A graduate from the National Institute of Design in India, Prasoon Pandey, ad filmmaker, Corcoise Films, began his career as a copywriter with Lowe (then Lintas) and later made the transition into ad filmmaking. His films are extremely performance driven and usually reveal themselves bit by bit to surprise the viewer. He has a huge collection of awards, collected from the Clios, Cannes, New York Festivals and Asia Pacific Adfests. In a chat with Ankit Ajmera and Devina Joshi of agencyfaqs!, Pandey talks about the pressures of being an ad filmmaker, his own unique style of filmmaking and how the predictability factor is a long way off yet for Fevicol...

Q. Being the brother of Piyush Pandey, who is like a demigod in Indian advertising, must have helped certainly in the initial part of your career. But the tag of being Piyush’s brother also comes with the pressure of living up to high expectations from people. Your comment?

A. True, being Piyush’s brother comes along with the pressure to perform well. Besides, my mistakes get noticed more often! (Laughs)

In fact, during the early part of my career, I used to be really worried about this. I used to say no to a lot of scripts and pick only those that had a killer idea. I was particularly more cautious for any films that I shot for O&M, as the agency, too, would be at the receiving end of any mistake! But I think it was Piyush who helped me get over this hesitation. He told me that I was weighing myself down and thinking too much about hitting a century every time. He gave me the example of Tendulkar, the ace batsman. “When Tendulkar gets out at an average 40 runs, people don’t really remember it,” Piyush told me. “They only remember and discuss his centuries.”

So, it was just about forgetting the end result and concentrating more on the performance. I learned not to obsess over the script, but pick it up and see what I could make of it.

As a whole, having a brother like Piyush has only helped my career as I have always received the right guidance from him. He is objective and fair when judging my work – whether the ad is for O&M or for any other agency, it doesn’t matter. He gives his unbiased opinion on what is appropriate both in terms of ideas and execution.

Q. How often has it happened that you’ve changed entirely a script given by the agency and it has turned out to be good for the product and the client?

A. I generally don’t change the scripts unless I find the agency game for that kind of involvement.

If I really feel that a script has something wrong with it, I try to convey my reluctance to become part of such a project. But this is only for people with whom I’m on formal terms. One has to weigh the situation according to with who one is working. There are lots of friends who know where I stand and I tell them frankly what I feel, and the changes suggested to them are always open for discussion. I won’t be getting any credit for suggesting any changes. But if the film is fantastic, everybody involved in the project will win eventually.

Answering your question specifically, it’s difficult to pinpoint an example when my suggestion changed things completely… it’s always teamwork and brainstorming. I have been a copywriter myself (at Lowe) and I know how writers hate it if somebody makes changes in their scripts. I myself will never tweak the script in isolation and send it back to the agency. If I am not happy with the script, I will try to have an open-ended discussion with the agency folk. More often than not, the end result is that they themselves realise what’s right for the script.

Q. Surely, there must be some instance you can think of when you encountered a difficult situation on making a suggestion in the script...

A. (Thinks) Well, recently, I shot a film for an American insurance company, Nationwide. The film was conceptualised by Anil Batwal, a freelance writer currently based in the US. The story revolves around a guy, sitting in a restaurant, who is taking too long to propose to his girl. By the time he is finally about to pop the question, he sees that life has moved on and the girl sitting across him is married to a handsome man and has three kids. The punchline goes, ‘Life comes at you fast. Be prepared for it.’

Well, there were two disagreements with the client regarding the script. Anil and I wanted the protagonist to take a ring out of his pocket when he is about to pop the question, to underline the fact that the guy was going to propose marriage. The client wanted just the dialogues to do the trick.

Secondly, the client wanted the film to start with the girl saying to the guy, “So, where do we go from here?”, whereas we had suggested that the film should start with the guy struggling to propose, while the girl just shows her eagerness to hear him.

