JULY 2013
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shots Cannes Special xx CELEBRATING 60 YEARS XXX
Tim Godsall xx DIVINE COMEDY XXX
shots.net
Dan Weiden xx TALKING TITANIUM XXX
Fred & Farid xx FRANK & FORTHRIGHT XXX
New York Experiential Advertising Cannes Special
Sir John Hegarty CONJURING CREATIVITY
60 Places | NEW YORK
illustration: CHRIS EDE
After playing second fiddle to the West Coast for the last few years, the Big Apple is once again back on top of its game when it comes to innovative, creative communications. Danny Edwards hits the streets to check out the empire state of mind among the city’s new generation of towering talents
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NEW YORK
NEW YORK
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62 Places | NEW YORK
“It’s that friction and tension in New York that makes good things possible.” 1
taking the lead T
hat advertising is changing is nothing new. We are constantly reminded of the changing nature of the business; of the varying ways in which brands can connect with their target audience; the differing playgrounds in which advertisers, and by extension creatives, can play and the exciting results those changes bring. Change, we are told, is good. What’s even better though, is actually understanding that change. The last decade has brought a huge level of transformation to the advertising industry. Even if, like John Hegarty on page 87, you don’t believe that the advent of digital really is a revolutionary advancement for advertising, you can’t help but be both excited and a little trepedatious about its ubiquity. Digital is everywhere. Modern life is overseen by our digital interactions. Our viewing, and indeed social habits, have altered in line with the ever-increasing App Store. “I can’t imagine,” says Framestore’s head of digital, Mike Wood, on page 70, “as seismic a set of years as 2004 to 2009. That was the real digital revolution.” But how well are advertisers managing that alteration? The answer coming from many people in New York is, ‘up until recently, not very’. A scattergun approach seems to have been the main tactic, with brands and agencies alike jumping on new technology simply to be involved rather than because it might be useful. But no more. Change has come and understanding seems now to have
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followed. “I love technology, I think it’s a great canvas,” states Droga5 founder and creative chairman, David Droga. “But it’s not an answer, it’s not a solution. A lot of people think it is; ‘Oh that’s the latest technology, let’s just pile in, pile all our ideas into that’. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. But then, if you really have a reason to do it, fantastic.”
Reasons to be digital The ‘reason to do it’ is where this new change has occurred and it seems that New York is taking a lead on how to implement that change. Paul Malmstrom, founding partner at Mother New York, agrees with Droga that many have been drawn to technology because of advertising’s obsession with the cult of the new. “I think it was, often, ‘let’s just do that new thing’,” he says. “And it came down to the new buzzword [that] we needed to execute in that area and the reasons why were a little blurry, but I think we’re all a little smarter now.” New York agencies, believes Mark Figliulo, chairman and chief creative officer at TBWA\ Chiat\Day New York, are leading the way in discovering the new opportunities and new avenues of exploration for the industry as a whole and, as Malmstrom says, being smarter about the approaches they take. That’s not to say New York has worked out all the answers just yet. “I think New York is still figuring out exactly what the future of the business is,” says Figliulo, “which is, traditionally, New York’s role. There’s been a lot of change so we [the city of New York] matter right now. I think the world looks to us and says, ‘OK, we’re confused, there’s been so much change. New York, are you gonna lead the way?’ Right or wrong I think that’s often how it works so, yes, it’s an exciting place to be right now.” And it seems that New York is leading the way. The last couple of years have seen some fantastic
campaigns out of NY agencies that are changing the way people think about creativity and the application of idea and technology. Figliulo’s agency recently completed a piece of work for the Brooklyn Film Festival called Expand Your View which made ingenious use of both creative thinking and technological application. The campaign compressed short films down to create, essentially, scannable barcodes which, when used in conjunction with a specially created app, link to the film in question. The images were also pieces of creative art in themselves – on business cards and on posters – and the whole campaign connected brilliantly with the intended audience and worked into Figliulo’s insistence that advertising, successful advertising that is, needs to be ‘functional art’ and that the creativity must sing for its supper. AKQA has also been at the forefront of this sort of thinking. Their campaigns for brands such as World Wildlife Fund, for which they created an interactive iPad app to teach children about the environment and animal endangerment, have been a huge success, both creatively and commercially, and the app already has more than 500,000 downloads. Another example would be Droga5’s Cannes Titanium Lion-winning campaign for Jay-Z and Bing, Decoded, which utilised more traditional art forms such as posters, sculpture and installations, but combined them with geo-technology on Bing’s map and search functionality to create a campaign that spanned not only platforms but cities and countries too.
