John Zhao
John Zhao is a Korean/Chinese–American independent filmmaker. Born in China, he spent his childhood with his grandfather, an acclaimed calligrapher who sparked John’s everlasting love for art and poetry. John went to the cinema for the first time in Germany; he was a young boy, but decided that day he’d start making films.
While growing up in America, John spent this time riding skateboards and taking heavy interest in scuba diving and studying the behavior of sharks. He studied marine biology before transferring to Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) for its esteemed creative advertising program. During this time, he frequently visited China to teach and travel.
John’s first ad stint was an internship at Wieden+Kennedy the year before graduating. At age 23, during his first year in New York City, he successfully wrote, produced, and directed his first feature, Days Gone By, with rogue tactics and few resources. (Learn more about the film at www.johnxzhao.com.) John is currently developing several more features while freelancing in advertising and film production projects in New York City.
Tracy Tuten: How did you get started? Did you grow up knowing you’d work in advertising?
John Zhao: Well, indirectly. I knew that I wanted to be a filmmaker since I was a kid. It was later that I realized I could take skills I gained from being a filmmaker and apply it to projects in ad agencies as well. Advertising could provide a steady career for me that was also related to my love of film. I was living in Germany, actually, when I realized I loved film. I was born and raised in China and then I went to Germany as a young boy. That’s when I went to my first movie theater. Ever since then—I think I was seven years old—I just wanted to make films. And I think I wrote my first feature film when I was like twelve or something. It was a really terrible horror movie. I just found it in my basement the other day. But, if you look back into my childhood, there’s evidence that this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
Now, advertising is something I knew nothing about until I got to college. I didn’t want to go to film school because my favorite filmmakers never went to film school. They just picked up a camera and made their first films. I figured film school was expensive. If I had the money to do that, then I would just make my own film, too. I also seriously considered spending my college years as an English and history major because literature and the humanities were important to me as a storyteller, but I realized I could do a ton of that on my own as well. When I saw that the strength of VCU’s communication program was in their creative advertising courses, that’s when I realized that if I wanted to make films, I would also have to be able to advertise them, to market them, so that’s what made me choose advertising initially.
I’m the only child in my family, so it also convinced my folks that I wasn’t just going to spend four years learning how to “tell stories,” you know? Even though that’s all I wanted to do with my life. They were more supportive knowing I’d be able to get a job out of school. Also, I knew I wasn’t the best businessman. I knew I had ideas, but film is a pricey venture and I had no clue how I’d deal with getting my creative work into the marketplace. So I felt like an ad agency would be a fast-paced place to start and learn. Surprisingly, the creative advertising program opened up my mind a lot. It wasn’t so much about making ads or selling something, but more about learning how to be specific with your message, collaborate with strangers, and be a faster thinker. Everyone in the program became very close with each other. So I started out with these two separate things, but they turned out going hand in hand. Yeah, it was a fun couple of years.
When I think of film, this thing I was after since I was a child, I was always unsure how or what I’d do to support it. Even full-time filmmakers do other things to make a living. They direct commercials, write screenplays, wait tables, they do whatever it takes because being able to make feature films isn’t a career—it’s a privilege, and your so-called career can end any day. So for me, having found and extracted the hard skills in something I love to do and being able to apply it to another part of society is a very lucky thing I’ve been able to do between films.
Tuten: How did this unfold from the time you were in college?
Zhao: I interned while finishing my undergrad degree. After I graduated, I did some freelancing. Soon I decided to make my first feature film and moved to New York. While I was editing the film and telling people about it, it helped me find a full-time position in a new branded entertainment company. So it’s been a kind of straddle between advertising and filmmaking, then discovering a place where I can I juggle the two.
Tuten: Most people starting out in the field would target a traditional agency and work with a mix of media. You’ve targeted film and especially branded entertainment early on. Did you eschew traditional agencies?
Zhao: I was really enjoying working in a traditional agency, and I loved working with the partners that I had. But during that time, I wanted to get out of the office and onto a film set. Even prior to graduation, I was spending my free time on film shoots so I missed the physicality of that a lot. I felt like if I could find people who would let me apply my conceptual skills in advertising to film production, I would be able to create a more distinct line of work, if that makes any sense.
Tuten: You started with film on your own. You did your own writing, filming, editing?
Zhao: Yeah, I mean, that’s the way you should start these days. It’s easy to get someone else to do the dirty work, but as a first-time director, you should know what it feels like produce, to write, to edit, to cook meals for your cast and crew. The technology these days really allows you to do a lot and very quickly. Almost as fast as you can think of something. While I was still in Richmond, going to school, I’d spend as much time working in plays, being a production assistant on commercials, music videos, anything really. Even in a small town I was able to do that and it taught me a lot of stuff.