But eventually, when the client did not agree to our suggestions, we caved in and told him we’d shoot the film the way he wanted it. It was his money and his decision. But then, something unexpected happened. He asked us hesitantly whether the ad would really work his way. I told him that I was 100 per cent sure that it would not work. And guess what? (Smiles) He agreed to shoot it our way.

Q. Have there been any disasters when you went against agency scripts?

A. Whatever I suggest doesn’t have to be correct every time. It’s an intangible field in which I work. You may think you have the right answer, but actually, you may be having the worst answer. To cite an example, I just finished working on a film for one of Perfetti Van Melle India’s products with Leo Burnett. I can’t reveal the details of the ad because it is slated to go on air in three weeks.

For this ad, I wanted to change certain things and tweak the script here and there. But the agency explained to me the reason why I shouldn’t do it. And if I look at the execution of the film in retrospect today, I am really glad that they explained it to me because it really works the way they have conceived it.

But so far, there have been no disasters as such. Like I said, the eventual execution of the film is decided on mutual consent between both the agency and the client.

Q. You are known for picking only those projects which are substantially good in terms of the idea. Have there been times when Corcoise was caught in a tight situation and had to choose ‘business’ over ‘ideas’? How did you deal with that? After all, you, too, are a businessman.

A. I think we have been lucky that way, touch wood. We have only picked up projects in which we found something unique. For Corcoise, it has to be the idea first always. Or even if it’s an idea that’s been done before, it has to have an element which is new, something which has not been done before. That’s where the challenge is.

Q. It has been four years since you launched Corcoise. Are you satisfied with the way it has shaped up so far?

A. Currently, the going is good. When we started, there was only one director, me. We’re a team of three directors now, Prashant Issar (aka ‘Sippy’), Sainath and I. Sainath has just joined us six months ago and he has already got some really well-executed films to his credit. As far as performance is concerned, all of us follow the same principle of building a great reel first, without looking at the money part of it... if we like the idea and the client has a limited budget, we’ll go ahead and try our best to do whatever we can in that much to execute the ad well.

The three of us have a lot in common, including our competitive streak! If one of them makes a fantastic film, then the pressure is on me to make a better one. I think this is the factor that is instrumental in making us what we are today. At present, Corcoise has three directors, but if we find a director who shares our passion for making films and gives his best shot at filmmaking, then we’re open to hiring more people.

Q. As a filmmaker, do you look up to somebody as a mentor? Has there been somebody who has influenced your current style of filmmaking?

A. I admire Woody Allen, Alfred Hitchcock and Kieslowski. Woody Allen tries the demented/eccentric comedy route without being too slapstick. It’s vastly different from the Charlie Chaplin type of comedy. Not that I don’t admire Charlie Chaplin. While Charlie had a set of sequences in his comedy, Allen uses a style that is rather weird and surprises viewers when they least expect it.

On the other hand, Alfred Hitchcock had the art of fantastically mixing humour with suspense. If he had to scare you, he’d do it in such a way that after you got scared, you’d laugh about it. It’s a little mind game that he plays.

And if you see Kieslowski’s films, they have a sense of pathos and contradiction embedded in them. He explores the complex, contradictory parts of a relationship. He is one of the few directors who can justify the portrayal of a woman loving and hating her man at the same time. And it’s not easy to do such a thing when it comes to execution.

So, you can see, I have a lot from which to draw inspiration.

Q. What has been the contribution of good scripts to your success as a filmmaker? To draw a parallel example, it is said that some film stars are successful because they work under big banners and good scripts. Is that applicable to you?

A. Good scripts and big banners do affect a film to an extent, but I would say they haven’t affected me as a director. My films are performance driven. The performance of the actors plays a crucial role in the final feel of the film. I’d rather show people in my films, than do an animated or cartoon type film. And I like to explore with different kind of faces, different people you wouldn’t meet in everyday life. I like making people perform. It’s like you might not find a guy good looking when you see him face to face. But when you see him on the screen in a particular role, you’ll realise that, actually, he does look good. It’s not about traditional good looks, but more about what face carries what story. I’ll always say yes to films that have room for good performances, keep aside good scripts. Take the example of the 8 PM whisky ad which I shot a few years ago. The situation involves two guys from enemy camps, who can’t resist their desire for a whisky and they end up having it together. It gave me a high to film a moment as exciting as that.

