May, 2026.- There is a line between authentic storytelling and exploitation. Chandler Kauffman knows exactly where it is—and refuses to cross it.
The director, whose work spans global pharmaceutical giants like Novartis and Novo Nordisk, recently took on a radically different assignment: a campaign for Ember Health, a small mission-driven clinic offering ketamine treatment for depression. The challenge was not just creative but ethical. Ketamine therapy faces deep public misconceptions, and the patients telling their stories are not actors. They are real people who have struggled with depression, suicidality, and the weight of a mental health system that too often fails them.
Kauffman approached the project with a documentary sensibility. He brought a documentary DP, Graham Willoughby, and ran a lean crew with smaller Sony FX6 and FX3 cameras to minimize the gear footprint. The priority was not cinematic polish but creating a welcoming, intimate environment where subjects felt safe to share. On pre-interview calls, Kauffman established trust and parameters tailored to each person’s comfort. And on set, something remarkable happened: the more they talked and developed rapport, the more the subjects wanted to share. Some revealed depths of their depression—and potential suicidality—that the team had not known about beforehand.
The resulting campaign was shortlisted for an AICP Next Award. Not because of flashy craft, Kauffman suggests, but because the jury responded to something else: a real desire for honest conversations about mental health. Everyone can relate to these struggles to some degree. The project said the quiet part out loud—and now more people want to share.
In this interview, Kauffman discusses the single creative mistake he avoided (inauthenticity), the tension between a better shot and a subject’s emotional safety, and why smaller, mission-driven clients often allow for more honest storytelling than global giants.
1. Stigma as a Creative Barrier: Ketamine treatment is effective but faces public misconceptions. When you’re directing a campaign that needs to destigmatize while remaining credible, what’s the single biggest creative mistake you avoided?
I think anything that felt inauthentic or dishonest would sink a project like this, especially if it seemed like we as filmmakers were putting out thumbs on the scale, so to speak. Our goal was to allow the patients’ stories and the integrity of the providers to destigmatize ketamine and talking about mental health.
2. Documentary Roots in Branded Content: You brought a documentary DP (Graham Willoughby) to shoot patient portraits for a healthcare brand. What does a documentary cinematographer capture that a traditional commercial DP might miss when filming vulnerable subjects?
While Graham has plenty of commercial experience, this project required a different approach. We ran a lean crew, all of us hands-on, so we wouldn’t overwhelm our subjects with a big production presence. That kind of nimbleness and story-first instinct is what documentary work demands. The priority was creating a welcoming environment that felt more intimate and low key than a typical commercial shoot. Graham brings a calm and inquisitive energy to set, along with decades of doc experience. Together, along with our producer Glen Hoffman and the rest of the crew, we collaborated on a workflow using smaller Sony FX6’s and FX3 4K cameras to minimize our gear footprint.
3. Honoring the Subject vs. Serving the Brand: These are real patient stories, not actors. Where is the line between authentic storytelling and exploitation of trauma for emotional effect? How do you protect the subject without sanitizing the story?
We went in committed to honoring whatever our subjects’ lived experience actually was, and to encourage them to tell their story as honestly as possible. Practically this meant establishing trust and parameters tailored to their comfort on the preinterview calls which I had with all of the subjects ahead of the shoot. A big goal of this project is to de-stigmitize conversations around mental health, and depression in particular. Too many people suffer unaware of the recent breakthroughs in treating depression, and there have been so many misconceptions about ketamine in recent years, we felt a duty to do what we can to help change the narrative.
4. The Intimacy Imperative: You said “empathy, respect, trust and care were essential” to telling these stories. Walk me through one moment on set where you had to choose between a better shot and protecting the subject’s emotional safety. What did you choose?
That tension was never really a factor on this project. The Ember team and my team were open to whatever our interviewees wanted to share and we found the more we talked and developed a rapport the more they wanted to share. Some of the patients revealed more about their depression, and potential suicidality, than we had known about before filming the interview. This was of course hard to hear as you empathize so much with each person and their struggle, but you also recognize that their openness and desire to share this publicly comes from being in a different place and wanting to speak to other people who may be struggling like they did.
5. Healthcare as a Category: You’ve worked for Novartis, Sanofi, Novo Nordisk, and now Ember Health. How does directing for a small, mission-driven clinic like Ember differ from directing for a global pharmaceutical giant?
I found Ember entered into this project with a lot more flexibility and desire to go where the story took us than maybe some bigger clients would have been comfortable with. That’s probably a byproduct of how regulated this kind of advertising can be but also Ember’s commitment to telling the complete story as accurately as possible. Ember very much knows their brand and are precise in their messaging but are also committed to portraying the most accurate picture of depression and ketamine treatment.
6. The AICP Next Shortlist: The campaign was shortlisted for an AICP Next Award. What do you think the jury responded to that isn’t obvious from a standard case study video? Was it the craft, the restraint, or something else entirely?
Hard for me to say exactly but given the response we’ve gotten to this project and the conversations it’s sparked, I think there’s a real desire to have honest conversations about depression and mental health especially with everything going on in the world. Everyone can relate to these kinds of struggles to some degree, it sort of feels like we said the quiet part out loud and now more people want to share.
