Into the Library with Paul Middleditch

Paul Middleditch is Australia’s most awarded Commercial Director, winning over 300 international and national awards, including 8 Cannes Lions (4 of which are gold). Several of his ads have found their way into the general lexicon, perhaps most famously Carlton Draught’s “very big ad”, widely regarded as a staple of Aussie and Kiwi beer culture.

But you wouldn’t know it from talking to him. Paul is a man without ego, laid-back and inviting in a classically Kiwi fashion. His madcap humour and obvious professional talent are couched in an easy laugh and a simple, clear way with words.”

“I was 10 years old when I asked my dad for a film camera… there was a student competition here, amongst all the secondary schools in the country, which I won for four years in a row. So that got me noticed.

Paul’s made five feature films, and countless advertisements and music videos. 

“When I began, I wanted to be a very serious director, wanting to make art movies. And the interesting thing is that I think when I started working in television commercials, I sort of decided to chill the fuck out. I became less serious. I still love Tarkovsky films and what have you, but just relaxing a little (which I had to do when making these commercials)... it’s given me a degree of perspective.”

Currently represented by Plaza Films, Paul continues an extraordinary career in advertising and film; one he is only too happy to recount.

Carlton Draught: The Big Ad

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The team behind it, Grant [Rutherford] and Ant [Keogh], had made a legacy of those ads, all of which I think were similar in the fact that there was farce involved. This one was taking the piss out of the British Airways and Qantas ads, with their crowds and ethereal landscapes. And at the time it was made, Lord of the Rings had just come out, which meant it was the first time we had the technology to do something like that. We used a crowd simulation programme called Massive, that Animal Logic had access to, and which had been developed for Lord of the Rings. It was kind of groundbreaking, in its way.

All in all, we had 300-350 people on the ground, with about 46,000 little CG characters made. It’s been voted the best beer ad in history, which is pretty good.

Also, see the little guy with the glasses? He’s my brother. I still like getting my family involved.

Carlton Draught: Flashbeer

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It’s a fucking ludicrous parody of Flashdance. And it’s shot for shot!” You know, I took that movie and copied it frame for frame. And the reason for that, is because if you’re going to do a parody like that, you have to do it with that level of devotion to detail. You need to be accurate.

During the shoot, the stunt coordinator said ‘this guy (the lead actor) is the most unfit man I’ve ever come across. We’ve got to be real careful with him.’ And he ended up doing his hamstring in! But we got it all shot eventually. Not painlessly, but we did.

Carlton Draught: Slow Mo

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There was an ultra slow motion bubbles ad, for Schweppes. One which featured all the balloons exploding. It was shot seven or eight thousand frames a second. When these things explode, they more or less just sit in space. It looked spectacular of course, and when Ant and Grant saw it, they went “Well, this is our next piss-take.”

I'm a big Caravaggio fan. And so I said to the cinematographer, Daniel Ardilley, look, I'm going to show you some of these paintings. I wanted us to use all this contrasting light, and have characters look left to right and so on. The whole piece, fundamentally, has the aesthetic of a religious painting. And yet, it’s just blokes in pubs being silly. So, the goal there was to make men in pubs into art.

Reflex: Enwhitenment

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Reflex is a funny one, because the actual original script finished at “You’re sure to find enwhitenment.” That was it. And I went, “Well, can't we just extend this into total stupidity?”

My thinking was that that word is so absurd, that it only made sense to fully commit to the absurdity. At this point, of course, we're heading into Adam McKay territory. So I ad libbed with the performer on the day, and we developed all the lines. Stuff like “Did somebody write that down for you? Nup. Yep.” 

And we just kept riffing. “How'd you get here? The bus. All right, and sleep.” We kept pulling on this thread, trying to find what would be too absurd. And we never found it. And the whole ad is better for it.

Specsavers: Cowboys

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With something this visually involved, I storyboard the whole thing beforehand. But you can never plan for everything. We got up to the location, and it was raining. So we ended up having to light the whole damn thing ourselves. This, it turned out, was a miracle in disguise, because Daniel Ardilley did such a good job that it ended up looking more filmic than it otherwise would have. 

Meat & Livestock Australia: You Never Lamb Alone

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This really is one long take. Nothing stitched together. I’d been doing one take music videos way back when - and I’ll tell you the secret to getting them right: Do it backwards. Start at the end, work your way backwards through the entire take - and that's your rehearsal.

From there, there’s obviously a great deal of coordination, but that gives you the bones of it. We shot 26 takes in total, and I think that take is somewhere around number 18.

It's a pretty exciting thing to experience when it all comes together as one take. And that was my intention behind it when I read the ad. The moment I finished the script, I just knew in my bones it had to be a one-shot commercial. And, of course, when the team went “Oh, can you do that?” I said, “Yeah, we just need to commit.”

Pepsi: The Nod

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So this is, obviously, an American work. It’s based on a famous SNL sketch, where two guys, one played by Will Ferrel, keep bobbing their heads to Hadaways “What is Love?”

The idea came from Pepsi wanting to show off the caffeine in their drink; playing on the nod as looking like people falling asleep, which I thought was pretty clever. They spent a fortune on all the people in it, but it paid off. That ad played in the Superbowl, it made a huge impact.

Funnily enough, it looks like it took forever to shoot, but it actually came together over just four days. I attribute that to shooting in Los Angeles. It’s a film town, and they’ve got a pretty slick system in place. They can hustle when they need to.

Bud Light: Scary Fridge

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The Pepsi ad was all location shooting, but this one is obviously on a soundstage. And, again, it’s fucking absurd. I did it quite a long time ago. Visually, you can tell it comes from the early 2000s, but I remain proud of it. It was one of my first truly famous ads, winning the gold at Cannes and all that.

It was just such a brilliantly stupid idea, really. It was back when the art of advertising was very bold and simple. Today, a lot of ads tend to take themselves a little more seriously. This sort of singular punchline of the guy’s head in the fridge… it’s of its time. But I still love it.

Nandos: Online Dating

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Here’s another case where it was about ad libbing. The line I came up with was “And where do you surf?” This guy obviously doesn't surf. That, I think, was just a simple piece of performance and casting. The interplay worked really well, because he’s so quietly odd, and she’s got such contempt for this rather sad liar. 

Getting the casting right is really important. Once you’ve got the right person in the right role, improvisation and the like comes so naturally from there.

Budweiser: Apocalypse

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Here’s another one from the mid 2000s. The guy who shot it, Newton Thomas Siegel, is a dear friend of mine now, but this was the first time we’d worked together. He shot all the X Men stuff, so he was absolutely down for making a big action sequence, with, again, another absurd ending.

There’s no logic to it all. Why are these guys chasing Dale Earnhardt Jr? Why are they dressed like characters from Mad Max? Why is he driving a NASCAR car through the desert? It doesn’t make any sense, and yet it made perfect sense. 

That sort of sums up a lot of my career really. Couldn’t be happier about it.