Q. Well, it seems like you’re quite turned on by wit and humour. Do you think you’ve found your strength in that genre?

A. I really do enjoy humorous ads. One doesn’t have much time to say what one wants to in advertising. Therefore, humour allows for instant connect, whereas a short narrative may require some more time. Ads are like sending SMSes – one can think of four liner jokes on SMS, but have we heard of too many emotional stories that are as short?

But then, even the humour in my ads is performance based. I never show a guy slipping on a banana peel, with someone else laughing at him. The humour element should not be felt by the actors, the viewer should feel it. Take the example of the Centre Shock ad. The barber who is cutting the guy’s hair doesn’t find it funny when the hair stands up and become erect. He was just doing what was required from him as a barber. But what surprised the viewer was his performance.

Having talked about my love for humour, if I get an emotional script with a great idea in it, then I have no problems in doing it. For example, the SBI ad, in which two old women travel by train to surprise their brother on his birthday, was a very emotional script. Here, I wanted to add the performance factor as well as the nuances that would signify the concept of train travel in India.

I used the insight that it is very common to become friends with people and open up with them when you are sitting face to face, travelling in a train. I put in this shot of one of the old ladies asking her co-traveller, a newly wedded woman, to pass on a box of dentures to her sister on the berth above. She could have done it only if she had opened up with that lady during the journey. This is a fine Indian nuance which added a lot to the final feel of the film. I like this kind of layering in my films.

Q. You were among those who introduced the surprise element in advertising, or what is known as ‘layering’ – revealing each element of a film one at a time. Some young, over-enthusiastic filmmakers today are subtly trying to emulate that style. In fact, so focused are they on ‘surprising’ the viewer that the brand message is in danger of being compromised. What’s your advice to these emerging filmmakers?

A. I would tend to disagree. Young filmmakers today are in fact doing some really fantastic work. Most of them have developed their own style instead of copying someone else’s style. They are actually trying to go beyond the kind of work that is being done today in an effort to take it to a completely different level. Let’s take the example of Prakash Varma of Nirvana. He has got a very unique, aesthetic style of filmmaking. Each frame of his is like a picture postcard. His Wagon R ‘Feel At Home’ series for Saatchi & Saatchi won him the ‘Campaign of the Year’ award in its category at the AAAI Awards in 2001.

My advice to young filmmakers is to try and leave their stamp on the industry with their own kind of work. The advertising industry is going to become richer if each guy follows his own unique style, instead of following each other’s styles.

Q. You are of the belief that an establishing shot is a must for ad storytelling. But several other filmmakers feel strongly that this technique is outdated and only tests the patience of the viewers. Your comment?

A. Well, it all depends on the kind of feel I’m trying to bring out in the ad, in addition to the story line and narrative chosen for the film. Let’s say, the narrative for a story is that ‘a Sardarji is going to a shop to buy a carton of curd’. In this case, I’ll specifically need to open my film with an establishing shot showing the Sardarji to bring out the fact that he is going to buy curd. Alternatively, other directors may want to directly open on a shot of the curd carton in the Sardar’s hands. It depends.

But there are many commercials where the story line is such that I can do without the establishing shot, irrespective of the narrative. There was one commercial I shot eight years ago for the brand, Allen Solly, in Sydney in an underground railway station (subway). The commercial had a guy wearing a smart yellow Allen Solly shirt aboard a train. When the others in the compartment see this guy dressed so well, they try to emulate his every action, including the way he sits or looks at his watch. The next day, when he enters the same compartment wearing a brown shirt, he is surprised to find each guy there in a yellow shirt.

