"[It] puts a fire under your ass," is how Andrew Christou, ex-creative director/partner of New York's Berlin Cameron & Partners, describes his move to directing. "But it's a unique challenge."

Now based in LA, Christou switched professions in late 2001 because, he says, directing was all he'd ever wanted to do. "I'd direct a spec spot every year while working on the creative. Then it was a case of, 'Okay, if I'm gonna commit to this, then it has to be full-time'."

He quickly found he had to work his way back up the food chain. "I knew people from the advertising days, but I had to build up the caliber of cutters and colorists [that I'd been used to having access to] all over again."

Christou's agency career kicked off nine years ago as a junior art director on Pepsi at BBDO, NY. He then joined Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, for three years on the Nike account before heading back to New York and working on Coca-Cola at Fallon McElligott Berlin (which later became Berlin Cameron/Red Cell).

After he moved behind the camera, Christou signed to bicoastal Moxie Pictures, racking up a list of impressive credits including Sketchers and Fox Sports. On last year's Sketchers shoot, in fact, he acted as both in-house agency and director for the client.

The pervading theme of Christou's work is authenticity. His Sketchers spots depict everyday people enjoying the simple pleasures in life, using personal moments that invite the audience in and make them feel good about the brand. For instance, "DJ" unveils a Sketchers-adorned spinner mixing sounds in front of what seems to be an avid audience. The camera pans out to reveal that the 'venue' is his humble abode, and the 'audience' is his dog.

Christou says the scene is deliberately unpretentious. "[Sketchers] aren't Nike or Reebok - they don't make you score three-pointers. Sketchers are cool, good-looking reality shoes." To augment the authenticity he used a '70s-styled sepia look, carefully calibrated before production. "The shoes had to feel natural in their environment, but also pop out," he explains. "Every item in view had a certain tonality that matched the tobacco filter."

Christou's most recent work is a lampooning effort for client Labatt Blue through Grip of Toronto. Dozens of individual gags were set up and filmed on handheld DV over seven days to create a 12-spot campaign that's currently running across Canada.

In one spot, a guy meanders over to his car and opens the car door, only to be engulfed by a sea of ping pong balls. As he slips and slides in the avalanche, his friends split their sides laughing, filming the prank from a rooftop above. "It's about how friends get together, have a good time and pull shit on each other," says Christou.

If a situation lends itself to improv, Christou will milk it. For Austin-based Makos' Texadelphia campaign - which collected a Best of Show at the ADDY Awards in February - "the approach was free-form," he says. The seven spots feature two stoners tripping on the excellence of Texadelphia food. They engage in gnarly discourse on various topics, such as the onion-to-beef ratio in each meal. "We shot all the spots in one day," Christou says. "We caught little moments about these guys and their head trips."

Similarly, in Kovel/Fuller's "Bicycle Kick" for Fox Sports, which features a guy doing acrobatics with an invisible soccer ball, Christou was inspired to ad-lib by the "authenticity" of the air-soccer player's actions. This, he says, "allowed ideas to generate during the shoot". In the spot, the guy ends up doing a scissors-kick, landing with a crash on pavement, whereupon a passer-by announces: "He's okay: he just needs some soccer."

For his own path ahead, Christou digs the European sensibility of commercial filmmaking. "I have yet to shoot there, but I hope the opportunity comes up," he confesses. "There's a dry, ironic sense of humor in England. I foster that in my work here, because I think Americans are willing and ready for it."

WEBFILES:
Moxie Pictures> http://www.moxiepictures.com