While SHOOT has chronicled major production houses’ diversification into new content opportunities–from @radical.media’s hiring of Bob Friedman and the formation of entertainment conception, creation and distribution company Radical Thinking, to Believe Media bringing agency vet Mark Sitley aboard to partner in content firm Beyond Belief last year–a new coming-of-age beat can be heard in the movement to extend the spot shop business model to encompass much more.
Indeed the Association of Independent Commercial Producers is in the process of sharing with the production house community what AICP president/CEO Matt Miller calls “amazing, relevant, tangible pieces” developed by AICP.next, a committee formed last year to provide insight, context and answers as to how houses can capitalize on emerging content opportunities while dealing with new sets of related risks and potential liabilities. This dialogue will look beyond the traditional work-for-hire scenario to encompass other forms of compensation for production companies, including intellectual property ownership and creative fees.
In the spirit of breaking new ground, SHOOT wanted to look past the Top 20 Companies pabulum that’s in vogue and offer some examples of smaller at times overlooked shops that have more than gotten their feet wet in new content waters, as well as divisions that have come out of the considerable shadows cast by their production house parents to gain traction in the marketplace.
Rebranding On the latter score, consider V3, formed two years ago as an offshoot of Anonymous Content to develop new interesting, up-and-coming directorial talent and facilitate emerging media projects. At times, Anonymous’ established spot directors would also get a taste of new media projects via V3.
But now V3 has evolved into something greater as it is being rebranded as Anonymous Content Emerging Media. The division’s executive producer Sylvia Kahn Versace explains, “The rebranding signals the maturing of the business. As budgets for new content become more substantial–and as these projects help to define future paths for the advertising/marketing business–the stakes get higher and it makes sense to bring all of the Anonymous Content resources to bear in this developing area.”
Those resources include: Anonymous Content’s talent/literary division with writers and performers helping to develop content and bring it to life, the company’s music video directing talent, and even filmmakers with whom Anonymous enjoys relationships in theatrical motion pictures (and not necessarily commercials). Anonymous’ mainstream commercial directors are also being called upon for select projects under the Anonymous Content Emerging Media banner.
Currently in the works is a series for mobile and portable devices. While the project was under wraps at press time, Kahn Versace said that it is a purely entertainment driven piece sans a branded sponsor and that Anonymous Content Emerging Media tapped into Phil Brown to direct the project. Brown is on the roster of Anonymous Content’s music video division.
Last year, filmmaker Antoine Fuqua directed via Anonymous, V3 and Milan-based Movie Magic International a web film, The Call, for Pirelli Tires out of Leo Burnett, Milan. The film starred John Malkovich and Naomi Campbell.
Particularly gratifying for Kahn Versace is seeing some of her original V3 directors make new significant inroads. For example, Tom Gatsoulis, a V3 helmer who now maintains a new-media relationship with Anonymous Content Emerging Media, has interactive mini-movies under his belt for Verizon via McCann Erickson, New York, and Sprint from Organic, San Francisco. And Shyam Madiraju, who made SHOOT’s New Directors Showcase last year while at V3, has since moved over to Anonymous Content’s spot directorial roster. At V3, he directed a branding short for Volkswagen back when it was an Arnold, Boston, account. Titled Therapy, the piece was so well received that it went from web to broadcast.
“We’ve learned a great deal about developing content for digital distribution, how to make the most of budgets and are allowed to tell more compelling stories and be involved in a more collaborative way more often than with traditional commercials,” relates Kahn Versace. “It’s much more than execution and that has helped fuel us creatively and led us to step up our commitment as we transition from V3 to Anonymous Content Emerging Media.”
SEED SEED, a sister shop to longstanding Venice, Calif.-headquartered Backyard Productions, has blossomed into a significant player in the entertainment content space as underscored by the three series it has created and developed for the much anticipated online entertainment network Bud.TV, which launched Monday (2/5). Helping to drive traffic to Bud.TV were Budweiser commercials/promos that aired during the mega-audience Super Bowl the day before.