The Big Apple bites back Many of the city’s creative thinkers believe that the focus has shifted from the West Coast back to the East and that New York is undergoing a creative renaissance of sorts. “I think that the last year has been really good for New York,” says Matt
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NEW YORK
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1 Brooklyn Film Festival, Expand Your View out of TBWA\Chiat\Day New York 2 Yes Virginia! The Musical from JWT New York 3 Jay-Z with Bing, Decoded from Droga5 New York 4 Nike+ Kinect Training, from AKQA
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MacDonald, co-chief creative officer at JWT New York. “I think a lot of people in the industry are shifting their focus back to New York as an epicentre of creativity [because] for a number of years people were really looking to the West Coast. All of a sudden they realised that New York is the centre of development of creativity, of technology and they are turning their focus here.” David Lubars, chief creative officer at BBDO North America, is someone who has been at the epicentre of that creative thinking for some time and is no stranger to changing technology and shifting advertising practices. He was a key figure in the seminal BMW The Hire films, which in 2001 helped usher in a new approach to content and advertising’s place within it, and
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Lubars, while embracing the current climate, is keen to point out that you should never get too comfortable. “The interesting thing is that [where we are now] isn’t the end,” he says. “There are going to be new things coming out and those things will change the game too. There’s always something happening.” New York, like much of the rest of the world, has been at the mercy of a highly precarious financial situation in the last few years but even that is given relatively short shrift. There is a sense that, while the ship might not be completely steadied, the worst of the sea-sickness has passed. “There are still some financial difficulties,” says BBH New York’s John Patroulis, “but those pressures always exist, and I also feel like they’ve evened out. Everyone’s a bit more relaxed, which always makes you braver.” Free, or at least freer spending might not always be a good thing, though. Financial constraints, according to many in the city, make for tighter and more creative thinking. “There’s a feeling that people are starting to spend again,” continues JWT’s MacDonald, “[but] constraints can be really good for creativity.” Asked whether the recent
recession has helped focus creative thinking, Tom Jump, EVP and managing director of Leo Burnett New York says: “Absolutely. Everyone seems to be more strategically and results focused. It’s now standard practice for everyone, including the creative teams, to inquire about the real business problem we want our work to solve… It has encouraged more precision and accountability.”
