A still from Carl Erik Rinsch's online film "The Gift", part of Philip's Parallel Lines campaign.

Commercials have become less creative, says RSA-repped Carl Erik Rinsch, and a valuable school for the next generation of young directors is being lost. He argues that branded content projects like Philip's Parallel Lines may provide the outlet that young auteurs need to bring their creative vision to life and become the next Scotts, Jonzes and Scorseses.

For the Spotopsy feature in the May issue of Boards, we spoke to Rinsch about his short film, "The Gift", one of five films in Philips' Parallel Lines from different RSA directors, all using the same six lines of dialogue. In this extended interview Rinsch, who is currently in development on features Creature From The Black Lagoon and 47 Ronin, argues that long form projects like Philips Parallel Lines offer a new opportunity for filmmakers to fund their ideas and for brands to create entertainment that will woo consumers.

Rinsch says that projects of the caliber of Parallel Lines are very rare. "I really think commercials have taken a major turn for the worse. I think with Boards you could post 15, 20, 30 ads [a week] worldwide that were worth talking about. Now you're struggling to do two or three. And it's like, wait a second, I thought it was a recession, everyone had less money but they had to be more creative in order to capture attention. But I don't think unfortunately that's been the case."

That lack of creative scripts along with the music video world's lack of budgets has dried up the vital watering hole that once supplied the features industry, he argues. "The one thing David Lean, Martin Scorcese, Ridley Scott, Akira Kurosawa even have in common? They've all directed commercials. Let's remember that... If you look at filmmaking it's like any other art form in the respect of schools. You can go right back. There were studios in the '30s and '40s, and recently filmmakers out of film school. Scorcese out of Tisch, Zemeckis out of USC, Coppola out of UCLA. There was a generation of filmmakers who all came from the same watering hole of film schools. That ended up being a school of filmmaking that really affected everything. The way that they learned to tell stories became a movement. In Europe you had Adrian Lyne, Alan Parker, Ridley and Tony Scott and that school was really commercials."

In the past commercials were a testing ground, says Rinsch, where financiers came to trust directors with big budget movies based on their commercials reels. With the disappearance of that commercial avenue, he says, has come a boon and a bust for filmmaking. "You put your stuff up on YouTube, which is very amateurish, but is that really where the next generation of filmmakers is coming up from? I don't know if I like that. In that respect it's very depressing because you see the bloodline disappearing, but in another respect you're seeing the whole new generation of filmmakers coming out who are mixing digital and traditional and are able to achieve more or less."

Initiatives like Parallel Lines, he argues, offer funding and creative freedom for young directors, and simultaneously rich, beautifully told stories for brands that will draw in consumers. "Every once in a while, I hope, you have a new movement like Philips. Where you're working hand in hand with an agency and client to create ‘advertainment' almost. They give you enough money to actually shoot something interesting, and push you, but not too much money that everyone's terrified of clamping down on the creative."

Such has been the success of the project that Rinsch says they have been approached by other companies to create similar properties, which he hopes will represent the future. "That's the new thing, instead of advertising getting in the way of what you're trying to watch... you're searching out the material that's being sponsored by these large companies. That you're going to get filmmakers making short films of all different varieties with space where there can really provide their own unique voice, and hopefully let that expand into the movie business."

As well as tempting the finest advertising directors like Frank Budgen and Jonathan Glazer to do more commercial work, Rinsch hopes these brands will invest in the next wave of young filmmakers. Ultimately he hopes that Philips will set a bar and standard to create better, more entertaining commercials for brands and consumers and train a new wave of auteurs.

"[The Philips films] are getting a response, to the point where people in Hollywood have approached and said, ‘Well we'd like to make this into a movie.' Isn't that the goal? To make an ad so good they have to turn into a movie? 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. Then you're onto something. Not something that people want to get rid of, to get onto what they really want, but that they want 70 times more of. If we can get onto that point, we're onto something."

Read the Spotopsy from the May issue here and watch the Philips Parallel Lines films here.

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