Colin Renshaw’s Cannes Lions Diary: Day 1 – 3

Colin Renshaw (left), VFX supervisor and founder, Alt.vfx is sitting on this year’s Cannes Film Craft Lions jury. Here Renshaw gives his day-by-day rundown of his judging experience, exclusively for Campaign Brief.

Day 1

Getting there is never half of the fun. I am just going to lay that out straight up. Doesn’t matter what airline you fly or which end of the plane you sit in – long haul sucks. And long haul to Europe is the high priest of suckery.

Bars on planes (thank you Emirates) are like kissing a hot someone with a coldsore. You jump in with reckless abandon but you know you will pay for it later.

I once got on a flight and heard a very recognisable voice behind me. It was Singo (legendary Australian ad/media man John Singleton). We introduced ourselves he asked me what I did. I told him. He said: “What’s your strategy?”

I began my usual quasi-earnest reply: “Doing great work…uhh….hiring great people…”

He cut me off mid-sentence. “No, you fuckwit – your plane drinking strategy. You go hard early, and then sleep? Or do you go hard all flight? Hmm?”

I confessed didn’t have a strategy and that ended the conversation. I slinked back to my seat.

But of course, you do need a strategy. You definitely need a strategy when you go to Cannes. I think this is my 5th or 6th year now and mine is well entrenched. Go hard for 2 days – then hibernate for 2 days. Then go hard for two days again. Avoid talking to people that matter after 2pm and never ever go to the Carlton bar after 8pm.

I live in my boardies, only bathe when I swim, and try to grow a beard. For me Cannes is a working holiday with largely the very same people I work with every day, and I like it like that. This year my strategy is getting all screwed up.

I am going to Cannes to judge Film Craft.

Being asked to judge at Cannes Lions Festival is an honour, certainly. But it’s also a big commitment. There is a lot to do, not just in the judging process, but readying the life you leave behind for you being absent, busy as hell and practically uncontactable for the next however many days.

For one thing, I’ve never been so exposed to so much bloody amazing work from all over the world. And for those who have sat through that initial online judging stage…you understand. There is A LOT.

But of course, as with everything, with greatness also comes a great wave of utter bollocks.

While I was awed by some of the amazing, beautiful, touching stories that brands across the world told in the past year, there were others that tried so desperately to achieve greatness that they reeked, a powerful stench of cynical emotional jabs that left me feeling like they had exploited the subject matter to the extreme.

If you have a prosthetic limb, are transgender, in need of affirmative action or are #girl power, this is your year. The brands are behind you.

It’s a fine line to tread when you are seeking to tell a very real emotional story of human endeavour – that ends mostly with a completely incongruous brand logo. When it works, it pierces the heart of even a cantankerous cynic like me. When it doesn’t, it leaves you feeling cold and repulsed, and dirty.

Thankfully, the obvious bleeding-heart PC bandwagon trash was quickly excised on Day 1. And in general, day 1 judging was exciting and funny and inspiring.

Some of the comedic spots entered across categories are utterly brilliant, with a particular highlight being a handful of ones from Thailand. They seem to be able to get edgy, creative comedy along the production pipeline better than we can in Australia, and it’s a universal comedy that just works. Great scripts, great casts, great direction.

Have to say that I’m loving it so far. But I do miss my pool toys and Pina coladas.

Wednesday seems so far away… Stay tuned.

Day 2

The French do many things well. Handshakes are one (did you SEE how tightly Macron gripped Donald’s tiny hand?!). Wines are another. Advertising and creativity festivals are another.

Food, on the other hand, is not one of them. Call me backwards you may, but I would smash a Chiko Roll from the local servo over 90% of what is on offer here in Cannes.

As beautiful as the place is, I’m longing for a servo pie, or a sweet chicken schnitzel, (The Old Fitz will be my first port of call when I land back in Sydney). Breakfast maybe the most important meal of the day, but not to the French. Stale baguette. Some ham a croissant..and…mmm…That’s it.

So as a rule I tend not to eat here in Cannes, which is probably a good thing as I left my run on my Cannes bikini body workout plan a bit late this year. Not as buff as I should be. Hopefully the rigours of 16-hour judging days combined with a very limited diet might just shed that extra 5kgs, allowing me to prance around the villa pool resplendent in my DTs come next week.

The late, great Anthony Bourdain said: “Your body is not a temple, it’s an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.” Well, my body isn’t an amusement park. It’s a water park. It’s Wet n’Wild. Except that isn’t water. It’s wine. And I am here to enjoy the ride. Here in France, they are gods amongst men, making some of the finest fermented grape juice in all the world. At least there is that to console my troublesome digestive system.