New York state of mind One thing that everyone agrees on is that the city itself is responsible for much of the creativity emanating from its inhabitants. Living in a city with so much diversity, both cultural and artistic, it seems you can’t fail to be inspired. “New York is so ripe with culture, humanity and unique experiences that it provides daily inspiration for new ideas and expressions,” says Leo Burnett’s Jump. “I read some research not too long ago talking about the denser the population, the more a city creates; [it has] something to do with the ideas colliding off of one another,” says MacDonald. “It’s that friction and tension in New York that makes good things possible.” The potent marriage of possibility, creativity and increased awareness of what can, and more importantly, should be done makes New York one of the most vibrant creative cities in the world and a place that looks set to continue to evolve. “Ironically,” concludes Jay Benjamin, Leo Burnett’s chief creative officer, “the city most famous for the old Madison Avenue way of working has quickly become one of the most innovative and energetic markets in the world. It’s a chaotic atmosphere filled with tech start-ups, agency start-ups, production companies, fashion designers, musicians and storied agencies who are all constantly reinventing our industry. We love the chaos. It’s a lot of fun to work in New York right now.” S
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64 Places | new york
Sally-Ann Dale didn’t get to be Droga5’s head of integrated production without being, as Danny Edwards observes, calm and highly organised. She also has to be adept at hand-holding, ego-wrangling and casting the right folk in the right jobs
cool queen of casting S
itting down to talk to Sally-Ann Dale in one of the meeting rooms at the sprawling Droga5 office in New York, you get the impression that maybe Dale is unused to being interviewed, to being in the spotlight. She, unlike pretty much any other interviewee in my experience, has notes, diagrams and information written down to pass on and be explored. Is she nervous? She doesn’t seem nervous. She talks eloquently and expertly about her current job, previous jobs and how a girl from Bedford, England ended up in the Big Apple. No, what dawns as she speaks is that she is organised. Supremely so. But that should come as no surprise. Her current role as head of integrated production at one of the world’s leading creative agencies is, she later explains, “like being a referee” and overseeing the output across all the various disciplines means that being organised isn’t just a useful personal trait, but a necessary working function.
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Like many before her, Dale’s life in advertising started by chance. It wasn’t something she initially set out to be involved in, it was simply ‘a job’. But now, after 25 years in the business and with a multitude of award-winning work to her name – including the seminal TV spot NSPCC Cartoon, one of the original viral campaigns, Still Free for Ecko Unlimited, and the multi-disciplined Decode Jay-Z with Bing – Dale is one of the most respected producers in the industry and an integral cog in the Droga5 wheel. Having left school at 16 and already with a year’s work at a solicitor’s office under her belt, Dale’s step-sister got her a job at a small ad agency in her native Bedford in the south of England that she too was working at. “It was tiny,” she recalls. “I think it mainly did catalogue work with some typography and stuff, but there were just some different characters there.” She liked the vibe of the office and the possibilities of the industry and soon moved on to a design company in Marylebone High Street in London before, not long after, seeing an ad for secretarial work at Saatchi & Saatchi London which at the age of 18 and after three interviews, she got and which, she says, “opened up her world”.
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1 Dale worked on The Great Schlep, Droga5’s campaign to get Jewish people to vote for Obama in 2008 2 Decode Jay-Z with Bing
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Not long after starting at Saatchi she realised that where she wanted to be was the TV department, which she refers to as “dynamic”, but it was another five years before she got her chance and was made one of Saatchi’s TV producers. From there though, her career took off. Altogether Dale spent 15 years at Saatchi London, where her work picked up a multitude of awards. The aforementioned Frank Budgen-directed Cartoon bagged Commercial of the Year at the British Television Advertising Awards in 2003 and the Best Crafted Commercial of the Year at the British
Television Craft Awards. Cartoon stands out for Dale as a project that she is not only proud off but one that really helped her both fully understand and better hone her role as a producer. “[That project] was a great learning experience,” she says. “It was quite a brave film to make at that time and it taught me how to hold people’s hands and take them on the journey. You know, no matter what work we do and no matter how terrifying it is, if I’m in a room with a producer and they’re making me feel nervous then that’s no good for anybody. Holding people’s hands and making sure you’re bringing them along with you is challenging but absolutely key. NSPCC taught me a lot about that.”
When Droga met Dale Saatchi London is also where Dale first met David Droga who was executive creative director at the London shop and it’s a partnership that has continued to this day. When Droga left Saatchi in 2003 to take up the role of worldwide creative director for Publicis, based out of New York, he took Dale, who by this time had been made head of TV at the London agency, with him. Then, in 2006, when Droga set up Droga5, Dale was one of the first names on his list of people to help him get the fledgling agency off the ground. “I have worked with Sally-Ann for so long now I find it hard to remember not working with her,” says Droga. “She was my deputy head of broadcast when I was at Saatchi London and then she came to New York with me when I joined Publicis Worldwide. So when I decided to open Droga5 she was my first and only choice. I didn’t want anyone else to run production.” It wasn’t long before Dale and Droga5 were making headlines with Still Free, a fauxdocumentary spot for clothing brand Ecko Unlimited, shooting what, to everyone
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PHOTOGRAPH: danny clinch
“Holding people’s hands and making sure you’re bringing them along with you is challenging but absolutely key.”
