The Creative Casualties
Just like a line producer who finds purpose in the chaos, or an architecture graduate who questions her degree while choosing between shades of red for a banner, a filmmaker can also be an assistant director who decides he's had enough
A production house called me in to provide a voiceover for a commercial. I arrived at the studio early, before the client and the director, and was kept company by an assistant director. A final year student at his university, he wanted to become a filmmaker.
We talked about my journey as an independent filmmaker who didn’t take the advertising route. A few days later, he texted me to say he quit his job at the production house.
Hollywood of Dhaka
Niketan is sometimes called the Hollywood of Dhaka. Home to several agencies, studios, and production houses, it is a world of its own.
At every tea shop, you hear film crew members talking shop like where to find light stands at this hour, an overbearing director, the tardiness of an uncooperative model, feedback from a client who can't seem to make up their mind.
Soon something more somber becomes apparent: Filmmakers aren't making films. They are building a case for why they deserve a place in the waiting room to make films.
Trapped in the advertising industry, creatives are at the mercy of client guidelines. Writers become copywriters. Artists become graphic designers. Directors are stuck emulating the work of others.
The trajectory gets sold early. Join a production house as an assistant director or production assistant, work your way up over the years, and one day you might get to direct a commercial.
After enough commercials, maybe, just maybe, you’ll get to make a film of your own.
Having made three short films in the last three years, I sometimes get asked by experienced, well-respected filmmakers how they can make their own work.
The advice I give is always a version of the same thing: the kind of work you put out is the kind of work you get hired to keep doing. It's hard to make fashion films if all you make are car commercials.
The dream of making films only becomes a reality when your own permission is the only one you need to begin.
Instead, a filmmaker's own ambitions take the backseat.
The “someday” of creating work that's truly your own gets pushed further as job security and client networking make you question the risk of possibility against the stability of remaining stagnant.
As a freelancer who has worked with numerous clients and agencies, I've found the advertising industry follows a consistent hierarchy. A marketing agency pitches to a client. The client approves. The agency then hires a production house to execute.
For the same role on the same project, your pay depends entirely on who hired you. Get hired by the client directly and you make the most. Get hired by the agency and you make less. Get hired by the production house and you make the least.
The system ensures that the most creative people are consistently the ones with the least power. Even when the work comes in, the creative control rarely does.
Filmmakers have little to no say over the client-approved scripts handed down through agencies. Briefs arrive filled with references to the styles of other directors, other campaigns, other films. The job is not to express something.
It is to execute someone else's vision of someone else's vision.
In an age of artificial intelligence, the creative who emulates existing work rather than expressing something individual is doing precisely what AI does. In a way, the advertising industry is training creatives to be replaceable.
But that’s not the whole story.
The most challenging parts of working within guidelines and deadlines can push artists to operate at their most creative. Production houses are a great place to build technical craft, professional networks, and the discipline of executing under pressure.
Having worked with several production houses, I’ve encountered people who genuinely love what they do.
Like soldiers in the trenches, the tight deadlines and behind-the-scenes chaos bring the crew members closer together like a dysfunctional yet capable family.
Cinema is an empathy machine that enables us to visit worlds and experience circumstances we would otherwise never encounter.
Moving images are a way of collectively dreaming that has persisted from magic shows in the 19th century to a 10-second unskippable ad shot in vertical and optimized for traction.
Who are we to define what is and isn't art?
The Mona Lisa was commissioned. Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling for a client. There are commercials that are very emotional and the storytelling is more unique than many movies you find on streaming services.
When freedom of speech is under attack, comedians craft their sharpest jokes. It is through limitations that creatives are forced to become their most creative.
Just like a line producer who finds purpose in the chaos, or an architecture graduate who questions her degree while choosing between shades of red for a banner, a filmmaker can also be an assistant director who decides he's had enough.
Akhlaq Siddiqi is an Independent Filmmaker, Comedian, and Economics Graduate based in Dhaka.
