Knockoffs with… Nicholas Muecke
In the debut edition of CityMag’s newest column, we sit down with local director Nicholas Muecke to chat simple pleasures, exploring South Australia and defining success.
WHERE: The Kentish
WHAT WE DRANK: 2x pints each of Birra Moretti
Nicholas Muecke is a local director who most recently worked on the new ads promoting South Australia’s simple pleasures. Previously, he’s worked on music videos for the likes of Tkay Maidza and ALT. and has directed ads for commercial clients like Brand SA, Alpha Support At Home and St John Tasmania.
We kick things off with thoughts on phone-on-the-table etiquette.
DS: Just ignore that my phone is sitting right next to you.
NM: It’s telling me that you’ve got something better to do, better people to talk to by having the phone on the table. Simon Sinek was like, just having your phone on a table subconsciously tells people that you’ve got other things that are just as important, if not more important.
DS: That’s a good point because you do just subconsciously check it, or consciously check it if you’re waiting for another call, or a text.
NM: I mean, like, I don’t know if I pay that much attention to other people having their phone up, but sometimes, if you’re telling a story of grief or whatever, and the other person’s just on their phone…
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DS: These days, I feel like I have to make a real, actual effort to put it in my pocket. I need to remember to otherwise it will just go straight on the table. But I do feel like I have the bad excuse to just be like: ‘Oh, I’m a busy guy’.
NM: Yeah, I got phone calls. Yeah, that’s it. You don’t strike me as a very phone attentive person, to be honest.
DS: Like on my phone while hanging out with people? No, I don’t think so. I think because I feel like I’m on my phone all the time anyway, so why would I do that when I’m with someone? I’m bit sort of bored of looking at it, and it sucks anyway these days. There’s nothing good to look at. Except for your ads. They do come up a lot. Is that a sign of success?
NM: I don’t know if it’s a sign of success. I actually feel like I no longer understand what it means to be successful with what I do, right? When you finish university, you come out of it, and you’re like, I have this milestone for myself. Whether it’s ‘I want to make a feature film’, that’s when I know I’ve made it… But for me, because I pretty quickly turned my mind to trying to build a career in commercial filmmaking, I was like ‘When I land that first big commercial, I know that I’m directing now’. When I did, that thought didn’t even cross my mind. Now I’m like 30-something commercials deep and I’m just doing it. I don’t know if I’ve succeeded, or if you ever succeed when it’s just a journey. Like, what’s the yardstick?
DS: Is it recognition? Is it an article like this?
NM: It’s not an article like this. I’d only do this because it’s you! Maybe some context is important: commercial filmmaking involves a lot of creative egos, so you’re not that kind of typical feature film director where you’re the only creative ego on set and you get final say, even if that’s not really realistic, but you know you’re in service of a creative director and a client above them and other voices in the room at all times. I’ve kind of learned to really enjoy this as a career by finding what it is I can bring that elevates their idea in the first place. Watching them get really happy when we deliver something that kind of blew away their expectations, to me, is when it feels like I’ve kind of succeeded in what I’m trying to.
DS: So it’s more about the response and seeing your clients happy?
NM: Yeah, seeing clients happy, but knowing that an agency will always understand their client better than I can, because they’ve spent so much time with them quite often. It’s been a year of building that campaign alongside a client, and then they’re like, okay, it’s now time to make the film.
DS: Did you have ambitions to be a feature filmmaker ever?
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NM: I still do. But I just like making commercials, because I get to do one once a month, and it keeps me stable, and it allows me a lot of time and also time to work on my feature films. That’s the background thing bubbling away. But I think if I was to dedicate my life to making one film every four years, I would be struggling and bored.
DS: I suppose the reason we’re chatting is these new ads selling the state. It’s enviable in one way in that it’s a big opportunity, but it’s also quite a rough gig I can imagine having to sell an entire state and the idea of South Australia to other people from interstate and overseas. What did you think about when you first got the gig and then how did that change or develop over time?
NM: I agree. I think selling a state is really difficult. You’re always going to have a number of opinions, but you’re also going to have, you know… people feel strongly about very specific things within their state. The reason you might live here could be different to the reason I do. The thing that I found having moved away from South Australia for a while was always like the kind of passion that we have for local produce and farm to table and when you go to a restaurant here and you sit down and you get served the staff are always so excited about what they’re providing and want to teach you more about where that food might have come from, why it was cooked this way. You don’t get that experience very often in other states. I think it says a lot about how much we care for the land we sit on. When I was talking to Andy, the creative director, that always kind of felt like the thing that underpinned it. It might be small, but to us, it’s massive. As South Australians, I think we love to tell a story, and there’s a sense of cultural myth-making that we wanted to instil in the ads. In terms of where it’s gonna go, it’s, you know, it’s a big strategy. It’s not just the first lot of films. So I think as the South Australian cinematic universe builds out a lot of what makes it special will become clearer and clearer and clearer.
DS: I suppose in the ads that have come out, it’s very landscape-heavy. Let’s talk about that. It’s a beautiful state. Where did you go and why?
NM: For Harvest, we travelled all four corners of the Barossa and all four corners of McLaren Vale, and we were trying to find a set of locations that felt unified across all of them, spoke to a sense of heritage and history in South Australia, which I think is really important. And I feel like a lot of people here maybe don’t know a lot about South Australian history outside of a few major things taught in school. But we have an incredibly deep history with music and the relationship between that and the landscape. We wanted to find places that were reminiscent of what you know to be the Barossa, but while still speaking to that history and telling a story that felt summery and vibrant and kind of delish. It just takes a lot of fucking looking, to be honest. I think we scouted for about two months just to find spots that felt really nice, and that includes the other two films that came out as well.
DS: Did you get to see parts that you’ve never seen before?
NM: Yeah, definitely. I think the true tragedy of making a film, whether it’s commercial or not, or for South Australia or not, is you see so much and you discover so much about whatever it is you’re researching, in this case, South Australia, and it just becomes this tragedy that you can’t fit it all into the one film.
DS: Two months of looking for 30 seconds. And what’s the tagline? It’s about the simple pleasures, right? What’s the simple pleasure for you in Adelaide?
NM: Adelaide? Oh, man, simplest pleasure I have in Adelaide is, honestly, it’s walking through the Parklands into the city. It’s so nice, especially now that I live on the north side, cutting through Adelaide University, passing by the Torrens, the parklands that surround the north side, especially near the cathedral. It’s such a gorgeous experience. And I don’t think you get the same uncluttered viewpoint in other cities. And you get to see Adelaide for what it is. It’s a nice reminder that Adelaide is kind of sitting on this knife’s edge for progress, and getting a really good sense for where it’s travelling.
DS: How about we do some rapid-fire questions. Favourite spot for go for a drink?
NM: I love Loc. It takes all of the stress out of having to pick a bottle of wine. You go there, their service is incredible. He sits down with you. He tells you exactly what you might be after. It’s always spot on. That’s how a wine bar should be.
DS: Best place to get a sando?
NM: One’s not necessarily a sando, but it’s sando adjacent. I’ve really been enjoying Frankly Bagels and I love Pinco. I just think their marinated tomato sandwich is a must try. Also Gang for the Houdini hot burger, which is close enough to a sandwich.
DS: Who are some of your favourite Adelaide creatives?
NM: Always Lili Harrison, I think she’s incredible. Like incredibly entrepreneurial minded, insane problem solver, and has the ambition of the whole city put together. And for just the prolific number of films he creates, Connor Mercury.