Australia: The Glue Society; Stuck on Creativity

At my meeting with Michael Ritchie, the executive producer and managing director of Revolver Films, he made a prediction that adequately describing The Glue Society – which is signed to Revolver for representation in Australia – would be impossible to do in less than three words. Luckily, it wasn’t a bet because Ritchie would have won.

The most concise way to describe The Glue Society is as a ‘creative collective’ – two words – but that cannot really be said to be an adequate description. How Gary Freedman, one-seventh of The Glue Society, explains it is that they are simply ‘a group of writers, artists and directors’. It’s not alliterative, and doesn’t necessarily roll off the tongue, but those seven words perfectly sum up what The Glue Society is, if not what it actually does. What it does takes a lot more explaining.

The Glue Society was founded by Freedman and Jonathan Kneebone at the tail-end of 1997. They both originally hail from the UK and worked in the advertising industry there but moved, independently of each other, to Sydney in 1995 where they met and began working together at Young & Rubicam. After about 18 months they decided that they wanted to do their own thing and so The Glue Society was born. “We hadn’t been working together for very long,” says Kneebone, “but we did a project which made us think that it would be nice to be slightly removed from the restrictions that you can have in an agency system. We wanted a bit more freedom to be able to have more of an impact on the things we worked on and how they were executed.” “The thing is,” adds Freedman, “in an advertising agency in 1997, there were a lot of restrictions because it was, by and large, about making TV and radio commercials and print ads. That was pretty much it.”

Kneebone and Freedman were interested in projects outside of those parameters, even though, at the time, they weren’t entirely sure what those projects would be. What they were great at then, as they still are, was working creatively to solve problems, both for Australian and international jobs. They are keen to stress that they’re not an agency – “other people are better at managing clients and relationships and coming up with strategies” – and they’re not a production company housing various directors, as any projects they do direct are attributed to The Glue Society as a whole. What Kneebone compares them to is a photographer. “Sometimes photographers are hired by agencies to execute a campaign, sometimes they’re hired directly by a brand, like Vogue, for a commission, and sometimes
they simply work on their own projects.”

Mixing it up brings rewards

The majority of The Glue Society’s work is as directors. They have shot fantastic, award-winning Australian work such as VB: The Regulars through Droga5 Sydney and Tooheys Beer Relay for Saatchi’s Sydney, and international ads like Axe British Accent Guy for BBH New York or the more recent Dip Desperado for Doritos through AMV BBDO London.

Seven years ago they went international themselves, with Freedman moving to New York where he now spends most of his time, while the collective is represented across the globe by a variety of production companies, including Independent in London, Park Pictures in the US and Wanda in Paris.

But directing isn’t the only string to their bow. They are, as we have established, writers and artists as well as directors, and the seven of them are not just willing but more than able to attempt projects that others might baulk at. “The whole industry is evolving to a place where someone might want to open a shop rather than create a 30-second TV spot,” says Freedman. “And because we’ve got these other skills inherent in our little set up, we’re finding that we’re being asked to take on those sorts of ideas.” Freedman and Kneebone reference the upcoming London Olympics and director Danny Boyle’s involvement in the opening ceremony as an example of how the creative landscape is changing. “That, to me, is a sign of the way the world is going,” says Freedman. “Having someone who can see a vision for a feature film but who can also bring direction to a whole concept. That’s the sort of thing we hoped would happen when we started The Glue Society.”

Kneebone says that agencies are now looking beyond the confines of traditional media to reach consumers and, subsequently, contacting The Glue Society to see what they can bring to the project. “It’s the imaginative agencies that see the world that way,” he says. “They create something from a brilliant idea and bring in the right people to open it up. They don’t cling on to all aspects of it because they know that the best way to bring something to life is to collaborate with people who can offer something else. Someone once said to me that we were experts in things that had never been done before. I would never have thought of that myself but I do quite like it.”

Watch with Mother

However, The Glue Society leaves nothing to chance and has been working on its own special project that should see the light of day in May. Watch with Mother is a ‘sketch horror show’ shot through Revolver which, Kneebone and Freedman explain, is basically a sketch comedy show without the comedy. They’ve been working on the project for some time and admit that, realistically, it’s something they’ve been attempting to put together since the inception of the company in 1997, because one of their initial aims together was to write and direct their own TV show.

“Everybody within The Glue Society has contributed to it in different way,” says Kneebone. “All seven of us have directed different segments and if someone wasn’t directing they might be art directing or helping in other ways. We’re really excited about it.” Although described as a TV show, its distribution will be more forward-thinking. It will be available to download via iTunes, but they have also created an iPad app to provide a richer viewing experience. “In a sense,” says Freedman, “the format of the show has come from the medium in which you can watch it. When we originated it we really just imagined it as a piece of TV but all the advice we’ve had from networks that we’ve been speaking to is that it’s going to be a more rewarding experience online or on an interactive device.”

Avoiding definition

It’s taken a while for some to work out exactly what The Glue Society is, but rather than worry about people misunderstanding their intentions or their abilities, they’ve revelled in it and on occasion turned it to their advantage. “In a sense,” concludes Freedman, “we are ill-defined, but in a way that’s quite a deliberate thing. I think we’ve ended up being more useful to more people and more able to contribute to interesting things by never actually saying what we do for a living.”