Joaquin Baca-Asay

Having worked his way up the ladder alongside some of the biggest names in the business, Joaquin Baca-Asay made the leap to directing. Stephen Whelan finds out just what it takes to get to the top

Over the course of our two-hour phone conversation, Joaquin Baca-Asay dropped references to the celebrities of the commercials industry with a pace and nonchalance that left me in no doubt that the person I was talking to was very accomplished indeed. Not that he goes about it in an ostentatious way. At times during the call he sounded humbled and grateful, as though when name-checking Mike Mills, or Mark Romanek, he found himself caught in the glaring headlights of his own success for the first time - recollections as fresh for him in the telling as they were to me.

Born in Boulder, Colorado, Baca-Asay spent his formative years growing up in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. Although his parents divorced when he was three and he stayed with his mother, Baca-Asay continued to visit his father in Arizona and later New Mexico. "I grew up in a really creative environment," he recalls. "My father's a sculptor and my mother's always been a really creative person, so art was always an assumed possible career for me growing up."

As a child, Baca-Asay says he remembers finding his way into his father's art studio where he'd sit experimenting with paints and playing with different materials. "I'd be there beside him while he was doing his work. It was something we had in common - a way of communicating."
With the guidance of his cinephile mother, Baca-Asay discovered the joys of alternative cinema. "When I was about 12 or 13 my mother started taking me to the two little arthouse cinemas in Boulder to watch these amazing experimental films. The one that stuck with me was Peter Weir's The Last Wave. As a kid seeing these crazy, weird, little movies, I remember thinking I'd like to be a director, but I didn't really take it seriously."

The second great cinematic influence on the young Joaquin was Jim Jarmusch's 1986 classic, Down by Law, which included a turn by the gruff-voiced Tom Waits. "I was about 17 when Down by Law came out. At the time I was doing a lot of black and white photography so the film spoke to me immediately," says Baca-Asay. "It's perfectly executed, a master work, but it looks so simple. As a young guy I could relate to how it was made and I could imagine myself creating something similar so that was a big leap for me."

Baca-Asay decided to explore his interest in cinema at university, studying film and politics. As a student at the University of Colorado, Baca-Asay was exposed to the work of American film pioneer Stan Brackhage, who taught several classes on his course. "At the time I was bored to tears by those lectures," Baca-Asay recalls. "But looking back now I realize how beautiful and amazing his work and his message is. I guess growing up you're sometimes exposed to stuff you're not experienced enough to appreciate at the time but that comes back into focus later."

It wasn't until Baca-Asay happened upon teacher and filmmaker Jerry Aronson that he found a mentor to steer him back towards the camera. "Jerry was really pivotal to my development - he lit my fire. He led this really small class, there were maybe 13 of us guys, and we'd all work together to make our individual films. He ignited my passion for narrative storytelling."

Though Boulder had provided Baca-Asay with a kick-start, the confines of his home town began to feel culturally stifling, and his vision started to turn outward. "I applied and got into NYU, but I couldn't afford to go. I thought that was the end. But Jerry called up and convinced them
that I deserved a scholarship. I really do owe him for that."

That summer in 1988, Baca-Asay headed off to join the hustle and bustle of New York, and found himself undergoing an initiation into city life during the hottest spell on record. "It was just so nasty. But I just loved it. I wanted to be in the nasty," he says, reminiscing. "The subways were unbelievable. Just so hot. It was like being in hell. But it was so exciting. When you're not underground you're walking around up top, staring skywards, overwhelmed by the staggering scale of it all."

Along with the shift in visual surroundings came an acute awareness of the patchwork of intersecting lives that make up a city. "When I was looking at the buildings, all I could see were stories emerging. Then I'd start thinking about the people within the buildings and how they have stories too. All the great cities have that quality, naturally, but to me it feels like New York has that times 1,000 because of its density. "

During his sophomore year at NYU, Baca-Asay hooked up with fellow film fanatic and director Christian Taylor. "Together we collaborated on a film project that ended up earning a nomination for an academy award." Straight out of the stable, Baca-Asay found himself catapulted on to guest lists and the red carpet at the Oscars - a far cry from hiking and biking in Boulder.

"I did feel slightly out of place at first, but it was also incredibly stimulating and exciting," he says, grinning audibly (if such a thing is possible to discern down a phone line). "I remember being out there on the red carpet with Chris and Jim Frohna, who produced the film, the three of us standing there behind Liza Minnelli. The heat from the flashbulbs popping on both sides with the paparazzi in a frenzy snapping shots of her. It was fucking insane - one of those experiences that's so out of your normal realm of existence that you just find yourself grinning like it's all a joke."

