Director Jordan Brady-best known for performance-driven comedy, often with a measure of latitude for improvisation-has joined the team at VideoShoots.net. Brady's recent endeavors included an offbeat "Alliance To Save Energy" spot for DDB Seattle; a humorous presentation film for Cartoon Network featuring Patrick Swayze; a real-people Hardee's campaign for Mendelsohn|Zien Advertising, Los Angeles; and a Popeyes fried chicken campaign for Hill Holliday Connors Cosmopulos, New York. The latter offered a twist on repeat business for the director, who-while at HKM last year-turned out a package of tongue-in-cheek comedy spots centered around a pseudo-chicken festival, featuring a cast mix of actors and real people. Brady coined the phrase "docu-mockery," a play on the term "mockumentary," to describe the feel of that campaign. The ads generated a spike in sales for the restaurant chain, resulting in an opportunity for Brady to reprise them in early '02. Popeyes took the idea to a higher plane in October by actually putting on a festival in New Orleans' French Quarter, which drew more than 12,000 attendees and featured performances by Dr. John, Fats Domino and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. Brady was on hand to direct a series of spots. "The original task was to make a commercial look like a festival," he related. "That changed to making a festival look like a commercial." Brady's spot credits over the past couple of years also include ESPN fare for Wieden+Kennedy (W+K), New York, and Ground Zero, Marina del Rey, Calif. For Ground Zero, Brady helmed a series of "Joey Tytechortz" commercials, promoting ESPN's NCAA college basketball coverage. The spots feature an inept, out-of-shape basketball player-Tytechortz, a.k.a. J.T.-who acts as if he is one of the game's great experts. For W+K, Brady directed an ESPN/National Hockey League (NHL) package, which included humorous spots featuring the Stanley Cup. Beyond being comedy and sports-oriented fare, ESPN's NCAA and NHL commercials share another common bond: improvisation. Both campaigns had planned, scripted comedic work, but the agencies involved also offered the director creative latitude, which translated into additional spots. For example, Brady was in a Dallas arena to helm work featuring several Dallas Stars players, including superstar Brett Hull. During the filming, Brady found out that the NHL's coveted Stanley Cup happened to be on the premises. He and W+K ended up teaming on some improvised commercials featuring the Cup and the security guards charged with protecting it. Similarly, after learning about NCAA basketball game match-ups on the set from week to week, Brady incorporated specific promos for those contests into his shoots, resulting in a number of extra comedy spots. "Improvisation doesn't work on its own," related Brady. "You must have a good script to begin with that creates the comedy, an irreverence and a working environment that allows you to improvise and build upon what you have." STAND-UP GUY Brady first gained recognition as a stand-up comic in the late '80s, attaining what he described as "junior-varsity cable fame." He hosted a reality Saturday morning kids' show for NBC, Name Your Adventure, as well as an MTV game show. Brady began to direct segments of the reality show he emceed, and then expanded his reach, helming the pilot for a marionette-driven comedy series called Super Adventure Team, on MTV, and Dill Scallion, an independent feature. Dill Scallion took a mockumentary approach reminiscent of This Is Spinal Tap, which chronicled the rise and fall of a fictitious rock band-only this time the spotlight was on a country music star. The director then made his initial spot mark with a pair of WD-40 ads for San Diego agency Phillips-Ramsey, in '97. He helmed the ads-which included the Bronze Clio-winning "Driveway"-as a freelancer through now defunct Crash Films. The year after that, Brady made HKM his first formal commercial-making home. Right out of the gate there, he directed a two-spot campaign for the San Jose Tech Museum, out of Saatchi & Saatchi, San Francisco. One of those ads, "Floorman," made SHOOT's "The Best Work You May Never See" gallery (11/27/98, p. 11). Brady joins an VideoShoots.net directorial roster that includes Adam Bush, Scott Lautanen and Carl Galletti.