Change (& Creativity) is in the Air in South Africa

Will open chairs open new doors?

Challenging the status quo 

With change comes hope, and in 2017 various initiatives were introduced to South Africa to readdress imbalance across gender and race. While the focus has traditionally remained on racial inequality in South Africa – inevitable considering its apartheid history – this year the local advertising industry seems to be pushing issues of gender diversity. It’s still too early to tell just how effective these ventures will be, but it’s a start and a move in the right direction. 

Free The Bid

In celebration of its first year as a worldwide female-empowerment initiative, Free The Bid – its mandate to see one woman included in every three pitches – is in the process of setting up in South Africa. Having garnered support from Monkey Films director Leigh Ogilvie, who’s acting as the nation’s Free The Bid ambassador, the South African arm will bring more local women directors to the attention of agencies. It will take time to roll out, but there does seem to be an appetite for encouraging female filmmakers through the ranks. 

Although Ogilvie thinks that perhaps a slight alteration of the pledge might be required to make it locally relevant. “Even with the implementation of the BEE policy, it is taking a while to [achieve racial equality in South Africa], having made modest gains, the number [of racially-diverse creatives] within agencies and production houses is still low,” says Ogilvie. “Growing any minority or disadvantaged group within a racially-challenged and gender-biased industry requires committed investment. For this to happen, the culture within agencies and production houses, regarding how they select or champion a director, needs to change, which seems a little tricky to accommodate fairly in a three-way bid, particularly if you add representation of women to the mix – regardless of race.” Furthermore, equality has historically rested on racial diversity, but as Ogilvie says, “We may as well address all areas of diversity, while we’re at it.” 

Open Chair

A South African mentorship scheme running quarterly events, Open Chair launched in August 2017 in partnership with the African and Middle Eastern awards show, The Loeries. Structured like a speed-dating, networking forum, it enables young female creatives to connect with women in more senior positions – offering them the space to ask questions and seek advice and mentorship in their careers. FCB’s creative director Suhana Gordhan (pcitured) co-founded the programme after she assumed the two-year post of Loeries chairperson. “When I took on this role, I decided to use the position to also stand for something,” she says. “During my appointment, I spoke about the role of transformation around women and race. I wanted to put a focus on young women in the industry as they’re not often brought up to the right leadership levels and there’s no connection between them and senior leaders.”

Gordhan brought on board TBWAHunt Lascaris ECD, Jenny Glover, and Molo Sana Films EP/founder, Simoné Bosman, knowing they shared her vision and would help to elevate the campaign. “In South Africa, white women are slightly better represented in leadership than they are in the rest of the world,” says Grey Africa’s CCO, Fran Luckin. “But we need to recognise and empower more black female creative leaders. There’s no shortage of awesomely talented women out there; we just need to ensure they get the kind of mentorship and support that we all had coming up.” 

Losing velocity, finding romance

When South Africa’s largest production company, Velocity, closed its doors in early 2017, it left something of a void in the country’s commercial production scene. But in August a new contender emerged: bringing together two of South Africa’s top directors, Greg Gray (formerly of Velocity) and Terence Neale (ex-Egg Films), with their respective producers, Helena Woodfine and Rozanne Rocha-Gray, Romance bills itself as a “leaner, more intuitive approach to production – a tight-knit family of passionate filmmakers and creative producers”. Below, Gray tells us more about how he came to embark on this amorous adventure.

How did Romance come into being?

Terence [Neale] and I have known each other for many years, vicariously and socially, through [my wife] Rozanne, who’s been his producer all that time. We get on well. We both have a respect for each other as friends and as filmmakers. We went for a coffee one day and I got a sense from him that he was feeling a little bit stifled, frustrated maybe. And I was feeling the same. It felt like it was time for both Terence and I to get out of what felt like very, very big machines, where as much as you may have influence in the work that you do, it never really feels like it’s part of your own vision or structure. 

It felt like the best time for both of us to regroup and to start something small: to try and build something with a new focus and new set of objectives. 

You were signed to Velocity for 17 years. What did you learn from that experience that you’ve brought to the new venture?

I suppose the only lesson was to make sure that we keep the company at a size that still feels like it’s personal and it doesn’t just become a monolithic machine. My time at Velocity was fantastic, and I have no regrets. There are no negatives that I’ve been able to draw on with regards to what we do at Romance – except to not let it get carried away and become a company run by financials. 

Those big [production] companies become machines and you have to keep feeding the machine. So, they tend to have people take on work because they need to keep the company going, and the bigger a company gets, the more top-heavy it becomes and the bigger the administration department, the more expensive it is to run and the more money that you need to make to fuel it. 

It’s nice to be out of that equation and to be able to look at work and decide whether or not to do it purely on the merits of the work and whether it appeals to you, and sits with the company’s ethos or not. 

Your directing aesthetic is cinematic and emotional, while Terence’s is more visually striking. Was it a case of opposites attracting?  

Terence and I complement each other, because we have different styles and different visions and intentions with regards to the work that we like doing. That’s often the problem in a lot of companies: everyone’s chasing after the same work. So, even though we are both at the top of our game we aren’t really competing against each other, but we both have the same kind of ethos in mind and that is to do interesting, creative work. It’s our intention, when we are both around in the office, to collaborate on scripts that come in, regardless of which one takes it, because I think we both have strengths that we can offer each other.

What inspired the name of the company?

It just felt like a fun name that rolls off the tongue easily, and I suppose it is the idea of the romance behind filmmaking and our love for it. It wasn’t referring to a particular romance…despite the fact Rozanne and I are married.

“It felt like the best time for both of us to regroup and to start something small: to try and build something with a new focus and new set of objectives.” 

Currently Romance numbers just four people. How do you plan to grow the business?

At the moment, the intention is just to try and keep it as small and bespoke as we can. It’s quite a process setting up a business – especially in South Africa – as there are a lot of hoops to jump through. We’ve been approached already by a number of directors wanting to join us, but we are just wanting to find our feet first.

Do you have any exciting projects in the pipeline for 2018?

I was in the middle of a job when we launched and we’ve done two since then. We’ve been pretty busy over the past few months: Terence has been in London shooting for Hugo Boss and now he’s gone off to LA for Beats' #AboveTheNoise job (below).