The Directors: Temple Caché
Temple Caché is a creative studio led by directors Marion Castéra and Kelzang Ravach. Temple Caché lays fresh storytelling and offbeat visuals for advertising, luxury, cinema & music industry. Temple Caché’s work stands at the border between dreams and realities, surrealism and cinematography. Temple Caché blends skills and meanings to create a unique multifaceted signature. Temple Caché enjoys collaborations and experimentations with international disruptive talents. They have worked with renowned brands such as Hermés, Dior and Twitch.
Their work has been recognised on the international awards circuits, including Cannes Film Festival, Palm Springs International Animation FestivalBerlin Music Video Awards, and Los Angeles Cinefest amongst many more.
LBB> What elements of a script sets one apart from the other and what sort of scripts get you excited to shoot them?
Temple Caché> Scripts that get us excited are the ones allowing us space to get a bit crazy, the ones with potential to tell the story from a variety of different angles. Scripts where there will be different contexts, different cultures, different characters.
The ad we did with Nike and Birth for example. We were working with real characters, sports icons with different origins and different tastes. That’s really fun as you’re opening a door to possibilities. In the treatment stage, we can propose different techniques and still tell stories.
What also grabs our attention are scripts with a changing perception of reality.
LBB> How do you approach creating a treatment for a spot?
Temple Caché> I try to feel the vibe of it. Then we do a lot of immersive research. You dive into it, the technique, the text … these are mostly digital conversations. Then I build a proposal.
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?
Temple Caché> If we don’t have affinity or context, then we do a lot of research to propose something that fits with the brand. Sometimes it just has to be creative enough, even if we don’t personally know the brand so well. But if it’s not something we stand for, we just won’t do it. You can’t fit a big foot in a little shoe.
With our new ad Tout Part En Live for Twitch France, we really did a lot of research and entered into their world.
The brand image and strategy are important to understand. So we rely on a brand manager to define the campaign strategy. The sooner this conversation happens, the better - if you have it too late, it downgrades the creativity. Whereas if you receive it early on in the production process, you can give a really good creative brief.
If you try to be creative without knowing the purpose, you end up being a creative machine - it’s random, so you lose the purpose of it. At the end you think, ‘Oh this could have been really better if we knew this at the beginning’.
LBB> For you, what is the most important working relationship for a director to have with another person in making an ad? And why?
Temple Caché> A good producer.
A good producer is vital to understand where, why and how you want to go. All the other elements will follow. Without the producer, you cannot achieve this. The ideal producer really understands the creative process.
On the recent Twitch ad, for example, there was much complex collage work which is sometimes incomprehensible. During all this craziness, our producer Kate Elson really got to understood our working process and she defended our point of view.
Even for us, our process isn’t always fluid. The creative process is about experimenting with ideas, it can be crazy and chaotic, yet that brings good results.
When we receive a creative brief, we prepare a storyboard. Each step is always about creating something new and always evolving, and that’s hard for a client. We need trust. Trust is key. Kate trusted us. At times she’d say, ‘I don’t understand you, but I’m supporting you all the way’.
It was a true collaboration. That’s rare.
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?
Temple Caché> It’s about consciously not choosing a formula.
We have a lot of different styles, techniques, emotion. Some directors are pigeon-holed: they’re ‘a comedy director', or ‘a beauty director’ etc. But people are so complex. For us, we enjoy using animation, live action, mixed media, comedy… We’re good at everything. This means we’re passionate about everything, too!
Perhaps I’m most passionate about comedy. I love how you make something look like one thing, then you end it with humour. That fascinates me. Also, creativity and sustainability are important to us. A client that is fair and can be trusted.
Lately, we’ve been enjoying creating very short content. Typically, this is digital content between 5 or 10 seconds long. A blast of feeling. They’re fresh, which is great.
LBB> What misconception about your or your work do you most encounter and why is it wrong?
Temple Caché> The most common misconception is that we don’t know how to do direct live action.
The industry thinks we just do collage, animation or mixed media. But this is so false. We love to do live action. It’s something our producers understand.
It’s not a good feeling that people put us into a box.
LBB> Have you ever worked with a cost consultant and if so how have your experiences been?
Temple Caché> We’re fortunate that we haven’t really worked with a cost consultant, though I certainly understand the thinking behind using them.
We work in a world of art, of trust! You know you don’t have trust when everything is costed, and there’s so much back and forth. Like buying vegetables in the supermarket, you’re just a commodity. But clients also want storytelling. Creativity. Something out of the box.
LBB> What’s the craziest problem you’ve come across in the course of a production - and how did you solve it?
Temple Caché> I was once taken to the local police station for carrying an illegal weapon.
It was very early on in my filmmaking career and I was directing a music video in the countryside near where I lived. The shoot needed a shotgun, and the night before we still didn’t have a prop one. So at midnight, I asked a favour from farmer I knew - could we borrow his? And it all worked out the next day, we had the shotgun for the scene.
After filming, when I went to return it the blanket I would have wrapped it in had been taken by a crew member as it was raining cats and dogs. So I found myself walking home - without shoes, because they had fallen apart during the day - carrying a shotgun in the rain. Of course the police apprehended me, took me to the station for questioning, and released me after the farmer was contacted and explained things.
That’s how I learned early on that some solutions just are not going to work!
LBB> How do you strike the balance between being open/collaborative with the agency and brand client while also protecting the idea?
Temple Caché> It’s about trust and understanding. I am the guarantor of the vision. You are the guarantor of the brand and the image. Each one has a role. We need to respect the creative strategy, I’m here with the creative solution.
The agency has a concept and now I’m directing. I don’t need help with that, but if you have ideas about the concept, let’s work together on that. These are the usual pressures on the collaboration.
For the best film, to get the best results on a film, agency and brand client need to trust the choice they made in selecting us in the first place.
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?
Temple Caché> One of the main points for me with diversity is that it should be a given, not a question. It’s crazy that we are talking about it. I understand the conversation is positive but, at the same time, we shouldn’t be needing to have it. The more diverse talent there is, the more creative our industry will be.
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?
Temple Caché> We’re working remotely, for shoots and meetings. It’s not ideal - you don’t feel the human contact, you’re not discovering new things, certain dynamics of life can’t be felt working remotely. We lose interactions, which are essential for creativity.
But it’s also an opportunity.
Working remotely offers new freedom. Should we live in Portugal? Why not?
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)?
Temple Caché> We think that each format and each platform influence the perception of the content, film, or story that we want to tell. So we prefer to propose different kinds of concepts that are best adapted for each format or platform.
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)?
Temple Caché> Such technologies open a new world of possibilities and a wider range of new perceptions, new ways to express and feel emotions. Playing with them is really cool as the viewer - or user - user is always in the middle of the experience. Using these tools you can create something that is really strong and immersive. Where we can, we incorporate these as complementary tools for expression and creativity in all our projects now.
LBB> Which pieces of work do you feel really show off what you do best - and why?
Temple Caché> Our work is about creating and opening new worlds where narrative is the starting point and where techniques blend together, break the rules, play with perception, and mix all the different ways we have to express ourselves in a way that allows everything to coexist.