While working his way up from PA to grip to electrician to gaffer, Baca-Asay took on several side projects, one of which - a low-budget student flick called Low - he says stands as one of his best achievements. "Low's this grungy, complicated little film about these fucked up people. It's about lifting up the rock of people's characters and peering underneath. It was insanely beautiful, hell to make and it's one of the best films I've worked on."

It was during his time as a gaffer that Baca-Asay struck up a creative relationship with Lance Acord, founder of Park Pictures, future home to the as then unsigned go-to gaffer. "Lance was still pretty new to directing at that point. All I remember about my first project with him was the stage and these Bolex cameras all over the place. I did a lot of gaffering for Lance over the next three years and learnt a hell of a lot from him."

With more experience under his belt, it wasn't long until Baca-Asay got the call from an agent looking to rep him as a DP. Word of his talents had spread further than he'd expected. Without a reel work was thin on the ground, but chance threw Baca-Asay a line in the form of several right-place, right-time opportunities and, more importantly, a couple of firings.

"I remember working on this student film, One Night's Tan, and the director firing me. This quote from Conrad L. Hall, one of the greatest cinematographers ever, came into my head. It was something like 'you're not a real DP until you've been fired'. I think that whole experience taught me that being a DP is about figuring out the director's vision and sensibility so there's a clarity and focus to what you're doing. You need that singular voice. As a cinematographer your job is to keep your ego separate from the story so you can help the director be as clear a storyteller as possible."

After a two-year career coma, Lance Acord got in touch to hook Baca-Asay up on a project with Mike Mills. "I'd worked with Roman Coppola on a couple of projects and he was friends with Lance. They both recommended me to Mike for this little film he was making," Baca-Asay explains. "We shot this cool short about a woman who gets caught skinny-dipping in a stranger's pool. Mike wanted the whole thing to look like the camera had been accidentally dropped into position. It was a new way of framing a scene. Looking back, what Mike was doing at that point was the beginning of a whole new aesthetic movement at the end of the 1990s. Accidental framing, flat lighting, minimal settings, shooting in the suburbs."

Baca-Asay's collaboration with Mills helped press the professional fast-forward button, and before long the pair teamed up on Mill's 1999 adidas spot, All Sports. Off the back of that hugely popular project, the pair shot a VW spot, a promo for Air and a feature called Thumbsucker.
"That whole process was quite stressful on our relationship," he reveals. "We're still in touch but Thumbsucker burst the seams. By the time we shot the movie we'd got to the point where Mike would just play music for me and tell me that's how he wanted a scene to feel. It was such a developed relationship and we had such a clear sense of communication."

Although Thumbsucker ended Mills and Baca-Asay's creative relationship, the film also marked a new beginning. Another feature, We Own the Night, followed and not long after he teamed up with his producer Lalou Dammond on a spot through Berlin Cameron. Hot on the heels of that job, Lance Acord got in touch to offer Baca-Asay the chance to make the leap to directing. The spot? Nike Defy.

"I'd been approached a couple of times with offers to sign as a director, but it hadn't appealed. I was already working with directors like Mark Romanek and Paul Hunter and the thought of starting out at the bottom when I'd got that far just didn't interest me."

Limited arm bending later, and with the agreement that he'd be given creative control, Baca-Asay shot his first commercial. "It was a real eye-opener, suddenly seeing that as a director you get to control everything. It made me realise how important it is for me as a director to create something that people will want to watch, something that's satisfying to engage with."

With two more Nike spots, a Net 10 campaign and a job for Eurostar under his belt, Baca-Asay says he's beginning to understand his sensibility as a director. "I guess there are two things I like doing," he muses. "One of them is this sort of slightly reserved watching, like the Defy spot. I'd describe that as a cool sensibility. You're treating the human being as an abstract subject almost, as a sculpture, as an element, with a physical and emotional distance. Then there's the opposite of that, which I also enjoy, when you get in close with a hand-held camera and you're much more involved, the tone is more humane and visceral."

As well as honing his directing abilities, Baca-Asay says the learning curve also helped to develop his diplomatic skills. "When it comes to executing a vision you've got the karate method or the tai chi method. Either you can punch your way through, or you can work with the force from outside and use it to your advantage. I think it's about balancing the two approaches and recognising that you win by making people love what you're doing."