WHY SO SERIOUS
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hi guys
my name is ayappa i’m a partner
and director at early man film
some of you may be wondering why a
filmmaker whose specialization is
advertising
is giving a ted talk because let’s face
it
people hate ads when i say commercial
break
what is your first thought i asked my
mom what is the feeling
she got every time she saw a commercial
break her answer
so irritating so ask more people what
they thought
here are the best ones bore
annoying stupid i want to punch the ad
makers
and my personal favorite puke
it’s sad because it wasn’t always like
this when i was growing up i used to
love ads
so much that i ended up making them i
used to wait for commercial breaks and
see
piotr and personal party’s great ass for
center shock and fevicol
we used to discuss it with our friends
advertising was cool advertising created
popular culture
advertising was doing edgier work than
films feature films
of course the times were different then
and unlike today we didn’t have a
plethora of options to entertain us like
we do now
but that’s actually not an excuse in
fact it should better your output
look at feature films and the tv series
coming out of india now it’s such great
work
films and tv series have taken giant
leaps forward but the same cannot be
said about advertising
which is sad because advertising films
are in a very unique place
you can jump from genre to genre you
really test
your storytelling capabilities because
you have to communicate so many feelings
and emotions and things in like
30 seconds in such a short duration you
have access to huge budgets
much more than feature films which means
you can employ the best crew you can
you have enough time to work on your
commercial you can really indulge
you can shoot 50 takes of the same shot
over analyze the color of a curtain
get 10 options to choose from and then
still throw a creative tantrum and
pretend to be unhappy you don’t have all
these luxuries in
long form i didn’t realize this until i
shot a tv series for amazon last year
we were shooting six minutes a day
that’s about 360 seconds a day
and how many seconds do we shoot in tv
commercials
30 and yet the result is beyond dismal
and there’s no reason it should be today
commercials are either just screaming
some useless
product information at you or it’s some
goody goody husband wife mouthing lame
lines while giving each other these
romantic looks
it could be safe clients it could be
lazy creativity
it’s not just enough to come up with a
great and crazy idea
everybody has good ideas that’s what we
do but you have to get a brand to
believe in it as much as you do
and the moment you show hesitation or
weakness or even worse self-doubt
that’s the end of the idea then you have
to find a director
who’s going to handle it sensitively and
not screw it up so many times you see an
inkling of an idea destroyed with
lazy execution not that it’s a smooth
ride for the director either
everybody involved in the project has an
opinion which is fair when you’re paying
money for something you will have an
opinion
when i’m building my house i am going to
tell the architect what color to paint
the walls and piss them off
in advertising film production we have
something called the ppm
the pre-production meeting in which the
agency creatives and the director have
to present their vision of the film to
the client which most people dread
and over these years i’ve noticed these
two issues and concerns keep cropping up
one the film should look premium and
upmarket
which means don’t have dark skinned
people have only fair skinned people and
fake looking houses you’ve seen
advertising houses right
have you ever seen a single house like
that in india i saw a commercial where a
kid returning home from school
is greeted by his dad who’s standing in
this huge lawn and he’s wearing like
this
british overcoat and this beret looks
like sherlock holmes
and looks ridiculous no no indian dad
dresses up like that
how will people believe you or connect
with you
number two don’t make it dark which is a
really strange thing to say when your
film is set at night it’s night it will
be dark unless you live in iceland
so it’s all these buzzwords that have
been passed down
decades and decades from conference room
to conference room
uh it’s becoming an industry in itself
and there’s no logic or any
justification to it
now i’m going to show you a couple of
long commercials that don’t add you to
these rules
and will also help me fill up my
mandatory 18 minutes so i don’t have to
talk so much
the first one is for ambuja cement
starting the wrestler khali
initially we had a lot of outlandish
scenes about a man with superhuman
strength
but then we decided to do the opposite
of how we would approach a job like this
so indians like loud humor let’s do
something subtle ads must have good
looking people let’s only cut strange
looking people
and we ended up we played down the joke
and treated it like a documentary about
a man who’s cursed with strength
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you notice the last shot his eyes are
darting nervously from one side to
another
a lot of people in front of the camera
do that once they finish a take
because it’s an uncertain moment for
them and they’re seeking approval from
a director or whatever so we kept the
cameras rolling even after that even
after saying cut and we got those
expressions of kali being slightly
unsure
and we used that in the film and it
showed us a very real and endearing side
to him and it ends up humanizing him
it breaks the fourth wall between the ad
and the viewer because it’s real and
unstaged and raw and
you can’t you can see the person behind
the star so you have to
keep looking for things like this when
you’re shooting things that cannot be
storyboarded or explained
all these happy creative accidents and
that’s what makes work fresh
the next commercial i’m going to play is
a public service announcement
which doesn’t have deaf blind or
limbless people which is the first for
indian advertising
but it still manages to elicit a strong
emotional response
some opinions may differ but advertising
is not pure art you can approach your
creative process
and your approach to it can be like art
but end of the day it is a commercial
art
some years ago at cannes you had the
film festival followed by the
pornographic film festival
and then you had the advertising film
festival just to put things in
perspective
but every once in a while you can toy
with that by creating a storyline and
visuals that are a little more abstract
and something that draws you in because
