Director’s Brief: 12 Questions with Anh Phi @ 116 Pictures
Director’s Brief: 12 Questions is a new Q&A series from Campaign Brief Asia that shines a spotlight on the broad mix of talent shaping Asia’s commercial directing scene. Next up in the series is Anh Phi a director with top production company 116 Pictures in Vietnam and Thailand.
1. Describe your directing style in one paragraph?
I’d say my style seeks to balance poetry with rawness, instinct with reasoning. Grounded in culture and its margins. In commercial filmmaking, I try to approach each project with research and intention, aware of how bias, cliché and exoticism might blur the search for “authenticity”, a word always used that has lost its meaning. My goal is always to get closer to the essence of the subject, with care and curiosity, to reveal its own singular beauty.
2. Was there a specific ad that made you think, “I want to do this for a living”?
My creative path had been more like a flowing river rather than a traced trajectory.
When I was a teenager, I started shooting friends’ live bands with a Canon 7D and a cheap plastic 50mm lens, it was the early DSLR cameras era. I don’t have any degree and started to freelance right after high school, then organically started to work with record labels, fashion brands, creative agencies, media platforms… Eventually ads appeared on the way and became one of my ways of making a living but not only. Ads is an interesting field that intersects arts and commerce, it’s a space that allows you to have great resources to explore and develop your filmmaking practice.
3. What’s your all-time favourite TVC?
One of the first ads I remember is a flavored water commercial when I was a kid growing up in France. It aired in 1999, right when Dragon Ball Z was huge, so the ad rode that wave with bold dramatic transformations and FX. The kid’s line, “Mum, I need water… waterrrr…” became iconic and copied in school’s playgrounds. Looking back, it stands out as one of the first times I saw an Eastern-influenced ad on TV. I however would not say it directly shaped my directing style.
4. What’s your all-time favourite TVC/Campaign from your country?
One that I like from Vietnam is from that transgenerational leading shoe brand called Biti’s. It’s an ad they made in early 2000 that is inspired by mythology, history and national identity, following foot in various contexts, travelling space and time. So simple yet efficient, I love the anthropological approach of it filled with symbolism.
5. In your experience, what’s the secret to a smooth director-agency-client vibe?
In my early 20s, I was assisting a fashion photographer and he told me on set “this job is 80% politics and 20% talent” (I don’t remember the exact numbers but it was a similar ratio hahah). And why I’d love to not agree, it happened to be the case for a lot of time. No matter how good your idea could be, paying effort and attention to how to communicate it is essential. When I started working in ads as a director, my ego would often see agency-client comments as attacks, yet with time I’ve realized that it is more about learning how to translate their feedback and answering it with rationals, hows and whys, rather than with straight opposition. Any comments can help reveal my own blind spots. It also depends on the level of trust and the types of power dynamics between everyone, dir, prod, agency, client… Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t.
But at the end of the day, let’s be true, what we usually do is not gonna change the world so gotta take things easy, it’s all just a game.
6. Where do you go (or what do you do) when you need to recharge your creative batteries?
Creative work can feel very abstract and make you lose touch with reality because it’s built on worlds shaped by intersubjectivities. My neighbors or family won’t care about that cool film I could be releasing. That’s why it’s important to ground myself, get off screens, be present, and embrace whatever life throws at you, the pleasant and the unpleasant. Creativity needs fuel, and that fuel is real life experience, filled with emotions and experiences. Needs to let space to feel or be moved otherwise there’s nothing real to create from. So to answer, to recharge my creative batteries, it’s just about living life, wherever I’d go, whatever I’d do.
7. Ever had a happy accident on set that turned out to be a game changer?
Most shoots come with a package of unexpected things to deal with which is a part I find exciting about filming, but I don’t recall any happy accident that turned out to be a game changer.