As there was no need for a linear narrative in this commercial, I chose to shoot it in a style that demonstrated only the elements of the station instead of taking the usual wide shot for the entire station. I revealed elements such as a part of the train, people, a bulb, a staircase and so on. So, in the end, everybody gets a grip of the fact that this situation is taking place at a railway station, but the actual geography of the station, as to what is where exactly, is left to the interpretation of each viewer.

There was another film for Bajaj Boxer, which also didn’t have an establishing shot. The commercial shows a set of cobblers sitting in a straight line when a guy comes on a Bajaj Boxer and gets first one shoe polished and then turns his bike around, comes back and gets the other shoe done. Here, too, I followed the same pattern of showing things in and out of the frame, such as showing the cobblers polishing shoes in one frame, people coming and going in another, someone sitting near by watching all this and so on.

And what I have done for ‘The Times of India’ ads a few years ago is again at a completely different level. These ads, too, don’t have an establishing shot, but efficiently convey the buzzy and chaotic feeling of the commotion in India.

Q. Prasoon Pandey is best known for his work on Fevicol, which has become rather iconic for the ad fraternity today. How difficult is it to bring out the surprise element each time you shoot a film for the brand?

A. Each of the Fevicol commercials is a classic in itself and I must tell you that it’s very tough to bring out the surprise element in each subsequent ad. Each year, we take even longer to come up with an idea. But no two Fevicol ads are the same. The Fevicol ‘Egg’ ad is completely different from the Fevicol ‘Bus’ ad. But people enjoy it at such a level that you need to continuously push yourself to create good work. I am yet to hear of any other brand which can boast of its executives receiving some 500 scripts every year from viewers, with each saying that here is one more idea, make a commercial on it. Fevicol can.

Q. But don’t you think that the Fevicol ads, in an effort to surprise the viewer, are becoming clichéd and predictable in a way?

A. For this question, I’ll tell you one incident that happened during a meeting with the client. When I was narrating the final script for the Fevicol ‘Train’ commercial, someone put up a question whether in coming times, the Fevicol commercials would run the danger of becoming boring and predictable. To this, the managing director of Pidilite Industries, Madhukar Parikh, said that, of course, some day, we are bound to fall because we are walking on the edge! But unless we fall, we’ll never know whether we were actually on the edge or whether we were just thinking that we had reached the edge.

I’ll say that it’s the client’s aggressive search for creativity which is also pushing us. We have done 10 commercials in 10 years and, every time, the task has been different.

Each commercial has taken Fevicol to a different level and we haven’t fallen as yet.

The whole team is so proud and possessive about the Fevicol ads that if an idea was predictable, it wouldn’t get through them.

Q. What is the next piece of work lined up for Fevicol? How will it stand apart from its predecessors?

A. The current ad I am working on for Fevicol will roll out by the end of November this year. I cannot say much about the ad at this stage, so you will have to wait and watch.

Q. Why have you used loud Bollywood dancing styles for the recent film on MetLife? Doesn’t that reinforce the theory that ad filmmakers can’t help but borrow from Bollywood?

A. It’s not just the ad filmmakers, sometimes, the marketers, too, tend to borrow from Bollywood. The brief for MetLife given to me by the client was, in one word, ‘Bollywood’. As per their marketing need, they wanted to target the NRIs in the US. And Bollywood was chosen as a brief because it becomes an entire memory package for NRIs of what they are missing in India. Therefore, sometimes, doing ad films in the Bollywood style depends on the idea and, at other times, on the marketing need of the client.

Q. The latest ad for Mango Slice made by you portrays a romantic story, in which a boy makes fun of a girl all through their growing up years, only to propose to her when they are adults. The typical romantic story per se may not be that unique, so it must have been quite a challenge to keep the interest of the viewer alive...

A. This script was written by JWT, Delhi, and I haven’t changed anything in the script. When they narrated the script to me, I found the idea interesting because nobody in India has been selling cold drinks in such a sweet and sentimental way. As far as I can remember, cold drink commercials generally revolve around Bollywood stars or cricket stars or around spoofs. Though this particular idea may have been used for other products, the real challenge lay in using this really unique style of communication for a cold drink brand. So, that was the ‘newness’ I got from this particular ad.