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66 Places | new york including American mainstream news networks, looked like someone breaking into an air force base to ‘tag’ the President’s private jet, Air Force One. Still Free was one of advertising’s first true viral sensations and set the tone for much of the groundbreaking and non-conformist work that the agency would come to be associated with. Dale’s current role as head of integrated production means that she has to hold lots of hands on lots of different projects but, more than that, she is a facilitator for those projects. She explains that, initially, it’s like being in casting.
She has to make sure that the most suitable people are put together on the right projects and then make sure those people and projects are working to the best of their abilities. “I have to make sure I have the right people in place to drive [the projects],” she says. Dale has been in New York for ten years now and, while a committed New Yorker, is still alien enough to notice the subtle, and often creative differences between it and London. “The creativity in New York is very dense,” Dale explains. “Dense in that it’s everywhere. I literally walk out of my front door and there are influences all around me. Everything is so beautifully art directed here, from a coffee cup to a dry cleaning slip. You always feel like you’ve been to New York before you come here because of the films but I suppose that’s also influenced the people who live and work here too, they’ve grown up in this very filmic, art-directed world.”
PHOTOGRAPH: paul mcgiever
Decoded gets decorated Dale adapted quickly to life in the city and since the very beginning of Droga5 has been at the heart of some of the most interesting and influential work the industry has produced, making sure that the projects flow as smoothly as possible and that people are allocated to the right jobs. Over the years those jobs and people have transitioned into a far more digital sphere which has meant a steep learning curve for her as well
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“The creativity in New York is very dense. Dense in that it’s everywhere. I literally walk out of my front door and there are influences all around me. Everything is so beautifully art directed here, from a coffee cup to a dry cleaning slip.”
as the industry in general. “[The learning curve] has been huge,” she nods, “but that’s also been the most exciting part, bringing in these amazing people that I can learn from.” One of the most difficult, but ultimately most satisfying jobs was the Decoded project for Jay-Z and Bing. Utilising a huge variety of platforms to promote both the search engine Bing and the soon-to-be-released Jay-Z autobiography, Decoded, the campaign saw every page of the book placed in a different location inspired by the words on the page, in a different format in 13 cities around the world; billboards, pool tables, jackets, cars wrapped in paper, the bottom of a swimming pools and many more. A location-based game was then created using Bing and its search and maps technology, and allowed fans to assemble the book digitally before the hard copy hit the shelves. It was a huge commercial and critical success, picking up a tonne of awards, including, at Cannes 2011, both the Outdoor and Integrated Grand Prix, plus gold and Titanium Lions. “It was a huge idea,” Dale says, with understatement. She again talks about the casting process and how important that was to the whole event. “The casting had to be spot on. Getting the right people in for the right amount of time to do their thing; ‘we can pay for him for 15 days then he’s out and that person’s in’. Because it was a huge team that basically slept [in the office] but all these amazing people made it great, it was such a brilliant collaboration. Sometimes the
hardest thing is managing the egos. Everyone’s great at their job, and pretty generous but when you’ve got an integrated campaign, you know…” she trails off before laughing… “‘my bit’s more important than your bit’.”