Then by the time I was able to have some time and mostly have the courage to make my first feature, I thought the best thing to do would be to do everything—that included writing, producing, shooting film, editing, directing. I felt like, “Okay, the technology is available for me to do it all.” It would [also] obviously save a lot of money.
And the third point, and probably the most important, is that I would be able to learn everything and figure out what aspect am I good at and what aspect of filmmaking I am not good at. I knew that by handling each step of the film, it would be fun, but I would also learn firsthand what I wish I had more help on. I knew that would inform my work on the next film. I would develop a new model of working. I’ll know where I should reach out for more help and so on. That was my philosophy when I started making my first feature.
Tuten: Beyond that, your work is focused on film whether you are making feature films, shorts, or commercials. Are there other synergies between your work in advertising and your film making?
Zhao: VCU has a great advertising program. It really hits the most important aspects of the work. You’re working with different partners, and you learn how to work with people and how to find a point where the team can agree on the creative direction of the concept. Coming out of that program, I knew how to come up with ideas very quickly and work under deadlines—you know, pulling all-nighters. All the things that I learned in advertising school have also taught me how to be a good director. These are the same key qualities needed to direct film.
I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but it turns out that film directing is very similar. You’re working with different actors, and each actor is a different person. You have to know how to talk to each actor a different way. And you have to be aware that they’re coming from a different background. And you have to be receptive to any ideas that they come up with because filmmaking is a collaboration. It’s not about writing a script and then me telling people what I want them to do. That never makes a good film.
You should always be collaborative, receptive—and it’s a high-stress job. You know, it’s like every day you have so many hours of daylight, for example, to shoot a certain scene and you have to get all of it done and also be aware that there are going to be technical issues that fall in your way. I hope that answers your question.
Tuten: You speak passionately about the work, about each aspect. Things that others might consider just another chore on the list of things that have to happen in creating the work.
Zhao: I see all the steps in creating something from writing to shooting to editing, as all one motion, in both advertising and filmmaking. Sure, we need to designate jobs to organize the machine, but I really get disappointed when someone doesn’t go the extra mile because it’s not part of their job description. It’s very common for me to have to rewrite an entire scene while shooting, or begin producing while writing, so it’s all part of the same motion for me.
For me, though, in making my feature film, I had some challenges in terms of getting everything done in a way that was consistent with my vision. Typically, it’s useful to have more than one camera running on a scene, but I couldn’t do that because I simply didn’t have the resources to hire another cinematographer. These limitations got in the way of my directing at times, because I was playing other roles.
Sometimes during the process, I felt like there was a glass wall every time I had a camera in my hands. I felt like there was a glass wall blocking my relationship between me and the actors because I was more invested in the technicalities or the framing or how things looked and how things would cut together in the end, and the colors and, you know, very technical things. For me, it was a tug of war between the left brain and the right brain, which is working with actors, getting the best performances, and being able to tell the story in a meaningful way. The next time I work on a feature film, I would definitely love to have a cinematographer and a producing partner to help me organize the whole shoot a little better.
Tuten: Was it a detriment that you didn’t go to film school? How do you learn what aspects should be represented in film if you didn’t go to film school to learn the process?
Zhao: I have a lot of film school friends and I think it’s a great place to learn technical things. It’s a great place to meet like-minded people, but I think it’s super important for filmmakers to be inspired outside of film. And I think that I get a lot of my ideas and inspiration from life. I get better ideas from walking around Brooklyn or just traveling than if I were to sit down at my computer and watch a ton of movies. I think talking to people and being connected with people is super important.
And I want to make a film school if I wind up making enough films and having enough to teach from those experiences—this is going to sound weird—but I want to make a film school where we don’t even watch any films during the time we’re at the film school. You’re going to learn, you’re going to study literature, you’re going to study music, and you’re going to be inspired by other things, and then in the end, you’re going to learn how to make a film by making a film. I don’t think it’s an academic thing. It’s more of a physical process. And that goes with advertising, too. I don’t really want to keep my head too high in the sky ever.
One scary thing I realize is that the more comfortable or secure I feel in my life, I tend to be less creative. Like during the whole time prior to making my film, I was in university or I was interning or freelancing at a large agency. You live pretty comfortably in an agency. Offices are hip, you get a desk, you get to travel. I was eating well and everything. And then I dumped all of my savings, which when you start out really isn’t much at all, into making a film. But suddenly, I felt very creative because I had to find ways around those financial difficulties in creative ways. I couldn’t throw money at problems. It was very physical because I had to run all over the place to find things. It was great to be able to work with very creative, successful people at an ad agency, but it was also very refreshing to be like a street-level creative where I was talking to people at diners, bowling alleys, or what-have-you to see if I could film there or get their stories.
