MAT HUMPHREY: COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR 

Mat Humphrey is a commercial director working at Film Graphics Productions in Sydney. He has been directing ads for almost twenty years. His clients have included Vegemite, Listerine, Nissan, CBA, Ford, the Land Transport Authority and Brink’s Security in the US. He has also won numerous international awards, including a Bronze Lion at Cannes and a silver and a bronze Cleo in the US. AUSUS magazine spoke to Mat about his transition into commercial directing, working in America, and why he likes the business of advertising. 

Q: How did your career begin?

I started off directing low end commercials and then moved into industrial training films that were predominantly drama based. I was at a bit of a cross road. I didn’t know whether I wanted to get into drama direction or commercial direction. But I really enjoyed the commercials so I thought I’d try to direct more top end spots. A lot of commercial directors just do this till they can get a feature up, but for me I really like advertising. I like the little stories. A good thirty second or one minute script can be really clever, but also really challenging. I probably don’t have the attention span to deal with anything longer anyway! 

Q: The budgets for commercials are also a lot higher than many people realize.

Yes. However, the budgets here aren’t obviously as large as the budgets in America and that just purely comes down to the prospective audience. Like if an Australian soft drink manufacturer wants to get on air here in a prime spot their potential audience is only the people who watch television in Australia. But in America they can justify spending a hell of a lot more money because a hell of a lot more people are going to see it. And added to that, if it’s a multi national company like, say Coca Cola, the chances are they’ll run it over here as well. The rules have changed now so they can play more American commercials here. That’s why it’s important for me to get more work in the US. 

Q: Are you affected by the free trade agreement?

It affects Australian drama more. It’s a lot easier for a channel to buy say, ‘CSI’ or ‘Law & Order’, than to make Australian programs. While with television commercials, if you forget about the multi nationals like Coke and Pepsi, local brands still want to have a local feel to their commercials. Like Vegemite, for example. Although it’s owned by Phillip Morris in America now, it’s still seen as an Australian brand and it would be suicidal for them to run an American commercial for Vegemite. And that goes with other products too, like car manufacturers. I’ve been doing a lot of car work lately and we try to give it that local feel because people still want to buy local. For me as a commercial director there’s pluses and minuses. If it means it’s easier for me to go and work in America then great. 

Q: Did you study commercial directing? 

I actually studied graphic design. But I always liked film and I used to borrow my friend’s fathers super 8 camera and we’d go and shoot little animated films. The graphic design was a little bit too structured and neat. I was a bit of a slob really and I liked coming up with a good idea and really getting into it, whereas this was all about presenting on clean white bits of paper and so on so it probably didn’t suit my personality. It was a pristine kind of thing. So I left that and thought that maybe I’d become an animator. But I ended up getting a job at a production company and that was kind of it. I discovered I really wanted to direct so I started at the bottom as a production assistant, then an editor’s assistant, then a camera man’s assistant, then a cameraman and then I became a director. That was the production side of it, the knowledge of the tools. But I also wanted to get more knowledge about actors. That’s why, when I had the opportunity to work for corporate or industrial production houses, where all their films were like little soaps, I took it. It might be about selling insurance but it’d be like an eight minute film and it’d be two guys walking around a golf course having a casual conversation about insurance or the changes at work or something. These training films were a lot of fun because we’d get to shoot and edit a lot of material so it was it was like I was doing blocks of drama. I miss that a little bit because in television commercials there’s so much to tell in thirty seconds that normally you know exactly what you need to get from that actor in that two seconds for the story to work. I know that can get frustrating for actors because they can give so much more but I have to say ‘…you know what? I just need this. I just need you to look at him and smile’. In that two seconds this is the information that I have to give the audience. In a longer form I could tell the actor to do whatever he likes and I could just pick the bits that I think work.

Q: So you basically worked your way up to directing?

Yes. Really lucky I guess. I think when I got into corporate industrial film’s they’d just had a really big kick along. Particularly in Australia because large corporations had just discovered that they could make a film to teach employees or to promote themselves. Basically, using film as a communication tool to clients or to staff. No one had really thought of it before but then it got a push start with the advent of video because video made it cheaper. As soon as news went to beta cam there was a lot of beta cams around and cameramen saying ‘…hey, I got a camera. I can shoot something for you’. So people could make broadcast quality productions quite economically. Then once the industry had started people began wanting better quality and in the end we were shooting lots of projects on film. They’d sort of been educated. They needed to understand that they could afford it. Once they’d done a few things and it had worked for them, whether that be getting clients or showing someone how to put something together, they soon realized it was effective so they started to think that if they spent more money it might work even better. 

