Germany: Daniel Warwick

It would be fair to say that director Daniel Warwick doesn’t take himself too seriously. He missed the “nuts worlds” of promos when he moved into ads but his modesty and constant chuckling belie the serious talent of the man who invented beauty/comedy.

Daniel Warwick lets out the first of what will be countless belly laughs in the next hour. “I’m hated everywhere in the world!” he exclaims in reference to his mixed upbringing. Born in Yorkshire, England, he moved to Minnesota aged three, then to Germany two years later where he’s lived ever since.

Now he’s visiting London, taking meetings with the big production companies that are fighting for his signature following the success of his double-gold Lion-winning TVC, Off-Road for the Smart Fortwo car, through BBDO Düsseldorf. Short on time, we’ve dived into the dingy basement of a grotty café where the air is hotter than the deep-fat fryer and thick with a retch-inducing smell. Luckily Warwick isn’t a diva. In fact, he’s as affable and modest as they come. “My CV’s kind of boring. It’s not like I’m the secret son of Stanley Kubrick… Which you could actually write down though,” he says, chuckling again. From now on just assume he’s laughing at all times.

Reeling in the BigFish

Originally aspiring to be a pilot, a shoulder injury kept him from completing the required exams. Instead he ended up interning at a local TV channel in Hamburg where he rekindled his love for music videos that had started years before when his friends filled four-hour VHS tapes with MTV content for him to watch on repeat. Moving to Berlin in 1999 he got in as an intern at production house 3000 Films. “From there I became a production assistant and then line producer very quickly, the way you do in music videos. They’re just like, ‘Oh right, who’s got time? You produce that.’”

He was keen to direct, but 3000 Films saw his flair for production and kept him on that path for a few years until his flatmate, a DP, was left without a director following the split of a partnership. Warwick began writing treatments and shot his first promo on a €1,000 budget for German rock band Bosse’s first single, Kraft, in 2003. His third effort, for hip-hop group, Fettes Brot, caught the attention of production company BigFish, who signed Warwick and encouraged him to shoot ads.

At first, he admits, he “didn’t know what the hell was going on,” and missed the “nuts worlds” he could create in music videos, but then had an epiphany. “I nerded myself so much into the commercial world that I now enjoy doing almost the same thing. I’ve got a reputation for doing all the really crazy stuff and have a bit more slack to shoot the kind of style I like. I try and analyse the jobs a lot as well, to see whether I’ll be able to fit my style in.”

How would Warwick describe his style?

“There’s a genre that I think I invented myself called beauty/comedy. It’s just shooting really wacky ideas. Stupid, funny stuff, but I’m a full-on camera, lights and aesthetics nerd too. There’s a very distinctive colour code and lighting concept in my films. Johan Renck is someone I admire a lot because he does the same kind of thing, well not the same – he does it a lot better than I do.”

Having worked hard to establish his style, Warwick is now in a position to be able to turn down jobs that don’t suit his skills – such as the countless scripts for documentary-style vignettes he’s received in the last 12 months – but it wasn’t always that way. “I had a phase in 2009 where I couldn’t pay the rent. I went into the BigFish office and said, ‘I’m quitting. I’m out’. I wanted to open a sandwich shop in San Sebastián.”

Unconsciousness, the easy way

Thankfully the right job, a series of five web films for German bank Sparkasse, came at the right time and gave him some crucial exposure. A spot for energy company Yello followed, which showed an army of beautiful, rain-soaked women blow-drying their hair in an average Joe’s home.

“As soon as that happened people wanted to shoot stuff with me because that was the first time that I had a feeling for myself as well. That was the first time that I really got my handwriting into something, where we [created] this beauty/comedy kind of thing. It’s kind of that Axe world.”

Another energy client, E for Easy, followed with a series of films demonstrating easy ways to do things. One of the films, which at first looks like a cosmetics ad – all fluid and sexy – shows a woman waking her partner to tell him she can’t sleep. But then the partner headbutts her into unconsciousness, proving how ‘easy’ it can be to sleep. It’s close to the bone to say the least.

“That was the only PPM between an agency, clients and production where there were fourteen people around the table and all were women except me. I kept saying to them, ‘We can’t do this headbutting thing. Maybe she should headbutt him because politically it’s going to be a tricky one.’ They were like, ‘No, it’s really funny’.”

The ad ran and was banned. “Even now I’m not quite sure whether it took it a step too far,” muses the director. 

Iffy about his Off-Road winner

Other sparkling spots on his reel include jobs for Nivea and Mercedes, but this year’s Off-Road TV spot for Smart Fortwo has brought Warwick the most plaudits.

Shot like a 4x4 ad, it shows the little car miserably failing to tackle various off-road obstacles before finally ‘dying’ in a ditch. Then we see an SUV pull up to a tight parking space in a city and drive off, as the driver realises his car won’t fit, before the Smart pulls in with ease. The end line is ‘as good off-road as an off-roader in the city’. It’s a classic idea and the execution is flawless, although Warwick wasn’t so sure.

“I saw the result of it in the edit and it’s one of those things – I loved the script so much – I thought, ‘Is this actually good enough?’. I regularly have moments of not liking my work at all but that was one where I wondered, ‘Maybe I really fucked it up’. Then we started getting reactions to it and everyone just loved it to bits, so I must have been wrong.” The film’s performance at Cannes alone suggests he definitely was wrong and the spot is likely to continue to collect hardware at awards shows into 2014.

Earlier this year Warwick made a brief return to promos when he shot one for DJ Koze and Apparat, but although he wouldn’t rule out doing more in the future, that’s not where he realistically sees himself heading.

“There’s always the right time for the right job, I think. It feels like from 20s to 30s it’s music video time. From 30s to 40s it’s commercials time and from 40s to 50s it’s feature film time. There’s something that’s just, sort of, a weird rule that’s in my head.”

Aged 36 now, Warwick is no stranger to features as his girlfriend, Fredericka Jehn, whom he has a three-year-old son with in Berlin, has just directed her second one. “She’s very art house-y, much more intellectual and I’m a lot more visual and a bit more of a redneck. But we kind of, in our opposite ways, nourish each other.”

We finish our drinks and Warwick’s off to meet Hungry Man, whom he’ll soon join for worldwide representation outside Germany. Unsurprisingly it’ll be a conversation with another visual comedy guru, Bryan Buckley, that will make his mind up about who to sign with. He sniffs the greasy air in the café, then his own shirt. “I hope the smell in here doesn’t attach itself to me, they’ll think I stink!” Warwick roars, as he lets out another long, joyous, belly laugh.