tim maguire

Plane Stupid

Polar Bear from Plane Stupid on Vimeo.

Posted via email from maguiretim's posterous

Coca Cola: Eat Sleep Drink: Blind Fan

This is one of eight "micro-documentaries" I produced when I was working at Weiden & Kennedy in Amsterdam in 1997-98, part of the larger Pan-European 'Eat Sleep Drink' campaign devised by Jon Matthews who was Creative Director there at the time. The director Lenard Dorfman and a small crew from @radicalmedia including Adam Lyne, Jason Kemp and me trailed round some of the UK's least glamorous towns for a month, finding some fantastic stories on the way. This one, about a blind West Ham fan, who went to every game with his brother and his mate was particularly brilliant and won a Silver at D&AD and a Gold at the British Television Awards in 1998.

Isn't YouTube wonderful?

Every so often, you stumble across old friends. Here's two of them.

This was the first ad I ever produced for VisitScotland, under their old title as The Scottish Tourist Board. Directed by the Douglas Brothers, it was written by Simon Scott & Andrew Lindsay when they were still the Creative Directors at Faulds Advertising and featured the late great Norman McCaig reading some lines from his poem 'Celtic Cross.'

On the shoot, McCaig was reluctant to read it at all, saying not only that the audience wouldn't understand it but that he wasn't sure that he understood it himself. I'm glad he changed his mind.

This film had a very long gestation period. The original script by Ian Allan and Ross Thomson lay around for about a year before the thrusting young team of Chris Muir and Al MacCuish inherited it in 1995.

Having just worked on the multi-award winning BBC Radio Scotland campaign with Tomato, we were very lucky that not only did they agree to direct it for the princely sum of 4/6d, but that Underworld allowed us to use their song 'Cowgirl' as well.

Then our esteemed client, Michael Forsyth, the Secretary of State for Scotland (allegedly) decided that it 'encouraged teenage promiscuity' and the spot was canned for almost a decade before it finally hit the screen.

BBC Radio Scotland Campaign

Are you sitting comfortably? Then let us begin... Once upon a time back in the 1990's, I worked at an advertising agency named after its founder Jim Faulds. It was my first job in advertising. In fact it was my first ever salaried job. 

I knew nothing about the business other than that I enjoyed doing voiceovers, admired the good stuff that occasionally graced the screen and fancied a shot at it. My ignorance was blissful and complete but in the two and a half years that I spent at Faulds before they fired me, I was lucky to work with some very gifted people. One of them was Adrian Jeffery, who's just set up a new agency called Mighty Small. He and his art director Lindsay Redding came up with this campaign for BBC Radio Scotland, which was directed by Jonathan Barnbrook and Tomato. 

I learned recently that - more than ten years later - it is still the most awarded campaign in the history of Scottish Advertising. this is Foggie Bummer, one of the three by Jon Barnbrook.

 

If I remember correctly, each of the six spots cost £8,000, which wasn't much money then either. 

I think they stand the test of time - but I would say that wouldn't I?

Have you got a minute?

Actually, you'll need two. This is a short montage of some of my work as an agency producer, producer and director over the course of what is no longer a short career. The earliest bits are a few frames from the D&AD & Epica award-winning campaign for BBC Radio Scotland written by Adrian Jeffery & Lindsay Redding at Faulds in 1994. There are one or two other bits of agency work, including two campaigns for Coca Cola (Weiden & Kennedy + Mother) and a scene I still rather like from a campaign I produced for Glenmorangie at 1576, but I directed and produced most of the other stuff. Hope you like it!

Rush Hour

The Seychelles Islands are scattered over hundreds of miles of the Indian Ocean and were uninhabited until some pirates turned up in the 17th century. Apparently they came from the Caribbean which may explain why the locals have a fondness for dreadlocks and believe the late Emperor of Ethiopia is god incarnate.

In a rare example of live action, we persuaded some of them to help us make this spot early one morning on the tiny but occasionally bustling island of La Digue. If you look very carefully, you may discover how to encourage an ox to pull a cart uphill. And if you can't quite make it out, drop me a line and I'll tell you.

Footsteps

Of course with jobs like these, there's usually a catch.

In this case it was a simple one. There was no money. Not 'no money' in an absolute sense, but certainly in an advertising sense - £16,000. Not enough to produce a single commercial in the UK, let alone a dozen. And certainly not on 35mm film, which is what I wanted to use.

Fortunately at that point there were no scripts either. So we made a rule. Every film would consist of a single shot. And every film had to capture the sense of remoteness, peace and relaxation that we all hope to find in an exotic, far off destination. In the middle of the fast-cutting, pump up the volume, this week only chaos of a typical commercial break, they would be a sea of tranquillity, an oasis of calm.

Well that was the intention. Let me know what you think?

Marine Life

You can wait all your life for a script to come along that begins with the words "We open on a tropical beach...". And then along come a dozen at the same time.

This is one from the campaign written by Lucas Wild that I produced & directed for The Union who are part of the Worldwide Partners network. It's currently running on CNN Europe (who still transmit in 4:3, which is why it's in this charmingly nostalgic letterbox format).

It was shot on 35mm by Paul Herley, supported by Derrick Peters & Scott Rodgers, and the authentic sounds of the Seychelles were recorded by Robert Anderson

It was a dream job in every sense apart from one. How on earth do you produce 12 TV commercials on 35mm for £16,000?

Can a Computer be Beautiful?

Yes, if it's a Nokia - or so I would have you believe. This is running in the Asia-Pacific region, which came as a welcome surprise when my agent told me last week. My voice has never been that far on its own before, but it would be very happy to go there again...

Carve It

2007 is The Year of Highland Culture so we made three spots in the summer of 2006 to celebrate it. This is the 40 second version which takes in dolphins in the Sound of Mull, a 54 mile hill-walking race called The Caledonian Challenge and some dancing in the carpark at The Lonach Highland Games at Bellabeg in upper Strathdon.