I even cast some people in my film who weren’t actors. Like if one location was a pharmacy, I would actually cast a pharmacist there and learn about their life and know where they came from and things like that. I think that’s super important to stay connected with people outside of your industry because in the end, you are in the business of connecting with people. Being in that twentieth-story corner office is actually detrimental to creativity. I would rather come up with my best ideas in a diner at three in the morning while I’m talking to my waiter or something like that. I feel more connected to people and I guess I’ll end at that. That’s a big thing for me, to keep my life polarized where I can work in an office space and work with bigger budgets but also never get my head too high in the sky.
Tuten: Would you say that’s the philosophy that guides your work?
Zhao: Yes, that’s my philosophy for the rest of my life. And also make films and maybe start a film school and continue to work in advertising because I think it’s fun and it’s great practice, especially in branded entertainment. It’s great practice for me as a filmmaker.
Tuten: Overall are you happy with how the film turned out? Do you feel that it met its purpose in your life?
Zhao: Yeah, definitely. I think the first feature someone produces, it’s something you can’t expect too much out of. You just have to do it all on your own, stay focused on telling the story you want to tell and get it out there and then get some feedback. Then you grow. The experience feeds future work. I don’t think a person really becomes “a filmmaker” until the second feature, or maybe even the third.
It’s weird because I didn’t expect this film to really go anywhere. I knew I liked it, but I knew this year’s Sundance alone had like five thousand film submissions, which is crazy. Eight hundred films would get submitted back in the nineties. So when I made my first feature, I [thought], “Wow, this will just get lost in the clutter. Like this is kind of my self-taught film-school and that’s all it will be.” But it’s getting into festivals, and I couldn’t ask for more, so at the same time, I just don’t know what to expect because I just wasn’t prepared for it. Basically, I’ve screened it in New York a couple of times and it went over well with the audiences, so I’m just more curious now to see what will happen at the festival in London. Since it’s an international festival, I’m curious [about] what a more international audience is going to think of it.
I thought making the film was the hardest part. I’m realizing this stuff is the part where I actually need the most help, the most people involved. Right now I don’t have that. I don’t have a team that’s behind this film. I’m just flying solo. So, really, I’m just doing everything I can. It’s a learning process.
My advertising skills come in handy. I’m able to put together press kits for example—just knowing how to design a good press kit and website pretty standard for film makers. And things like that, how to present the film. What I’m missing with this film is what a strategic or seeding expert would do at an agency. They’d organize and time the campaign release. Like I would organize and time festivals and distribution.
Tuten: How did you fund the work?
Zhao: It wasn’t anything formal. I self-funded it by saving up money from my day job and I took the sacrifice by being basically homeless and living out of a suitcase for a while, couch-surfing, and pouring all my resources into the film.
Tuten: How do you stay current in the roles you play—whether it’s writing or directing or filming?
Zhao: That’s a good question. You know how I said I was trying to figure out what I’m good at and what roles I like taking on the most during my first film? For filmmakers now, especially when you consider how easy it is to pick up a camera and go out and shoot a film, there’s just no excuse to not practice and do your homework. You can see this truth every day online with the films posted on YouTube and the prevalence of UGC [user-generated content] in ad campaigns. The technological resources are there for almost anyone with the talent to jump in and create film work, video work.
Actually, I am really in the mood to do a couple of short films, just very quickly. I’m thinking about, starting this fall, doing some short films with friends and actor friends that I’ve made up here, and that will keep me in good practice while I finish writing the feature scripts. I really want to package the scripts this time with the proper business plan, and pitch it and get some financing behind the production. It’s not really about money, it’s just that the stories—they require more resources for me to actually realize them the way I want, so I might be living out of a car again, but either way it’s going to require more money on the production side.
Tuten: As you do this film work, will you be able to maintain your advertising career, too? Will you have to sacrifice it for the feature filmmaking?
Zhao: When I was still in school, my first experience at a larger agency was at Wieden. That was in Portland, Oregon. I left and came to New York specifically because I wanted to take the risk of making a feature film. I felt that New York was the place to try. Whether I failed or succeeded at it, I wanted to take the risk now. Later on in life there will come a time when I really need to make a living. I needed to try this path before the day that I really have to worry about earning money to live.
