For 30 years, he searched for humor in advertising and rendered it in commercials that became urban folklore. Now, when jokes don’t really find a place in advertising anymore, Bogdan Naumovici follows in the footsteps of comedy in film. “Tăndări” is his debut feature film and is inspired by Romania, the country where life always beats the film. A comedy with local politicians who bet their budget on a football match, with the priest who becomes the free will, with policemen, donkeys, people and icons. “Tăndări” is produced by Hi-Fi Production and can be seen from January 28, in all cinemas in the country.
Bogdan has over 100 creative awards and has directed over 300 commercials. In 2019 he made “Zimnicea”, shis debut short film, selected and nominated at several international film festivals.
“The advertiser is lucky to gather all these studies and see his audience 360 degrees, because the same person also drinks beer or juice, buys a car, TV, house through a bank loan, goes on vacation, and also votes That’s why I hope that the characters in “Tăndări” will be as natural as possible”, says Bogdan.
We continue to talk with Bogdan Naumovici about Romania, humor, advertising and what the experience of his first feature film was like, from the idea and script, to casting, filming and working with the actors.
The idea
I started thinking about making a film out of frustration, I could see that there was no more room for humor in advertising, that no one took it upon themselves to make a joke in commercials, for fear of being held accountable. It is obvious that the public has not changed, they are still looking for humor and entertainment, you see this in everything that goes viral, in the audiences that good series on TV or Romanian comedies in the cinema have, so the problem is not there, but with the decision-makers. And then I decided to only have the public as a client for my next project. It doesn’t mean that I don’t advertise anymore, but I only advertise that I like, not just the focus group moderator.
The next step was to write a script, which took me a few days, and then there were about three years of raising money, which is not at all as simple as it might seem from the outside.
First draft
I once read a news story about a village where on Saturdays the intercommunal football matches were interrupted when a funeral procession passed by, because the only way to get to the cemetery was across the football field. The image stayed in my mind and when I started writing my first comedy feature I started from here. I write quickly, I think that in about 4-5 days I wrote the script, which underwent small changes in its subsequent versions, determined by the locations found, the scenography, the availability of some actors for different roles, but nothing major. Broadly speaking, what I wrote “from one”, that’s what we see on the screen.
Budgetary constraints forced us to prepare the film very well, so we knew exactly what we wanted to shoot, and working with some exceptional actors helped us achieve exactly what we were after in a few takes. As a detail, maybe relevant, I only had to cut 7 minutes from the first edit to the final one.
Sources of inspiration in character design
Advertising, if you like it, gives you the opportunity to study many people, from different “socio-demographics”, either through direct contact but also through customer studies, because everyone looks at their audience from the perspective of their own category. The advertiser is lucky to gather all these studies and see his audience 360 degrees, because the same person also drinks beer or juice, buys a car, TV, house through bank credit, goes on vacation, and even votes! That’s why I hope that the characters in “Tăndări” will be as natural as possible. I believe a lot in comedy with people, not with caricatures, as it seems to be the fashion now, in the natural and believable game, that’s why I wanted to make my first film with actors and not with influencers, another fashion of the moment.
tryouts
In almost 30 years of advertising I have worked with countless actors, I also had the project Improvshow together with Mihai Bobonete, I was also involved in television shows, so I kind of knew what I was looking for. Plus, my favorite style of advertising is in film, so I had some service suspects in mind when I started writing the script.
Then, because I postponed the filming date about three times, because there was a pandemic, because a war started across the fence, because we didn’t have enough money, when we finally started work, several actors were no longer available. I cried for help, and Laura Georgescu Baron, the film’s producer, and Domnica Cârciumaru, the casting director, who saved me and completed the list of wonderful actors you will see in the film, answered immediately. Among them, many well-known names from theater, films or successful series: Carmen Tănase, Tache Florescu, Alin Florea, Nicodim Ungureanu, Cristi Bota, Sergiu Costache, Gabriel Spahiu, Alex Conovaru or Andreea Samson, but also Dan Badea, who although better known from stand-up, graduated from Dem Rădulescu’s class, Cătălin Neamțu, one of the “fathers” of improvisation from us or the magician Robert Tudor, the man with only one semester of acting, but an exceptional spontaneous comic combustion.
Feature film debut
As my good friend Dan Chișu used to tell me: “There are people who do and people who comment. You always did.” When I learned to swim, around 6 years old, the instructor at Strandul Tineretului didn’t know what method, he would throw us into the 3 m pool and shout “Swim!”. Same with this movie. I said I was doing it, and then it was just a matter of how and when.
Laura has known me for over 25 years, we worked together at Leo Burnett and she got into it from the first, just as she got into “Zimnicea”, the short film I made 5 years ago. The hardest part was getting the funding together. The team was almost all known, most of them I worked with on commercials, the actors were impeccable, and the surprises were rather pleasant and depended on our proverbial luck when it comes to filming.
The first village where we did location scouting had the football pitch next to the cemetery, the pop boy, met by chance on the street turned out to be the best stunt coordinator and captain of one of the football teams in the film, and the storm on the penultimate day of shooting , which left me with the unfinished film, stopped for the two hours I still needed.