But alas, I am not here to just eat, drink, and be merry. I am here to take part in the International Jury for Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. Thankfully, the Lions’ organisers know how to bring a very diverse group of international creatives together, and they use the tried and tested method of the ‘first night welcome drinks’. This is a delicious river of social lubrication that flows and flows and with each day the previous night’s festivities help break down the barriers between the judges and level the playing field. You quickly work out who the characters are, the nay sayers, the negs, the doo gooders. Hmm…what box am I in?

It is declared open season on some of the entries as strong opinions come to the fore quite quickly. Of course, that’s part of the joy of the process, because what makes great work great and bad work bad is all subjective. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

2017 was not a great year, let’s face it. And so, it seems the advertising community as a whole has decided to do its part to facilitate change. Gone is flippancy and silly/quirky humour has been relegated to the sidelines and earnestness has taken the field.

No worthy cause is left unturned in 2018. The ad world is taking the power back from misogynists, racists, ageists, ablelists and warmongers and so, in my IMHO, they should.

But fuck me its seems everything in 2018 is about the struggle. The transformation. The eventual acceptance all brought to you by….XYBR
AND.

It strikes me that we are not watching branded content as much as it is sponsored content. Well, that’s how it feels when it’s done badly anyway.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not ragging on the subject matter or the effort to bring these things to our consciousness’. I just that this year’s work contains so much struggle, so much indignation it is absolutely overwhelming. I have to keep reminding myself that this is the output of the entire world I am watching – and its distilled and amplified due to the event. That is the only thing that stops me from rushing to join Anthony in the great beyond.

Day 2 was heavy man.

Give me Middleditch, a soup can and two guys in a kitchen talking shit. Please.

Day 3

OK day 5 in Cannes tomorrow. Two days to go. This is where it starts to get gritty. We have shortlisted all of the entrants, and don’t quote me but it was like 4300 entries pre judged down to 1300 and I think we end up with 430 on the prelim shortlist. Now those numbers may be whack, its after 11pm here – I haven’t been up this late for a week, but the ratio is kind of right.

Point is, now we have to do one last round of culling and start to award metal.

The real personalities of the judges are starting to bubble to the surface. And it’s delicious. Mr Congeniality suddenly bares his fangs defending a piece of work that leaves the rest of the  jury convinced he is on crack. Maybe his brother did it.

Mrs Middle America dredges up something from the first round that obviously we all thought was shit. And manages to mainline it back into the shortlist. Go you.

Truth is it’s all good. It’s all *legit* The convulsions, query, recalibrations and reinterpretations are all part of the process and we the jury are here to represent you, the great unwashed, and we will do so with selfless honour and integrity.

You have my word.

I am going to tell you that if you ever win a Lion, you have no idea how lucky you are. They have more algorithms than Netflix here to keep the judging straight – to stop block voting – bias – self interest. But nothing can stop the influence of subjectivity. You can’t allegorise for that. It can be influenced by the dynamic of the room’s diverse personalities, the ambient temperature of the judging space, the lack of snacks, the amount of hours you are crammed together, where your spot was entered in the list (hint… enter early), the temperament of the taxi driver that delivered you to the Palais. All factors…

And that is the best bit about being a judge. You get to face off against this wall of subjectivity, defend or annihilate work depending on your debating skills, and when you win you feel like the Redeemer and when you lose…ahh you just blame it on the power of the networks. Honestly though if you love what we do, it’s the best fun you will ever have without falling foul of the millennials in their race to set us on the Righteous path. Take that as you will.

So I decided randomly on the spur of the moment to see a fortune teller. It was kind of on my way back to the hotel and I literally fell in the door.

I don’t want to perpetuate any racial stereotypes but this woman was text book gypsy-esque witchy fortune teller. If she had popped out an third discombobulated eye ball so that it could gaze at me from the table I wouldn’t have been any more weirded out.

She took my hands and ground her palm into the top of them like she was exfoliating a bison, and stared at me in such a probing way that I felt she was extracting all of my childhood secrets one by one. She had a gnarly, steamy wheezing breathing thing going on, but other than that we sat silent for 10 whole minutes. She was just pegging me with her eyeballs.

After an eternity I blurted our half jokingly – “So? am I going to win a lion?”

She silently eye pummelled me for another 5 mins before asking: “What is lion and why you worry about lions?”

Truth is I have no idea. Even sitting on the jury I really have no solid idea what will get shortlisted. That is how finicky it is. That is why if you win you should be very fucking happy.

Strangely enough I got a text from a client not long after, and then another, asking: “So? am I going to win a lion?”

I replied to both. Yes, I think you will take the Grand Prix.