Johnny Hardstaff's voyeuristic "Darkroom".

It’s an irony in filmmaking that although the director’s cut is usually the purest iteration of an auteur’s vision, it’s usually the one least seen by audiences. Inevitably the conflicting interests of the studio – or in advertising, the brand – contrive to compromise that vision to accommodate their needs and requirements.

Briefed to create a campaign to sell Philips’ range of cinematic proportion TVs, DDB, London flipped that paradox on its head, embracing the possibilities of unadulterated directorial creativity to show off the brand’s filmic prowess. They dreamt up an intriguing and utterly open brief: Take six, simple lines of dialogue (“What is it?”, “It’s a unicorn”, “I’ve never seen one up close before”, “Beautiful”, “Get away, get away”, “I’m sorry”) and interpret them to create whatever story the directors wished. Stipulations, says DDB chief creative officer for Philips Neil Dawson, were simply to create original content that highlighted the qualities of the TV, its picture and sound quality, and  Ambilight feature.

“Normally when you put a brief in you’re asking for a TV commercial with the product in it,” says Dawson. “This is the other way around; a piece of content that’s in the product.”

The resulting campaign, Parallel Lines, is a series of five short online films that vary wildly in tone, look and genre. Jake Scott’s “The Hunt” shows two hunters tracking an unseen beast, who unwittingly become its prey. Johnny Hardstaff’s “Darkroom” melds the dark intrigue of Hitchcock’s Rear Window with Blade Runner-esque sci-fi styling. Greg Fay’s “El Secreto De Mateo” is an understated tale of a boy bringing wonder into a young blind girl’s life. Hi-Sim’s “Jun and the Hidden Skies” is an animated fantasy romp through the galaxy, while Carl Erik Rinsch’s “The Gift” is an enigmatic futuristic thriller, complete with an unexplained assassination and an android on the run.

Dawson says that the aim of the campaign was twofold: to build on the success of last year’s Cannes Film Grand Prix-winner “Carousel”, while again creating something original and distinct. “I used the example of Honda ‘Cog’ and ‘Grrr’,” he explains. “Two completely different ads, but both about the power of dreams. I thought that’s what we needed to do; something that people couldn’t compare one to the other except strategically in that they were about the cinematic viewing experience.”

After approaching a few production companies, DDB quickly settled on RSA as the only one with a broad enough roster to accommodate a wide variety of ideas, and with the filmic pedigree of Ridley Scott.

It was, says RSA executive producer Caspar Delaney, a unique opportunity, a fact reflected in the huge response from the company’s directors, who submitted 45 treatments in all. Not only did it offer total creative freedom to the directors, but the raison d’etre was not about making commercials but creating films as product showcases. Additionally, with the directors as creatives, it flipped the agency/production company dynamic. “Because they’re short films, you weren’t reliant on them being commercials – they didn’t have to tick the usual boxes, they were making a body of work to show off the product,” says Delaney. “Sometimes at the beginning it was tricky for the creative team to realize that we were working under different relationship criteria. The usual opinion and influence they would have on individual casting and wardrobe...    it was a completely different chemistry.”

The opportunity was not the only unique aspect. Delaney line-produced three films and executive produced all five. It was the hardest, biggest project that the veteran producer has ever worked on. Briefed in mid-October, they began shooting in mid-December, firstly with Jake Scott in South Africa. The following week Hardstaff began shooting in a studio in London, simultaneously with Rinsch in Moscow, while finalizing pre-production on Hi-Sim’s animation film in Bristol. Fay, meanwhile, began shooting in mid-January. “This wouldn’t even have been possible 15 years ago,” he says. “[It was only possible] through communication and the Internet, being able to share.”

As well as streamlining pre-production, technology changed the productions themselves, providing more cost-effective, innovative solutions. “The only one that was shot on good old 35mm was Jake Scott’s. But even within that there is a sequence with the unicorn POV, and that was as state of the art as it could be. We had about 15 Canon 7Ds, which we put on a bespoke rig to give that peculiar, wide shot of chasing the hunters through the woods. Three films were shot on various high-def digital cameras. Johnny [Hardstaff]’s was shot on a Genesis and Carl [Erik Rinsch] and Greg [Fay]’s on Red.”

For Rinsch’s CG-heavy “The Gift”, he employed Spanish VFX house Big Lazy Robot, which recreated large sections of Moscow (30% to 40% of the final film, he estimates) in CG in a remarkable five weeks. That proved invaluable in recreating the former KGB headquarters and the entire chase sequence, both of which would have been impossible to film for real.

Shooting for the web, DDB was keen to use the medium to interact with users and hold their attention beyond the first viewing, says Delaney. Accordingly, each film has so-called Easter eggs, intriguing clues that viewers are urged to look out for and meant to raise discussion. Each film also has a sub-film that segues from the main film to reveal more of the story, which proved a learning experience for Delaney. “We were shooting our main films to hit a point where you could naturally segue if a viewer wanted to go to a sub-film. You can check out of the main narrative and back into it. “

For the directors involved the brief was an extraordinary opportunity, and the passion that elicited so many pitches is also reflected in the individual responses of the directors. “The agency didn’t amend the story at all,” says Hardstaff. “They were admirably hands-off and respected my desire to deliver a singular voice. The creatives were very much the guardians of the dialogue. They ensured that the parallel lines remained just that, and though involved in every respect throughout, worked strategically on the bigger picture. DDB were very supportive in helping us to deliver the films we wanted to make.”

It’s a testament to both the bravery of Philips and the agency, and the vision of the directors, that both Hardstaff and Rinsch are in discussions with Hollywood agents to create full-length versions of their shorts. “In a sense I think this is the future for directors, which is thrilling,” says Hardstaff. “People bring us design problems or parameters and then we define our projects, we write them and we realize them. If we’re lucky, informed brands become corporate patrons and help us bring these worlds to life through commercial models.”

Rinsch echoes that sentiment. He bemoans the lack of a system such as music videos from which the next generation of great filmmakers will spring. Parallel Lines, he argues, offers a new system in which corporate benefactors become artistic patrons, financing directors to create visionary work which audiences crave and brands benefit from.

“They’re getting a response, to the point where people in Hollywood have approached and said, ‘Well, we’d like to make this into a movie’,” concludes Rinsch. “Wouldn’t that be a great goal? If we all wanted to make ads that were so good that people wanted to watch it for two hours? Not something that people want to get rid of, to get onto what they really want, but that they want 70 times more of.” Q

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