Bicoastal HKM Productions has entered into a strategic alliance with New York-based Filter Media, an enhanced television (ETV) and convergence strategy consulting and content-development shop.
Designed to allow the companies to more effectively pursue and deliver on ETV commercial and video production initiatives, the alliance combines HKM’s creative resources, production expertise, directorial talent pool and commercial production professionals with Filter Media’s consortium of convergence-media and ETV veterans. The relationship will focus primarily on the exchange of information and expertise between the companies, and on the pooling of their resources, to pursue ETV production assignments in the advertising industry.
ETV comprises services that allow consumers to customize and/or interact with their television viewing experience. Features include allowing consumers to access programming "on demand," change camera-viewing angles, buy products through the television set and retrieve complementary Internet content, while watching a television show.
"HKM recognizes that interactive television is going to have a real impact on advertising and our industry," said Tom Mickel, president/CEO of HKM Productions. "When you add interactivity to the emotive power of television, the result is a new form of communication that is exciting to our roster of talent, to our clients and to their brands. We want to fully understand the ramifications and possibilities of this media without being bogged down in hype, so we turned to Filter Media."
The deal was actually a year in the making. Mickel explained that HKM Productions was approached regularly by different groups of people trying to form alliances which would expand HKM’s spotmaking horizons into areas such as DTV and interactive.
"HKM has been active in commercials for 20 years, and when we sensed a change or shift in the way things may be done in the future, interactivity was something we wanted to participate in," continued Mickel. "ETV is at an embryonic stage … but now is the time we wanted to get involved. After meeting dozens of people, the Filter Group [principals] were the first that we thought were totally committed to ETV and totally had a vision," he told SHOOT.
Co-founded by Mickel and directors Graham Henman and Michael Karbelnikoff, HKM also represents helmers Richard Sears, Michael Patrick Jann, Jordan Brady, Michele Civetta, Max Malkin and Christian Loubek.
The alliance between HKM and Filter Media also encompasses one of HKM’s satellites—Santa Monica-based Public Works—but not the other, The Directors Bureau, Hollywood.
Music video and commercial production company Public Works was launched as an internationally focused HKM satellite in August 1999, and is run by Mickel and executive producer Ellen Jacobson. On its roster are European directors Roenberg, Felt, Guiseppe Capotondi, Arni & Kinski of Gus Gus, Eric Coignoux and Franco Dragone. U.S.-based directors are Johan Brisinger, Joel Gallen, PanOptic, Todd Lincoln and Girl Next Door.
Public Works will play a lead role in HKM’s overall ETV initiative, and is currently experimenting with the medium. During the course of its regular spot production, Public Works is trying to take into account factors that occur during an enhanced broadcast, such as a viewer pausing the TV program in order to visit a Web site. "Since we are a production company shooting the footage that is ultimately going to be used in ETV, we want to know how the process works and how to enhance material in a way which makes the most sense," explained Christopher Buckley, Public Works’ head of production.
Buckley noted that Filter Media’s team members are veterans of what has been a bloody war up to this point. "There have been a lot of failures over the past few years, and now ETV is getting to the launch stage," he said.
Co-founded last November, by managing directors Ilario Pantano and Vladimir Edelman, Filter Media is a consortium of ETV industry executives, with experience in the film, television, commercial production and advertising communities. All have spearheaded convergent-media and ETV initiatives. Prior to starting the company, Pantano and Edelman worked together at New York-headquartered Shooting Gallery Interactive (SGI), the new-media division of Shooting Gallery Inc., which maintains hybrid commercial/ music video production house Shooting Gallery Productions, New York.
Pantano was executive VP at SGI, where he was charged with developing the company’s Digital Studio Services initiative and Enhanced Television Group. Edelman was SGI’s VP for Digital Media Development, overseeing the strategic development of ETV, broadband and digital content. Other key management at Filter Media includes director of production Emily Field, COO/general consul Joseph R. Mckechnie Jr., director of engineering Az Nyhus and director of business analysis Frank Barbieri.
Keen to have a strategic partner in the commercial production arena, Filter Media was attracted to HKM’s "creative pedigree," according to Pantano, who predicted that the first projects out of the alliance with HKM will be launched in the third quarter of this year. Additionally, Filter Media maintains confidential alliances with convergence and ETV technology and production firms, as well as with companies operating in traditional media.
One of the major barriers to the implementation of ETV has been the large number of competing hardware, software and technology platforms. "This non-standardization represents a major obstacle for almost anyone looking to develop content—commercial and otherwise—for the ETV space," commented Pantano. That said, he projected that this will be a breakout year for interactive television. Reasons for his optimism include the fact that deployment costs have dropped to a point where scalable rollouts are now achievable. Also, mergers in the media and technology arena, such as that between AOL and Time Warner, may serve to accelerate the marriage of content and interactivity.
