Johnny Cigarini by John Cigarini Page B

director the agency had chosen to shoot the commercial. Before the job is awarded, the agency requires meetings between the director, the producer, the agency producer and the creative team to discuss execution of the script. If it’s bid competitively, very often a job is won or lost on the director’s interpretation. Once the job has been awarded and signed off by the agency’s client (e.g. Coca-Cola), the producer’s job is to set up the shoot. This means scheduling it according to the director’s availability, organising the casting, finding the locations or briefing the set designer if it’s to be shot in a studio, booking the studio, booking the crew, ordering the wardrobe department, and so on – so that on the day of the shoot, everything is ready for the director and film crew to shoot and to run as smooth as silk. Sometimes this can mean protecting the director from the clients, but usually the director will have good communication with the agency creative teams and producers.
    Shooting one commercial can usually take between one and three days, depending on the complexity of the production, but if it’s part of a campaign of commercials involving a series of films, it takes much longer. It’s the producer’s job to coordinate everything. Producers and directors usually work as a team and I’m not being falsely modest if I say the director is much more influential and important than the producer. The director is the star, and that’s who everyone wants and wants to be. The agency also has a producer, whose job is to liaise with the production company producer. The agency has video playback to see what is being shot and approves it as they go along. BFCS pioneered the use of video playback and was possibly even the first company to use it through Joe Dunton, who developed the system. If anything goes wrong during a shoot, and things often would, the production company producer has to sort it. After the shoot is over, the producer has to coordinate the post-production with the editor, the director and the clients. In the US, this is usually done directly by the agency, and the director has very little say in the editing beyond seeing the final cut. Directors in England, though, would not stand for that.

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    By the late 1980s, I wasn’t producing any more. In my capacities as managing director of BFCS Ltd. (the English company) and president of BFCS Inc. (the American one), I was in control of the two companies with the brilliant help of Linda Maxwell, Gary Feil and Patricia Judice, the executive producers in New York and LA. Running a production company is a bit like being the manager of a rock band. You don’t get your name on the door, but you have to deal with a bunch of talented stars who earn an obscene amount of money, and with many big egos. There are financial rewards, though; a top commercials director can earn a couple of million dollars a year. Finding and keeping good directors is the hardest role for a company owner, and making them happy and remaining in your company is the name of the game. I have tried hard not to think about any of this for eighteen years; it’s big business, big stress, big egos and big parties. It was a heap of fun, though; I’d just never have thought it was all going to move so fast. Had I known, I guess I’d have tried to enjoy the ride even more. Like the great Billy Wilder once said, “Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.” But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to the King’s Road.

Chapter 9
    King’s Road: Part 1

    The King’s Road in Chelsea was the epicentre of the swinging sixties and seventies London scene. Today, although unique places still exist, the global chains have moved in too, and its edge has been lost, its independence. But back then… then it was different, and different to anywhere else in London. It began as a private royal road only for Charles II, but by the