What makes an audience lean in, hold their breath, or burst out laughing at exactly the right moment? Theatre has mastered this dance for centuries — long before the first 30-second advertising spot ever aired.
As advertising searches for deeper emotional connections and more memorable storytelling, the stage may hold the answers.
Here, award-winning stage, film and commercial Director Ben Woolf, shares what brands can learn from the boldest performers in the business.
By guest writer Ben Woolf:
Directing plays and commercials might seem like different worlds. However, having directed productions in the West End and on Broadway, I believe there are plenty of useful skills that can be gleaned from theatre and applied to the advertising world.
So, without further ado, here are the most important things I’ve learned from the theatre that can be applied to commercial filmmaking.
Performance is king
On a typical West End show you get four weeks of rehearsals in a studio and at least a week doing technical rehearsal in the theatre.
In commercial filmmaking, the majority of your time is spent getting the technical stuff to work. It’s on you to make sure that the limited time you have with the actors is spent wisely.
For many actors, the experience of being in a commercial can be character-building to say the least. Years of craft is reduced to holding up a burger and being directed to “look less horrified”. So treating them as partners tends to yield surprisingly good results.
In theatre, the first week of rehearsals is often dedicated to talking through the play and its context. This is a luxury not afforded to commercials, but I’ll make a point of finding time to chat to the actors, even if it’s only for three minutes by the craft table.
Be open about what you’re trying to achieve and listen – or at least make them feel like you’re listening – to their ideas.
Actors in ads are often not super-experienced or very confident. And they’re usually thrown in front of the camera, lights and crew, without much rehearsal. It’s easy to forget that as the director part of your job is to make them feel supported.
Making sure you give positive feedback – not just noting critically – goes a very long way.
Be flexible about the process. In theatre and in commercials, actors come with a different language. It’s the job of the production – and especially the director – to work with them and find an approach that works.
Keep the number of notes between takes to a minimum and make them as clear and direct as possible. Theatre teaches you that if a note takes longer to deliver than the performance take, it’s a bad note.
On a commercial set, it’s key to iterating quickly and keeping the energy alive.
A big part of the job for everyone is to keep anxiety from reaching the performers. As director, it’s particularly important to manage the anxiety levels of the agency and client when the performance isn’t award-winning in the first take.
You need to reassure them that acting is a reiterative process and there’s no need to panic-recast – at least, just yet…
Setting the stage
In theatre, because there is no editing, blocking becomes the main tool for directing the audience’s attention and shaping the narrative.
In theatre – you’re blocking for hundreds of viewpoints, from the stalls to the nosebleed seats. In film, you block for one: the lens.
You can use this by being crafty with your blocking. Helping you slash the number of shots by tying coverage together and bringing performances to camera. It’s a technique I’ve used for a number of single-shot commercials.
It recently saved the day on a shoot for Etihad with some Manchester City footballers. Our shoot window was massively reduced when their training overran – as it turns out, it’s tricky to argue with Pep!
Through blocking, we were able to reduce five individual set-ups into a single shot with some basic choreography. It saved the schedule and, to be honest, made for a tighter film.
Serving the script
The first job of a theatre director is to serve the script. This builds a genuine respect for the core idea, and it’s an attitude that goes a long way in advertising.
Rather than stamping your mark as a director and making changes to the script, you’re there to realise the ideas of the core creative, even if it was rewritten at 3am after the client suddenly ‘tweaked’ the brief.
Your job is to find the brilliance in the creative idea and bring it to life.
In conclusion, having a different perspective ultimately leads to commercial work that truly connects with audiences on a human level.
It’s possible that I sometimes take directing a man eating a McDonald’s a bit seriously, but years in rehearsal rooms have taught me that even the smallest moments need to feel real and authentic.
There are of course a few key differences. In theatre, after weeks of rehearsal, you have to trust the actors. In commercials, after 15 minutes with a celebrity and a new mobile phone, you have to put your trust in the editor.
Luckily, working in the theatre also teaches you about hope.