Q: Is the corporate industrial scene still happening?

I don’t think it’s as good as it used to be because of the internet. For example, in the past, if I wanted to find out information about working in America I’d ring up the relevant people and they’d send out a video that would tell me how to do that. Now I’d just do a search on the web. 

Q: Will there be a time where films are made exclusively for the internet?

Sure. No question. It’s just a matter of time. I think a lot of people are scared of that, but I sort of embrace it because I did longer form communication. I imagine that that’s the way my career might go. An example of it now is the BMW films. And because they’re not being broadcast they can break rules. Car advertising now has a whole lot of rules. You can’t show the car going fast. You can’t show it being used in an aggressive way. A lot of people used to get around it by claiming it was all just fantasy, just make believe. But you can’t use that as an excuse anymore. Now that’s not to say that we have to have those things in television commercials, but sometimes you have to think about why people want to buy a car. Particularly when it’s a sports car. So they want to show performance. So BMW made these films and put them on the internet. I think that’s an area I’d like to get into. 

Q: How would you establish yourself in that area?

I’m not quite sure. I know an interesting thing happened recently where a production company, like Film Graphics where I work, actually dealt directly with the client, not the advertising agency, to shoot some stuff in America. A lot of people stood up and took notice of that because in some ways it’s like biting off the hand that feeds us because the advertising agency gives us the script. Pepsi goes to the advertising agency who will say ‘…hey, we want Mat Humphrey to direct it’. So it was interesting that the client skipped that step. I believe that when the internet films start getting a kick along advertising agencies will still be involved but realistically the longer the film becomes then there’s more things the client will want in that film. So I guess that’s probably the future. That clients come directly to production companies. I imagine that someone like BMW will have their own television station on the net. They’ll be streaming films twenty four hours a day. It’s really not that far away. In fact, I think Ford in Melbourne does this already. They have a live web site where they show Ford technicians fixing cars. It’s like their own little television station. 

Q: Do you think that will create work for actors?

I think it will. A lot of the money that went out of the corporate videos went into setting up informative websites. Now because you can have films on those websites they’ll start to use training films on there. And because they have the potential to have basically their own television station they’ll want product. Every manufacturer can have their own website and as long as they make it interesting I think people will watch it. Like a car manufacturer might run highlights of the motor racing season, or you can click on a link and look at the technical aspects of the car. The potential is huge. Any product that a consumer needs information on could have a website. Then there’s the potential for products you don’t need information on sponsoring these sites. Fingers crossed that they’ll have quality rather than quantity. And if you have to spend the time downloading the films they better be good!

Q: How long have you been doing this, Mat?

I turned forty this year and I directed my first commercial when I was twenty two. I do think, particularly when there’s a story involved, that experience really helps. Because you’ve kind of done that. You know what’s going to work and what’s going to communicate. But when it’s a look or a cool or hip type of commercial the young guys can do that really well. I’d like to be known as a good drama director that can tell stories. It’s pretty rare that a project comes to me these days and I feel like its something I’ve never done before. 

Q: How many commercials have you shot?

I don’t know. Hundreds. A thousand. When I first started I was just churning them out because they were cheap retail spots. I was probably doing eight to ten a month. But now, if I do ten commercials a year I’m happy. Normally it’s about six to eight because each one of those is about a month’s work. Sometimes even more, depending if there’s a lot of post production. And things are quiet in Australia between about November and February. 

Q: Do you have a favorite commercial you’ve directed?

There’s a commercial I did years ago. It’s one of the first commercial’s I did after doing training films. It was about driver fatigue. It ran all around Australia and I’d say why it’s my favorite is because it had the most amazing impact. It just blew everyone away. It was a guy in a combi van and he’d just picked up his girlfriend. They were going away for the weekend but he falls asleep at the wheel and runs into a truck. And it was so simple and so graphic. And I was really proud of it. Not because I took risks or anything but because it was such a big client and they took a risk on me. I was a bit nervous. I was confident in what I was trying to do but do no one else had really done this before. Normally in the lead up to an accident it’s the classic Hollywood scenario. Foot on the break. Close up on the eyes ‘…oh my god’. I didn’t want to do that. I just wanted it to be bang. No warning. It just happens. And that’s the way I told the story. I looked at a lot of Hitchcock’s stuff. How to build tension. To foreshadow that something is going to happen but then let the audience think that it’s over and they’ve made it and it’ll be okay. But just at that moment it’s all over. It won a lot of awards. It won the Lion at Cannes. It’s about twelve years old 

Q: Have you won many awards?

