Rodrigo Saavedra, founder and director of the Immigrant production studio, is on the D&AD 2023 jury
With a different vision of what can be awarded at a festival, Rodrigo Saavedra, founder and director of the Immigrant creative production studio, is the Brazilian representative on the D&AD 2013 jury in the Cinematography category. The director spoke with the reporter in a new episode of PROPCAST, part of the special series of podcasts with the Brazilian judges, which is available on Spotify.
I’m going (to the jury) knowing a tendency that exists in advertising festivals, especially in categories like cinematography, which is to award pieces that are a little more serious, darker. People often think that because a photograph is denser, it is automatically more cinematic. I don’t have that thought, on the contrary, I think that cinematography is at the service of the direction, of the film’s history, he says.
He explains that cinematography is all about light, camera movement, and believes that no aspect of film survives independently.
Saveedra gives an example outside the world of advertising to explain his thinking.
If I had been on the Oscar jury this year, I wouldn’t have given the cinematography award to the film that won, All quiet on the western front. Again, a super dense film, a super heavy theme. I would have given the award to the film that won the Oscar itself, Everything everywhere all at once (Everything in every place at once), because it is more innovative in terms of cinematography. He has transition techniques, photo techniques allied to montage that have never been done before. Even Avatar, which is a blockbuster that perhaps isn’t seen as highly intellectual, I think was more deserving of an Oscar. I don’t want to detract from the film, it’s obviously super cinematography, but it’s more expected that it wins. This year, there could be a film winning cinematography partially made in artificial intelligence, because that is a new frontier, one more way of producing image, he reflects.
For the second time on the D&AD jury, which will be held between May 8th and 10th, in London, Saveedra says that this time the experience will be different because it is a face-to-face trial. The other time I participated in the festival, two years ago, it was due to Covid-19). Obviously, the exchange between the judges is much richer when we are in person, reinforces.
On the podcast, he also talks about craft, crisis in the creative process, judging criteria, sending pieces to the festival, and the relevance of branded content in brand strategies.
