Words of wisdom

+ Perhaps it was fate today when I pulled out the new issue of Shoot from my mailbox and turned immediately to the interview of with Tom Kuntz.

"I've never been somebody who's out seeking a stamp of approval. But if I step back from my career, this was a good year to get that kind of affirmation, helping to validate me as a solo act," observes Tom Kuntz of his recent Directors Guild of America (DGA) nomination as best commercial director of 2006. Having been on the agency side, Kuntz deeply appreciates the efforts of Burnett and TBWA\Chiat\Day in making the work what it is, including worthy of DGA recognition. "A lot of ideas that first come to me are bold, daring and exciting," he relates. "But you need an agency to follow through in order to keep the work bold, daring and exciting. To have advertising agency people who are creating great work isn't enough. They also have to sell it, stay with it and get it on air the way they intended it to be. Without that, you have a lot of directors with reels of great director cuts that never get out to the real world.
"I think that's the most underestimated talent on the agency side—being able to preserve the concept and get it out on air," Kuntz continues.
"Often a brave concept doesn't survive. When you deliver your cut to an agency like Chiat\Day for instance, there's a trust that it will end up the way you had planned it. That's why I'm always excited when a board comes through from an agency like that."

- From Shootonline.com's interview with Tom Kuntz