Mark Romanek on starting a new chapter in commercial directing at Superprime Films

The filmmaker Mark Romanek has a reputation for doing work that’s on the darker side. But he bristles at that assessment—and sometimes, perhaps as a subtle form of protest, takes directing jobs where the subject matter couldn’t be more bright and bubbly. “I was so excited when Taylor Swift reached out,” Romanek told Ad Age this week, referring to his celebrated music video for “Shake It Off” in 2014. “I was thought of as ‘the dark guy,’ although if you look carefully at my work, that doesn’t really hold up. But because of that, I was so excited to make this very, very pop piece—which is a perfectly valid genre to try to figure out, too.” Super Bowl commercials Tracking the latest brand and agency plans Enter here Trying new things has been central to Romanek’s evolution as a director, he said. And this week, he embarks on a very new adventure indeed—signing with Superprime Films for commercial representation, after decades with Anonymous Content. Romanek described his split with Anonymous as amicable, saying they mutually drifted apart after the death of Anonymous CEO Steve Golin in 2019. At Superprime, he reconnects with an old friend, Rebecca Skinner, the production company’s managing director. And following an extended health issue of his own—plus, the downtime of COVID—Romanek is ready to get back to shooting more spots, whatever the tone, subject or brand. “I guess it’s like speed chess,” Romanek said of why he enjoys creating in the ultra-condensed format of commercials. “I enjoy solving creative problems. Ads are usually about human behavior, which interests me. It’s quick in and out. It’s lucrative and creative. I don’t really think of it differently than other kinds of filmmaking—it’s a little story that has to be told in kind of a daring and sincere way, hopefully.” Classic campaigns, from Nike to H&R Block Romanek has built up quite the body of work over the years, directing scores of memorable brand spots and a slew of music videos. Among his advertising highlights are several projects for Apple and Nike—including, for the latter, the lauded “Voices” spot in 2012 and the Kobe Bryant retirement spot in 2016. But he’s often found projects with more down-to-earth clients to be just as fulfilling. For instance, his Yoplait spots from 2015 by Wieden+Kennedy, starring Dominic Purcell—“I had never tried that dry tone of comedy,” Romanek said. Or the H&R Block campaign he did for Fallon in 2011 that visited towns with money in their names—like Greenback, Tennessee. The H&R project—which used real people, surprising them on camera by revealing their tax returns in real time—brought a kind of risk and unpredictability that Romanek found energizing. It’s the kind of work he’d like to try more often. “Maybe the agency and the client knew, but I didn’t know the amounts of those returns or what was going to happen,” he said. “The whole thing could have been a flop. Not only did it come out well, but it created a bit of excitement. It was kind of an adventure.” Capturing humans on film The H&R Block campaign allowed Romanek to do what he likes best as a filmmaker—explore human behavior. His happiest day of directing ever, he said, was filming a scene for his 2010 film “Never Let Me Go” where he hiked to a remote beach with three actors and just captured their unadorned dramatic performances in a single scene. “I don’t think anything could possibly be more interesting than humans,” he said. “There’s nothing more fascinating in front of a movie camera. And I actually really prefer things simple. If someone sends me a simple, clever idea, I’m definitely more impressed, because that’s the hardest thing to do—to make something simple in a way that has resonance or is evocative and memorable. I like that challenge.” Not that Romanek won’t do effects-driven work. In fact, he’s quite proud of a visually extravagant Kia Soul hamster spot he made in 2011. “Big visual-effects jobs, I’ve done many of them,” he said. “I’m proud of the Kia spot as a visual effects piece, and it’s quite amusing. I feel like I put several good ideas into that. But something super organic with humans behaving is usually more interesting to me.” ‘Friendly service’ with an edge The balance Romanek always tries to strike is satisfying the needs of the agency and client—the top priority of any advertising job, clearly—while also pushing himself creatively. In our interview, he pulled up his sleeve to reveal a scripted tattoo that reads “Friendly Service”—a good mantra, he said, for any commercial director. “Obviously it has wider spiritual meanings, but I’m hired to perform a service,” he said “I usually have the head creative sitting next to me the whole time, because I want them to like it.” At the same time, he added, “I am looking for an aesthetic or a tone I haven’t gotten to try before.” Ad Age Creativity Bookmark our section covering the best in brand creativity every day Read more here Again, a sense of risk or adventure on a project is a welcome bonus, if the agency and client can stomach it. “I did a long-form video for Jay-Z once called ‘Picasso Baby,’ which was really a kind of performance art piece,” Romanek said. “It could have been a disaster. Nobody could have liked it. Jay might have been in a bad mood. But it turned out to be this joyfest that we were able to record. I think I’ve been doing this so long that there’s a quality of adventure or chance or risk that I find exciting.” Other times, the joy is in the craft itself, in bringing a simple idea beautifully to life. As an example, Romanek points to his favorite ad campaign currently on the air—the Airbnb spots with houses in miniature, created in-house with animation by Buck. “It has that quality of simplicity yet cleverness and emotion in it,” Romanek said. “It’s beautiful and quiet and unbelievably well crafted. Some people just break through the ceiling of what ads are supposed to be. They go to this other place, where it’s less of an insulting time grab—where you feel like, ‘I’m glad I saw that.’ Not ‘I can’t wait to get back to the football game.’” Experimenting with AI In the spirit of experimenting with all things new, Romanek has also—like most creatives today—been playing around with artifical intelligence. A well-known portrait photographer in addition to a director, Romanek has posted some AI-generated portraits on his Instagram. He also recently made a short film AI—though he said it’s already dated, just four months later. Romanek finds the whole AI revolution fascinating yet disturbing—clearly game-changing, but as yet, almost completely undefinable. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Mark Romanek (@markromanek) “It’s too seismic and it’s changing too fast to understand what it’s going to mean,” he said. “But I find it fun and strange and disturbing. I’ve made some images that I think are quite striking. I say, ‘I’ve made’—I don’t think that’s an accurate sentence. I’ve managed to get the app to generate some very interesting images.” This “doodling,” as Romanek describes it, is somehow both thrilling and disappointing at once, he said. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs “I’ve been able to get at something I’ve had in my mind for a long time very quickly, which is a thrilling experience. But there’s a sense of a hollowness to the accomplishment,” he said. “You’re not doing what we understand making art to be. You’re not slathering paint on a canvas or chipping away at marble or writing a poem on a legal pad. You’re trying to get another entity—a non-human entity—to create this thing for you. So it’s not very satisfying. It could be good for generating production design and costume ideas. But you almost want it to make mistakes.” Like the best advertising projects, it is, at the very least, an adventure. “I could go on about it for hours,” Romanek. “I don’t know what the fuck it is. But it sure is amazing.”

Mark Romanek on starting a new chapter in commercial directing at Superprime Films

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