“Sabertooths and dinosaurs ruled till the ice age – but what survived is cockroaches.” This is how Pranav Harihar Sharma’s synopsis of his session at ADFEST 2018 begins, which is curiously titled ‘Be Michael Corvin: A Hybrid’.
 

In case you were wondering, Michael Corvin is a character from the Underworld film series, and he’s the first Lycan/Vampire Hybrid. It’s this hybrid nature that inspired the topic of Pranav’s session.
 

“Today we are divided like vampires and lycans,” explains Sharma, Executive Creative Director of Leo Burnett in Mumbai. “A client is no more interested in the age-old copy-art-servicing-planning system. She has moved on from the clutches of cliché designations/roles. She is fed up of seeing vampires and werewolves. She wants to interact with a hybrid now.”
 

Intrigued? Read on…
 

For those who haven’t watched Underworld, how does Michael Corvin’s character influence your session at ADFEST this year?
 
The session is based on my own personal experiences and ‘Michael Corvin’ is a wrapper around it.  It’s nice to give a species a name. I call the ‘hybrid species in advertising’ Michael Corvin! To understand a hybrid, you need not watch ‘Underworld’ or know Michael Corvin’s character in the movie.
 
It’s not required. But anyone who is a hybrid in advertising is Michael Corvin. I’m Michael Corvin, and there may be a lot more out there! What one needs to understand here is ‘what is a hybrid in advertising’.  Knowing that is important, and that’s what the session will dwell on.
 

What will people learn from your session at ADFEST & why should they come along?
 
My session won’t be talking technology or strategy! You can get that on the world wide web and in many other places.
 
My session will talk about Life – in and out of advertising. I will try to cover the most obvious things that we tend to overlook. As many have said, finding the simple thing is the most difficult! Advertising today is being overshadowed and overwhelmed by technology, mediums and designations. We need to go back to our roots. Not advertising roots but human roots. Behaviour, capabilities and understanding. We need to REVERSE TRANSFORM.
 
The session won’t just be taking cues from a Hollywood franchise (as visible from the title) but also will be borrowing from Indian Mythology and world history.  The session will be an advertising version of a TED talk. What I call it, you get to know in the session itself.
 

You were dyslexic growing up, yet today you are a writer, director – and one of your first roles in advertising was as a proofreader! How did you overcome being dyslexic to forge a successful career in advertising?
 
 I don’t think I have made a successful career in advertising – yet! I’m still in the process. I’m still learning and I’m not a legend yet!
 
I believe that physical problems can stop you only to the point when your will is subdued. And that happens when you are not doing what you want to do. It’s human nature. The moment mind and heart starts working in tandem, all the physical problems disappear. We have seen disabled people conquering peaks and crossing channels!!
 
I’m still dyslexic and find problems in directions and angles. But as I said, the moment I’m behind the camera as a director, the angles start coming to me automatically! I may find driving a car difficult but when it comes to framing a scene, I’m game. The same thing happened when I started proof reading! I never fumbled in spellings, though I made (and still make) mistakes in grammar. But thankfully the first language of my country is NOT English and filmmaking has no language.  Strangely I survived.
 

You were a Fabulous Four director at ADFEST 2015. What did you learn from the experience, and has it helped your career since then?
 
There is no bigger stamp for direction in advertising than Fabulous Four. It can really kick start a directional career. Before Fabulous Four, I used to ghost direct my own commercials as neither clients nor my own agency were confident that I could direct. And this is the biggest hurdle a creative guy faces when he is trying to cross over from creative direction to direction.
 
The world just doesn’t let you transform yourself.  Fabulous Four not only established me as a director in the eyes of stakeholders (both inside the agency and in client’s offices) but also gave me the strength to pitch myself confidently. You can say that after Fabulous Four I came out of the closet!
 

Since then, you’ve directed 30 advertisements – what is your proudest achievement (either professionally, personally, or both?) 
 
 My proudest achievements are two.
 
First, in November 2017, I was given the Golden Elephant trophy for best direction for my period short film, ‘1869’ at the International Children’s Film Festival.  The award is special as in this film I was tackling two challenges.  First, it was India’s first period short film set in the era of 1800 and second it is a children’s film. So working with children in a period film with absolutely limited budget is a tightrope walk. But I’m happy that me and my team delivered on that, and we won the biggest award in one of the biggest International Film festivals.
 
My second memorable moment was when one of my ads went viral and it not only won a lot of awards but also a lot of public acclaim. The sweetest reward I got was in the form of Facebook personal messages where people blessed me for making the ad and told me how it has changed either their lives or the lives of their loved ones. For me, this is the biggest award a creative person can get and it is bigger than any metal of any form, size or color.
 


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