The trio of SEED shows consists of two reality series–Truly Famous and What Girls Want–as well as the comedy Replaced By A Chimp. SEED partner/creative director and Backyard director John Immesoete created and developed the concepts for all three shows. Anheuser-Busch naturally gravitated to Immesoete due to its comfort level with him, dating back to his days as a group creative director at DDB Chicago where he had a creative hand in assorted notable campaigns for Budweiser and other A-B brands.
SEED worked directly with Anheuser-Busch on the new series, with Backyard producing four episodes for each (with the reality TV show episodes being between five and six minutes apiece, and episodes of Replaced By A Chimp ranging between one-and-a-half to two minutes). SEED and Backyard brought reality TV show veteran Rick Telles into Truly Famous and What Girls Want. Telles served as producer on those two series, collaborating on the directing of the episodes with creative director/writer/director Immesoete.
Truly Famous centers on a fake celebrity who keeps an entourage of hangers-on and goes to various places to see how much they can get for free based on the made-up celeb status. Seed and Backyard partner/executive producer Blair Stribley describes the show as Entourage meets Punk’d.
What Girls Want is a straight girls for straight guys variation on the Queer Eye for The Straight Guy premise. The Bud.TV show features single guys trying to connect with the fairer sex at a bar. After seeing their approach, straight girl experts makeover the males and advise them on how to improve their spiel to the ladies. The guys then return to the bar to see how they fare after expert counsel and a new salon-created look.
Meanwhile Replaced By A Chimp explores how well a chimp would do in certain professions, including as an artist and a dentist. Immesoete directed all of the episodes in this series.
“The Bud.TV shows are not mini-commercials,” notes Stribley. “There are no real product references. At most, the product is incidental.”
Stribley says simply, “The spirit of the projects is to create original programming for the client’s constituency to enjoy.”
Backyard’s diversification beyond its bread-and-butter commercialmaking business also extends to broadcast television with The Courier, a seven-minute action film. The short is being split up into seven interstitials, roughly a minute apiece, that CBS will air in primetime. Directed by Ericson Core (the feature film Invincible) who is on Backyard’s spot roster, The Courier was shot in Prague. It’s not yet known how the seven interstitials will be scheduled on CBS; options include the installments airing during the course of a primetime week or perhaps one a week over a seven-week period. Plans call for a sponsor to be attached to The Courier.
“It’s sequel entertainment with an inherent advantage,” Stribley says of The Courier. “This way a brand can buy a minute’s worth of airtime but if the content is entertaining and has characters the audience can relate to, people won’t TiVo through it. You can take a brand to a new level and help to build an audience.”
The Courier and the aforementioned trio of Bud.TV shows share a relevant dynamic, continues Stribley. “In a sense, they are all a proving ground for longer form programming. If an audience develops for any of these shows, they could blossom into longer shows, perhaps even more traditional format [half-hour, 60 minute] programs.”
There’s also potential for new horizons on the business front as content creators/producers–particularly those behind shows in which characters become popular–could move from the work-for-hire scenario to a compensation model based on holding equity in an entertainment property.
Green Dot
Rick Fishbein, executive producer of commercial production house boutique Green Dot Films, has a pair of perspectives on the changing landscape–one being entrepreneurial as a production company principal, the other in his role as a governor of the Commercials Branch of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (ATAS).
He was scheduled to attend an ATAS emerging media task force meeting this week to discuss how the Emmy competition can best recognize deserving content that doesn’t necessarily play on broadcast television. “What if episodes of a great series air only on the Internet?” asks Fishbein. “Can that work be submitted for Emmy consideration? There’s a lot of thought that has to go into guidelines for determining excellence of content in a world of changing media.” Fishbein plans to engage in the task force dialogue along with others, including those in ATAS’ Interactive Peer Group. “The Academy discussion underscores that the times are changing for all of us,” he says.
From his Green Dot P.O.V. Fishbein relates that “Thirty to 40 percent of the projects we’re bidding on now are not broadcast :30 spots. And the new opportunities presenting themselves are exciting for commercial production houses today. Whereas 24 months ago, many of us were apprehensive about ‘new media,’ now we’re encouraged by what they bring…..including the possibility of new models of compensation beyond work for hire.”