A healthy balance in the trust bank Dale is undoubtedly a trusted member of the Droga5 team, and understandably so. She has her finger on the pulse of pretty much everything that comes through the shop and has recently been appointed to a newly created Droga5 global board as the production leader. “Trust is something earned and Sally-Ann has a lot in the bank,” says Droga. “She has helped us build a future-facing, integrated agency and she has managed to do it with grace and humility.” But despite all the accolades, all the plaudits and testimonies, Dale simply loves being a producer and taking on the challenges offered by the role. “I always think as a producer,” she says. “You know, you get a big idea and you’re thinking ‘my first question is what do you want at the end of this?’. I can work out the journey as long as I know what [the client] wants as an end result, what they want people feeling. And by asking that question I feel I can lead the way. You may not get exactly what you want because you’ve only got, like, a dollar, but you’ll get something. When we understand what a client’s need is we can get them there, and that’s when it starts to get rewarding.” S
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68 Places | new york
Naysayers poo-pooed his move to games title work, but he proved them wrong with Xbox success. Now BBH New York’s CCO John Patroulis is enjoying another move that was questioned, from San Francisco to a Big Apple buzzing with creative energy
Getting his game face on “I
’m pretty proud of the reel we’ve put together over the past year and a half,” says John Patroulis, CCO at BBH New York. As well he should be. With great work including campaigns for Sprite, Google and a trio of Axe spots including Hot Girl vs Zombie and Office Love, plus the fantastic Susan Glenn, which starred Kiefer Sutherland, the past 18-month period has been one of creative rediscovery.
Not always a rational decision Eighteen months ago was when Patroulis joined BBH – from the agency twofifteenmccann (formerly TAG) in San Francisco – and, asked why he made the choice to move there after such success at his previous employers (more of which later), he explains that these decisions aren’t always rational. “It just felt exciting. Usually there are many things that pull you somewhere – career, life, you know, all that – and, on the career side,
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1 Halo 3 ODST The Life: one of the hugely successful game campaigns Patroulis worked on at TAG 2 Axe Susan Glenn
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BBH obviously has a great creative legacy. While the agency has been in New York for a while, the centre of gravity has always been London – and rightly so – but I felt there was an opportunity here to make this a great American creative agency.” Dedication to creativity is what Patroulis puts “at the centre of everything”, saying that the shop is looking to express that creativity in various ways and on various platforms, and that they’re feeling a good amount of momentum, fuelled by the new business they’re winning. One of those wins is Sony PlayStation and, with the eagerly anticipated PlayStation 4 console due to be released later this year, the creative possibilities are very exciting. Of course, Patroulis has form when it comes to games consoles with his work on Microsoft’s Xbox titles, including Fable, Gears of War and especially the mutli-award-winning Halo 3 campaign, while he was at his former employers. Of that time he speaks extremely fondly, saying it was incredible to be working with such talented people as Geoff Edwards and Scott Duchon. It was Duchon, Edwards and Mike Harris who invited Patroulis to join them at McCann [which soon became McCann TAG, then twofifteen] from TBWA\Chiat\Day Los Angeles. Together they had previously left Chiat to help launch the Xbox 360 console in 2005 and wanted Patroulis to join them to continue the work on the brand. “Everyone told me that if I took it I would be making a mistake,” says Patroulis, “because they felt that the console had already launched so all there would be was a bunch of [game] title work and, you know, how’s that going to be any good?” Oh ye of little faith. That game title work went on to gain international recognition, an outstanding amount of awards and, in the case of Halo 3 and its Believe campaign especially, change the way that games titles were marketed. “[Xbox] was always very open to innovation,”
Patroulis explains. “They were open to using emotion instead of logic, and open to storytelling. We were always trying to expand on the narratives that were happening in the games, trying to elevate games to entertainment properties.” So does he think that PlayStation chose BBH because of Patroulis’s history? “Well,” he says modestly, “that might have played a role in them wanting to talk to us, but it was a very competitive pitch. They certainly didn’t walk in and say, ‘hey man, we liked some of that stuff you did, let’s get together’. But I think this falls in our sweet spot – technology and storytelling, that’s what we’re about and I think that’s what we’re best at, and it’s a fantastic opportunity for us.”
