London Special: gotgotneed

The directing pair behind small but versatile production company gotgotneed, Will Innes Smith and Adam Wells, tell Olivia Atkins about the culturally specific origins of their name, a shared winding route to spot direction and the unique combination of luck and skill that led to their picking up the sort of experience and projects that film students today would kill for…

“There’s a sort of demographic – usually men of a particular age range around ours – that get it straight away,” says director/co-founder Will Smith about the origins of gotgotneed’s name. Cast your mind back to the school playground and the gaggle of boys who’d be exchanging football trading cards, a soft murmur of “got, got, need…” emerging from their lips as they root through another child’s collection of cards, praying to find the one that’s missing from their own deck.

It’s explained best on gotgotneed’s own website; “[That culture] was a kid’s first enterprise. An introduction to supply and demand.” And the importance of luck and skill: luck because you’d have to come across the right card at the right place, and skill because you’d still have to negotiate for it.

And luck and skill have been important for the Northern pair behind gotgotneed, who have unwittingly been blessed with opportunities along the way, although doubtless they have worked hard to keep them coming. Will Innes Smith and Adam Wells do so many jobs under the umbrella of gotgotneed, it’s difficult to define their many skills. They met at Sky Sports back in 1999, when the office was full of young people playing Call Of Duty.

It was a breeding ground for budding creatives and a great place to learn new skills and try things out. “Sky was a different place then,” says Wells. “If you wanted to try something, you’d just suggest it and it would be more than likely that you could do it… It had a bit of a maverick sensibility about it.”

They started on £200-300 jobs, but pretty soon the experience exposed them to good briefs, talented people and, before long, reasonable budgets. “We didn’t know how lucky we were, being trusted to do these projects,” says Wells. “It’s the kind of stuff film students would kill for now, but we were just presented with the opportunity. And that’s how we did it – we just went through the system and continued to direct.” And edit. And pitch ideas directly to clients.

It’s not what you pretend to know…

But this haphazard, falling-into-it-by-accident approach is characteristic of gotgotneed. Even the name wasn’t an intentional decision. “When I was a student and everyone was registering domains, I thought it would be cool to do a business card that looked like a football trading card,” remembers Wells. And the name stuck, although the pair admit that they’ve had their fair share of confusion explaining to others what it means and exactly what it is that they do. “We’ve never really acted on the gotgotneed brand [until this photoshoot], it’s just been a name and it’s a name that we usually spend a lot of time correcting.”

That’s because while gotgotneed has operated as a production company since 2007, with Wells and Innes Smith at its helm, they both also serve as the only two directors on its roster, although they work under their own names rather than as a directing duo. And if asked, they also double up as creatives. As they did for their recent TV work for Worcester Bosch, The Longest Day, which they wrote, directed and produced.

Advertising wasn’t the obvious route for both Innes Smith and Wells. Instead, they were attracted to the longer format of feature films. Derby-born Innes Smith went to a local art college and then on to Birmingham City University (formerly the University of Central England) to read visual communications.

There he dabbled in graphics, photography and filmmaking, finding himself inspired by the likes of directors Michel Gondry, Mark Romanek, Spike Jonze and visionary filmmaker Terrence Malick. He became increasingly interested in graphic design. “I initially wanted to make title sequences for films,” he says. Soon after, he landed his first job as a runner at Sky Sports where he later met Wells, although he admits he thinks he only got the job because “I knew how to work a Mac and not many people did at the time.”

Wells grew up in Leeds. He spent his childhood drawing anything and everything. “I’d just lie on the floor on a Saturday or a Sunday and draw. Get everything from a drawer and just draw. It was always quite graphic-inspired – I was always quite precise,” he says. His dad was an art teacher at a local high school, so Wells could often be found in the art studios among the pottery and the paintings. Or watching Steven Spielberg films. Or making comics about the adventures of the Wells family. But his non-academic side caught up with him when he was doing his art, history and geography A-levels and he decided to leave school after being issued with a final warning for robbing the vending machine… for chocolate not cash.

Thankfully, this meant he could finally pursue his passion guilt-free. So he went to Leeds College of Art, previously known as Jacob Kramer College, and completed a BTEC national diploma in graphic design. From there, he headed to Sheffield College to study design communications – and live in a tiny pink bedsit. 

