The Directors: Ian Power
Ian has a flair for finding relatable human moments in film and crafting them into something that feels true. A performance director with a passion for storytelling and an ability to connect with audiences, he is driven by empathy, emotion, and delight in working with actors, whether they’re street cast or Oscar nominees.
His debut commercial featured in Shots won him an ICAD for Direction. Since then his commercial work has won a haul of Bells and gongs with iconic campaigns for clients like ESB, FBD, and An Post.
His first feature film, ’The Runway’, premiered at the Director’s Guild of America in Los Angeles, won numerous festival awards, and was picked up by Tribeca Film for theatrical distribution in the US.
Name: Ian Power
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Repped by/in: Butter
Awards: ICADs, Sharks, multiple film festival wins.
LBB> What elements of a script sets one apart from the other and what sort of scripts get you excited to shoot them?
Ian> I’m always excited to work with actors and I’m very comfortable in that space but for me the story is king. Good stories manifest in different ways but I think if you’re a storyteller that’s always going to be your priority.
The minute the story becomes a technical exercise the audience will feel that. There’s an emotional response to a good story that is universal and that’s something you strive for - it’s an elusive sort of magic you’re trying to capture - ‘lightning in a bottle’.
LBB> How do you approach creating a treatment for a spot?
Ian> You can pretty much tell when someone’s put their heart into a script and that kind of passion is infectious. That’s what I’m looking for - emotion.
Sometimes you get a script and just immediately know how to tell the story. Other times you have to wait for something to resonate in an honest way. It’s an emotional response and I’ve learned that you can’t force it or be superficial about it. The process of writing treatments is so similar to writing screenplays in that respect. The sculpture is inside the stone. Writing is a process of realising what you’re really looking at and figuring out how to show that to people. When that happens it’s a very magical feeling.
LBB> If the script is for a brand that you're not familiar with/ don’t have a big affinity with or a market you're new to, how important is it for you to do research and understand that strategic and contextual side of the ad? If it’s important to you, how do you do it?
Ian> It’s a bit like working on a well established TV show - you’re not there to re-invent the character. If someone has worked hard to create a character then the legacy of that is interesting to me. Everything has to make sense on those terms. And brand is character.
When it comes to research, you always want to know what’s important to everyone - what are the sacred cows - but you can’t be cynical about that. There’s usually a good reason for even the most bizarre requisites.
It gets difficult when someone has to do something or say something for the purposes of the brand for no apparent story reason. To be very honest that’s exactly the burden of exposition when you’re writing a screenplay, you end up with characters having to do things and say things to move the story forward. The art is making that exposition feel invisible. It’s a slight of hand trick.
The best way to sell anything to anyone is to tell them a good story.
LBB> For you, what is the most important working relationship for a director to have with another person in making an ad? And why?
Ian> Well obviously the creative team are the principle collaborators and I think part of the process is getting everyone in that little circle on the same page. The brief and treatment are a big part of that but once that initial communication is right then it’s a process of broadening the circle to included principal collaborators. A lot of directors forget that between the treatment and being awarded the job is the creatives pitching your idea to the client and often going to bat for you. We work in a collaborative medium and I think you have to value the opportunities that are going to come with that.
With my own team I don’t just want my heads of department to be collaborating with me, I want them collaborating with each other. So I think it’s really so important to hold on to the spirit of those first meetings from when you’re briefed to when the job’s awarded and right through to wrap. Sometimes the script does all the work. Sometimes the script is so obviously good it’s breathes life into everything at each stage. That’s true in all media. Other times there’s a little more work involved to get to that place but the optimist in me believes you can get there.
David Lean had a group of HOD’s he called his ‘dedicated maniacs’. I definitely like to surround myself with people who are passionate to the extent it’s more than a day’s work. If it’s just a day’s work for someone then somehow that infects the everything.
