House of Atlas
Brand Spot
A collaboration worth the wait.
I first connected with Humanaut, a Chattanooga-based agency, back in 2020. We had a few conversations over the years, but it wasn’t until 2024 that we finally collaborated on a project. That project was House of Atlas, a new men’s grooming brand from Athena Club, best known for their feminine shaving products.
Creative Director Steven Preisman developed bold, offbeat concepts for the launch, and I got to bring them to life. We produced two separate shoots: the first introduced the brand and its core products, while the second featured timely campaigns, including a Father’s Day spot and a playful April Fools commercial.
House of Atlas Brand Spot :45
Turning ridiculous into remarkable.
House of Atlas was one of the most creatively unhinged campaigns I’ve ever directed. For the Father’s Day spot, we built a katana made entirely of razor blades, which meant treating the prop like a real weapon and creating a handling protocol just to film it.
The April Fools commercial was no less wild, featuring a bald cat in a custom-fitted jacket from our costume team. Every concept pushed us into delightfully ridiculous territory — and made it that much more fun to bring to life.
Visually, these spots are some of the most striking I’ve done.
But to get there, I had to build sets entirely from scratch — a daunting challenge on the budget we had, but one that forced me to make every decision with precision. The production design, led by Paul and his team, elevated the entire world we were building, and the cast brought it to life (even while shirtless in the middle of winter).
One of my favorite moments?
DoorDashing a machete from Lowe’s just so I could stage a “shaving” photo for the treatment. What started as a joke turned into the actual katana concept, and the effort paid off — the client loved the work. One of the spots even ran in Times Square and on prime-time TV.
