Archive - Advertising Worldwide

If you didn't already notice, the 84th Academy Awards took place last night. Although many of the creatives who attended the ceremony at Hollywood's Kodak Theatre are best known for their work on feature films, some of them are not strangers to the world of advertising.




Image: Michel Hazanavicius wins Best Director at the Oscars 2012

There are many film directors who have notable works in the advertising world before going on to grace the red carpet in Hollywood. A prime example is Ridley Scott, who directed "Boy on Bike" for UK bread brand Hovis in the 1970s and has so far in his career been nominated for three Academy Awards for Directing.

Some were surprised to see the absence of David Fincher in this year's Director category for his film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Fincher of course co-founded production company Propaganda Films, U.S.A. whose commercials have featured in Lürzer's Archive on numerous occasions.

Fincher himself is no stranger to our magazine as director. His ads "Beauty for Sale" for Siemens Xelibri and Nike's "Just Face It" and "Magazine Wars" have all made appearances - the latter of which was recently featured as our Classic Spot of the Week 2012/3.

The Fincher machine however made itself known across other Academy Award categories. Jeff Cronenweth was nominated for Best Cinematography for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (the award was won by Robert Richardson for Hugo). Known for his role as Director of Photography on Fincher films Fight Club and The Social Network, he has also applied this title to commercials.

Along with his brother Tim Cronenweth, he has worked as 'The Cronenweths' - a Director/Director of Photography team on commercials including "Footsteps" for Audi, "Mechanical Rabbit" and "Critical Delivery" for Jaguar as well as "Carrier Pigeons" for FedEx, which aired during the 2008 Super Bowl.

For the same film, Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall won the award for Best Film Editing. Their work on The Social Network won them the Academy Award last year. Wall and Baxter have both worked as commercial editors. Along with Linda Carlson, Wall started the Rock Paper Scissors firm - an editorial house known for its commercial work for BMW, Hewlett-Packard and Nike. Baxter also co-founded the commercial editing firm Final Cut, before joining Wall's Rock Paper Scissors in 2004.

Wall's work is featured on Heineken's "Beer Run" commercial, which starred Brad Pitt and was unsurprisingly directed by David Fincher, which is not an unfamiliar collaboration.

But the man who took home the coveted Academy Award for Best Director was French film director, producer and screenwriter, Michel Hazanavicius. Before directing feature films, Hazanavicius directed commercials for clients such as Reebok and Bouygues Telecom. He was featured in Lürzer's Archive (Vol. 4/1999) for his spots for Air Liberty, "L'Hostess" and "Le Rideau" ("The Hostess" and "The Curtain"), which spoofed the notion of other airlines' poor service.



View the full list of winners and nominees.

Nominated in the same category was Woody Allen, who also featured in Lürzer's Archive (Vol. 3/1993) as director of three spots ("Apples", "Gallery" and "Party") for supermarket chain Co-op. He won the award for Best Original Screenplay for the film Midnight in Paris.


Video: "The Hostess" for Air Liberty, directed by Michel Hazanavicius


Video: FedEx "Carrier Pidgeons"


Video: Jeff Cronenweth was Director of Photography on Audi's "Footsteps"

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