Something about the magical apparatus of a film camera is that it collects not just the aesthetic but also the emotion. And if people are passionate about making the film you feel that when you’re watching the film. Even if you can’t put your finger on it, even if it’s a landscape, you can tell when someone really gives a shit. That’s who I want to work with. People who really care. Not just paid experts.
LBB> What type of work are you most passionate about - is there a particular genre or subject matter or style you are most drawn to?
Ian> I think when people start directing film it’s about presentation. Everyone wants to do the Copacabana shot from ‘Goodfellas’ - shots that scream ‘look at me directing the shit out of this’. Presentation and bombast are appealing when you’re younger because you can hide behind it. But the simple stuff is really hard. Great performance, succinct visual storytelling.
’Boogie Nights’ and ‘Raising Arizona’ are full of bombast and they’re great films but ‘There Will Be Blood’ and ‘No Country for Old Men’ are masterworks because they are so simple in execution. At this stage in my career the elegance of simplicity appeals more than anything else.
LBB> What misconception about you or your work do you most often encounter and why is it wrong?
Ian> Well, you’re always going to get pigeon holed aren’t you? My first commercial was a comedy / performance piece that was featured in shots. After that I was a comedy / performance guy. Then I did a really lyrical campaign for FBD Insurance that we shot in South Africa with a really great team of people from Ogilvy Dublin - a kind of love letter to Terence Malik’s ‘Tree of Life’ and someone said ‘you’re a lifestyle guy’. I gave a confused look to the person beside me who said ‘he means you’re good with scenes that are about nothing’.
The last few jobs had quite technical VFX elements to them so maybe I’ll be considered a VFX guy for a while. But for me it’s always about how to best tell the story. If there’s a misconception about me then it’s probably category related - I’m an emotion guy.
LBB> What’s the craziest problem you’ve come across in the course of a production – and how did you solve it?
Ian> I remember doing a Lottery commercial years ago where the hero had to drive off into the sunset in a dream car - middle aged guy enjoying a life changing win. It was a sort of elaborate set up with everything kicking off as soon as he started the car. We call ‘action’ and nothing happens. I go over to check on him and as I leaned in the drivers window I could literally hear his heartbeat. Beads of cold sweat on his forehead. I remember noticing that there was even sweat on the cuffs of his shirt. He’s sitting there holding the steering wheel. Paralysed and white knuckled. Like Brad Davis at the start of Midnight Express. ‘I can’t drive’, he says, like he was confessing to a crime…
Problems are part of the fabric of making films. If you’ve done your prep they often manifest as opportunity. Sometimes, when you’ve spent weeks breaking down the minutiae of a film to a client it can be difficult to present a problem as an opportunity. But to be very honest anyone working in advertising knows how to roll with the punches in that respect. It’s easy to forget that it’s show business too and for a lot of clients this is the most exciting (and sometimes scary) part of their job. The thing I always come back to is that everyone wants to make it better. You just have to find a way to plug into that.
LBB> How do you strike the balance between being open/collaborative with the agency and brand client while also protecting the idea?
Ian> I think first and foremost you have to trust in the strength of an idea. Stephen King has a rant about writer’s notebooks because he thinks they’re a great way to preserve a bad idea. Good ideas are persistent.
So there’s an argument that if you’re working too hard to protect an idea, then maybe you’re never going to find out if it’s a good idea or not. It’s a bit like being an overbearing parent. Stephen Soderberg will cut a scene if it doesn’t immediately stand on its feet in the walk through on set. He kind of trusts that strong material is insuppressible. In the same way Kubrick used to talk about a script being a collection of non-submersible units - scenes that would continue to float to the surface whenever you tried to tell the story.
I think you’re a fool if you think you’re in control of a story, or just not very good at telling stories. True authorship is a process of discovery.
LBB> What are your thoughts on opening up the production world to a more diverse pool of talent? Are you open to mentoring and apprenticeships on set?
Ian> I was 22 when I made my first commercial. I showed up on set and someone handed me a box to carry because they thought I was a runner. A film set can be an intimidating place. Spielberg once contemplated the hardest part of the day on set as ‘the moment you get out of the car in the morning’. I’m always conscious of that.
