The Directors: Lalou & Joaquin
Lalou & Joaquin are the award-winning directorial duo of Lalou Dammond and Joaquin Baca-Asay. Creative partners since 2006, the pair is known for striking visual techniques combined with deceptively simple storytelling – grounded in reality but with a magical touch.
Sharing and wearing many hats over the years, Lalou & Joaquin’s creative partnership dynamically blends the roles of director, cinematographer, producer, and photographer. They have worked with leading worldwide brands including McDonald’s, American Express, Nike, Apple, the NFL, FitBit, Toyota, and Chevrolet, among others, earning accolades from the DGA, Cannes Lions, Clios, AICP, Effies, Ciclope, Addys, and The One Show. In 2023, they directed a Budweiser Super Bowl commercial narrated by Kevin Bacon and featuring renowned hip hop artist and producer Metro Boomin. They are in post production on a TBA music documentary, and the pilot they directed, "Rick Younger Presents the Rick Younger Show Starring Rick Younger as Rick Younger,” won best pilot at the 2023 NY WebFest.
Lalou cut her teeth in the independent film and documentary world, where she honed her skills as a creative producer with many award-winning and festival-favourite projects to her name. She is currently in development on her latest documentary feature 'A Part of the People' about her ancestor William Monroe Trotter, a Black civil rights activist in the early twentieth century. Joaquin began his career as a cinematographer, working on a range of projects including an Oscar-nominated short film shot while a student at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Jay-Z’s '99 Problems' music video, James Gray’s acclaimed films 'We Own the Night' and 'Two Lovers,' Mike Mill’s directorial debut 'Thumbsucker' and the cult comedy classic 'Super Troopers.'
The duo is represented by Biscuit Filmworks and based in New York City.
Name: Lalou & Joaquin
Location: New York
Repped by/in: Biscuit Filmworks US and UK
LBB> What elements of a script sets one apart from the other and what sort of scripts get you excited to shoot them?
L&J> We get excited by a very cohesive idea, where the concept and the brand enhance each other, and where we can visualise the ad just by reading the copy. A good script feels like it will be really fun to make whether it’s complicated or simple, big or small, emotionally hot or cool, heightened or banal. It could be about a rock, if it is well written it will be fun to make and interesting to watch.
LBB> How do you approach creating a treatment for a spot?
L&J> We are very yin and yang - that’s how our creative partnership works - we come at ideas from really different angles. So we spend a lot of time talking about what we find interesting about the idea, looking at photography and films that inspire us, and finding our creative mind-meld. Then we each go off into our corners and write.
Joaquin tends to start with the story section and work his way out. Lalou starts from the top and writes very fast and then we just write right on top of each other. (Pro tip: always save your drafts!) We get very specific about shot making, world and character building, and the essential themes of the story. We do a lot of visual research and end up creating a lot of images as composites because, by definition, it can be so hard to find what’s in our heads in existing images.
LBB> If the script is for a brand that you're not familiar with/ don’t have a big affinity with or a market you're new to, how important is it for you to do research and understand that strategic and contextual side of the ad? If it’s important to you, how do you do it?
L&J> We’re big on research in general - that’s part of the fun of what we do, and the strategy on the context of an ad is super important. Initially, we may want to approach a board with fresh eyes. After we formulate our ideas based on what inspires us about the script, we’ll do a deeper dive into the brand. But that can be tricky - some of our favourite treatments and spots have been outside the box, so you want to let the creative lead you to interesting places.
LBB> For you, what is the most important working relationship for a director to have with another person in making an ad? And why?
L&J> There are so many important relationships - the producer, the DP (in our case Joaquin is the DP, so that’s part of our partnership). In our experience, the best ads we’ve done came from a good relationship with the agency. On one of our most successful campaigns, we spent a few days at the agency, creating this gigantic 14-foot-long paper scroll that was the flow of the boards. We carried it around with us for the entire shoot - it was in tatters by the end. On another favourite campaign, we worked out a strong game plan with the agency in prep, then they spent most of the shoot playing frisbee and letting us do our thing, and then we had a lot of back in forth in the edit. That one also went on to win a bunch of awards. Good collaboration yields great results.
LBB> What type of work are you most passionate about - is there a particular genre or subject matter or style you are most drawn to?
Lalou> Anything with interesting characters and worlds. Could be comedy, could be a visual spot - but if we get to create characters and bring their worlds to life, something interesting will come of it.
Joaquin> Genuine humanity is very important in our work. We rarely do anything that’s pure style. We always want the emotion to be real and grounded, even when we are working in more comedic or pushed realms.