So during that time, actually, when I first came to New York, I wasn’t working in advertising. I was just doing random, odd jobs. Sometimes they’d be freelance, but sometimes something completely different. When I was shooting, in 2010, I had the most jobs that I’ve ever had in one year compared to the rest of my life. Some of it involved freelance work that I was getting from recruiters where I was lucky enough I could work from home and schedule things around the work. That was during preproduction when I was writing. But for the most part, it was scrappy. I was meeting a bartender down the street that would let me take a gig at the bar for like two or three weeks, and they would be night shifts so that during the daytime I had time to shoot. And then I would find my next thing.
Somehow, day by day, week by week, I was able to make it work. Eventually there was a three-month period, where I needed to just focus on the film, and I was able to get by. Living on people’s couches obviously saves you a lot of money.
I don’t want to come off like I’m complaining. I was really blessed. The time I’m describing, it was the most crazy, intense, fun year of my life. I would do it again in a heartbeat.
But to really answer your question, I think there are a lot of students that wind up in ad schools, on the creative side, who want to be a copywriter or art director as their day job and then paint, write novels, or make music at night. The honest truth, it’s not impossible, but it’s very difficult. I really don’t know any filmmakers who had a lifelong career as a copywriter, for example. But I think it’s possible to switch back and forth between both. There’s no right or wrong, but for me, I thought that before I could help other agencies and brands have something to say creatively, I needed to do something to see if I had something to say personally. Staying focused on one thing at a time helped me try different things in a short amount of time rather than trying to be everything at once.
Tuten: Now that the film is out and you are writing the next two scripts, you are back in advertising full-time. But still working with video.
Zhao: Yeah, definitely. I’m really blessed to have chosen advertising and film as two interests that I have. I feel like the more I work and the more I’m growing up, the more I feel like they go hand in hand, just because what I know from one thing definitely has helped the other. These days, I really love watching some of my favorite filmmakers who started out before this whole branded entertainment thing, take on their short films and other projects, funded by brands, and still make something that’s uniquely them. There’s definitely more of a dance going on between the two worlds.
In an artistic sense, whether film or advertising, it’s all about finding a distinct voice. It doesn’t matter whether it’s for a brand or simply for a story. The key is to find something that’s very, very distinct, very unique, that hasn’t been said before, and that resonates with an audience.
But then you have to pitch it. Pitching a film is just like pitching a campaign to the clients. You’re pitching a film to the actors, and the crew, and your producers. It’s a very similar mindset. In the pitching, you’re testing out whether the idea works. What doesn’t work? Who do you want to work with? You’re getting feedback. And then once you find what you’re looking for, then you have to produce it. Once you’ve finished creating the work, you know, it’s still not the end of the story. Then you have to see if the idea resonates with the audience.
Tuten: Usually in advertising, there’s a leap of faith at that stage, especially if there hasn’t been testing. But you know there will be media support to get the story in front of the audience. Is that the same or different for film?
Zhao: I think the biggest lesson I learned in making this film was that once you finish making the film, that’s only half the battle. You have to market it. You have to put it through festivals. You have to find an audience. Those things can take more money and time than making the film! I didn’t know that before I made Days Gone By. I thought eighty percent of the battle was just getting the thing done. In a way, advertising is the same. You have to have a strategy as to how to time the release of certain pieces of your campaign. Just like a film, you have to do that, too. You have to build a world around this story that you’re telling and time it in a very efficient way and reach an audience.
Tuten: In what other ways is your film work similar to your day job in advertising?
Zhao: The job I have now is with a relatively new company totally dedicated to branded film work. Obviously all of us began in more traditional agencies, but we are all film lovers and we see how film can tell a brand’s story. The agency is quite small. With such a small group of us, we all have to wear many, many hats in order to get our work done. There, my main focus is writing. Most of my time is writing scripts. With every project that I’ve done, the work always starts out with writing, but then depending on what the project is and how it goes, I’m always branching off into various roles, especially during execution.
Primarily we are creating videos that are intended to be viral. Sometimes we will produce a series of viral videos in a short time. Especially in those cases we really have to split up the work in terms of directing them. Sometimes we have two different shoots in one day, and there’s just not enough people to hold down all those shoots. I’m finding myself producing a music video here, directing a viral there. Sometimes I’m editing them. It’s definitely a good balance between my advertising and filmmaking skills, and keeps my skills honed across the work. Still, I’d say I spend most of the time writing and putting together pitches—everything that happens with a traditional ad campaign up until the point of execution—and then I switch into my filmmaker mode.
Tuten: Do you think this will be the focus of your career in advertising? Branded entertainment? Or do you think you’ll return to a traditional agency now that you’ve figured out the process for film and how it can co-exist with your career?
