Blitz expresses a desire to add more fast food to his repertoire, but he's also geared up to expand his expertise on a technical level. "I try to do most of my work in-camera, but recently a lot of work is a combination of live photography, CG 2-D and 3-D graphic animation, so it's interesting that those are other disciplines that I've had to learn over the years in order to stay current." Such was the case in directing spots like "Flex" or "Spin" for American Express Blue via Ogilvy & Mather/New York, which depicted the card contorted by things like robotic arms or CD spinners. Blitz shot a lot of elements for the spots himself, but the majority of his involvement was hammering out the action in preproduction with the agency, the effects house Digital Domain and graphics shop Yu + Co.
On the set itself, Blitz, a former still photographer who once ran a studio in New York, says that lighting is just as crucial as the camera work. He recently shot about 102,000 feet of film capturing diamonds against a matte surface for jeweler Zales, out of Publicis/Dallas. "It's not like lighting Jell-O or a donut," he notes. "I had to devise a lighting schematic that would allow me to light not only the jewelry but keep the surface black and still get a reflective out of it. I had to ice my eyes for days after that shoot because all I kept seeing were sparkles." Blitz also had to don the shades helming this year's Aquafina campaign, which featured the VO of Friends' Lisa Kudrow, and close-cropped images of water gloriously splashing and trickling against a stark white backdrop. The shoot required an extraordinary amount of light: 18 20,000-watt lights, to capture a single drop of water. (Just two 20k's are enough to light up one side of a city block.) "Shooting at 1,500 frames a second, to get the sharpness and the magnification I was looking for, you need that quantity of light," he explains. "It's water. It's a bottle. It's a label. It's the most simplistic thing, but it's the most difficult thing to do."
No matter how dry or wet the subject, Blitz is ecstatically open to the creative possibilities. "It's all about beauty," he says. "Tabletop is about looking at the image and relating to it. And it could be anything, Lady Schick, Campbell's Soup. It's kind of funny. It's very Warhol. I wouldn't give it up."
ACTION
Dante Ariola,
Propaganda
Michael Bay,
Bay Films
Sam Bayer, Mars Media/HSI
David Fincher, Anonymous
John Frankenheimer,
Anonymous
Jonathan Glazer, Propaganda
Spike Jonze, Satellite
Guy Ritchie, Anonymous
Kinka Usher, House of Usher
John Woo, A Band Apart
CARS
Gerard de
Thame, HSI
Erick Ifergan,
Believe Media
Frederic Planchon, Academy
Mehdi Norowzian,
Chelsea Pictures
Nick Lewin, Crossroads Films
Robert Logevall, Bruce
Dowad Associates
Victor Garcia, MJZ
Dayton/Faris, Bob Industries
Sam Bayer, Mars Media/HSI
Tony Kaye, Tony Kaye
COMEDY
Bryan Buckley,
Hungry Man
Baker Smith,
Harvest
Dom & Nic,
Oil Factory
Joe Public, Headquarters
Spike Jonze, Satellite
Kuntz & McGuire, Propaganda
Rocky Morton, MJZ
Noam Murro, Biscuit
Filmworks
Frank Todaro, Radical
Traktor, Partizan
DOCUMENTARY
Michael Apted,
Michael Apted
Film Co.
Nicholas Barker,
Academy
Lenard Dorfman,
Radical
Paul Gay, Omaha
Pictures
Christopher Guest,
Moxie Pictures
Spike Jonze, Satellite
Tony Kaye, Tony Kaye
Mike Mills, Directors Bureau
Errol Morris, Radical
Chris Smith, Independent
Media
FASHION
David Cameron,
Artists Company
Paul Hunter, HSI
David LaChapelle, Venus
Entertainment
Gus Gus, Public Works
Melodie McDaniel, Satellite
Dewey Nicks, Epoch Films
David Ramser, Artists Co.
Herb Ritts, Ritts/Hayden
Mark Romanek, Anonymous
Peggy Sirota, HSI
PERFORMANCE
Frank Budgen,
Anonymous
Leslie Dektor,
Dektor Film
James Gartner, Gartner
Spike Jonze, Satellite
Tony Kaye, Tony Kaye
Nick Lewin, Crossroads Films
Jeff Lovinger, Lovinger
Mahoney & Adelson
Errol Morris, Radical
Joe Pytka, Pytka
Kinka Usher, House of Usher