8. Is there a mentor or person who has had a big impact on your career?
One of the first people who had a big impact was my friend Arnaud in my twenties. I had shot his rock band, and later he introduced me to a boutique creative agency where he started to work at. On our first meetup, the agency founder asked if I could design an ad for a book he wrote to be featured in a national newspaper. I had no professional experience in design, just some basic Photoshop skills yet no idea what even CMYK, DPI or bleeds meant. But I said yes. YouTube and internet forums were my teachers. From there, trust got earned, I ended up working on cultural campaigns and doing activations at art fairs and fashion weeks around the world. That “say yes and figure it out later” energy has stuck with me ever since.
I’ll always be grateful to the friends, collaborators, and clients who trusted me to do things I’d never done before. I appreciate collaborators who can see your essence and your potential to make something new, rather than those who only want to work with you if you’ve already made their exact brief. Two schools.
Otherwise, Rick Rubin and Quincy Jones are my mentors. Their ability to deliver honest, soulful, boundary-pushing works with so many types of collaborators had always inspired me.
9. What’s the next big thing in commercial filmmaking? Explain.
I can’t dodge the AI topic with this question haha. Its impact on society is unprecedented, way more profound than the industrial revolution, for the best and the worst. So commercial filmmaking would definitely be affected by it and it has already started. I can imagine the further we go, more polarized branches will emerge. Hyper-surrealist films only AI could make, hyper-realistic films only humans could make. And in-between, a big ocean full of noise with very loose railguards where reality and truth doesn’t matter anymore. We won’t believe anything from our screens anymore, it’s gonna be wild and a big rollercoaster. Some highs and lows.
“Cool” images, vibes, aesthetics, and camera tricks are going to become even more disposable. Just seasonal ingredients in constant mutation. So I believe realism, groundness, and the impossible seek for timelessness, will get more and more central to how I approach filmmaking. A few months ago, it was my first time getting tricked by an AI video. It was that smartphone-style video of a kangaroo being refused to board a plane. So when my mind jumps from “I notice AI directly on video, our jobs are safe” to “damn that was not a real kangaroo”, I felt its shift viscerally. A big punch in the face like feeling we’re really stepping into a new era. I’m awaiting for the moment I’d be truly moved by a full AI-made art. Unless it already happened and I didn’t notice 🙂
10. If you could direct a dream ad for any brand, which brand would you choose?
Making a fish sauce and an instant noodles ad had always been a dream. Not specific brands in particular but there is so much to explore, I already have ideas for it. And also, it’d finally be something speaking directly to my mum.
11. If you could give one tip to an aspiring TVC director, what would it be?
I kind of dodged a lot of questions earlier, so here’s more than one tip.
• Directing TVC is a playground not an end goal.
• Don’t only do ads. Do and try other formats, fiction, doc, MV, social/community causes, dance, experimental, or just weird phone videos for yourself and friends. Doesn’t have to be shiny nor expensive.
• Nowadays there are plenty of tools for finding references online and algorithms on social media create echo chambers
• Distinguish what is your own taste VS trends
• I’m not gonna sugarcoat, the ad industry can get overwhelming, toxic or stressful. I remember pre-COVID when boards were flowing, I’ve worked 6 months non-stop on ads only and I burned out. I would not know what my own tastes were anymore nor how I’d really feel. So taking care of both your body and mental health is essential.
• Last but not least, your work doesn’t define who you are, even though society blurs that line.
12. What are your top 3 ads you’ve directed?
It’s not really an ad per se but Absolut funded this short-documentary film about two queer club collectives in Saigon. No client on set, no drinking scene, nor bottle shot, just the neon logo to appear organically in the party. Small budget but full creative freedom. When brands tap into platforming marginalized communities, it often can feel appropriative or performative, where the artist’s words and voices are meticulously tailored to fit a pre-set brand narrative. Luckily, it was not the case here.
Beside my film practice, I was deeply involved in grassroots music culture in Vietnam, years organizing raves, DJing, producing and mentoring to develop the local experimental club scene which eventually gained global attention and shows in Asia and Europe, So this film is also a personal one close to my heart. Pure community love.
The two other ones are those fish sauce and instant noodles films. Hypothetical future classics.
Director’s Brief: Alexis Odiowei @ Vantage Pictures