Steve Rogers

Looking at director Steve Rogers’ work from the past year, one gets the sense that he’s not someone who screams easily. Though the athletic bombast that dominated the 42-year-old’s reel when Boards chose him as a Director to Watch in 2005 remains, his recent work is filled with many more moments of understated peculiarity.

“One of the difficulties in telling advertising stories simply is the seemingly constant need for something more,” he says over the phone from his Sydney office. “Something bigger, brighter, more dazzling – more often than not to disguise an average idea. Taking the simpler route, the more classical path, in some eyes does not scream loud enough.”

The classical path served Rogers well in the past year. In the James Boag’s Draught spot “Pure Waters”, visual effects subtly demonstrate the mystical transformative powers of Tasmanian water; an eerie foreboding fills the quietly satirical Subaru “Drifter”; and in the anti-human trafficking PSA-cum-Radiohead video “All I Need”, Rogers takes a stark, observational approach to compare the lives of a suburban Aussie kid with an Asian child laborer.

Rogers credits his unobtrusive storytelling style back to days studying graphic design at Sydney’s Randwick College. “The art school I went to focused a lot on composition and an aesthetic consideration, which you can apply to whatever medium,” he says.

That approach can often subtly elevate a mediocre or familiar concept into that “something more” clients crave. Take Subaru “Crowd Rider”, in which the entire population of a nondescript city races through the streets to help an office worker crowd surf his way home. Rogers pitched an in-camera approach that limited the number of shots and edits.

“My response is always to try and bring a story to life in the most believable way possible,” he says. “We achieved about 90% of the story in-camera using many, many extras and some wonderfully inventive and resourceful technicians.”

In addition to directing, Rogers is a lifelong entrepreneur. In the ‘90s he founded a title design and motion graphics studio called Revolver Design, and as the field became more live action-oriented, so did Rogers. In 1998, he partnered with producer Michael Ritchie to launch Revolver Film. Today, the boutique prodco represents Biscuit Filmworks’ Noam Murro, creative collective The Glue Society and innovative up-and-comer Kris Moyes.

Rogers, who is repped by Biscuit in the United States, kept busy at the end of last year, wrapping two jobs for the Australian market: a PSA for the World Wildlife Foundation and an “all guns blazing” ad for Toyota’s new hybrid Camry through Saatchi & Saatchi, Sydney, the latter he took for the large-scale technical challenges it posed. He’s also looking forward to taking his measured directorial skill into a theatrical arena – literally – with a Revolver-produced play penned by a local creative director.

“If we can bring something extraordinary to life and make it enjoyable and entertaining and real, then that’s OK with me.” Q

www.revolverfilm.com

www.biscuitfilmworks.com