A city on the upswing On a more general note, Patroulis believes that the industry as a whole, and certainly in New York, is on a creative upswing. There is, he thinks, a positivity about the city and, although there are still some financial uncertainties, the work being produced is good and getting better. There has also, he says, been a fuller understanding of what clients and agencies need to do to connect with consumers; an understanding that has technology – and the uses of technology – at its heart. “Technology is just another form of expression,” Patroulis says, “but everything needs to start with an idea. I think there was a time recently when there was a scramble and everyone felt that if we don’t have that [new] thing, we’re not doing it right. I think clients were nervous about it as well and no one seemed to understand, but it’s not complicated. We are all just living our lives. How are you spending your day? Who are you spending your day with? Should we be expressing an idea though those platforms? It’s really not that complicated.” S
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PHOTOGRAPH: spaces
“Technology is just another form of expression, but everything needs to start with an idea.”
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70 Places | new york
A one-time skater boy with a video camera in hand, Mike Woods has come a long way since entering the industry in the mid-90s. The boss at Framestore Digital talks to Tim Cumming about his role in shaping the great digital revolution of the noughties
the game changer “I
t’s always been about images. That’s been the main thing even from the age of 12, when I stole my parent’s VHS machine, hooked it up with mine and started editing things.” Mike Woods is one of the pioneers of digital, the head honcho of Framestore’s digital department in New York, where he moved in 2011, after working on the celebrated Polar Bears spot for Coca Cola at the Super Bowl. Back in the 80s, the teenage Woods and his friends from Redbourn in Hertfordshire were skateboarders, making their own skater vids. “Cutting them ourselves, titling them. Constantly making short films, always with a camera in hand. It was a natural thing; that was what fired me.”
It’s the monster mash-up After a BA in film, media and video production in the early 90s, he got a copy of London’s Yellow Pages, spent all his money on postage and wrote to every production company listed. “I sent about 150 speculative letters. I got four replies.” He was invited to visit Telecine on Charlotte Street, and in 1995 started work as a runner, and joined Telecine’s in-house technical training scheme to learn the basics of video and the just-emerging digital formats. Those who failed the exams were sacked. If you passed, you got a back-end job as a tape operator. “There’s not a week goes by where I’m not reliant on what I learnt in that one month,” says Woods. “It was an amazing grounding that really went back to the basics of bandwidths and video things, and it still stands up.” He stayed at Telecine for the next four years, getting to grips with the first bulky tech that turned video into online web files. “They were huge file sizes and terrible picture quality,” he says, but he sensed a revolution brewing. “What we were able to do very early on at the MPEG department was make our own stuff and get it up on the internet,” he remembers. “This was a good five
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years before YouTube. You couldn’t have believed back then that there’d be a website that would host it for free.” He laughs. “That seemed like the most insane thing. All these things came together at the same time – data connections, mobiles, internet on mobile, free hosting – within a five-year window. That’s an industrial revolution scale of change. There’ll be variations on that, but I can’t imagine as seismic a set of years as 2004 to 2009. That was the real digital revolution – it’s an incredible set of things in a really short space of time.” With a friend from Telecine, Jonny Dixon, he moved to Framestore in 2000, at the same time setting up a guerrilla arm in Cartel Communique. “We wanted to be a renegade outfit,” he says. “Our obsessions were the KLF and the Situationists. We loved Jamie Reid and how Malcolm McLaren set up the Sex Pistols, using the Situationist mantra and using these channels as a medium to expose hypocrisy, the society of spectacle.” They’d started raiding Telecine’s huge archive of pop videos, to cut and paste anarchic new works out of old pop product, pioneering mashups, launching an influential club night, getting signed up to Channel 4 and MTV, and working with Chris Morris of Brass Eye fame. His bosses at Framestore – where he was still in technical support rather than a client-facing role – soon got wind of his extra-curricular successes. He was working as a director on a job for Mother, “so I was in this brilliant situation where I was supporting technically the suite where I was also the director”, he remembers. That meant a lot of running up and down stairs.