Zhao: Branded entertainment, or being able to take my film production knowledge and apply it to ad gigs, came at a great time for me. After I finished my first film, I was a bit hesitant about whether a traditional ad agency would even ever hire me again! I finished undergrad and didn’t have a huge portfolio like some of these bigger portfolio grad school guys. I was just beginning to work at agencies when I left to make a film. Then with that, it’s like—wow, two years went by working on that film. Some might disagree, but I don’t know if a feature film shows well in a traditional portfolio for agency work. It’s kind of a weird thing to stick in a book.
So as I wrapped up the film, I was wondering what my next step [would] be. And then I landed this opportunity and it seemed to encapsulate both things that I live for. It’s just the right place for me to be, especially now.
This is an important lesson for people getting started in their careers: to be open to feeding your passion and not just locking yourself into a set career path because that’s the path that is most common or most understood. I feel like my generation should be open to more unusual paths and not just lock themselves in one career mode. They should be receptive to all these other things that are connecting with the ad industry.
There are so many roles to be played in branding. There are so many opportunities. I’m even reluctant to use the word “career” anymore. I feel like people my age especially are going to have several careers throughout their lives and maybe two or three careers at the same time. The choices should be more about going where you feel like you can be most useful and most talented and a place where you can grow and really give the world as much as you can rather than just pigeonholing yourself into something that the industry has said is the right path and being stuck in there forever. I think it’s good to explore.
Tuten: Would you say that branded entertainment is more advertising or more about film?
Zhao: If I had to give a percentage, it’s probably like a seventy percent to thirty percent ratio, advertising versus film. The thing is branded entertainment does begin with the same motives, the same goals, the same ideals as traditional advertising. But the model is about finding a new way to reach an audience. We know as an industry that traditional modes of communication are not as effective as they once were, whether that’s because of the form, or the fragmentation in media, or whatever.
I try to be a good audience. That’s how I inform my work. I try to watch what’s out there. I try to enjoy films, and art, and commercials, and everything as much as anyone else would. Today I would rather watch a really fun, little, short film or a music video on YouTube than sit in front of the television screen and watch a TV spot. When someone passes me a viral video that’s hilarious, or it moves me in some way, or it surprises me, that leaves a much bigger impact in my mind than say a print ad these days.
I’ve grown up around all the other traditional media and to my way of thinking, they have become just background noise for me. I know that my interpretation is the same as others in the market. I represent the audience in many cases and if I recognize advertising as background noise, others are, too. And having branded entertainment seems capable of breaking through those barriers a little more effectively. From the perspective of the brand, you’re able to tell stories in a way that you weren’t able to before.
I’ll give you an extreme example. My film’s sound designer is French and he was nice enough to let me crash with him at the Cannes Film Festival last year. I had a brief chat with one of the Oscar-winning producers of The Cove—this really moving documentary about the murdering of dolphins by fishermen. Save it for a sunny day, it’s pretty depressing.
But anyways, getting back to the point. The producer is an avid scuba diver and he went on to direct a 30-minute documentary called The Deepest Dive about the bathyscaphe Trieste that dove to the deepest known part of the Earth’s oceans in 1960. During this dive, Rolex attached one of their prototype watches to the outside, and it emerged and survived. It was that durable. So naturally to make this film, it was supported by Rolex and produced by JWT [J. Walter Thompson], who does a lot of work with them and has their own production house, JW2. Even though the film is about this historic event—and I think it wound up broadcasting on National Geographic—I found that the little tibit about the watch that survived in Rolex’s overall involvement of this film left a much more natural and interesting impression with me than if I saw some glossy cheesed-out TV spot during the commercial break.
Tuten: How do you go about writing a viral video or a short film that’s branded? Is there a creative brief just as there would be for a more traditional advertising project?
Zhao: That’s a good question. Yes, there is a brief. It’s just executed differently. I often start concepting for my projects in the same ways that I would concept for a print ad, or a TV spot, or any communication intended for traditional media. I begin that way and I get that out of my system by writing all those ideas down. After, I realize that the viral world is a different medium. Many times viral videos, to be specific, need to have something that will make the audience pass it around. They need something that’s super punchy. That something special needs to be a specific little quirk, to be of the brand rather than something encapsulating the whole campaign. It’s often a little joke, or a little whistle, or something like that that really grabs your attention.
So oftentimes, I begin as I would traditionally, but when I get all those little ideas out of my system from writing a traditional ad campaign, I will grab my partner, my art director partner, and we will just turn off our art director/copywriter roles and grab a camera and go out and start shooting things. You know, we will start doodling or we will start improvising and telling jokes, until we find that thing that makes us laugh. And that’s how we do it. With viral films, it’s important to find something quirky.
Tuten: How can you know what will be quirky enough to go viral? How do you know when you’ve hit upon that special something that triggers the spread of a piece of entertainment?
