Oscar winner Tom Hooper on his trio of acclaimed ads—and why he’ll keep making them

Few, if any, commercial directors can claim to have made three spots in 2023 that were as affecting as Tom Hooper’s long-form work for Vanish, Montefiore and Chevrolet. While quite different in their storylines and executions, the three films have a compelling common thread—lead characters for whom it’s challenging to connect with others, due to autism, cerebral palsy and Alzheimer’s, respectively. And in each case, Hooper’s deeply empathetic direction brings their stories beautifully to life. The three spots were a big reason why the Production jury for Ad Age’s Creativity Awards named Hooper director of the year for 2024. We recently spoke with Hooper—an Oscar-winning director for “The King’s Speech” (2010)—about those three ads, as well as his approach to advertising generally: why he keeps making spots, and how he chooses his commercial projects these days. The conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity. See all of Ad Age’s 2024 Creativity Award winners here Were you always interested in making ads? Yeah, in fact I did my very first commercial when I was 19. It was for Sega gaming and it starred Right Said Fred and the budget was about £10,000. It was for WCRS [agency Wight Collins Rutherford Scott]. I was at Oxford University, doing an English degree. I was writing an extended essay about James Joyce, and I was secretly sneaking down to London without telling anyone to shoot this Sega ad with dancing grannies and Right Said Fred in it. I remember thinking it was a hilarious mix of high and low culture in the same week. But I’d always had a fascination with [advertising]. I was particularly struck by that generation of Ridley [Scott], Tony [Kaye], Adrian Lyne, Hugh Hudson—guys who’d been making such great work and had gone on to make films. So I was very aware when I started off that one of the possible routes to film was through doing commercials. I certainly admired their work at that time, so I’ve had a kind of lifelong passion for it, from humble beginnings. Not many directors return to advertising after having success in features, though—Ridley being an exception. What made you want to stick around? The truth about making films is, the development process can be lengthy. You’re dealing with a system in feature films that’s very risk averse, so it takes time to package the right cast and get the right budget together. But I love the process of making. I love being behind the camera. A bit like Ridley, I’m a shooter. I like to be at work, and I’d find it incredibly hard if I didn’t shoot between films. It allows me to tell stories and keep using my director’s brain semi-constantly. That makes me very grateful to it. Are there similarities in the storytelling? It’s the same challenge of how you hook an audience, how you move an audience, how you engage people, arguably in some ways in a more competitive terrain. If you make a movie, people hopefully sit down and make the commitment to see it. With commercials, you’re dealing with an audience who don’t necessarily want to watch what you’ve done, unless you can persuade them otherwise. So I love the challenge of finding an audience where you have to work hard to get them. With films, they’re on your side from frame one. With commercials, you have to win them over. The ads you’ve made lately aren’t exactly your traditional 30-second spots. These are some special stories. There’s been a really fascinating shift, in the time I’ve been directing commercials, in the flexibility about the length and what an advert can be. For addressing the kinds of subjects I was looking at last year—late diagnosis of autism in girls, or cerebral palsy and how technology helps, or Alzheimer’s—this new world where stories can be the length they need to be, and the power a story can have in cutting through in the online space, has been an amazing revolution to be part of. Let’s start with the Vanish film, which you worked on with Havas London. Patrick Milling-Smith, co-founder of Smuggler told me it’s the best piece he’s seen in 20 years of doing this. The Vanish one was really extraordinary. There was a script, of sorts, which was based on this insight that a lot of autistic people, especially teenagers or kids, have this sensitivity to fabric and the feel of fabric. They may well have a preferred thing they wear, which gives them a feeling of security. They may stim that fabric, or do repetitive motions with it, to give them comfort. So there was the idea of building a story around the value that a certain garment might have to someone. I met 30 or 40 autistic teenage girls and came across one girl, who we called Ash. It was an amazing process where the script evolved out of a series of meetings with the family, trying to understand the issues they faced and the way they experience their challenges. It evolved toward a snapshot of 24 hours in their life. But it was all improvised. There was no script in a formal sense. There was no dialogue. And the extraordinary thing was not only to discover that Ash was such a remarkable actress, but her real family turned out to be amazing at acting as well—and more importantly, amazing at acting their own lives, which is a particular skill. I don’t know if I’d be any good at it. Ash is amazing—it was one of great performances of the year. I remember saying to Ash’s mom, “How come she’s so amazing?” She said something fascinating. She said, “Part of her