LBB> What misconception about you or your work do you most often encounter and why is it wrong?
L&J> Not sure it’s a misconception, but often it seems like people want to put directors into specific categories - comedy or visual or doc or SFX, and aren’t sure what category to put us in. We do a bit of each of those things, all with a specific humanist approach.
LBB> Have you ever worked with a cost consultant and if so how have your experiences been?
L&J> Generally speaking, no. That said, there have been one or two who have been on set, and who have been mindful of the creative. To state the obvious, being mindful of the creative is welcome.
LBB> What’s the craziest problem you’ve come across in the course of a production – and how did you solve it?
Lalou> This wasn’t the most challenging per se, but it may have been the funniest: a couple hundred sheep we were filming broke loose and started charging through the village in the north of Spain. The whole crew was sprinting around herding sheep. We did manage to get them back to the farm and we didn’t lose a single sheep!
Joaquin> We were doing an around-the-world job in January/February of 2020, just as Covid was developing. One of the cities we were going to shoot in was Shanghai. As we traveled from France to Morocco and then to Mumbai, the Covid news grew by the day. At the last minute, we pivoted from Shanghai to Seoul. Everyone there was already wearing masks, even though the reported number of cases wasn’t very high. But we did manage to dodge Covid, which was definitely a crazy problem!
LBB> How do you strike the balance between being open/collaborative with the agency and brand client while also protecting the idea?
L&J> Listen and build trust. We’re all on the same side - we all want to make a great ad. That, and shoot it both ways!
LBB> What are your thoughts on opening up the production world to a more diverse pool of talent? Are you open to mentoring and apprenticeships on set?
Lalou> As a multi-hyphenate male/female Black/White/Hispanic/Native American team, we’re very supportive of a diverse pool of talent. In fact, we run a mentorship program for young creatives. We’re open to anyone with good ideas and passion for the medium, and are happy to be there for those who haven’t always seen a path into our industry. When I started out working in advertising, I took a look around me and there were almost no (any?) women of color who were directors, and that really affected my career decisions.
Joaquin> More perspectives make the world more interesting.
LBB> How do you feel the pandemic is going to influence the way you work into the longer term? Have you picked up new habits that you feel will stick around for a long time?
L&J> We started directing a documentary about a British band at the start of the lockdown - so it became all remote for a while. It was surreal, and special in a lot of ways - how accessible the world became during this time with Zoom and remote filming. So it’s amazing to have that, but there’s no replacing IRL.
LBB> Your work is now presented in so many different formats - to what extent do you keep each in mind while you're working (and, equally, to what degree is it possible to do so)?
L&J> We’re always thinking in different formats. Early on Joaquin developed a framing chart for all the formats - this gave the agency and clients a lot of confidence because they could see how it was all going to work in the end. Honestly, it’s fun to have the creative challenge. Some of our favourite spots have been the six-second socials of a campaign.
LBB> What’s your relationship with new technology and, if at all, how do you incorporate future-facing tech into your work (e.g. virtual production, interactive storytelling, AI/data-driven visuals etc)?
L&J> We created an AI-generated prop photo recently. It was for a horror-themed spot, so it worked out. And we used some AI to clean up the audio in our documentary. Technology is a tool like any other though - creativity comes from people, and we’re especially partial to things people make. That said, especially with AI, the feeling right now is “strap on your seatbelts” because it’s going to be a wild ride!
LBB> Which pieces of work do you feel really show off what you do best – and why?
L&J> We pulled a couple more recent spots and a couple more historical spots for a full range of what we do.
Budweiser - The idea of this spot was '6 Degrees of Bud' for the Super Bowl, where a six pack was passed from person to person throughout a city in a seamless one-take. The vibe wanted to be handheld and feel totally in-camera, where we passed the camera through windows and on and off cranes, with real people. It was a technical challenge on all fronts, but we like that the end result feels effortless.
Fuck I Love NY - this is one of those great ideas that hit at the exact right moment - the creative director Mat Jerrett came up with it as the Covid lockdown started, and we shot it, just the two of us and sometimes a PA, with actors and non-actors (something we do a lot of) from all five boroughs. It shows how a simple idea can work so well.
NFL - The Ball — we do a lot of work with visual techniques that link scenes together, and this is an all-time favourite - just the way the scenes are connected in an organic way that wholly supports the creative all with a strong emotional resonance.
Net 10 - Bill - we do a lot of docu work, and this is a favourite. The contrast between the cheekiness of the VO and real, earnest people doing real good in the world gave us a chance to develop a language for the campaign that landed really nicely.
