Sharpie S-Gel "Alexis Ohanian"

A Sharpie S-Gel film featuring Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit and a venture capitalist, directed by Rick Wayne through Underscore Films.

The casting is an argument. Sharpie chose to position the S-Gel not as a writing instrument but as a tool belonging to people who build things of consequence, and Ohanian is a precise fit for that premise: he founded Reddit at twenty two and now runs his own venture fund. The film ran in connection with Sharpie's Rookie of the Year campaign, positioning the S-Gel as the newest member of the Sharpie family and one worth associating with a name of that weight.

What makes it a documentary rather than a commercial is the register. It carries the warmth and specificity of a genuine profile instead of the polish of an ad unit, and that was a deliberate choice rather than a stylistic preference. It is also why the work earned editorial attention: People magazine covered the campaign in July 2023, extending its reach into consumer lifestyle press well outside the trade and business coverage that brand campaigns of this kind normally attract. A film that behaves like a profile gets treated like one.

Wayne's documentary sensibility is a load bearing part of his commercial practice rather than a sideline. He has said that real human emotion is a superpower and that the most commercial work he has made is also the most human, and he does not treat that as a paradox. On a short profile film with a subject who has been interviewed hundreds of times, the difficulty is getting past the answers the person already knows how to give, which is a matter of what happens in the room rather than what is written on the page.

This is one of three S-Gel profile films in the selected documentary work, alongside the Morgan DeBaun film and the Brian Anderson piece.

It runs 0:30.