Illustration by Dave Cormell.

Such is the guilty enjoyment of watching Harold Einstein’s razor sharp satire that before calling him there’s a mental preparation for a caustic wit of vicious proportions. It’s a palpable relief therefore to find him astonishingly sincere, without ego and, well... nice. Everything is lovely, every agency wonderful, every job simply amazing, every set an opportunity for collaboration. All of which makes his masterful direction of subversive comedy spots for Crest, FedEx and Xerox the more intriguing.

“I enjoy being around good actors, that’s all I know how to say,” he explains simply when asked for his secret to capturing moments of hilarity. “It’s too hard talking about why something is funny, or why it’s not. Maybe you can go back and dissect why, but that’s a college professor’s job or something.”

His artless description belies a nuance to his work that even seasoned comedy directors work hard at. But his very niceness and sincerity, mixed with empathy – which seems so ill at odds with his comedy – is exactly what drives his directing style: “Can you imagine how scary it is standing in front of the camera needing to do something to make the audience laugh, but you don’t have the immediate feedback of people laughing? All I remind myself of is how frightening that must be. My job is making those gifted actors feel at ease and comfortable and safe. As long as you do that, good stuff comes from it.”

A studio guitarist turned award-winning creative at some of the biggest and most creative agencies in the business including DDB, Wieden+Kennedy, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, Cliff Freeman and BBDO, he announced his directorial debut with a bang last year with three unconventional spots for Crest. Showing that you can say anything with a smile, in one a construction worker beams while telling a group of perplexed kids that he’s tearing down their playground to build a noisy, dirty factory. Since then spots for Avis, Xerox and FedEx have shown Einstein’s mastery of performance direction, matching deadpan dialogue with ridiculous situations to great effect.

Einstein says that two things dominate his process: meticulous, in-depth preparation to get everyone on set on board and, unsurprisingly, casting. “I work very, very hard in casting and call backs to make sure that with anyone we bring to set we’ve already seen the commercial in front of us. If you don’t see what you’re looking for on the call back, you’re not going to see it when you shoot.”

Last, but certainly not least, his agency experience matched with that disarming charm works wonders. “I was in a lot of client meetings, so I’m very comfortable around the people who are giving agencies money to make ideas. People get nervous, so the nice thing is it means there’s one more person on set to have a good conversation with. And that’s proven to be incredibly helpful,” he concludes earnestly.