Q. Was it a new high for you to be a judge at Cannes 2006? What was the opinion of the other jury members on the Indian entries this time, especially on the Levi’s Slim Jeans ads, for which everyone had high hopes? Why is that it could not make it there finally?

A. It was good fun to be with the top 18 creative people in the panel. We, as Indians, are always interested to know what people from abroad think of our creative work within the advertising fraternity. But while judging, there are so many entries that people hardly notice which ad is from which country unless the ad portrays a Chinese, Japanese or Korean face.

As far as films are concerned, winning an award becomes much tougher because films are judged from head to toe, including the idea, the execution and the whole feel of it. There was appreciation for the execution style of the Levi’s Slim Jeans commercial, that’s why it made it to the short-lists, but afterwards, it could not hold its own. If you scrutinise the whole category, there was work there that was far superior. You really have to be lucky to have only your work as the really excellent one in that category. Because then it can go ahead and win straight away as there is nothing else to give it competition. But if you are unlucky, just that year, there will be super-fantastic work that is better than yours from somewhere else. For example, it’s a pity that this year, in the Feature Film category for the Oscars, we have two great films, ‘Lagey Raho Munnabhai’ and ‘Rang De Basanti’. Both deserve to get short-listed, but, unfortunately, only one can go.

Q. Several ad filmmakers blame the quality of Indian ad films on ‘lack of technology’ or ‘lack of budgets’. Don’t you think that’s escapism? Brilliant films have been created with simple shots and low budgets...

A. You’re right. Less than 1 per cent of the commercials that win at Cannes have the so-called high technical effects and high budgets. Most of the commercials that win are idea based and straightforward, which you could shoot even with a simple Handycam. Take the example of the four commercials from India that have ever bagged a metal at Cannes, be it Fevicol ‘Bus’, Fevicol ‘Cliff-hanger’, Ericsson ‘Black Coffee’ or Forte ‘Organ Transplant’. All have been shot with the simplest of technology over a day or so. So, more than the budget and the technology, it is the idea that decides the winner ad.

Q. The Abbys introduced the Filmcraft category for the first time this year to acknowledge the filmmaker’s contribution. Don’t you think this was long overdue? What more needs to be done to encourage good work from filmmakers?

A. I told the Abbys to introduce the Filmcraft category long back, when the IAFPA had stopped. The IAFPA (India Advertising Film Producers Association) was a filmcraft award that used to honour Indian ad filmmakers and film producers around eight years ago. This category has been introduced finally in the Abbys now.

I think to encourage good work from filmmakers, the Abbys should include a category for the best debut director as well because it will encourage upcoming directors and all the agencies will get to see a new director’s work. At Cannes, they have this thing called the ‘New Director’s Showreel’, where they showcase the best piece of work from all the directors on the nomination list before announcing the winning debut director. I think the same could be done in the Indian context as it will give a chance to all the directors to have their work showcased in the awards ceremony.

Q. Like Shoojit Sircar, Pradeep Sarkar, Abhinay Deo and Prahlad Kakar, has the feature film bug bitten you, too? Can we expect a feature film from you in the near future?

A. Every year, for the last eight years, I have been on the verge of making a feature film. It is at the last minute that I get cold feet and I get scared. We have even discussed scripts with actors. And when, after a period of time, they keep asking what happened to the film, we tell them we ran out of steam and come back to advertising (Laughs). You can say that this is because of the pressure of performance as everyone expects a good film from me. If I were a really bad filmmaker today, then I would have made a feature film straightaway as there would not have been any expectations. The problem is that everyone you meet tells you that you have to make a feature film – we are waiting for it. The moment they say that they are waiting for a feature film from me, it adds to the pressure I already have on me.

October 03, 2006
Mumbai
You can write to Prasoon Pandey at
corcoise@corcoisefilms.com