of its mystery and invites you to
interpret the images
as an intelligent viewer
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if you’re feeling a bit emotional after
seeing that don’t worry the next one
will change that
because i’ve been instructed to speak on
the cred campaign that ran a month ago
on the ipl
you know it’s like one of those
ridiculous scripts that you present at a
meeting and then you go haha just joking
and then you present the actual one but
yeah you had a client who was egging you
on and
getting you to push it more and more and
that’s great because then
you have the freedom to do what you want
and you have to deliver because you
can’t blame the client later if it turns
out like
baby i am your otp
when we come together payment is easy
downloaded baby download
this campaign poked fun at lazy
copywriting hiding behind celebrities
and masquerading as ideas
it also proved that in bollywood if you
pay enough money celebrities will do
anything
the campaign was fearless because the
client and the creatives understood
that people want entertainment they
don’t want ads
we will never default on our love story
download facebook seriously let’s just
do a simple voiceover like download
credit sometimes the creative risks that
you take
just don’t work out because you have to
take take them for the right people
sometime back we were in delhi and we
were presenting a film that the agency
and me thought it turned out quite well
because
we had really worked hard on it and
we presented the film with a lot of
pride
but there was like radio silence from
the other end of the conference room
and uh they hated the film and they said
this is the worst film we’ve seen it’s
not funny
it’s too subtle and really launched into
us
and uh in fact then one of them started
acting out some scene from some
david darwin film and said this is how
we should have pitched the acting
and then it would have been funny and
after all that they said we’re not going
to pay you
the balance that they owed us really
smart guys
so uh we were really shocked and i took
a photo of this
moment does it look like these guys
are going to buy anything half decent no
chance you’re wasting your time
and you’re just getting the solution i
look at this photo every time i go meet
a client for a film briefing to remind
myself that everybody has opinions
but you should only take the ones that
matter to you still i’ve had many films
bombed
so either you’re a director or
maybe the work that you’re doing is
radical and far away from the current
cliches
and you need to know the difference of
course so one should not get bogged down
by rejection
especially when you know what you’ve
done is good in fact you should take it
as a compliment
because historically people have always
react reacted negatively when they see
something new
even visionary works like kubrick’s 2001
space odyssey was panned by critics and
the people when it came out in 1968.
today it’s considered the greatest
sci-fi film ever made after koemelga of
course
my amazing luck seems to have followed
me into long format as well the show
that i had worked on for three years has
run into some trouble because of the new
otd censorship laws blah blah blah
of course it’s very upsetting and
unsettling but this is the time we live
in
everybody’s so busy virtual signaling
and getting offended with everything
and indians suck at self-deprecation we
don’t we really don’t know how to laugh
at ourselves
and networks are scared of this
unreasonable backlash and this is
creativity’s biggest enemy because
then you’re trying to second guess that
a section of society is going to get
offended
and that really affects your output and
blunts your age as a writer
considering the current climate of the
country it’s
ironic that this statement came from
arun jaitley
what he’s saying is great because uh
well-meaning criticism in the form of a
joke
is good because it gives you objectivity
and is an opportunity for you to better
yourself
so it’s good to laugh at others laugh at
yourself it’s therapeutic
and makes you a better person look at
all the edgy content on social media
like hilarious insta stories and memes
this is what the top boss in a meeting
called it we need to connect with the
indian youths with mems
so take a look at this men
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years after i’ve seen it it’s still so
irreverent and funny
and this is what ads are up against to
the future because tv advertising isn’t
dead it’s just going digital
and you have to adapt to a more
irreverent and edgy sensibility for it
to work online
of course india is still a very heavy tv
market and most ads are still made for
tv but
when those commercials are adapted to
digital it can’t be as simple as
shooting the same commercial in a 9 by
16 vertical format
it’s not just a technical adaptation it
should be an ideological adaptation
so the old rules don’t apply dads can’t
be wearing berries in a tropical country
like india
advertising films have to stay edgy and
relevant because people want to be
entertained
and if they entertain then maybe just
maybe they listen to what you’re selling
many years ago when i was traveling i
saw an old lady in the smoking section
at the osaka airport
her she must have been about 85 and her
job
was to clean one of those big dustbin
shaped ashtrays
in the airport smoking lounge so that
ashley had these two compartments so she
meticulously
took took it apart and emptied the bus
and the ash from both
and then she took the bottom part and
took a cloth and started cleaning it
from
uh cleaning the whole thing and really
wiping it until it shows then she kept
it back and then she took the top part
she took another cloth and started
wiping it wiping it until it was really
gleaming
and then she put both of them together
and it looked like
it belonged in some museum it was like
shining so
bright and looks so nice and clean what
was a
routine two minute job took her 15
minutes to do
she was really into it and i was sitting
there and enjoying this
magical illusion when suddenly two guys
came and stubbed their cigarettes
and uh it was spoiled and it ruined the
effect
my point is if an old lady can devote so
much passion
into something as inconsequential and
mundane as cleaning and ashtray
so why can’t we do our best in whatever
we do so whether you’re making a tv
commercial
or a feature film or even making maggie
for dinner
do it in the best way possible because
when you push the limits of your craft
you just push the world forward just a
little bit and that
in turn may end up as inspiration for
somebody else
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