autism is, she’s never trying to please anyone. She’s not trying to please you. She’s not trying to please the audience. She basically can’t be untruthful when she acts.” And it’s true. If you watched the rushes, she’s never fake. There’s a fundamental honesty to her, which she can’t infringe, which made her performance very special. But she was also extraordinary at being able to mimic or mirror how she’d exhibit the stress of having an autistic episode. But we had to take great care that acting it out never triggered an episode itself. That was the other weirdly freeing thing, which was to approach the shoot going, all that matters is that Ash has a good time. The worst thing would be if she got upset or distressed. The film is less important than that. If I end up with a film that doesn’t really work, but she’s happy, that’s fine because there’s no moral justification in doing a great film which involves her distress. So it was a very weird moment of having a lot of pressure taken off me by accepting that in the hierarchy of what matters, her well-being came first and the quality of the film came in second. It was liberating to put it second, and it actually seemed to have a very good effect on the quality of the work. It must be nice to have clients who allow their brand to be a little more in the background, too. I take my hat off to the new generation of clients—Vanish, Montefiore—who are openly taking an unquantifiable risk. If Ash had had an autistic episode and had become triggered, I knew from her mom it would be maybe 24 hours before she could come back. So there was every chance that in our three-day shoot, maybe one day would be a wipeout, or maybe we’d get half a day. The client took that risk on board. With Montefiore, working with this amazing kid who had profound cerebral palsy—it was a huge risk financially in terms of ... he might do an hour a day, he might do a full day, we might have a day where we get nothing. The argument down the years about why you couldn’t allow Ash to represent herself, or Solomon to represent himself, is: What about the risk? Let’s cast someone who doesn’t share this condition or this behavior, and get someone to act it, because it’s risk-free to us. It’s a huge step in the world of identity representation for clients and agencies to say, “No, taking the risk is part of giving these people a voice.” What was tremendous in both films is we didn’t lose a day, or even an hour. Working with real people, but then creating lightly fictionalized worlds around them—was that an interesting technical challenge? Well, in my feature film experience, not only have I not really worked with non-actors in leads, I’ve been lucky to work with some of the best actors in the world. I love the challenge of teasing out performances in this way. [In the Vanish film], I kept trying to stage the scene so the family would fit into familiar patterns. What was so fascinating was the little flashpoints that developed. That the big story could be told through the details—you know, the whole “God is in the details.” When I read some of the amazing comments online from families who’ve got autistic kids, clearly that attempt to capture not necessarily a huge, dramatic storyline but just the drama of the everyday was very powerful to people. Ad Age Creativity Bookmark our section covering the best in brand creativity every day Read more here The other key thing, and it’s probably quite key to my style, is that I let scenes run. The breakfast scene—I shoot the whole thing as a real happening. It’s almost documentarian. You let the scene run, and then you see the opportunities and you shape it as you go. I don’t worry about whether I’m only going to use a few seconds. If you find the truth of it, it will have an authenticity that you won’t get by asking them—particularly this family—to act out a certain moment over and over, which is quite foreign to people. I imagine the Chevrolet film [by Commonweath/McCann] found similar support online. I was incredibly moved by some of the comments of people dealing with dementia in their families. I love the idea that a vintage car can bring lost memories back. It’s great to celebrate a product for what it can unlock. And I love vintage cars anyway. I’d love to hear about the Montefiore holiday film. To me, that was one of the most extraordinary ads of last year. We had this unusual production process where we were, in theory, shooting in New York on a certain date. And we were doing a nationwide search for who might be our hero. And I kept saying, “But you understand that this kid, when we find them, may not be able to travel. You might think we’re shooting in New York in two weeks time, but we might be shooting in Oregon or Texas.” That was such a mind-fuck for people. You’re prepping a job, but in fact you’re prepping it hypothetically. Given Montefiore is such a cherished New York institution, it was fantastic that we had the luck to find someone living in Queens and not the other side of America, so we could genuinely make a New York story about a New Yorker in New York. How did you approach working with Solomon? Meeting him over Zoom for the first time, and then in person, he had this extraordinary quality of being able to experience joy and an extraordinary positivity, which I think he possibly in part got from his mom, who is just the bravest, most positive person I feel I’ve ever met. But there was something about how he transcended his condition so frequently, just in the