Having developed his interest in 3D animation at college, Wells secured a graduate trainee position as an assistant designer at Yorkshire Television. Although he did small bits of animation and took part in the occasional studio shoot, it was the contacts that he made at Yorkshire TV that led him towards future opportunities. He followed two colleagues to London and secured a job at Sky as a junior designer, aged 23.

He says he only got the job because he lied about being able to use the primitive animation software Hal. “I used to sit at night with the manual and go over it for a couple of hours and then come in the next morning as if I’d not been reading it all night long.”

Once at Sky, the pair were presented with plenty of opportunities. Because their line managers gave them almost infinite freedom and trusted them to get the job done, they excelled, learning quickly from people much more experienced than themselves. “I’d always pitch films with big crazy ideas. They went for one of them and said I could go off and direct something in the Mojave Desert and I was just like ‘Wow!’ It was my first big work trip,” recalls Wells.

Innes Smith experienced similar freedoms during a brief stint at music channel The Amp. “We had complete autonomy and a lot of creative control. Essentially they just needed lots of content,” he says. It was a chance to develop his directing style, which he says he modelled on Gondry. The platform was axed and he returned to Sky, but this time went to the Arts department, working across idents, animation, graphics and stings… And that’s where gotgotneed began.

The history of PlayStation in posters

The duo’s big break working together was their first live-action job, making a content film – Ghostrider, about the Tour de France starting in London – for Transport for London (TfL) via a contact from Smoke & Mirrors. Together they pitched and directed it: “It was a template of how we’ve worked over the years. And it was probably the first proper invoice we put in as a company.” They still work with many of those initial contacts from that campaign. The majority of their work comes from returning clients, which is perhaps indicative of gotgotneed’s production values “or the fact that we’re cheap,” jokes Wells.

After so many years working together – and probably because they have such similar backgrounds and upbringings – it’s clear that their partnership is more friendship than formal. They know each other well and understand when one should take the lead. Innes Smith notes, “The more that we’ve directed away from each other, the more confident – self-confident – we’ve both become.”

“We’ve been very conscious of trying not to be that directing duo who stand in the corner and just debate for ages,” says Wells. But because they share the same vision and can both offer the full 360 approach to projects, they trust each other and rarely fall out. In fact, Innes Smith admits most of their communication is unspoken.

For all their similarities, they have their differences too. One of the jobs they’re proudest of so far is the For The Players Since 1995 campaign for PlayStation, a tribute to 90s and millennial youth culture. Its success, Wells admits, was thanks to Innes Smith’s attention to detail. “He’s very aware of youth culture, fashion and trends.

He knew the posters of 1996 and exactly what people were wearing,” he says. “One guy actually deconstructed the whole thing – the sound effects, the pictures on the wall etc – and didn’t spot a single mistake because Will had gone through it meticulously and knew exactly which era each piece belonged to.” That sort of dedication clearly pays dividends. The film was initially due to be online only but thanks to its viral success it ran as a TVC too.

gotgotneed seems to have evolved at the same pace as the industry itself. They’ve managed to stay at the forefront of the industry’s evolution thanks to their loyal clientele, experimental approach and willingness to try their hand at everything. Perhaps it’s been a case of being at the right time at the right place, but they’ve also worked damn hard along the way.

The missing card in the pack

When I ask the pair what the future holds for gotgotneed, they both quickly admit they need a bit of slapping around and want to push the PR. Their clients aren’t going anywhere, but they want to start actively pursuing their future. “We want to keep moving with the trends as they’re happening and remain flexible enough so that people can come to us for varied work. We want to make a feature of our flexibility and style as a company,” Wells sums up.

Their name, style and reels may show a football laddishness but they have a sensitive side too. Wells reveals their newfound ambition was inspired by late friend Grant Branton, a former colleague at Sky who passed away at the start of the year after becoming the pair’s executive producer and overseeing the business aspect of gotgotneed. “In the last few weeks, we’ve been questioning ourselves, asking ‘What would Grant say to us now?’ And that’s great,” explains Wells. “I spoke at his funeral and said, in many ways he was the need that gotgotneed needed.”