Zhao: I don’t think anyone really ever knows. You just have your instincts. Basically I think the idea of a viral video, or the appeal of it is they are naturally unintentional or voyeuristic—the videos of cats jumping in boxes or a friend catching on fire, those get a million hits and stuff. So when you’re trying to achieve that spontaneity on purpose you have to be in a certain state of mind.
You have to surprise yourself. There’s this quote from Robert Frost. He said, “No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” You have to surprise yourself first and then that will surprise the audience. That’s more important than ever with branded entertainment and viral films because for the video to be effective, it needs to be something that really resonates with people. Whether it’s shocking or funny, it has to be so spontaneous and so out of the blue that it grabs your attention.
Tuten: Do you have a favorite campaign? Something meaningful to you?
Zhao: Off the top of my head, those Old Spice virals Tim [Heidecker] and Eric [Wareheim] directed were just phenomenal to me. Their sense of humor is just so visceral and really I think it redefines what comedy can be today. It’s the kind of stuff I’d laugh at and joke around about with my friends since I was a kid—this kind of absurdist sensibility. I think they’re totally artists in themselves, and in a way, “anti-commercial.” So, like, to see a mainstream brand like Old Spice and an agency like Wieden be open to something that wild gave me more hope for working on ad gigs. That I can be myself. Like Tim and Eric!
As far as something I worked on goes, we did a series of virals for Google called demoslams. As we all know, Google has tons of different technologies and new ones coming out. From what exists already from Gmail to “Gchat” to the way the search engine works, basically Google wanted to create a unique viral for each service. So, for example, for Google Translate we came up with a viral that documents these three kids who are obsessed with kung fu films. Of course, they’re American kids and they don’t speak Chinese. They use GoogleTranslate to redub what they film into Chinese. For each technology, we basically made these fun demonstrations. The reason why I enjoyed working on these is because everything moved so fast. Literally, we were pitching our ideas one day and the next week we had it approved and we were shooting like ten videos in a two-week period. That’s fantastic for me as a filmmaker because I didn’t feel like anything was stalled. I felt like everything was very spontaneous, and that’s the vibe and the energy that I like to work in. Especially in making viral videos, you need to be very spontaneous. Everything needs to feel slightly scrappy and that’s how you get all those surprising ideas. Even during our shoot, we were improvising with the actors.
During that two-week period, I was able to go from writing to pitching and then the next week we were looking for the cast already and we
were building sets and we were shooting. We were coming up with more new ideas on the set. That’s great practice for me. Amazing. A wonderful opportunity to have.
Tuten: The fast pace is important to you. The ability to plan and execute quickly.
Zhao: I think so. I always knew filmmaking—here I’m talking about traditional, narrative filmmaking for cinema—can be a long process. You hear about these great films that come out, like The Tree of Life or Blue Valentine that take a decade to just develop. So working in advertising, I think I could be synergistic. It balances out the time component of filmmaking for me. I needed something that would balance out the time commitment to film and also provide a creative outlet for me in between projects. But, then again, you’d think that advertising is always fast, but there are so many pitches that take a long time. Where I work, we are set up to be a one-stop shop for branded entertainment. We are the ad agency and production agency all under one house.
But even with that, you still find situations where the process seems extended. One thing we like to do where I work is take on more personal projects, to keep ourselves sharp. I produced and edited a music video for a musician friend of ours, who’s on his way to release his album and other great things. Because the budget was so low, we did it very quickly and it turned out wonderfully. But because the musician’s manager had a specific way that they wanted to plan the record release and video, timeline and all that, it’s been months and we’re just releasing it this spring. We shot it last summer. Sometimes you can work very fast but there’s other things you can’t control.
I also find it enjoyable and fulfilling to work with a small team. I started out in agencies where there would be 400 people running around. Communication is key. With a small team, communicating on creative tasks is much easier. I can come up with ideas much more efficiently and faster.
Tuten: Your plan is to stay with a small agency then.
Zhao: Yeah. I prefer a nimble work environment. I guess I went from one opposite to the other, going from a large agency to what now is probably the smallest work environment one could have. Between those two polar opposites I would definitely choose a small team because I like working with people that I feel are family. It’s not that I don’t like bigger agencies or more people. It’s more that I like working with people I have a history with, and at bigger agencies, you’re put on a project with a group of people, and once that’s done, you might be switching to a completely new set of people. That can be great, but I like making those really long, personal connections with people. I like to know my partners. I like to know what goes on in my partner’s private life.
