Saturday dawned cold and clear. Unfortunately, in addition to sunny skies and mild weather, it also brought a return of the cold I thought I had left back in Los Angeles. But there were movies to see, so I stuffed my bag with tissues and myself with DayQuil and headed out for a 9:15am screening of Art & Copy, Doug Pray’s (Surfwise, Hype!, Scratch) new film about advertising’s effect on modern culture.
The night before, I had attended a press roundtable with Pray and the advertising titans featured in the film. Pray said that the film started as a tribute piece, something with which he he was never quite comfortable. He wasn’t sure where it was going to go, so he kept shooting and shooting to find the story. He says that eventually, “the energy of the subjects changed the film.”
The advertising industry still comes out of Art & Copy smelling pretty darn rosy, but audiences at least get a glimpse into the hearts and minds of those who want it to be the best it can be. George Lois, the loud, Bronx ad man famous for his shocking Esquire covers, says in the film, “Advertising can be, and should be, and at times has been revolutionary.”
The film opens with the sounds of familiar jingles such as “I Wish I Were an Oscar Meyer Weiner” and goes into the story of how the business evolved from a Mad Men-esque old boys network into a hot industry that attracted creative, cutting-edge talent. The action that precipitated this change? Simply putting the art director and the copywriter in the same room.
The audience learns the history behind some of America's most famous ad campaigns, including "I Want My MTV," "Just Do It,” and “Got Milk?" Throughout the film, statistics about media consumption, the advertising business and the amount of money spent on advertising are set against images of billboard construction and satellite launches, giving the audience a sense of both the local and global reach of the industry.
In addition to the agency vets, Pray also follows Chad Tiedeman, a billboard “rotator” whose family has been in the business since the 1930s. At the beginning Tiedeman says that he doesn’t know any of those who create the ads that he hangs. By the end of the film, watching Chad hang an Apple iPod banner, the audience will feel like they do.
During the Q&A following the film, someone in the audience asked how filmmakers can apply some of the ideas explored in the Art & Copy to marketing documentaries. Pray responded, "A film is a film. The first thing to do is get rid of the "D" word. Treat it as a cinematic experience, and then sell that experience to the audience."
FOR MORE:
DOCUMENTARY magazine article on Pray's previous film Surfwise
George Lois's Esquire covers
Crew Labs: a competition for independent filmmakers with a prize of a marketing package worth $100,000