Vaughan Arnell

Vaughan just recently completed post production on the M&S Christmas campaign for Pip Bishop, Chris Hodgkiss and Sally Pritchett out of RKCR Y&R London.

Vaughan has had a busy Autumn filming back to back, first with a great script for Horlicks out of Grey London with Andy Amadeo, Adam Arber, Chris Felstead, and Ellie Gibb. He then headed to Lisbon to film a visual feast for Ford Kinetic for Camilla Herberstein and Lyn Woodcraft out of Ogilvy London. 

August saw Vaughan re-united with Robbie Williams’ on a video that marks Robbie’s long anticipated comeback with the first single ‘Bodies’ from the new album. The shoot took place in the Californian desert.

Vaughan spent the early part of the Summer delivering a Music Promo for rising star Paloma Faith. Before this Vaughan had been busy filming a spot for a Vodafone launch in Germany.

Vaughan began 2009 delivering two very strong films for Aviva out of AMV BBDO. The spots were created by Mike Durban and Tony Strong, and produced by Anita Sasdy. The work brought together one of the largest all star casts ever seen in a British TV commercial. Bruce Willis, Ringo Starr, Alice Cooper, Dame Edna Everage, and Elle Macpherson all featured in Name Change. They appeared alongside archive footage of themselves saying whether they would have become famous by keeping their original name. I Am John features members of the same cast along with Michelle Yeoh, Macaulay Culkin and Ekow Eshun . The spots were shot in London, Los Angeles and Singapore.

2008 was spent focusing on quality of work. Vaughan began last year shooting a global campaign for Samsung out of Leo Burnett’s Chicago. He followed this up with a brilliant commercial for the launch of Stella Artois Légère for Lowe World Wide, and a charming little film for Shell/ Ferrari featuring Michael Schumacher. The second half of 2008 was spent in preproduction on the two epic Aviva films.

In the not too distant past, Vaughan has delivered outstanding work for The RAF, Lexus, Intel, Halifax, O2 and Carlsberg. All of these spots have featured the attributes that mark Vaughan out as one of the UK’s leading Director’s. Each spot has a keen eye for pin sharp quality, the clever use of CGI, not to mention a sense of fun and entertainment.

Vaughan is the only Director to have received 3 Brit awards for his music video’s, for George Michael ‘Fast Love’, ‘Millennium’ for Robbie Williams and the Spice Girls ‘Say You’ll be There’. Having had a break from promos recently, he will be looking to engage on selected projects over the coming year's.

Vaughan’s passion for film blossomed at Epsom School of Design where he studied graphics. During his time there he dabbled with his first promos. Having graduated, Vaughan went to work in London as a runner for a sleeve design company (record sleeve for our younger readers). Realising that film was to be his medium to express himself he moved to a production company and worked for Tim Pope.

His first big Directing break came a few years later with the video ‘ Love of the Common People’ for Paul Young and he has never looked back. He went on to make dozens of videos before he met Anthea Benton. They decided to collaborate as a one of the first directing duos and took the music scene by storm, Directing promos for Terence Trent D’Arby, Simply Red and Curiosity Killed the Cat amongst many others.

The progression into commercials was inevitable and their opportunity came whilst making a spec film for Simons Palmer Denton that ended up winning the Agency the BT account. With the addition of the Wrangler jeans commercial to their reel, they were well on the way to establishing themselves as formidable commercial Directors.

Their major breakthrough came with the highly acclaimed Levis ‘Creek’ for BBH. A potential banana skin because of the 501 heritage, they nailed it with one of the most stunning and powerful 501 commercials made to date. It was decorated with two D&AD Silvers, BTA gold and a plethora of other awards.

There followed a series of commercials for many high profile clients including Smirnoff and another film for Levis entitled ‘Spaceman’. Then came arguably their finest hour with the D&AD Best Direction award for the stunning Stella Artois ‘Red Shoes’ film which cleaned up at all the award ceremonies that year.

After deciding to go their separate ways, Vaughan jumped straight into music video work for The Spice Girls, George Michael and Robbie Williams. The commercials continued too, with a flurry of films for Carlsberg, Lucozade, Dockers and Audi to name but a few.

With his fresh and innovative style and his ability to connect with huge audiences in all formats of film, Vaughan continues to go from strength to strength.