I’ve been privileged enough to have had more than one mentor over the years and I’ll always go out of my way to pay that forward, not least because you learn so much from doing it.
Diversity is really important and it’s manifesting in some of the most interesting voices in cinema today. On some level diversity is about learning to listen in a different way, and that’s good for everyone. So implicit in diversity is that we all have to be less blinkered. More open to new direction and new ideas. All very exciting.
LBB> Your work is now presented in so many different formats - to what extent do you keep each in mind while you're working (and, equally, to what degree is it possible to do so)?
Ian> I’m not sure how I got it but when I was in college I had the number of the projection room in my local cinema. It wasn’t uncommon for them to project a movie in soft focus or with the projection half way up the wall so I used to regularly call them from inside the cinema to let them know in the softest of voices… It got to the point where they were like ‘who the f*ck is this?’.
Quality has always been important to me. Format is really secondary to that. In terms of presenting work I don’t think we’ve ever had it so good. Independent cinema used to mean that it wouldn’t look great and it almost certainly wouldn’t sound great. That’s not the case anymore. We’re completely spoiled in terms of being able to produce high quality work and having someone’s focus is always going to be dependent on the material being engaging. That said I don’t understand why anyone would want to watch cam versions of movies because the quality is so terrible but I don’t mind if someone’s watching my film on their phone - it’s preferable to being on their phone while watching my film.
What’s going on with social at the moment is interesting. There’s a lot of worry about people’s attention spans getting shorter but I think it’s all just raising the bar on being interesting. It’s like Hitchcock said - a surprise might capture someone’s attention but suspense will keep it. Even if things get a little Tik-Toky for a while my feeling is people will always come back to story in the end.
LBB> What’s your relationship with new technology and, if at all, how do you incorporate future-facing tech into your work (e.g. virtual production, interactive storytelling, AI/data-driven visuals etc)?
Ian> When digital cameras came along everyone said it would be the death of cinema. Not dissimilar to the way that people are talking about AI now.
I learned to edit on a Steenbeck - splicing 16mm film and searching through rushes bins for the right shot - a torturous process that people swore by in a sort of masochistic way.
I’m excited by anything that presents new or easier ways to tell a story or ways to tell better stories. For a lot of people, difficulty is a barrier to entry and when you remove that difficulty it never seems to manifest as a bad thing.
Everyone was terrified that software like After Effects would destroy the post production industry but when you demystify the machinery and give it to everyone, it becomes about people again and you get artistry. Removing the technical difficulty has historically been a great thing. It happened all the way back to the printing press.
AI visuals are interesting at the moment because of their potential to limit the speculative nature of pre-visualising. Like, storyboards are great but too often the artist has drawn something that’s optically impossible or there’s an emphasis in the line drawing which somehow flattens when everything is real. So I’m all for tools which will advance that process and make it easier to communicate the idea.
Obviously there’s a fear that AI is going to make it easy for anyone to do anything but the reality is that a good film isn’t enjoyable because it was hard to make - I like anything that demystifies the folklore of difficulty.
Saying that, I do understand why AI is scary to actors and that artists have to protect their work but ultimately I do believe that AI is another evolution in storytelling and I think you have to trust the fact that the thing that makes us interesting to each other is imperfection.
LBB> Which pieces of work do you feel really show off what you do best – and why?
Ian> My favourite piece of work is a short film I made recently called ‘The Tattoo’. It was a kind of perfect experience with a beautiful cast and a wonderful crew and all of that ended up on screen. I’m currently adapting it into a feature.
I’ve just finished a spot for An Post about adult literacy which is a really simple story with a powerful message. In the same vein I made a film for RTE News with a post apocalyptic cloud which won a bunch of awards and was one of those scripts that was so much fun to collaborate on. Finally, there’s a film I made for Jameson Orange which is more light hearted in tone but was a pure joy to make.