Among the recent new content ground traversed by Green Dot are: Nissan’s “Seven Days In A Sentra” campaign spanning seven TV spots, a web film and footage displayed in an interactive van venue for TBWAChiatDay, Los Angeles; a humorous Shout Wipes online mini-movie for Draft FCB, New York; and a Video On Demand piece for GE’s Imagination Theater (SHOOT, 12/15/06), the charming, slightly offbeat two-minute-and-40-second animation film Samurai for BBDO New York.
Samurai was developed and directed by Green Dot’s Three Legged Legs collective (Casey Hunt, Greg Gunn, Reza Rasoli). “The directors were asked to come up with something that embodied imagination, nothing specific about GE itself,” says Fishbein. “It’s work that allows our talent to be fully creative, with GE benefitting from being attached to that creativity and imagination [reinforcing the client’s ongoing ‘Imagination At Work’ campaign].”
The alluded to Shout and Nissan projects were directed by Green Dot’s Richard Sears. The former, a short titled Rescue Mission, tells the story about hunters shooting stains at wild roaming pairs of white pants. A female animal rights activist protects the pants creatures with Shout’s new stain wipe. As for the multimedia Nissan campaign, it centers on protagonist Marc Horowitz who embarks on seven days of living in his Sentra. The two-minute introductory piece generated hundreds of thousands of hits on YouTube, according to Rob Schwartz, executive creative director of TBWAChiatDay, Los Angeles.
Uncle Santa Monica-based Uncle has diversified with the recent launch of a music video division under the aegis of exec producer Scott Kalvert as well as the formation of a transatlantic spot partnership with London-based Streetlight Films (SHOOT, 12/15/06). But perhaps the most interesting diversification for Uncle, which continues to maintain commercialmaking as its core business, is its long-form fare, including a 3D ride film for the Coca-Cola Company, and an original episodic series for the STARZ cable network.
The latter is Head Case, in which Uncle owns a 50 percent stake. Slated to debut on STARZ in April, Head Case stars comedian Alexandra Wentworth (who is exec producer of the series) as an unorthodox therapist whose patients are celebrities. Working with the head of Uncle’s TV/film division Robert Bauer and company cofounder, director Jason Farrand, Wentworth developed the series, which in its first season has 13 original episodes, each ranging from 10 to 15 minutes in length. Among the celeb patients in season one are Jason Priestley, Andy Dick, Shelby Lynne, Ione Skye, Jonathan Silverman, Tom Sizemore, Fred Willard, Traci Lords, Ralph Macchio, Jane Kaczmarek, Liz Phair, Jennifer Finnigan and Sean Hayes.
Also look for some cross promotional action with Volkswagen as its new Eos car has been woven into several episodes. “This isn’t product placement. The car becomes a character in the show,” says Uncle partner/exec producer Bryan Farhy. Head Case will have a presence on the VW website, the series and the car will have a place on the STARZ site, and other tie-ins are in the offing in this deal struck directly between Uncle and VW.
The plan is for the series to blossom into a half-hour format in season two, and to plug several of Uncle’s spot directors into helming duties on a number of episodes. All of the shows in season one have been directed by Farrand and will have set time slots in the network schedule, with reruns playing in rotation. “STARZ is committed to developing a slate of original content and our approach with them is to grow the show into a half-hour as we grow the audience during the first season,” says Uncle partner/executive VP Bauer who had a hand in a recent Sundance Film Festival coup as Fox Searchlight bought worldwide rights to the late actress/writer/director Adrienne Shelly’s Waitress. Bauer was one of the executive producers on that film.
“We’re looking to create assets as well as opportunities for our creative and directing talent at the company,” adds Farrand. One such opportunity is the alluded to 3D ride film, The Search For The Secret Formula, which is set for a spring debut at a special new theater venue at Coca-Cola’s headquarters in Atlanta. The multi-million dollar, nine-minute 3D film entailed extensive international shooting and has been in the making at Uncle for two years. Larry Gebhardt brought the project over to Uncle and directed it along with CG/visual effects veteran Terry Windell. Farrand wrote the script.
“The Coke project positions us for other opportunities in the 3D film space,” says Bauer who notes that Uncle’s long-form pedigree also includes a pilot and specials for the E! Network, content for TiVo, work with VH-1 and a six-part series for The Discovery Channel.