I’ve been pretty lucky in that I consistently do well in international awards, particularly for direction.  I’ve won a couple of Cleos’s in America. I got a silver one year and a bronze the next. I’m fortunate enough to attract commercials that have a bit of substance. But at the moment, for example, I’m just doing car commercial’s and they often don’t have too much dialogue in them which is a bit of a shame. But I think the best publicity for a commercial director is not the awards. It’s having your work on air. Because ultimately that’s what people talk about. The awards don’t really help you get work. The only people that talk about awards are the people that win them. It’s good for me in the US because it helps me get a work visa. Reactor Films can justify bringing me out because I’ve won international awards. 

Q: How did your commercial work in the US come about?

Basically the reps over there showed my reel to the agency and they liked it so they contacted Reactor Films and organized a conference call. We just chatted about the script and we pitched a couple of ideas. Then we negotiated a price on it and my producer and I went over and did it. It was amazing. I mean we’ve got great crews here but everything is just so much bigger over there. We probably had twice the amount of people working on the job. 

Q: What is the A to Z process of making a commercial in Australia?

Basically the agency has the idea. They then get in a bunch of directors reels from probably three or four production companies and find the directors they want to work with. They’ll usually choose three directors and from that they’ll send a script to them or their producers. Normally then there’s either a meeting or a conference call with the ‘creatives’ and I’ll ask them what they’re thinking. Often they’ll have a scene in a film they like, or a still that they’ve thought of or it might even be an ad. Or I might suggest something. From that I’ll do a written treatment and maybe show them some visual references. That might involve some scenes from a film or some stills. I’ll spend a lot of time and effort on that because ultimately that’s what wins the job. And if they like the treatment they’ll show it to their client who has to like it as well. Part of that is also a quote. Normally what happens is that they’ll get a couple of different tiers of directors. Out of the three directors they might have someone they really like but they think they can’t afford. Someone who would also do a good job but is a bit cheaper and someone who they could fall back on if these guys are too expensive. So money makes a big difference. There’s a lot of to and fro about it. This all takes about a week. Talking to people. Maybe looking at some locations. If they award the job to us it normally takes about another two weeks before we start shooting. Then it’s usually a two day shoot. Then maybe up to a week editing it. Until it’s approved by the client. And then up to another week finishing off the post production. We’ll go to a post production house and we’ll grade the film and do the special effects and then we’ll finish the music and the sound. So it’s about a month. Sometimes longer depending on what’s involved. And the final very important stage is we take them out to lunch! 

Q: It’s a different process in the US, isn’t it?

Yeh. You just shoot it and you walk away. I think their finished result would be a lot closer to what the director had in mind if he saw the whole process through. Traditionally over here it’s the voice overs that are handled by the advertising agency. I think it’s because they do a lot of radio ads and they’re used to that side of it. 

Q: What is the budget of the commercials you shoot?

If it’s four hundred thousand then that’s good. But a lot of this is contingency money. It’s different to a film in that in a film if you miss a shot then that can be okay because it’s usually about the story and the performances. But in a commercial you can’t afford to miss a thing. If it’s a car commercial then that car has to look the best it ever has. And if it rains you have to reschedule or use blue screen. And that all costs money. 

Q: How do you find the actors?

Through a casting agency. Toni Higgenbotham does most of my casting. But I do like to move around and try different casting agents, depending on the commercial. It’s basically my call who to cast but sometimes the client will ask me to keep looking. It’s funny. I was just looking at a commercial I did recently and I think the campaign will end because the actor wasn’t that good. It probably would have been a really sustainable campaign if they’d listened to my original choice. When I cast an actor the first thing is that I’ve got to like them. There’s a heap of pressure on a commercial shoot and you want dealing with the actor to be the easiest part. You want it to be like asking a friend to do something. And the other thing is that they’ve just got to be the person that I had in mind. I don’t often push actors to be something else. We all know actors can play different parts but if they come in their looking like the businessman or the farmer and say the lines the way I imagined then they’ve got the gig. 

Q: Is there anything you’d like to have achieved by the end of your career?