Less people also means fewer walls to hop over to get my ideas launched. Though it does, in part, depend on the scale of the campaign. Obviously, if I was working on a huge Nike campaign, I would rather work in a big agency where I have all the support and I’m working on a piece of a bigger whole. But when you’re working on one documentary project, or one music video, or one viral video, I think it’s good to keep it focused like that and not have too many cooks in the kitchen.
I’m really not opposed to working at a traditional agency again. I just prefer working with a group of people that I know really well. The day goes by in a much more productive fashion.
Tuten: Do you have advice for people who are getting their start in advertising now?
Zhao: Thinking back, to get a gig in advertising out of school I wanted to do work to impress people. To do things the “right way,” whatever that meant. I guess I wanted to get hired! [Laughter.] Now I think my 20s are more about figuring out what kind of work I can create that others might lack the sensibilities to, and why I’m doing the things I do, as opposed to just how to get it done. All that’s a lifelong journey but, I think I do feel I’m beginning to have a deeper sense of what kind of stories I’m good at telling and what kind of projects I’d be better concepting for.
Everyone is unique, but it’s hard to stay that way when you have pressures to conform to an industry or when any kind of group thinking is involved. Even in a huge agency it’s important to not fall into a role where you become an advertising machine. Once you begin to develop your aesthetic and what kinds of ideas you feel like you have a talent in coming up for, you can gravitate towards those more and in turn create better work. Because as a creative you’re like a tastemaker, or a filter for all the ideas floating around in the air.
Yeah, I think being nimble, and I think being spontaneous and a little bit scrappy maybe helps create great things. And that also comes from my experience as a filmmaker. I think it’s good not to be too precious about things. I know people are going to kill me for saying that because you’re always supposed to review your work and things like that, but I think there’s a point where, you know, there are twelve different opinions. The audience is going to look at something very differently [than you].
When you start out, you want to just work. You want to impress others. And in a way it’s good to learn the rules first before you try to bend them. But I wish more people had told me that eventually, the stuff that you make to impress yourself will probably impress others as well, so I’d be a little more of a risk taker from the get go.
These days, I try to come up with ideas and then make sure that I’m happy with them, first of all, and that my partner’s happy with them, before I just let it out and unleash it into the world. For instance, I try to go out there and I purposely listen to music, and see art and things and films that are outside of my personal taste. Those kinds of activities keep me in balance and keep me in check on what’s out there, how others may view concepts. The more I work, the more I feel it’s important to gravitate towards being a differentiated creative. A creative who is focused on certain things or good at writing certain kinds of concepts. Not to pigeonhole myself, but to be good at something specific so when there’s a project that comes around, I will know whether I can match well with it instead of just saying, “Oh, I’m just a creative. I do well at everything.”
Tuten: You’re saying young creatives should be true to their own sense of identity in developing their work.
Zhao: Yeah, you know, you come out of school and then you are trying to get the first job. That’s an important step because it’s those early experiences that will help you learn what you like and don’t like. But sometimes people will feel that you shouldn’t question things because you haven’t had any experience yet. We have to remember even when we are new to an experience that we have a voice. We have a mind. And the sooner you can identify your gift, that certain thing that belongs to you, then you’ll begin to find those projects, and find them earlier in your career.
The advertising world can be subject to slow response times and the tediousness can be frustrating for young creatives. I am a young creative and it might be a little immature of me to say this. Probably a lot of young creatives feel this way. We just want to jump in and get a lot of work done and get it produced. Still, I know there are a lot of reasons why it takes time to approve things.
There was this one campaign or TV spot that I was working on, writing. I think it took like a year or something, or a year and a half before I ever saw it. It was just so much back and forth. I just know there’s got to be a better way of communicating ideas or a better system of approval. Sometimes, I feel like filmmaking is great for me, especially in the way that I make films, where I’m working with a tiny crew. It’s very refreshing because I’m just with a group of actors and a sound guy. It’s very tiny and we’re getting a lot of work done, as opposed to if I’m working on an advertising campaign. I’m dealing with clients that could be a huge team of people as well as other agencies that we might be working with at the time. It’s just a lot of things that might stall the energy and the creativity.
In making viral films, I think it’s important to have spontaneous energy and mindset every time I walk into my office. And if there’s something stalling it that leads me astray a little bit. So I wish there were a way to like speed up the process.
Tuten: Do you have something you think you really wish you had known before? Questions of your own?
Zhao: The questions I still have are mainly about the business itself, in both advertising and film, just where it’s going and how to reach audiences. Personally, I think there’s too much content out there. There is too much clutter. Often, I watch virals posted on an advertising blog or somewhere else online, but I often question whether all the money that is poured into it and all the effort to produce the work that the agency did with the client—I wonder sometimes if it even resonates with people. Does it matter? Did it make a difference? How can a message really get across to people when there’s just so much stuff out there? That’s my biggest question, how do I as a creative not only come up with new ideas, but figure out ways of reaching an audience in a better way? How can I speak to my audience without simply putting more stuff into this ocean of clutter? I think that’s the most critical question for me as a filmmaker and as a person in advertising.
