Oscar-Winner Asif Kapadia Reveals Filmmaking Tricks He Learned From Making Commercials — Cannes Lions
deadline.comOscar-winning filmmaker Asif Kapadia has revealed that he uses the skillset he previously perfected making commercials to get his feature-length projects across the line.
Kapadia, who made his name in the film world with a trilogy of biography documentaries Senna (2010), the Oscar-winning Amy (2015), and Diego Maradona (2019), was speaking at Cannes Lions, when he explained his commercial mindset: “The work I’ve done in commercials has helped me make the films I make.
Traditionally with a movie or drama, you write a script, spend years developing it, but because of the number of pitches you have to do when you meet people [making commercials], or you have a script and you have to visualize it, cut a really interesting deck or a sizzle reel, all of those tricks I learned while doing the odd commercial, I bring into movies. “Whenever I make a film now, I always cut a really interesting short film, make a really interesting deck, all of that is traditional commercial-pitching, but most film people don’t do it.
It starts with me making a short film, then we raise the money, then I have a deck that is very visual, and that process ends up becoming a film which becomes a trailer which becomes a short moment, that might end up on some social media app.
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