Word: zieff
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...together, the directors, may one day be hailed as true innovators in film it is they who pack a succinct story into a few seconds and in the process produce many new cinematic ideas. The work of such directors as Michael Cimino for Kodak, Howard Zieff for Benson & Hedges and Mike Elliott for Rheingold, has precipitated an interplay of ideas that flows freely between Madison Avenue and the conventional movie set. The directors dabble with Fellini-like stream-of-consciousness techniques. Hollywood copies TV's fast cuts and odd-angle perspectives. The quality of Richard Lester's movies A Hard...
...Zieff and his staff spent several weeks producing a commercial that will appear next month for Volkswagen. After an assistant toured Europe for two weeks scouting shooting sites, Zieff flew to Paris, loaded cast, cameras, costumes, props and his 36-man crew into five trucks and a bus and went on location at the Marksburg Castle near Koblenz, Germany. The scene, which required three days of near round-the-clock filming, shows an angry mob of villagers storming the castle, battering down the doors, and chasing a mad scientist and seven assorted monsters who hurriedly gather their gear and escape...
People People. Zieff, who has made 200 commercials in the past six years, is obsessed with detail; he shoots 9,000 ft. of film to get a usable 90 ft. He demands that his sets have a lived-in look-right down to scuff marks on the door. For a takeoff on old aviation movies for Utica Club beer, he screened the 1938 movie Test Pilot to see exactly how Clark Gable flipped back his goggles. For a series of quick shots focusing on a variety of stomachs for Alka-Seltzer, he spent ten days "interviewing abdomens," auditioned 40 belly...
...Zieff has also composed some striking magazine ads: the chubby kid eating Kellogg's Corn Flakes on the back steps, the tattooed cowpoke smoking Marlboro cigarettes, the Indian munching Levy's Rye Bread ("You don't have to be Jewish . . ."). Now that he is the top director in TV commercials and earns about $300,000 a year, he is in the fortunate position of being able to turn down six job offers for every one he accepts. He deals only with those few agencies-Wells Rich Greene, Doyle Dane Bernbach and Carl Ally-that will allow...
...casting "people who look like people" and treating each scene as "a first-run movie in miniature," Zieff has helped turn the TV commercial into something of an art form. Now if only some of this expertise would rub off on the rest of TV programming...