Design Lab at Broadway Video has hired Danny Jones as visual effects producer, Roi Werner as visual effects supervisor, and Daniel Garcia as broadcast designer. Design Lab is the design/visual effects division of Broadway Video, New York.
All three have been freelancing for Design Lab since December and were officially signed as staffers in April. "I brought them in as freelancers first, as the most important thing to me was the combination of talent, how they worked together and the energy they created," said Alexandra Fitzgerald, VP of creative services, design and visual effects.
Fitzgerald has known Jones and Werner for several years, having met them through mutual friends in the design community. Garcia was recommended to Fitzgerald.
"They liked the people they were working for and they liked what we were doing, so when I offered them staff positions, they all accepted," related Fitzgerald.
A native of Wales, Jones spent four years as a visual effects producer at Cinesite, London, where he worked on commercials, music videos and feature films including Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. He moved to New York in September 98 and began working as a visual effects producer at Spontaneous Combustion. In April 99 he left to freelance. His endeavors at Design Lab include Showtime Original Productions "Noriega" campaign and various projects for Klemtner Advertising, New York, and Badger Worldwide, New York.
Werner, who is from Israel, worked in the visual effects department of production/postproduction company Broadcast Video, Tel Aviv, Israel, from ’92 to 96. After moving to New York in June 96, he freelanced for such New York operations as Spontaneous Combustion, Manhattan Transfer, Attik, The Firm, and the former LoConte Goldman Design, which closed in January when partners LoConte and Goldman split to form their own Boston-based companies LoConte.2 and One80 Visual Communications, respectively. He also was on staff at Splash, the visual effects division of New York-based First Edition (SHOOT, 5/16/97).
Werners credits include promos for the VH1 Fashion Awards and that stations "Where Are They Now?" and "Pop-Up Video" programs which he worked on in-house; and promos for the ESPN’s Sports Century, including "50 Greatest Athletes" and "Decades," via LoConte Goldman.
Garcia previously worked as a broadcast designer at the in-house production division of DDB New York, Cool Dry Place, from ’97 to ’99, when he left to freelance. He co-directed album promos via TVT Records for groups such as Gravity Kills, Buck.O.Nine, Sevendust and MIC Geronimo. He also designed and directed IDs and bumpers for HBO.
Design Lab was launched last October; Fitzgerald was brought in to merge the design and visual effects divisions of Broadway Video.. "We are going after multi-platforms with clients. We are very strong on broadcast right now so we’re branching out," Fitzgerald said. The new team will work with art director/creative technical director Gary Keenan and director/ designer Sharon Haskell, who were shifted across from Imbue Studio, which Broadway Video folded soon after opening that shop last year (SHOOT, 6/4/99).
On the closure of the broadcast design and live action division, Peter Rudoy, president of Broadway Video, said: "Imbue represented a philosophy and approach we felt would be successful for us: creating a very separate, very narrow, focused design group. We soon learned that this approach, while having some advantages, didn’t adequately tap into all the strengths that existed within the company. Clients were seeking a much more integrated approach. We then decided to reposition the group by having Alexandra Fitzgerald create Design Lab, a broader based design and effects company."