Last October, Greg Martinez ended his 10-year tenure at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco–the first three as a broadcast producer, the last seven as its director of internal postproduction and production. In the latter capacity, his responsibilities included overseeing the agency’s in-house GSP Post operation.
Martinez’s decision to leave was triggered in part by due diligence he had done over the previous months on behalf of GSP Post, which was contemplating a diversification of its editorial arm into online. Martinez had been demoing a Smoke room, but ultimately GSP chose not to take the online/finishing plunge.
However, the process piqued Martinez’s interest. He became intrigued by the notion of breaking out on his own and opening a company encompassing offline, online, finishing, visual effects and production. Via GSP, Martinez was active in varied disciplines, including producing spec work and some budget-challenged fare for the agency, such as “Y2Cud,” a Jeff Goodby-directed spot for the California Fluid Milk Processors Advisory Board that gained airtime. The ad was a humorous takeoff on the then brewing Y2K hubbub.
After exploring prospects for his own shop, Martinez made the commitment, securing financing and formally opening Teak Motion Visuals in San Francisco some five months ago. He is the majority partner in the venture. While it is boutique-sized, Teak has grown steadily over a short span, with key new staffers, as well as independent artisans who work regularly at the shop. The staff additions are executive producer/partner Jan Frei, who had served as executive producer at Red Car, San Francisco, and lead editor/partner Bob Spector, a mainstay in the San Francisco editorial community.
Prior to Teak, Spector had a brief stint at Red Car, San Francisco. Earlier he was with Jigsaw, Los Angeles, but he is best known for his long tenure as a partner for 10 years in Bob ‘n’ Sheila’s Edit World, a San Francisco editorial house that closed in 2003 (SHOOT, 9/26/03, p. 7).
Spector’s editing reputation is grounded largely in comedy and dialogue work, including such Super Bowl advertising as the high-profile Budweiser “Lizards” campaign out of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. He also cut that agency’s longstanding talking chicken campaign for Foster Farms. Among Spector’s other assorted credits are spots for such clients as Yahoo!, S&W, Sprint, Pine-Sol and The Learning Channel.
At Teak, Spector has edited several projects, including a spot promoting LucasArts’ Star Wars: Episode III game for agency Butler, Shine, Stern and Partners, Sausalito, Calif., a T-Mobile commercial for Publicis, Seattle, and regional McDonald’s via Hoffman Lewis, San Francisco. At press time, Spector was about to cut a campaign for Southwest Airlines, out of GSD&M, Austin, Texas.
Like Martinez, Frei’s industry roots are in agency soil, having served as a producer at Chiat/Day (now TBWA/Chiat/Day), San Francisco. She then moved over to the post studio side of the business, becoming a staff producer at now defunct Good Pictures, and then joining Pomegranit Editorial, San Francisco, as executive producer. In ’00, Frei was recruited to help open Red Car’s San Francisco office.
PRODUCTION
Additionally, freelance editor Tony Saxe works regularly at Teak. Saxe had been an assistant editor at FilmCore San Francisco and has now graduated to full-fledged cutter. His first major job at Teak was a
package of Saturn commercials tied into the Gravity Games, an extreme sports competition.
Martinez produced the spots via Teak for play at the Gravity Games venue, the Copper Mountain Resort in Colorado. Teak acted as full service production company on the job, handling shooting (blue screen with an HD 24p camera), editing, compositing and finishing.
Goodby, Silverstein & Partners’ creative Dave Laden directed the Saturn work. Additionally, Teak has
served as the production company for director Laden on some Internet spots for Saturn and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners.
Teak is also committed to collaborating with agency artisans on creative pet projects, according to Martinez, who related that during his 10 years at Goodby, he heard assorted ideas from colleagues for shorts and documentaries that never got off the ground. Martinez hopes that Teak can facilitate these creative callings, helping to make such projects a reality. Currently, Teak is producing a documentary piece about a short white man training himself to slam dunk a basketball. The director and producer on the project are, respectively, Margaret Johnson and Hilary Bradley who both work at Goodby. Teak has also been named postproduction company on an independent feature, The Village Barbershop, written by Chris Ford, a copywriter at Goodby. Spector is slated to edit the film.
While Teak counts Goodby as one of its steady clients, the hybrid editorial/production house is an independent venture and not affiliated with the agency. Martinez’s longstanding relationship with Goodby has helped translate into business from that shop for Teak. Similarly, Frei’s and Spector’s connections have yielded projects from their varied clientele over the years.
In addition to production and offline editing, Teak offers Smoke services and has been active in conforming and finishing work, as well as visual effects. Martinez has secured a couple of independent artisans who work regularly for Teak, Smoke artists/online editors Treena Loria and Michael Angelo. In fact, Teak recently handled online for the San Francisco Zoo’s “Tail,” out of BBDO West/San Francisco, which is covered in this week’s “The Best Work You May Never See” gallery. Teak has also done Smoke work for such clients as the San Francisco International Film Festival out of Young & Rubicam, San Francisco, and the Partnership For A Drug-Free America via Goodby. Loria and Angelo are both experienced in visual effects. Angelo recently wrapped visual effects for U.S. Postal Service spotwork that required 40 hours of heavy compositing in the Smoke.
Teak has additionally made its facility available to out-of-town editors coming to cut projects in San Francisco. The shop has hosted such cutters as Avi Oron of Bikini Edit, New York, Hal Honigsberg of Chrome, Santa Monica, and Jim Hutchins who at the time was with Nomad Editing Company, Santa Monica. (Hutchins has since launched his own Los Angeles shop, HutchCo.)
As for the Teak moniker, Martinez confessed an affinity for the South Pacific lifestyle and culture, as reflected in the shop’s décor, which includes much bamboo and a definite Tahitian feel. From a business model perspective, Martinez said he’s motivated by the chance to be engaged in different roles on different projects, which is why Teak operates as a hybrid production/post shop. He even occasionally edits projects. For example, at Teak, Martinez cut the pitch video for Butler, Shine, Stern and Partners that helped it win the Sun Microsystems business.