Framestore made him their first digital producer in 2006. “In the last seven years we’ve built and built it and now it’s one of the main features of the company,” he says. “It’s still got that mentality, the mash-up theory of putting things together – plugging game engine technology into our motion capture studio to make everything render in real time – finding a use for things that the makers hadn’t intended.”
Creating orders, not following them At Framestore, he leads a strong team of creative coders and producers with technical know-how. “We’re always dealing with new technology and new ideas”, he says. “We’re well ahead in being aware of what’s possible, more than the clients. So we can sit with them and advise creatively and that’s what makes our job fun. We’re not just carrying out orders, we’re creating orders.” Polar Bears, the work that brought him to New York, remains a favourite. “That ability to offer up to the client a solution where they can take a game controller and control a top-quality looking character or brand icon – that as a single idea is far ahead of the game.” Real-time interactivity – whether it’s the Secret Cinema nights that he’s pioneered with Vice magazine, or using game engines to get consumers to submerge themselves in real-time conversations with a brand – is where Woods sees the future of the industry. “Where you can interact and engage and do things, for brand and advertisers, that’s the golden ticket, and that’s what technology offers.” S
“It’s still got that mentality, the mash-up theory of putting things together – finding a use for things that the makers hadn’t intended.” 5/4/13 3:23 PM
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72 Places | new york
The new production model for an everchanging creative landscape integrates VFX and live action, animation and augmented reality. Isobel Roberts meets the men behind BREED who have pooled their talents to deliver the full monty
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ost production companies taking on live-action shoots, production houses venturing into VFX, agencies building up in-house capabilities – the production world is one in flux, and it’s this multi-disciplinary approach that set the cogs in motion for the launch of new production outfit BREED in New York City. Based in downtown Manhattan, the company was founded by executive producers Rich Rama and Zak Thornborough, who joined forces last year to take advantage of their different experiences in the VFX and live action worlds and open up a production company offering the full package.
The one-stop shop Rama, who began his career in Los Angeles, fell for VFX at Method Studios and worked his way up from the bottom to become a producer, before moving on to become executive producer at PSYOP spin-off MassMarket and then Passion Pictures New York. Thornborough got his break in the industry through live action, starting out as a production assistant at RSA in Los Angeles before going on to line produce for the likes of HSI, Smuggler and Anonymous. He then got a crash course in CGI, producing live action for post houses such as Digital Domain and Asylum, before opening up his own shop, GARGANTUAN Films, and then taking on an EP role for The Ebeling Group in New York. “I think the backgrounds that Zak and I come from lend a hand at effectively producing projects no matter what the execution is,” comments Rama on the pair’s broad skillsets. “Additionally, with the ever-changing budgets, we felt like we needed to create an option that could wear more than one hat. In a time where live action companies were trying to line themselves up with animation and with animation studios doing more live action,
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while at the same time figuring out the digital world, we just felt that we could effectively put together a roster to become a one-stop creative shop. Being able to offer more services under our roof means we can be a little more nimble with those ever-changing budgets.” And BREED’s roster certainly does offer talent for any type of project. To give a taster, while NYC studio PandaPanther’s greatest strengths lie in character development and design, director David Lodge’s focus is on live action and comedy. At the same time, signings such as British photographer and filmmaker Greg Williams, who has worked with A-listers including Daniel Craig and Sean Penn, flesh out the company’s stills capacity. The wide range of artistry on tap at BREED sees the line-up labeled as creatives rather than directors, and projects such as a recent campaign for Morgan Stanley via The Martin Agency highlight the shop’s ability to blend different disciplines. Helmed by Canadian director Steve Mottershead, who is also an accomplished flame artist in his own right, the spot combined live action with strong visual design elements and made full use of the EPs’ talents too. “We basically spent 10 days shooting vignettes in LA, San Francisco and New York,” says Thornborough about the job. “We also did some interview spots with real Morgan Stanley financial advisors, which was challenging because they aren’t used to being in front of camera, but we still managed to make them into heroes. We are particularly proud of this project because Steve also brought a nice sense of design to the live action, which made it stand out from just your average banking commercial.” While Rama and Thornborough’s expertise lie in different fields, since setting up shop together the pair have capitalised on their partnership
IMAGE: Mike Tello
It’s the new breed
and dipped in and out of each other’s respective fields too, splitting up the work and lending a helping hand to get the job done. The company’s diminutive size has added to its flexibility and, despite first meeting back when they were working on the West Coast, for BREED’s founders the ad scene in New York suits their style. “I think it’s picking up compared to years past,” says Rama on the ups and downs the local industry has experienced. “It seems like there is
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BREED
enough for all kinds of companies big and small, like us, to get some work. NYC is known for being such a creative hub that I feel that it won’t ever really slow down drastically.” Indeed, the last few years have seen a new crop of smaller players rise up across the industry as collaboration has become the buzz word, and with their cross-discipline approach, it looks like BREED have found a sweet spot to ply their trade.
