Adland Rockstar: Ketaki Guhagurkar

This week, Ketaki Guhagurkar, films supervisor at Contract advertising, took some time out from crisis management for an upcoming TVC shoot, to talk to Campaign India about what she loves about being the “agency’s producer”.

What intrigued you about advertising?
I studied commerce in college and, right from my college days, I was dubbing for animation, TVCs and so on. Whenever you go for a recording, there’s always one person on the other side of the glass who’s really nasty, and always ordering, “Do this, do that”. That person’s got a lot of power; usually what he or she wants is the worst suggestion and you have to do that. So I wanted to know what/who that person is, and found out that they aren’t from the production house, but from the agency, and I decided to go check what it is. It’s been 3 and a half years since then. I interned at Rediffusion, got picked up at Saatchi and then joined Contract last November.

What’s your job all about?
To make it very simple, everything that goes in between to take the script to reality is my job, be it a TVC or a radio spot. Of course, we’re usually fulfilling everyone’s demands, because you have the make the end result look good in the available resources, which you know are going to be limited, because not everyone has the money.

Which was the most challenging production you’ve been part of so far?
In my last few days at Saatchi, we’d shot these two cute films for ICICI. All the clients were happy, but when we went to present them to the main head (extremely confident that she was going to love it), she watched them thrice and then said, “Okay, but this isn’t ICICI”.  So those films were bombed and we were told to shoot a new film in a day. None of us knew what we were going to do. After a while, we thought that just by editing it in a different way it could work, and somehow Ramanuj Shastry [national creative director] convinced the clients that it could work, and it did – the films were approved without any re-shooting, re-recording or re-anything.

And the most memorable shoot?
We shot a film last month in Goa. It was supposed to be near Aguada and when we saw the pictures beforehand, everything seemed perfect. When we got there, though, we realised there was this steep path to walk down for the shoot; there was barely space to keep one foot on another, and the entire film crew was also there with lights, cameras and so on. It was fun, because we had such difficulty making our way up and down, and when we saw the film, we thought, “Definitely worth it.”

Which is the one film you’d have loved to be on the credit list for?
Last year’s Grand Prix winner “Carousel”. Everything was stop motion in it; for me that would be a real learning curve.

What do you like about your job?
You get to see what you do - the output is right there in front of you. And whether it’s good, bad or ugly, it’s your baby. You don’t need 10 people to tell you whether it’s a good job or a bad job, you just know it, and it’s very simple.

What do you hate about it?
I hate that everyone plays it safe. Our audience is not that dumb, we can be a little bolder in our ideas. There’s never time to take a risk either; sometimes I ask the production house for a kick-ass, CG film in a day, and I know what I’m doing is wrong as well.

Anyone you’d like to have a working dinner with?
Too many: Besides all the big daddies of ad filmmaking, maybe Vinil Mathew of Footcandles, who I haven’t worked with as yet, and I’d like to know more about his way of thinking and looking at films.