When things go south, that conventionally means they’re taking a downward turn. But in the case of going South America, business and infrastructure have been going up–though there are concerns about the world economy and its recent, current and future impact on the state of production business.
While the global economists hold their collective breath, there is nonetheless much to be bullish about relative to Argentina and Brazil.
Consider the former, which earlier this year hosted a campaign for Old Navy directed by its then in-house creative director Landis Smithers (who has since left the company and is looking to launch a directorial career). U.S. house Supply & Demand was tabbed to produce the ambitious campaign which yielded four web shorts (ranging from two to four minutes each in length), from which were gleaned four :60s and eight :30s.
Kira Carstensen, managing director/executive producer of bicoastal Supply and Demand, said the project ultimately gravitated to Argentina due to various factors. “Landis wanted a place that had locations that weren’t identifiable as being in the U.S.–that could be anywhere,” related Carstensen. “We wound up in Argentina with a mix of modern lifestyle and older style European architecture, a great backdrop for these little romantic stories.
“Plus we did some initial casting in South America and were very pleased with the talent we discovered,” she continued, adding that savings in production and talent costs also figured into the decision.
However key to supporting that decision was production house Film Planet, which has offices in Argentina, Brazil, Los Angeles, and an offshoot shop in Chile. Carstensen has been collaborating with Film Planet on South American shoots for eight years, going back to her freelancing days prior to her tenure at Supply & Demand. “I was freelance producing a lot for HSI, directors like Samuel Bayer and Matthew Rolston, and we turned to Film Planet for production support and services in South America,” related Carstensen who once again connected with Film Planet for this spring’s Old Navy campaign, teaming with that company’s executive producer Karin Stuckenschmidt.
“Karin has been great to work with,” assessed Carstensen. “She is fluent in different languages–English, German, Spanish, Portuguese. She’s Brazilian yet of German heritage. I remember producing a Mercedez-Benz job in Brazil and she was able to speak to the clients in German. She knows how to handle agencies and clients the way we do in the U.S.”
Editor Jeff Ferruzzo of Outside Editorial, New York, came to Buenos Aires along with a post producer, assistant editor and graphics designer for the Old Navy campaign. “It was such a big project that I had to be there to cut everything. We were on a tight schedule.”
He was impressed with Buenos Aires and the support he received from Film Planet. “Everything went smoothly. I was on the set for a couple of days and then often at the hotel editing. The production was shot by a Red digital camera so there was no film transfer. The Red files were put onto a cartridge. The assistant would load the dailies on the set, sequence them and then hand me a drive so I could get to work.”
Feedback Other shops are also well established in producing and facilitating production in Argentina and Brazil. SHOOT surveyed several for their takes on the state of the business, posing the following multi-part question:
What is the status of commercial production and/or branded content in your marketplace–are you attracting U.S. work (please cite examples) and what factors are drawing it to your market? Where is the rest of your ad industry-related business coming from–Europe? Other nations? Homegrown?
Here’s a sampling of their feedback:
Enrique Bacher, Sergio Gullco,
executive producers, Altana Films, Buenos Aires.
Despite some cost increases during the last two years, Argentina is still a very attractive location for commercial production. Cost increases in hard currency are not only coming from local inflation (around 20 percent a year) but also from the exchange rate stability (3.00 to 3.10 ARG pesos per dollar). Also unions have been pushing crew rates up. Nevertheless we are still cost effective on the combination of production+talent and still attracting U.S. commercial ads. In our case 70 to 80 percent of the jobs are coming from the U.S. Other commercial production centers coming to Argentina are: London, Paris and Germany.
Argentina is strong in talent diversity and competitive buyouts. More and more bilingual professional crew are coming on board as we go (focus pullers, AD’s, art directors, gaffers, grips and even DOP’s). Though we need resources to grow in order to have alternative and competitor vendors and suppliers. We, producers, need to invest time and energy in developing new sources to combat cost increases.
Paulo Henrique Miranda,
executive manager, FilmBrazil, São Paulo
Commercial production is still the main type of production in Brazil reaching 14.510 registrations with our regulatory agency ANCINE in 2007 alone. Within the last few years, Brazilians became the largest consumers of new media in the world forcing producers and production companies to specialize in reaching this market. The increased consumption of branded content and viral ads, naturally prepared the industry for the challenges of producing those types of projects. This expertise is gradually attracting other countries that come to Brazil looking for the balance among locations, infrastructure, creativity, content, and experience. More and more production houses are branching out and opening sister companies to become even more specialized while maintaining their well established reputation and infrastructure.
In 2007, the U.S. was responsible for 34 percent of Brazil’s international productions, followed by England with 26 percent, and Germany with nine percent. Those countries come to Brazil looking for a combination of factors such as locations unique to Brazil and often times similar to their own countries, talent, climate, and creativity. Lately, there has been an increased search for our directors which bring a different flavor to international productions.
In terms of branded content, a representative case is of Nike’s soccer documentary Ginga which has won a number of awards worldwide and is up to today (according to Wieden + Kennedy’s producer) Nike’s most successful branded content project. Ginga was produced by o2 Filmes.
In terms of infrastructure, Brazil has South America’s largest private studios, rental houses and state-of-the-art equipment in addition to one of the world’s most modern and efficient banking and financial systems. When combining this with the examples above, Brazil naturally turns into the most qualified market to take in foreign productions. When it comes to talent, all people need to get acquainted with is to the fact that this country has been colonized by the Dutch, English, Italians, Germans, Japanese, Portuguese, Libanese, just to name a few. FilmBrazil is working on educating advertising professionals that there is more to Brazil than the famous beach, samba, and carnival.
Georgos Nicolaides, executive producer, Benito Cine Argentina
Benito Cine has been working non-stop for United States production companies over the past five years. But the last six months have been the worst in our history: U.S. clients have been renewing talent contracts for commercials we produced four years ago. We have renewed more than 10 commercials–this has never happened before….It’s a clear sign of the economic reality.
A particular strength in Argentina is our set construction. Not many U.S. companies are aware of this fact. A good example is the huge and complex gyrosphere we built for MJZ and director Rupert Sanders for Monster.com,, or seven sets of high quality that represented U.S. looking home interiors we built for director Jeff Gorman, and many jobs requiring set construction for Moxie Pictures, especially director Pam Thomas. This carries big potential for filming in Argentina all year long.
And regarding your question about infrastructure, we have great crews and state of the art equipment here in Argentina, however, in my opinion, what still needs to be improved is the capacity to say “no” when Argentina is not the right choice of country for a specific commercial.