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“I think everybody is figuring out new ways to work with each other,” finishes Rama. “There isn’t such a hierarchy in terms of the structure of a project. Everybody seems to be on the same playing field with the same goals of creating the best possible film. I think BREED fits in because we aim to be a creative solutions company where collaboration is key. I think if we continue to have good experiences with clients, we’ll keep getting calls to collaborate on projects.” S
“Being able to offer more services under our roof means we can be a little more nimble with those everchanging budgets.” 5/4/13 3:25 PM
74 Places | new york
As a native New Yorker, @radical.media chairman Jon Kamen loves NYC’s mix of passions, knows where to get a meal at 3am and likens the city to a good vibrator
going native: new york
What is the worst thing about working in advertising in New York? Seeing how rich the fucking hedge fund guys are. What advice would you give to a visitor? Like all New Yorkers, don’t pay attention to the signs. If you were booking a hotel in New York, where would you stay? It’s all about geographic positioning, specifically where you have to be for a meeting the next morning. After that, it just comes down to which one has the best soap. What do you miss when you are out of the city? The energy. There’s a nuclear fusion of cultures, professions and passions in New York. What is the best US ad you have seen in the past year? Let’s put it simply: I prefer the more esoteric stuff. I don’t know if anyone’s seen it – even shots.
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Who do you/would you love to work with in the industry? I have had the privilege of working with my heroes, and I have a lot of them. Where’s the best place to eat in New York? It changes all the time, so it’s pointless to pick just one. Having said that, the gyro [kebab] stand on 74th Street is good. Or, maybe, I should say Blue Ribbon because it’s one of the last places in New York where you can order dinner at 3am (and, full disclosure, my daughter works there).
“What do I miss when I am out of the city? The energy. There’s a nuclear fusion of cultures, professions and passions in New York.”
Where’s the best place to drink in New York? Someplace where you don’t have to drive. Oh, and Eddie’s Sweet Shop in Queens used to make outstanding egg creams. If New York were a product what would it be? The best damn vibrator you can find.
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What’s New York’s favourite pastime? Work. If you could change one thing about New York, what would it be? Keeping Mayor Bloomberg. He’s done a marvellous job.
One table, four places. You and who? Friends. New ones, old ones, and some I haven’t used yet. What’s your one-line life philosophy? Change is good. S
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What’s your favourite memory of New York? In a way, my favourite memory is being born here. And, somehow, it’s managed to keep me here.
PHOTOGRAPH: Steve Hill
What is the best thing about working in advertising in New York? New York is a multidisciplinary city. I like to think of myself as that, as do most of the people I spend time with. So the best thing about working in advertising here is intermingling with people who don’t really work in advertising.
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1 Mayor Bloomberg 2 Blue Ribbon cafe 3 A gyro stand in New York 4/7 Eddie’s Sweet Shop, Queens, for the best egg creams 5 Wall Street: home of the hedge fund guys 6 The energy of New York
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