Olivia De Camps: The future belongs to fingerprints

What was your career journey? 

I didn’t grow up thinking, “I want to direct commercials and music videos”, but I knew I wanted to make images that moved people. I understood very early on that images could do something strange to people. 

I understood very early on that images could do something strange to people. 

In middle school, I made a short documentary that played before films at a movie theatre. I remember sitting there in the dark, watching strangers react to it, some of them crying, and feeling completely shocked. I had made this little thing in my head, and people I had never met were feeling it in their bodies. That really stayed with me. After that I went to NYU Tisch [School of the Arts]. In a way, I’ve just been chasing that feeling ever since. 

I’ve come to love short-form because it’s so unforgiving. You have 30 seconds before someone checks a text or dissociates completely. You have to build a world quickly. That pressure is horrifying. I love it. 

Who are the people who have championed you? 

My family. They gave me permission before I even knew I needed it. My collaborators. The DPs, producers, editors, colourists, sound designers, production designers. All the people who keep showing up with me, even when the budget is impossible or the schedule is deranged. So much of the work is shaped by the people who believe in your vision over time. People who understand what you’re trying to make before it fully exists. Championing someone can be everything. 

Above: De Camps spot for The Ordinary, which won the Health & Wellness Lions Grand Prix at this year's Cannes Lions, and a Gold Screen at the 2026 Young Director Award. 

Did you always want to direct? 

Yes. I always knew, which is both lucky and slightly annoying. There was never a practical back-up plan. But if I wasn’t directing, I’d probably be a journalist. I’m interested in people, behaviour and tone; what someone says versus what they actually mean. Directing and journalism both come from observation. You’re trying to notice the thing beneath the thing. 

What piece of work are you most proud of? 

Periodic Fable for The Ordinary, and Lullaby for Proton Mail, because they trust the audience. I like work that doesn’t over-explain itself or chase people down the street screaming its meaning. I’m always interested in work where you watch it and think, “how did they get this approved?”. That’s usually a good sign. 

I’m interested in people, behaviour and tone; what someone says versus what they actually mean. Directing and journalism both come from observation. 

The best work leaves a residue. I like things that stay with people, not necessarily because they understood every part immediately, but because something about it lingered. A feeling, an image, a tone. That’s what I’m always chasing. 

Above: Lullaby for Proton Mail.

What have you learned during your career that you wish you’d known at the start? 

The industry will sometimes make you question your instincts when your instincts were the reason you were hired in the first place. I wish I had understood earlier how important it is to protect the small, strange, specific voice in your head. That’s the whole job. Weirdly, the process often tries to remove that part because it makes people nervous. 

I’ve also learned that rejection is not an interruption to the career. It is the career. You spend weeks pitching ideas, building treatments, obsessing over references, imagining entire worlds. A huge percentage of the time, the job simply evaporates. Or the idea gets flattened. Or the strange living part quietly disappears on a conference call. 

I wish I had understood earlier how important it is to protect the small, strange, specific voice in your head. 

You have to learn how to keep making ideas without becoming numb. That’s hard because ideas, even commercial ones, are personal, and come from somewhere. When it works, it’s the best feeling in the world. Selling an idea, protecting it, shooting it, and then watching it affect people, whether it’s 30 seconds or two hours. That’s the drug.  

What kind of work continues to impress you? 

Work that feels like it shouldn’t have been approved. Not because it’s shocking for the sake of it but because it has a real point of view. You can feel that someone fought for it. The best work doesn’t just communicate, it contaminates your memory and leaves a stain. It makes you laugh at the wrong time, or feel sad without totally understanding why. What impresses me is work that doesn’t disappear the second it’s over. 

Above: De Camps' promo for Rebecca Black, Trust.

What were three moments in your career where everything changed? 

The first was making the Rebecca Black Trust music video. That project opened a lot of doors. People could see the worlds I wanted to build: heightened, emotional, a little strange and self-aware. The second was starting to work with SMUGGLER. They gave me room to be odd and to not flatten the idea, which is one of the rarest things a director can be given.  

The job is always to make people stop, look and briefly forget they’re a person with emails to answer. 

The third was realising film, advertising and music videos are not separate planets. They are different containers for the same thing: feeling. The job is always to make people stop, look and briefly forget they’re a person with emails to answer. 

Tell us about your feature film and your hopes for it. 

It’s loosely based on the Ciguapa folklore of the Dominican Republic. I’m still becoming the person who can direct it properly. Every commercial, every music video, every pitch, every life experience, every impossible production feels like training. I’m building the skills, technically and emotionally, to do it right. I don’t want to rush something permanent into the world before I know what it wants to say. 

What new skills will directors and producers need in the years to come? 

Taste. Nerve. Endurance. The psychological ability to survive constant rejection without becoming creatively numb. People consume images differently now. Audiences are faster, sharper, harder to surprise. Being awake to the world. Understanding how people watch things now, what they’re tired of, what still surprises them, what still feels human.  

Protecting authorship is going to become more difficult and more important at the exact same time. Directors and producers are going to have to move quickly without becoming disposable. They’ll have to protect authorship in systems that increasingly reward sameness, speed and repetition. 

Above: Director, Olivia De Camps.

What are your thoughts on where advertising and filmmaking are headed? 

Short form is maybe the most powerful form of filmmaking now. Most people will not give you two hours. They will give you 30, maybe 60 seconds. If someone gives you half a minute of their attention, you have a responsibility to do something with it. Wake them up. Move them. Seduce them. Make them laugh. Make them uncomfortable. Make an image that stays with them.  

If someone gives you half a minute of their attention, you have a responsibility to do something with it. Wake them up. Move them. Seduce them.

Audiences are smart and they can smell fear. They know when something has been over-tested, over-softened, over-explained. They know when an idea has been sanded down by too many nervous people. They feel when something has been over-tested into nothing. 

The future belongs to work with fingerprints on it. Work where you can feel a real person behind the camera making actual choices instead of trying to satisfy everyone. Work that feels like someone had a point of view and survived the room long enough to protect it. The work that cuts through is the work with a pulse. Work that provokes something. Laughter, discomfort, desire, recognition, shock, emotion. Anything real.  

Olivia was nominated as an Innovator by our Icon, Anselmo Ramos, whose interview you can read here.