What advice do you have for new directors?
Include whatever you feel will be helpful...
To be successful, a director’s reel must show creative range, but it must also present a cohesive directorial style that ties everything together and tells people who that director is. These days, we’re seeing how important it is to include short-form commercial work–not just music videos or shorts. Agency creatives and their clients need to know that a director can tell their story in a :15, :30, or a :60. And I encourage our directors to find a balance between their love of storytelling and current marketing trends. It’s not news that every campaign needs a social component with shorter bits of content. The days of agency creatives rolling their eyes at the idea of doing :15s and :06s are long gone. These elements should be embraced as opportunities to deliver powerful little messages. If long-form is the ‘comedy special’, :06s are the sharp one-liners you’ll remember long after the laughter dies down.