Prasoon Pandey, Director, Corcoise

“As creative guys we really do not create anything. We put together various things that we have seen in life and out of them germinates an idea. We are like cocktail mixers.”

Prasoon Pandey, shot into fame with his very first commercial, the Bajaj Sunny ad film with African tribes. He recalls, "I had written the script for that commercial. Seeing my passion for it, Rahul (Bajaj) suggested that I direct the commercial as well, and it was like a dream come true." He has not looked back since. Before moving into ad filmmaking, Pandey spent a few years with Lintas as Creative Director.

As an ad film director, for a good stretch of time he worked with Highlight Films on a freelance basis. But eventually, two years ago, he set up his own production house called Corcoise, a name he incidentally picked up from his daughter's young vocabulary. The logo of Corcoise is his son's creation. "While my son was drawing it, he explained it as a cross between a caterpillar and dinosaur. Something fresh and unconditioned—that is what our art is all about." In this conversation with Ritu Midha of exchange4media.com, Prasoon Pandey talks about the art of ad filmmaking, celebrity endorsements, episodic commercials and the global scenario, among other things.

Q. Of the commercials you have made, which are your favourites?

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Well it is not like cinema where you direct a small number of films and it's easy to choose your best. You direct so many commercials and you can't really pit one against the other. Let's see... I feel good about The Times of India commercials; nothing in that particular genre was even globally created till then. Fevicol is another commercial close to my heart—the most interesting thing about this one was the client's involvement.

Q. Have these experiences contributed to your current role as an ad film-maker?

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Yes, they do. Each director is unique because his experiences are unique. What I am today is a culmination of my experiences. When I look at my films, there are a lot of characters from Rajasthan. The Fevicol bus was the way it was because I have experienced that travelling in them as a child. As creative guys we really do not create anything. We put together various things we would have seen in life and out of them germinates an idea. We are like cocktail mixers.

Q. Did you make up your mind to enter the creative arena in your childhood itself?

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That was pre-determined. My mother tells me that I was pretty creative from my childhood. When I was six or seven, I had a passion to build houses from all kinds of cardboard boxes; such houses, I discovered later, are known as art deco bungalows. When I was around eight I acted in a light and sound show for three months every evening for long hours. I acted for Doordarshan as well. All this came in very early and I don’t know whether it was leading me or I was leading it; I flowed in that direction. Though I was not aware then that there is a field called stationery design, I would design people’s letterheads, logos, etc. I even designed magazines. As I was good at the work and did not charge any money, I got a lot of opportunities of the kind in Jaipur.

Q. Another thing that intrigues me is episodic commercials. Do you think they captivate the viewer? Does he really look for the second part?

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Not really. Life has changed. First time, it was done by Unilever almost 25 years back for Omo. It happened abroad. As students of advertising, we all saw that campaign. It was a fantastically serialised commercial. They virtually made a ‘Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki’ every week. It revolved around a family of four—husband, wife and two children. It was a brilliant, path-breaking piece of work at that point in time for a number of reasons. First, nobody had done that till then and second it was done at a scale that audience enjoyed it.

A two-part commercial doesn’t really work. If you start saying that I have a serial of my own and every week you would see a new commercial, it would be a different ball game altogether.

Coming to another point, there was no media clutter in those days and people could keep the previous episode in mind and wait for the new one. Right now there are so many brilliant commercials on air that if I tell people this is the first part and the second part I will tell you tomorrow, they just might not bother.

Q. Being the youngest sibling in a family of creatives, did you see competition through and through?

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In the earlier days, hierarchy was given much importance. You respected your elders and learnt from them. In that sense there was no competition. The fantastic thing was that though I did go to a design school at a later point in life I had by then already seen a bigger design school at home. All my siblings were involved in some creative pursuit or another, from dramatics and sitar to classical music and painting. In such an environment, you tend to pick everything around you. Larger families or joint families in the old days had great inputs in a child’s development. One could absorb inputs from all around.

Q. Do you ever think of venturing abroad?

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I am doing a lot of work in the UK. However, my ideas come out of India and I have no plans whatsoever to settle abroad.

Q. How is ad film-making different from feature film-making?

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Commercials are a bit like one-day matches while feature films are like five-dayers. The two are entirely different crafts. In commercials you have to be really precise, and you have to convey the story in a short time. In a feature film you have to develop a character and then take him to a threshold where he makes choices. Depending on what type of choices he makes, he starts evolving as a character. In commercials you do not have that space. Character is already developed. His choices have already been made. Now, how do you make him endearing! This is a slightly different craft. A commercial gets seen forty times on air so you can’t afford to make small mistakes. You would be caught. In a feature film it does not matter. If someone says there was an electrical pole in Dharamveer, it does not matter--it is already gone.

