Prasoon Pandey’s crusade for concealed craft

Being the youngest of nine siblings teaches a person many skills. The art of diplomacy; the ability to make your voice heard. It also involves a lot of listening – and learning. 

Perfect training then, for the daunting task of leading a jury of industry peers, managing egos and disagreements, and forensically (and fairly) judging a vast array of entries into what is, arguably, the toughest category of all at Cannes Lions: Film Craft. 

This is director and Corcoise Films founder Prasoon Pandey’s first stint as Cannes jury president – continuing a legacy of firsts at the festival, which include directing the first Indian commercial to win a Lion (for Ericsson’s One Black Coffee) as well as being the first Asian (along with his brother, Piyush, Ogilvy India’s former CCO and executive chairman) to be honoured with the Lion of St Mark for a lifetime of services to creativity in communications. 

The first ad that Pandey directed, One Black Coffee of 1996, won a silver Lion, the first Indian commercial to do so.

Pretty impressive for someone who “got involved with all of this inadvertently” – but then, a creative career was always on the cards for Pandey. 

Growing up in Jaipur, the capital of one of India’s most characterful and colourful provinces, Rajasthan, alongside eight older siblings into hobbies like painting, music and dance, his childhood was like “entering an art school. You can't help it - you are learning from observation, whatever you see around you influences you.” 

Pandey started his own forays into the creative world while still at high school, directing theatre and designing light and sound shows in far-flung deserts and forts, before applying to study architecture in Ahmedabad. But after seeing the “terrible” building the institute was housed in, he switched to a degree in visual communications at India’s National Institute of Design, going on to land a job as a creative director at Lowe (then Lintas). “I never worked hard for it, it just fell into my lap,” he laughs. 

Indian advertising was very Western in its demeanour, because it was very ‘big city’ business.

His move into directing? Another stroke of luck. When presenting a script he’d written for the moped brand Bajaj Sunny, A Very Simple Riding Machine, which humorously imagines an African tribe encountering a moped for the first time, his passion was so palpable that the client insisted Pandey himself direct it. “He said, ‘I cannot imagine anybody else being more excited than you are,’” he remembers. “Although he probably repented that decision.” The client might have had regrets, but with the spot going on to win a slew of awards at the Indian Academy of Advertising Art Awards and launching a stellar 30-year directing career, Pandey certainly hasn’t.

Thanks to now-iconic ads like Fevicol Bus – which riffed on a sight common in villages around the country, of comically overloaded buses with more passengers clinging to the exterior than sitting inside - Pandey is widely lauded for bringing an authentic and proudly ‘Indian’ ethos to the country’s advertising; credit that he insists on sharing with his elder brother and legendary adman Piyush. 

Ideas are all around you in the way people live, in the way they talk, in the things that they do.

“Indian advertising was very Western in its demeanour, because it was very ‘big city’ business. All the creative minds were born and brought up in big cities, and they didn't have a handle on what the real land is like. Piyush started writing ideas from the land in the language of the land, initially in print, and by the time it got to film, I’d landed there.”

“I love the madness of India,” he continues. “I feel there's nothing that we create, really; we simply observe well. Ideas are all around you in the way people live, in the way they talk, in the things that they do - and as a filmmaker, all that I'm doing is taking a frame, putting it around what I see, and sharing it with people.”

Pandey directed a series of ads for Fevicol that captured "the language of the land" of India.

Having spent more than three decades making ads, as well as setting up a successful production company, Corcoise Films, Pandey’s reel boasts more than its fair share of beautifully crafted films. His best-known work, Fevicol Sofa, is a classic piece of advertising: a cinematic chronicle of a sofa’s journey over 60 years as it’s handed down through the generations. 

Evocatively shot in monochrome that becomes gradually infused with colour, it’s also a clever social commentary on India’s changing cultural norms. The sofa starts life as part of a young woman’s dowry, but is swiftly commandeered by the paterfamilias, so she never actually gets to sit on it; later in the ad, we see a more equal depiction of marriage, with a husband bringing his wife a cuppa as she relaxes on the same couch. 

The job of great film craft is to support the idea, but keep itself absolutely hidden.

However, it’s his A Day in the Life of India series, for the Times of India, that Pandey cites as a more interesting example of film craft. Deeply satirical, the ads have a deliberately unpolished – almost “anti-craft” – feel, inspired by the rough-and-ready doodles of the paper’s cartoonist, RK Laxman. “It was important that the films looked like a backyard production, without the ‘finish’ of an advert,” explains Pandey. 

“Even for the soundtrack, I decided not to use music, only human voices.” In Arch, the process of erecting and dismantling a decorative archway for a visiting dignitary is sped up to comic effect, while File turns mundane paper-pushing into a spectator sport, narrated in the manner of a cricket match. “Those films are very close to me, because there is no genre, no precedent to it. It’s an example of developing the craft around the idea,” says Pandey.  

The director's most notable work for Fevical is the cinematic gem, Sofa. 

Having previously sat on the Film jury, Pandey says Film Craft is a much tougher category, because “you’re not only judging the idea. The job of great craft is to support the idea, but keep itself absolutely hidden – and the job of the jury in the craft category is to isolate that.” 

What did he make of last year’s Film Craft Grand Prix winner, Kendrick Lamar’s short film We Cry Together, which captures a couple’s blazing row in all its unfiltered bile through a bold single take?  “I think it reinforces the idea that craft should not try and shine above the idea, it should be embedded in it,” says Pandey. 

A lot of the films I get credit for, I didn't really do anything - I was surrounded by wonderful people who came up with fabulous ideas.

“Say you’re judging the editing in The Godfather and The Bourne Identity. They’re drastically different – The Godfather pauses and lets you soak it all in, and the Bourne Identity is hectic and takes you through the trauma. Both are doing a wonderful job for the genre that they are trying to create. So it’s not that a great hectic edit is better than a slow edit or a single take, no cuts – they’re all editing decisions someone took. What I'm interested in is, was that done to impress people, or because the idea required it?”

We have to evolve the craft according to the idea, and not just put something into the film because it’s doing well these days.

Yet as hard as the category is to judge, it’s still vital, because, as Pandey points out, “How else do we celebrate people who make ideas happen? A lot of the films I get credit for, I didn't really do anything - I was surrounded by wonderful people who came up with fabulous ideas and I just had to say: let's go ahead with that. So while I’m [president], I want people not to see it as ‘winning’ or ‘losing’, but as a celebration of all this talent. Yes, this [particular] editor may have won, but we are genuinely celebrating all the editors for all the hard work that they put in - and all the cameramen, the costume designers etc too.” 

Pandey says his series of satirical films for Times of India, titled a Day In The Life of India, are examples of "developing the craft around the idea."