tim maguire

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.

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?