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An interview with Art & Copy director, Doug Pray.

1) Were you a Marketing or Broadcast Journalism major?

Undergrad? I was a sociology major at Colorado College, but spent most of my time at the radio station and college newspaper.  Later I went to graduate school at UCLA School of Film and Television.

2) What prompted you to make a documentary on the modern way that advertising has evolved? 

I was approached by my producers with an opportunity: access to some of the most legendary ad creatives who ever lived. I was intrigued by the idea that they’ve shaped our culture so much, but are kind of unknown to the public.  I wanted to meet them and get into their minds and find out what personally motivates them, and why their work was so effective. (Short answer: because they put themselves into the work.)

3) The film has its own artistic visual approach with the usage of nature in opposition of the man-made ads. The scenes that cut from one location to another using the sky made me think that your decision to use nature was done in previz and not as an afterthought. Correct? Why the usage of nature to compliment the ads?

Two reasons: first, I always shoot lots of B-roll (scenics and cutaway footage) whenever I do an interview or go anywhere. I want to see and feel the environment I’m in. The sky, the weather, the roads, the city, everything contributes to a sense of what we’re after.  In ART & COPY, the extra visual footage also got us away from talking heads. And the meditative qualities of a lot of the shots were a nice counterpoint to the commercials themselves. I knew I didn’t want to make a loud, abrasive, non-stop, cutty film about ads.  I wanted the advertising to really stand out, and the rest of the film to be more quiet and thoughtful.

4) Many of the people interviewed mention the poor job done by a lot of advertising nowadays - that it’s not art or the copy is not clever. One even mentioned that he doesn’t like his children being subjected to bad ads because it’s like letting them watch bad TV. What do you believe makes an ad (radio/TV/print) art and what makes it simply a barrage of images & words that can be considered annoying, offensive or “evil”?

Bad advertising is communication that is delivered to the lowest common denominator. That treats the audience as ignorant and aspires to nothing more than the boring task at hand:  “tell the masses about a product.”  My film is a celebration of intelligent, entertaining and inspiring advertising. It’s about a small group of people who challenged the status quo, went far beyond just selling something, and made advertising that featured great beauty, or had redeeming social qualities, or that moved us by telling some human truth with emotion or humor. As much as we tend to think of all advertising as terrible (and most is), ART & COPY shows some powerful examples of people using advertising to change our culture for the better.

5) How easy or difficult was it to obtain all of the rights for the various spots (e.g. Volkswagen, Nike, etc.) used in Art & Copy?

In most cases, our usage of the media can be deemed as “Fair Use.”  This application of the fair use legal argument for documentary films is quite groundbreaking and stems from the Stanford Fair Use Project. Entertainment lawyers are finally redefining how some media can rightfully be used in documentary films (similar to how it’s always been acceptable in news). This is welcome relief for those of us who used to spend years begging for clearances after finishing a doc. But be warned: there are strict rules for what is “fair use,” and what’s not.

6) What was your criteria for choosing the spots and/or the agencies and marketing pioneers that you interviewed?

The film is a project of the One Club, a non-profit organization in NYC that honors creativity in advertising. They have a “Hall of Fame” and that’s who we had access to, and also defined who’d be in the project. There are, for sure, amazing creatives in the industry who are not in the One Club Hall of Fame, or the film, but the men and women I interviewed for ART & COPY are indisputably among the most successful and creative people in the business. They were all either a part of advertising’s 1960’s creative revolution or directly affected by it. As for the ads themselves, it was difficult figuring out which to use. But editing films is an organic process, and we ended up choosing ads that fit that part of the structure of the film. For example, out of all the hundreds of Jordan/Nike ads, we chose one about the nature of failure, because it follows a whole discussion about the importance of taking risk and failing in order to succeed creatively. We chose Mary Well’s 1960s Braniff campaign because it perfectly illustrated her stated desire to make big, splashy, theatrical advertising at a time when things had been very dull.  And so forth.

7) Was your goal with Art & Copy to get it released and distributed on a cable network or to be utilized as a training/educational tool in a college classroom?

The goal is always to get your film out to as many people as you can. Otherwise, why bother? But yes, this film may well be inspiring to people who are studying marketing and advertising, and we are planning to distribute it to schools. First, it will be released theatrically (in August 2009, by Arthouse Films), then cable and DVD, and then subsequent markets. I’m thrilled to have distribution and, as a filmmaker, I never take it for granted. I feel fortunate.

8) Do you see making commercials as part of your future in film? If so, will the type of commercial and art/class/style determine on whether you would shoot it or not?

I do direct commercials, along with my documentaries. ironically, my work in advertising had no connection to ART & COPY or the people in it whatsoever, but it did give me insight into the nature of what they do. The ads I’ve made are almost all documentary style, where I’m interviewing “real people”, or working with actors to appear in very “real situations”.  I’ve turned down a few that went against my personal beliefs, but for the most part they are interesting and dynamic concepts and a very good experience.

9) Where did you obtain the interesting facts about how much money is spent, how many ads we see in a day or in a lifetime, etc. that are given throughout the documentary?

My editor, Philip Owens and I researched some of them off the internet and then we hired a researcher named Stan Friedman, who fact-checked them all and helped us find more.

10) Were there any commercials or ad campaigns that you wanted to include in Art & Copy that you weren’t able to obtain the rights to?

Too many to mention. Seriously—hundreds.

11) What is your all time favorite ad campaign and why?

The famous 1984 commercial because it was advertising something that I actually bought, and actually DID change my life for the better. I have done creative work on Macintosh computers non-stop for 23 years (graphics, music, publishing, photography, editing films, and of course, writing, like now). As Lee Clow, who made that ad, says in the film, “how often, in the history of advertising, do you get to introduce a product that truly was revolutionary?”

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