When you create something, you create these works not just for yourself, but also because you want people to experience something. You don’t want the audience to go numb because the whole landscape is so cluttered. I really think it’s so easy to go through, say, 20 years of work and have only two or three campaigns or one film that actually resonates with its audiences's memories. So it’s like, how do we focus that?
It doesn’t need to necessarily be everyone. Obviously, films are just as targeted as ad campaigns, but, you know, when you create you want the work to reach and influence an audience and not get lost.
Tuten: Things change so fast in this industry. How do you stay current with new technology and the latest advances?
Zhao: I meet documentary filmmakers who work on their films often for a much longer time than a lot of independent feature filmmakers because of the amount of research required for a documentary. Especially if you’re doing a piece on someone’s life, it takes time to film and document life changes. The good documentary filmmakers are always so on point about using the latest technology and writing business plans to market their film. By the time they finish their film, whatever technology they used is going to be old technology because it’s from five or four years ago, and the same with the business plan that they used. It is constantly changing. The same is true with advertising. The years between the nineties and the 2000s represented crazy, crazy change. It just makes you wonder: if that’s just one decade of change, then what’s going to happen in the next decade, you know?
I remember one of the partners at Wieden, John Jay, whom I admire a lot, was giving a talk about creativity to these visiting Japanese students. In it, one of the questions he asked was, “Why do truly creative people dislike change?” As he was talking about that, it hit me personally. I feel like filmmaking has, more or less, the same hierarchy of studio and crew structures for most of the time it's been around. But if you look at the ad industry, it’s so much more accommodating to changing things up. Messing with the structures, you know? So, I start to wonder a lot about how the film industry could follow that kind of flexibility. Even working in a specific and, I suppose, new area of advertising—we still wind up doing things in a certain way, and we get comfortable doing things a certain way, but that could shift anytime. It’s pretty exciting I think.
Tuten: Some people in the industry might say that there needs to be a process of multiple levels of approval and refinement from other creatives. You’ve talked a lot about getting work out, speed, creating quickly. You focus on agility. In this project, there are people who are on one side of this continuum and then others on the opposite side.
Zhao: Yeah. I once read about a social experiment done with a school. I forget which school ran the experiment. The school took an art class and split the class in half. There were maybe twenty people in the class. The first half, their job was to come up with pottery. They made one piece every week. That was their goal—to produce every single week. The other half spent their entire year making one perfect piece of pottery. They all sent their work anonymously into a competition. The surprising thing was that no one in the half that spent the year perfecting one amazing piece of pottery was selected in the competition. But the people who made things every week, several were actually selected in the competition. Their work turned out to be more beautiful and more human. Why? They released it at a time where it was still full of life, before they killed it—before they killed their own ideas through tons of editing.
And, again, I know it’s very hard for me to say this in the advertising world because when you create advertising, you are creating something that a brand relies on. You are creating work that, when people see it, will affect their impressions of the company. It’s not just like me as a filmmaker, I’m telling a story. You are reaching a broader spectrum, and it’s hard to not want to gravitate towards that. But to hone real creativity, it’s good to just pound out ideas instead of spending the whole day writing the perfect TV spot and spending a whole week like sitting around writing this one idea and trying to cut it down and rebuild it. In the end, it’s not that it doesn’t matter, but I think you’re taking the life out of a lot of things by doing that.
Tuten: What’s next for you, John?
Zhao: I just hope I can keep making feature films. In between those, I want to put my creativity in anything else that magnifies my storytelling skills—and lately it’s been advertising and music videos. I just enjoy making things and also figuring out, as I said earlier, the infrastructure. Or being part of the dialogue of figuring out better ways to meet audiences. And being more effective and not wasting things and cluttering things.
I’m very minimalistic. If you walked into my room, [you’d see] I have a very small book collection, a very small DVD collection, my computer, and some clothes. I like it when things can be seen in a tangible way, and I feel like the landscape is the opposite of that in some ways. If I can make films and help the industry, both in advertising and film, find the audiences better and maybe build new structures, then I’m a pretty happy guy.
And I guess one last thing: in the end, if I learn enough from working in this throughout my life, I would like to build a film school some time later on in my life. If things click. That’s a faraway dream of mine, but I would love to set up some one-year film camp, where I can offer an experience for kids that’s very inspirational, and I can teach kids how to make films.