Pro Hello: Zac Crawley
Zac started making films at college in Falmouth where he was studying photography. Making those images move was a natural progression, and Candour was born.
It was all documentary work until bills needed to be paid, but he and the team have always kept that face-to-face storytelling nature close-by in the commercial work. Clients include some names you would have heard of and other you probably wouldn’t have. But pride -- and the painful regret of a perfectionist -- is found in all of the work for different reasons.
Today, Zac opens up on his journey so far.
LBB> What do you do, and where are you based?
Zac> I produce commercials, brand content and short documentaries in the UK under Candour Creative. I’m also part of UNCLE films, where a few filmmakers and I come together for passion projects. Every summer, we run a film school in South London, which is always a highlight of the year.
LBB> What recent campaigns might we know you from, and what was your input on these campaigns?
Zac> Recently, I directed and produced a piece for MANUAL with Danny Jones from McFly. You might have also spotted this fun food waste film we made for HUBBUB ahead of Halloween 2024 -- I produced that one with our team here at Candour.
LBB> How did you first get into the industry, and how did you realise what you wanted to do?
Zac> It all started in Cornwall when a friend and I were cycling between our digs and Falmouth town centre, dreaming up ideas while we learned how to make photographs. One of those ideas became Candour. I’m still figuring out what I want to do, though. With every project, I get a little closer...
LBB> Tell us about your journey so far.
Zac> I always knew that I liked to make work that portrayed things or people in a different way. That is where the documentary work began, telling a different story (a big motivation for our short-documentary, 'Gold & Ashes', about the community around the Grenfell Tower disaster).
I’d never really thought much about commercial work until a friend started selling socks… an endeavour that has become SUMS. He asked us to take that storytelling instinct and do it for his socks. Then the next one came along…
Also our work with Small Luxury Hotels has been wicked. We’ve been working with them to create brand campaigns around the world and a series of documentaries looking at their Considerate Collection, a group of hotels that are doing things differently.
LBB> What projects / campaigns that you’ve been involved in have been the most personally satisfying to work on, and why?
Zac> On the doc side of things, it will always be our work for beautiful charities such as Variety, Resurgo, the British Heart Foundation and others, because they’re real people with nothing on offer -- it's just their story -- which might just change someone’s life forever.
On the commercial side, I have really thrived in projects where I’m responsible for a complicated narrative like ZOE’s 'How It Works' campaign, and making it easy and fun and engaging for anyone watch.
LBB> What’s been your proudest achievement?
Zac> Honestly, getting through the pandemic was pretty cool. We rolled our sleeves up and did what we could for our clients during that time. We also came out of it with fresh impetus to complete two 30-minute documentaries we’d been working on. They were both passion projects. One was about the community of survivors from Grenfell Towers giving them a space to tell their own story, and the other was about a small cooperative farm in Somerset that, in the face of (mostly deserved) bad press facing the farming community, were sharing their vision for a brighter future for UK farms.
LBB> What do people (clients, agencies etc) come to you for specifically?
Zac> We tend to fill the gap sometimes left between creative agencies and production companies. Not by design, necessarily, it’s just where we’ve landed. We work directly with our clients to help them figure out how to communicate something (normally quite niche).
LBB> What are your strongest opinions relating to your specific field?
Zac> Honesty -- hence the name, Candour. We believe in being transparent, both in the work we create and in how we collaborate. I think people appreciate that straightforwardness.
LBB> What sort of projects really get you excited at the moment?
Zac> I really love working on projects that I know absolutely nothing about. A lot of what I do is trying to understand brands / people / ideas. That really helps me produce because once I know what we’re trying to achieve, I can keep the creative team and the client team aligned and pushing in the right direction.
When those projects involve learning and discovery, it gets me really excited. And it pays off, too, because once you know something deeply, you can get creative with how best to communicate it, and that is, ultimately, what we do.
LBB> Who are your creative heroes, and why?
Zac> Oooh what a great question. It probably changes all the time. The thread that runs through are people who make great inspiring work in the face of huge opposition or struggle. We co-directed the Grenfell project with Feruza Afewerki who was telling that story in the shadow of grief. Works of art and journalism that come out of places of conflict around the world will always pull on me. My uncle (Rory Peck) was a freelance cameraman who operated in conflict zones before being killed working in Russia in 1993. He was a big inspiration for me growing up.
LBB> Outside of the day job, what fuels your creativity?
Zac> I mentioned earlier that I am part of a group called UNCLE films and we run a film school in the summer in London. It’s a week long and is the best week of the year because we get to see 20/30 young people who have no clear route into film getting to taste what filmmaking is all about and the look on their faces when something clicks is awesome.
Other than that I still take heaps of pictures on a little pocket-sized Fuji camera. Having a frame helps me see people and places in a more curious way.