Due to the financial constraints I was talking about above, I only shot 9 days, which is probably some kind of record for a feature film, but I shot about 1100 takes, in 12 locations in 4 towns, with about 16 actors plus about 200 of extras, with two cameras, drone, steadicam, night or day filming.
And the last news, still pleasant, was that Damian Drăghici agreed to make the music for “Tăndări”. Thank you, master!
Somehow, my big surprise was that so many good people agreed to come on a debut project. I hope I don’t disappoint them.
Collaboration with actors
This is where I think I do best as an amateur director. I think I have a sense of the natural, or perhaps on the contrary, of the unnatural, which makes me very sensitive to thick acting, caricature, exaggeration, shouting or unwarranted vulgarity. And in this approach to the natural, I very quickly met halfway with all the actors. I determined from the beginning that absolutely all of them will have their minutes in the foreground on the screen, so the micro-expressions and film acting, not theater, are enough, that I want from them to “play people”, which can be seen from less and less in Romanian comedies, that I want them to speak naturally, but clearly, not in their beards, and I hope that I have described their characters, the intentions and motivations of each one well enough, so that they will quickly become familiar.
While I was directing commercials, I was also an “agency”, so I had no reason to shoot many doubles to justify my purpose or money, and this method of shooting few doubles and stopping when I feel that “we have it” I kept it on film too. This may also have made my life easier with the actors, who felt that I knew what I wanted and that I wasn’t beating the crap out of them.
PHOTOGRAPHY
The most difficult thing to film was the football match. In fact, I devoted two days out of the nine filming days to it. I decided from the beginning not to try to make it look like a football match “on TV” because it’s not a sports broadcast, but a comedy, and if the viewer entered a comparison with what he sees on Tuesday and Wednesday in the Champions League, I was losing it and I was losing it. I’m not interested in following phases and game schemes, but reactions, accidents, funny details. This led to the filming of the match with two cameras and a steady, all in motion, in detail or in close-ups, and a suitable editing. If we add to all this the storm on the second day of the match, we better understand how relieved we breathed when we said “it’s done, let’s go home, we have him”.
Pleasant, I liked the close-ups that the film is full of. I think it’s the Romanian comedy with the most close-ups and close-ups. And not even a reaction that scratches me, that seems unnatural to me. I’m very curious if the audience will appreciate this, if they will get close to the characters as I intended when I chose to film them this way.
Now, I’m sure there were moments when I laughed heartily, when I saw the 3D icon from the church in Crucea de Piatră, Dan Badea, a policeman raised by the bell rope in the air or how two of the actors were terrorized by the donkey who they were struggling to put a huge funnel on his head for “directional laughter”, but I still liked the close-ups better.
How hard it is to make Romanians laugh
I don’t think it’s hard at all to make Romanians laugh. On the contrary, it seems to me that I laugh too much at things that are not worth it, see some of the brainless antics on TikTok, to give just one example. I think the challenge nowadays is to make them laugh at something smarter than a swear word or a Becali impersonation. I mean, as I see it, you have two options: you go to the level of the masses or you try to, little by little, raise their demands to those of humor. Public taste is like a spring, as long as you make an effort and keep it stretched, everything is ok. When you slack off and let go, it returns to its original, inertial position.
That’s what we did in the early 2000s in advertising. Not only I/we, but also several other colleagues from other agencies, started making more and more clever, funnier, more “premium” ads. And what can you see, the public understood them, appreciated them, rewarded them by buying the respective products, filled the Palatului Hall or the Polivalenta at the Night of Advertising Devourers, magazines, shows or columns appeared in all the press about advertisements. It had become an industry where it was cool to work. I think this is what can happen with the Romanian commercial film. Of course it was simpler in advertising, you had dozens of good ads a year, and in movies maybe 10-12 a year maximum, but it’s not a shame not to try, to reduce everything to the lowest common IQ and “give it to the consumer just what is he asking for”? Oh wait, that’s what advertising does now.
Top 3 comedies from your personal list
Probably the 1st place will forever be awarded by “Top Secret!”. I remember even now when I saw it, it was the only time I instantly rewound the tape and played it again because I was laughing so hard. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when that monument to humor was written. Sure, the year was 1984, with the technical means of that time, but in terms of comic delirium, I consider it unmatched.
More recently, “The Hangover” (the first). Fresh in his time, from the same family as delirium (“Moama, what if these, in their trip, stole a tiger tonight? How, tiger, whose tiger?! I know, Mike Tyson’s!! !”), with an exceptional timing and rhythm of the jokes.
And from us, it’s hard for me to choose between the series “BD”, “Operation Monster”, “Secretul lui Bacchus” and “Tonight we dance in the family”. I know, I’m a boomer, but I dare you to show me, apart from perhaps “Filantropica”, a Romanian comedy after the Revolution that combines with such talent acting with memorable lines, situational comedy with morals, language or even puff, in places.
Source: www.iqads.ro
