Paul Weiland, one of advertising’s most successful commercials
directors, has accused agencies of putting too much financial pressure
on production companies.
Speaking at a Designers’ and Art Directors’ Association President’s
lecture last week, Weiland, whose production company made a gross profit
of about pounds 4 million in the year ended April 1995, claimed agencies
were still making production companies suffer for the excesses of the
80s.
‘Production companies are very tightly run ships, margins are constantly
squeezed and there are more directors competing for fewer scripts,’ he
said. ‘There are fewer big money jobs. I earn about pounds 6-pounds
7,000 per shooting day.’
Weiland called for a return to effective copywriting skills and for
agencies to put an end to using stylish post-production techniques to
disguise the absence of a good idea.
He said the industry should pressure the Broadcast Advertising Clearance
Centre to bring its standards up to date. He said the body issued what
seemed to be arbitrary rulings: ‘The BACC is strangling our creativity.’
Weiland also spoke of his spat with Steve Henry, the creative partner of
Howell Henry Chaldecott Lury. ‘If Henry had directed Blackcurrant Tango
I’d have kept quiet, but the ads he directed for Mercury [‘Oliver and
Claire’] weren’t very good. The idea that you can be a director just by
getting the right crew together is insulting,’ he said.
