I was a dancer when I got discovered, and I started working immediately. I started being in commercials and doing guest star roles. My first big thing, which happened maybe six months after being discovered, was ‘Bring It On: All or Nothing.’
And over the course of the last six years, as I’ve directed more features and commercials, I’ve become better at articulating exactly how I want the audience to feel.
I make commercials for a living; half of it gets thrown in the garbage, and I pitch TV; half of those shows get thrown in the garbage, so I essentially work for the garbage.
No one wants to risk a million dollars on a few laughs. The big, flashy commercials are out. The soft sell is out.
I enjoy living in a nice house and having a nice life. So I do two or three commercials overseas a year to sort of fill in, because they pay pretty well.
I come from music videos and commercials, where style is a big part of the whole world. I’ve always tried to add that to whatever I’m doing.
Doing radio commercials was how I was really able to leave my day job.
I like to do commercials that are more than just flogging a product. It needs to have something to say. It’s always an opportunity for a director to say something substantial and interesting.
I was in a commercial when I was three. My godfather was a director and a producer of commercials. He took me in along with his kids and I couldn’t remember my lines. I giggled my way through the commercial and they kept it.
I’ve done commercials that Sam Mendes directed. Paul Feig directed me in a commercial.
When I ask people what they think of when they hear the term ‘cerebral palsy,’ I usually get one of two responses. They either think of a smiling, crumpled child in a wheelchair on a poster or commercials on late night TV with lawyers enticing parents of CP kids to sue the pants off their obstetrician.
I’ve been blessed with doing something I love and then at the same time, do introductions at World Series, Stanley Cup championships, NFL playoff games and a lot of commercials. No regrets at all.
Artistically I like to do short-term things. Like I do a lot of commercials, I have the Miller commercial out where I play the Devil in Hell, where Hell is frozen.
I could go and make commercials left and right and pretend like I am a celebrity, but that is not me.
I really hate it when I see other bands selling their music to commercials.
American television, for all its faults, still has a black presence in shows and even in commercials. You’ll see black people in automobile ads, black women starring on their own television shows. We don’t see that on British television.
I got a part in a package of commercials for this big drugstore from the age of 6 to 10. For four years I shot those commercials, and old ladies would stop me on the street and grab my cheeks. That’s how it started.
I did a whole lot of work before taking up my first movie. From TV commercials to Telugu films, I learnt a lot from them all.
When I met Apple, I made it very clear that I am an old punk and I have never done commercials or been sponsored. And I wasn’t after their money.
My first job was an AFI short film, ‘Chasing Daylight,’ when I was 11, and I made a couple of commercials that never aired.
I often feel that my days in New York City, that I was here for five years, didn’t get one job, went on a thousands of auditions and literally did not get a job on a soap, not a movie, not TV, not nothing, although I did do some commercials thank God.
Internet-centric companies have already begun changing the rules with binge-watching, flexible running times, fewer commercials, and crowd-sourced content. The brainpower – and just plain power – of the most valued tech firms will change things even more.
I think comedy is drama, often. It’s hard to have comedy over a period of time – commercials are one thing, but over a period of time – comedy and tragedy go hand in hand.
Before I had satellite radio installed in my car, I thought I would lose my mind listening to commercials and having limited choices on the dial. Your car is your home in L.A., so you’ve got to have some good stuff to listen to.
TV has made dancing less important. It used to be a real treat to go to the movies and see Fred Astaire dance. But now you see dancing every time you turn on the set. You see lines of girls on the variety shows – even girls dancing around a big box of cleaning powder for commercials.
I grew up watching movies and television, and one day when I was really young I told my mom I wanted to become an actor, and she was really supportive and got me involved in local theater and commercials. From there I moved up to auditioning for movies and television.
I have been fortunate that my commercials became famous and the best directors have managed to work on my terms. I didn’t have to chase anyone.
I think everybody, from whatever town they’re from, knows their hometown commercials.
In my experience, not just in shooting films but in the commercials I’ve done, initially, it’s very exciting for the community, and its a real novelty. Very quickly, though, they realize there’s a buck to be had, and it becomes annoying, and they lose their patience pretty quick.
Philosophically, I don’t like doing commercials.
I was working in commercials and music videos, always with the goal of working in feature films.
I did commercials and voice-overs as a kid, and it just lead to musical theatre opportunities.
And I’ve always loved commercials. I like working out how to organically weave a brand’s message into the writing process. It’s like an improv show, where comics ask the audience to throw out a word and a skit is built around it.
I think the concept of commercials, for example, I have had offers to do songs in different commercials, and it is not what I have liked.
When I started to do work outside of surfing, commercials where I needed to lead, I came out of my shell more, and I realised I wanted to create an environment that’s fun because, a lot of time on shoots, people are so stressed and running behind the clock in an intense way.
You can feel how much money goes into commercials by how swiftly they act on your mind. And they’ve got, like, a hypnotic quality to the way they present their products.
One survey that I saw that was published I think in Variety or Electronic Media within the last three weeks says that now the average hour of radio in the United States has 18 minutes of commercials.
Here’s my tip: Have your production hire the best hair stylists on the planet to do your films and commercials, then casually hint about how great it would be to get a trim during lunch break.
In many ways, ‘Lords of Chaos’ is my first real movie. I went deeper with this film than any of my other movies. I approached my other films like I did my music videos or commercials, like jobs. But ‘Lords of Chaos’ I wrote myself, and it’s a close, personal story.
Sports, as a media property, is increasingly valuable because it’s something you have to have live. As a result, we’re a better touch point for sponsors and advertisers because our commercials typically don’t get zapped out.
Thank you… preseason football, for having all the excitement, commercials, and time-outs of the regular season, but with none of the mattering. I appreciate it. Thank you.
I grew up watching ‘Ghostbusters’ and ‘Knight Rider’ and Hot Wheels commercials. When I got to college, having never set foot in America, I knew more American pop-culture references than my friends did.
I started modelling while still studying. I liked doing television commercials and being in front of the camera. Lots of ad directors told me to try for films.
Commercials were too phony for me. I just didn’t like selling products I didn’t believe in.
The whole world loves American movies, blue jeans, jazz and rock and roll. It is probably a better way to get to know our country than by what politicians or airline commercials represent.
Just look at the messages today’s media are sending everybody, from TV and commercials to actors and singers. Kids are just drowning in that 24-7 and it’s getting really bad.
I started out doing commercials, like Diet Coke and Pizza Hut. And I started to find there was a different life for me, in a different field. From there, I got a call from a director in Italy, and we did ‘Indio’ I and II, and that’s where it started.
I had started in the comedy world in a more traditional way. I was auditioning for TV, film, and commercials while I was making these Web videos from my house.
When I wrote ‘Pink Houses,’ nobody was talking about that, right? The next thing I know, you can’t see the TV without hearing commercials with ‘Listen to the heartbeat of America,’ or ‘Born the American way.’ That whole America thing now – I hate it.
If you’re advertising on Facebook, the work you’re doing should be made better by being on Facebook. You can’t just be repurposing old TV commercials and hoping to get traction; that’s very primitive. The question, always, is, ‘How is this idea made better by this medium?’
A guy is a lump like a doughnut. So, first you gotta get rid of all the stuff his mom did to him. And then you gotta get rid of all that macho crap that they pick up from beer commercials. And then there’s my personal favorite, the male ego.
Commercials certainly pay more than films. I was pleasantly surprised at the profitability of commercials when I did my first ad for a popular soap brand years ago. I was paid a huge amount of money for a mere 30 seconds of screen presence. After that, ads have been a regular feature in my career.