Also, the commercial has to be enjoyable even the thirtieth time. There should be little insight and expression that keeps unfurling every time the commercial is seen. This is where layering comes in.

Q. Where do Indian ad films figure in the international scenario?

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We might not be at par yet. Abroad, people spend more time in making commercials. They also spend lot more money on each commercial. They think and plan their commercials really well. There is a finish--great casting, great location, and right music. But then, here you see a paradox. An average Indian commercial is much better than an average commercial anywhere else. Commercials in India, on an average, would be far more entertaining and engrossing than those in the UK or France. Worse is the US, there everything is a promo.

However, if you take their best and our best, the situation changes incredibly. Though USA's advertising on an average would be worse than anywhere else, at the award shows they win the maximum number of awards. Their best is too good and they make many such commercials. In a year, we in India make about 600 commercials. Out of these there would be barely two or three that are really worthy of winning an honour at an international show. And these also do not etch a story that powerfully. Whereas most other countries have 70-80 top commercials in a year; a huge number, specially considering that they do not make 600 commercials a year like we do.

In India the problem is that you might be spending Rs 10 crore in media buying to run that commercial umpteen number of times and you are ready to pay Rs 4 crore to the star. However, you want to shoot commercial with the least amount of time. It is like saying that I will make the foundation of a building with clay and put a number of expensive artefacts in it. The whole structure will fall.

Counting how many times a commercial will come on air is not enough – what will come on air is too important to be ignored.

Q. What's the difference when you are directing your own script or someone else’s?

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None. When I agree to do someone else’s script, obviously the reason would be that I like it. To that extent it is not really different. It is, however, certainly easier doing somebody else’s script because he would have done all the homework. No idea comes in an instant. Months of groundwork is required. If you come on the project when the script is already done, you come with a fresh perspective; you are still left with energy and ideas to tweak it. When it is your own idea, fatigue makes your judgment slightly lazy.

Q. Quite a few ad films these days have stars. How do you possibly make a star less overpowering than the brand in an ad film? Take the case of Amitabh Bachchan in the recent Cadbury film.

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It actually depends on the task at that point in time. I actually feel that Cadbury’s use of Amitabh Bachchan under the circumstances that they were in was a very clever strategy—the issue was one of credibility by getting Amitabh Bachchan to endorse their product, in one shot they are trying to get rid of their entire worm problem. When they hired Amitabh Bachchan, they did not hire a normal celebrity, they hired an icon. Fifty years back it would have been like hiring Mahatma Gandhi to endorse Cadbury. That generation believed in him, now an entire generation believes in Amitabh Bachchan. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I like the commercial.

In most cases, I feel people waste their money on stars. Unless you have a good marriage between what the star is and what your brand stands for, it serves no purpose. Amitabh Bachchan in a fountain pen ad, a lot of cold drink commercials where stars have now become bigger than cold drinks don't really hold ground.

An honest idea, something that the brand really means, sticks in your head. Fevicol has become big without using any celebrities. But the ideas were intrinsic to the brand and stood for the core brand value. It is ridiculous to get a Sachin or Hrithik to do a bike commercial; people know that never in their life would they ride a bike. There is no connect.

There are basically two reasons why people do it. One, whenever they can’t crack an idea they look for a celebrity. Secondly, a number of marketing people and entrepreneurs actually want to get to know the stars better. And this is a real huge problem. For their selfish reasons they completely ignore what the brand really needs.

Q. A lot many film production houses and film directors are now venturing into ad film-making. Do you see a threat there?

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Right now most of them are promising easily availability of stars. And that is not the most important thing in ad filmmaking. Barring one or two, who have crossed from ad film making to filmmaking and vice versa, no one has really made a mark. These are two very different genres. However, this time around, the trend is more obvious. Once these production houses settle down, they should be able to make good ad films. And that would be a welcome change.

Q. Moving on, do you find it difficult to shake off one film when you decide to direct another?

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As a director, at least I feel, that I am an actor. When the show is over, the script is gone, you become another character. You try to think like the people you are about to shoot. You try to live in that world. The switch is not much of a problem.

I did BPL, Fevicol and CloseUp in a month and they are three completely different genres. Fevicol is very much like Benaras. I had great fun shooting Benaras in Mumbai! CloseUp has early 90s, American soap opera kind of feel--slightly fake, slightly dreamlike but not unreal in totality. And BPL, of course, is very avant-garde kind of commercial. In film making terminology it is very French.

Q. Isn’t there then pressure from the agency or the client to have celebrities in an ad film?

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They have a choice. When I say I am not up to it, they go to another director. There is no pressure. That part gets resolved in two minutes.

Q. You write scripts as well.

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Occasionally. But in most cases, scripts come from the agencies. Last year, for the first time, I got a script for The Times of India commercial. Six to seven ad films before that were my own scripts. I wrote the script for an earlier Femina commercial as well.