John X Carey
“Going to a small school of only 500 students where the only employer in town was the school, creates dominant thought patterns that are very negative. For me, growing up in this environment was not depressing at all, but really interesting. It was such a different world to how most people grew up. Even the people of the town were nervous of the woods where we lived. When I was five, I became lost in the woods overnight and they had to send out a search party to find me, so I soon became pretty comfortable being in the woods from an early age.”
“My real interest in film started when I was fourteen, when my parents bought an iMac. I then took a summer construction job so that I could earn some money to buy a green screen and some editing equipment, which was only the start of things to come. In my town, everybody knows someone who knows someone. There just happened to be a past student from ten years ago who was working in television as a cameraman. It really all came down to Nicholas Appleton, who managed to get me onset for the local PBS studios in Branson. The studios were four hours drive from my home, but it was worth the travel just to become familiar with all of the broadcast equipment. That single experience really fired up my interest in directing and filmmaking.”
“My next break came through a commercials competition for Firefox. I didn’t win, but they liked my work so much they offered me an internship at the campus next to Google. This was such an amazing experience for me given my coming from Missouri. Firstly, they paid you generously and provided you with an apartment; which was very nice! When I got there, I worked hard and took every opportunity that came my way. Firefox threw the challenge to another intern, Matt, and myself.”
“Firefox wanted something grass roots that would go completely viral without costing a whole lot. So I threw out this idea of a crop-field using the Firefox logo. I am a big fan of the film ’Signs’, so I was really hoping this would get some attention for Firefox. We only had a $5,000 to spend on the idea, so we arranged for the Google Maps team fly over it. Well, that turned out to be the biggest viral campaign Firefox had ever had.”
“After I finished school, I went to college in Missouri to study literature and philosophy. Given that I wanted to be a director, the only reason I was studying literature was because my university didn't have a film program. I always figured that once I finished my general studies I could then transfer to a film school in L.A. I applied to a lot of film schools and then I got a scholarship with the Art Center College of Design, which was hugely fortunate for me. Their work is so slick and so well crafted.”
“I have always admired the work of Joe Wright and felt that the artistic world always had a place in his films. I have always wanted my work to have an artistic beauty that only an art school training could give you. I just loved the idea of cross-pollinating with all of these weird and wonderful art majors and learning from people studying design and photography. I think Elia Kazan said it best, when he wrote, ‘you really have to be a student of everything, even if you can't master anything!’ Again, that goes to being at Art Center where you could be a student of a lot of things. I just loved the idea of going to an art school and having that lyrical touch of beauty to your work."
“The Art Center has this amazing program where they hook you up with a bunch of NGOs to do rebranding and campaign projects for them. All of these clients actually treat the Art Center as their personal design firm. My NGO had a campaign called 'Project Concern'. My pitch to them was to fly to Africa to do a documentary. It turned out to be a brutal experience because of the humanity of the situation."
“After finishing this project, I found that people really responded to it and found it to be very emotional. Until then I was a huge fan of narrative films, but it suddenly seemed to me that this was more where I should be going. It seemed that documentaries were really moving the needle for the audience a lot more than the other stuff I was doing at the time.”
“I figured I could shoot these short documentaries and get a lot of views and different audiences, and hopefully ad agencies and production companies would see that I could do this for them too. Eventually, that philosophy won out for me when I was nominated for the Young Directors Award at Cannes in 2011. In fact, the documentary I did in Africa is what got me signed as a director while I was still finishing at College.”
“Famious Group were looking for a director at this time and they were a really good group of people and we did some really nice campaign work for the likes of Ebay and New Balance.”
“I then chose to join Paranoid because of the artistic style they bring to their projects. It was while I was at Paranoid, that I directed the ‘Beauty Sketches’ commercial for Dove. This turned out to be one of the most amazing commercials we could ever have worked on. At the time we were putting the spot together for Ogilvy & Mather, I felt that this piece had a real honesty to it. However, nothing prepared any of us for the reaction across the world that came when this piece was launched. It went viral the second week of April in 2013, and by the next week almost 15 million people had seen it. I understand that that number has now grown to 150 million people, which is truly incredible. It was amazing to watch a commercial I had directed being picked up by the mainstream press like the New York Times, Forbes, Huffington Post etc.“
“I then joined Tool of America, who are one of the top production companies. I am also now working with Mustard in England. I joined Tool because they are fantastic in terms of their production execution. Their reps are top notch too, and they have a great features development program that I have been taking advantage of. Being around the best talent, brings great advantages. For me, it’s all about learning how to expand and grow as a director, so its wonderful to be working with this caliber of people.”