way his psychology approached his situation, that was incredibly beautiful. I started just wanting to capture that capacity for joy—and show how this technology of eye tracking could help do that. Like Hannes [Ciatti], the creative director [at agency Alto], the idea of flying on a Macy’s Day balloon immediately appealed to me. I’m sure, like a lot of filmmakers, it has this hold on your imagination. There’s something about the scale of and the kind of absurdity of it, in the juxtaposition between these vast animals and the New York streets. I immediately saw the opportunity of it. Probably the biggest evolution I brought to the script—something I talked about with the creative team straight at the beginning—was the idea of bringing a sibling into the story, or the idea that in the end what matters even more than producing art or liberating him as an artist or allowing his imagination to be expressed is how the technology might bring you closer to those you love. What would it be like to not be able to express love to a brother or a sister? What would it be like to not be able to interact enough that you can even hold their attention and reciprocate love? So the core, to me, rapidly became a story about how to use the technology to get close to the people you love. And the fear that you could be so isolated without it. Therefore, the fantasy—the ability to picture the brother in the fantasy and to act out a version of that intimacy in such an epic and magical and mobile and free way—was such a great way to get inside his aspiration. The script initially was probably more about unlocking himself as an artist, but I felt like the art created a space of imagination, and the space of imagination allowed him to act out being close to his brother, and then that act of fantasy actually allowed it to happen in reality. That, to me, was the heart of it. And then the fun of the fantasy bleeding into reality, the idea that there could be some crossover, was very magical to me. Solomon’s wordless performance is pretty incredible, too. Previous to Solomon, I could be a bit of a purist about getting performances where an actor always has to be acting the scene. But there were points with Solomon where I had to let go of that, because it was so important to keep him happy and keep him focused. There was a moment when he was on the balloon and he had to do eye lines up high, and I was on top of a ladder, dancing to Cardi B, singing at the top of my voice. There had to be an atmosphere around him of warmth and love and friendliness and fun. And then within that context, he could act out what I needed him to do. Even simple things like just holding his hand under the camera while he acted. It was a really interesting thing where the environment created the performance, or created the basis of the performance. Once you had that, you could then be more specific. But it was like he needed a tremendous sense of being loved in order to make a film about love, if that makes sense. How do you choose your advertising projects these days? I’m mainly just attracted to great stories. There’s definitely a theme in last year’s work of giving voice to truly underrepresented voices. In my film work, I’ve often been drawn to stories about people who experience some kind of profound block between them and their best selves—whether it’s stammering in “The King’s Speech” or gender dysphoria in “The Danish Girl” with Lili Elbe. I’m drawn to strong characters, to strong stories. I find it hard to operate unless I’m in love with the story. Sometimes it happens in the process of putting together a treatment for a job. Sometimes you have to discover where it is. It doesn’t always present itself. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs You’re obviously not bothered by the ulterior motive of these ads, which is to sell stuff. That’s part of the bargain. No. There might be brands that I wouldn’t do [ads for]. But supporting brands when they are thinking about their social and corporate responsibility, helping them to make that manifest ... in the case of all three films you mentioned, what’s been extraordinary, when they’ve come out, is the communities of people online that they’ve found. You can see from reading the comments that they don’t have stories made about them very often, if at all. The Vanish film got 4 million views in a few hours on TikTok, and it was that younger demographic who live on TikTok who were either autistic teenagers or siblings of autistic teenagers. It spread like wildfire because people felt heard and seen and felt their lives being reflected. This power that a short content piece online has to track down these slightly overlooked communities at such speed is incredible. Any other projects coming up we should look out for? I’m working on a lovely commercial at the moment, which will be out later in the year, which I think is quite special. And then I’ve got a couple of films I’m developing, which won’t be ready for this year. I’ve got three girls who are 4, 3 and 1, and it’s tough when you do a film, as you disappear for a long period of time. The other joy of doing commercials is they’re kind of like sprints, and you get to be a very present dad in between them. So there’s definitely part of me that’s enjoyed the freedom of being a very engaged dad. They’re at the sweetest age at the moment.

Oscar winner Tom Hooper on his trio of acclaimed ads—and why he’ll keep making them

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