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Exclusive interview with Alec Sutherland, director of the Yiddishe iPhone ad

Many of you enjoyed watching the independently filmed iPhone ad that featured two real Chasidishe chevrah talking about the mailes of the iPhone. We were very intrigued by the concept of this ad so we contacted the director and procured an interview with him about his experience with casting such a diverse crowd and making the ad.

Here’s how it went;

Chaptzem:
Two of the big topics that are prevalent in NYC at this time, the iPhone and diversity. Your ad touches on both of them and combines them so beautifully.

I'm interested in the methods that you used to assemble such a diverse group of actors.

Alec Sutherland:
Myself and my producer Todd Dossantos got the actors, or non-actors primarily through two methods.

First, many of the scenes were pulled directly from situations or locations that I experience in everyday living in my Brooklyn neighborhood. For most of those, we primarily asked the people who worked at the bodega or barbershop or whatever, to be in the spot.

For the other roles we posted a few casting calls on several websites asking for actors with specific ethnicities and particular fluencies. We had a legitimate casting call in which we saw about seventy people and I picked the ones that I felt would work best.

For the hearing impaired scene we contacted a high school for the deaf and they helped us out.

Chaptzem:
How was it for you to work with them all?

Alec:
As far as working with them, the experience was great. It was very interesting going from a scene with professionally trained actors to a scene with people who had no experience whatsoever. Actually, I think I enjoyed the ‘real’ scenes more because they were much more organic, and I think that translated well in the piece.

Chaptzem:
Thank you very much for your time.

Alec:
Thanks again for your interest.