Freelance Producer, Art Director And Copywriter Team Targets Advertising Agencies.
By KATHY DeSALVO
The demand for freelance creatives and producers by ad agencies has increased over the past several years. As San Francisco-based freelance producer Jane Jacobsen believes this trend will likely grow, she and two freelance creatives—San Francisco-based copywriter Ron Saltmarsh and Seattle-based art director David Ayriss—are promoting a different freelance model in an experiment called the Creative Collective.
Jacobsen, Saltmarsh and Ayriss are marketing themselves as a team (although they continue to work individually as freelancers), and believe that such a package is advantageous to ad agencies, which stand to benefit from the synergy and comfort/trust level among the trio. In addition, Jacobsen explained, the three share a similar creative sensibility, cultivated in large part at San Francisco-based agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, where all have worked at various points in their careers.
"I think [the concept of a creative collective] works really well with smaller agencies that are just getting started," said Jacobsen, "or agencies that don’t do a lot of television commercials."
Jacobsen’s experience includes staff positions as producer for three and a half years at Goodby, Silverstein and a year-long stint as director of broadcast production at Hal Riney & Partners, Chicago (now Publicis & Hal Riney). Since going freelance in ’98, she has worked frequently for Goodby, as well as for Torrance, Calif.-based Saatchi & Saatchi LA, and San Francisco-based Black Rocket.
Before going freelance a year and a half ago, Saltmarsh spent two years as senior writer at Goodby, preceded by staff stints at Cole & Weber and Borders, Perrin & Norrander, both in Portland, Ore. As a freelancer, Saltmarsh has worked on assignments for McKinney & Silver, Raleigh, N.C., and TBWA/Chiat/Day, San Francisco, among others.
Ayriss struck out on his own two years ago, following an agency career that included creative director posts at Cole & Weber and Borders Perrin & Norrander. He also held senior art director jobs at Goodby, at now defunct Livingston & Co., and at Los Angeles-based Chiat/Day (now TBWA/Chiat/ Day). Among his freelance clients are Los Angeles-based TBWA Chiat/Day; San Francisco-based Leagas Delaney and Publicis & Hal Riney; and WongDoody and McCann-Erickson, both in Seattle.
The creative collective idea grew out of a recent experience in which the trio spent four months in Sweden on production for an Ericcson mobile phone spot, "Aliens," via Hall & Cederquist/Young & Rubicam, Stockholm. It was directed by Erich Joiner of bicoastal Tool of North America, with visual effects by Ring of Fire, West Hollywood. Jacobsen related that the account director on the job had formerly worked at Goodby. "The client requested a particular kind of work on the Ericcson spot, and the account director called to ask if we were available," said Jacobsen.
Due to the complexity of the production, Jacobsen said they orchestrated a pre-pro meeting that included many of the participants—Joiner; DP Russell Carpenter; editor Livio Sanchez of Santa Monica and Chicago-based Lookinglass Company; music composers John Trivers and Liz Myers of Trivers/Myers Music, Manhattan Beach, Calif.; and members of Ring of Fire’s team. Everyone provided their creative input on the job, which further solidified Jacobsen’s belief that the sooner everyone on a project begins reading off the same page, the better for the final product.
"From my perspective, Ron and Dave allowed me to be a part of the creative team, and that was the difference for me," said Jacobsen, who had known Saltmarsh and Ayriss from Goodby but hadn’t worked with them up to that point. "We spent an incredible amount of time together and during that time, we looked at each other and said, ‘We work so well together; how can we move forward with this concept of selling the three of us to agencies?’ We’re now talking about how to do it, because it does require a particular amount of marketing; I’m not sure if it works terribly well to go into a large agency as a three-part team."
The Ericcson job may have solidified the idea of forming a creative collective but, as Jacobsen observed, the benefits of such an arrangement—more power and control over the finished product—make it an appealing one to freelancers who are typically called on to put out fires, often on new business pitches. As a result, freelancers’ work is either rarely produced or is produced without their input. "So many times, we’re all thrown in with people we don’t really know," said Jacobsen. "Wouldn’t it be nice if you could work as a team with people you already have established relationships with, and who you trust?"
Review: Writer-Director Adam Elliot’s “Memoir of a Snail”
It's not your typical stop-motion film when characters name pets after Sylvia Plath and read "The Diary of Anne Frank" — or when the story's inspired by a quote from existentialist thinker Søren Kierkegaard. And it's certainly not your typical stop-motion film when you find yourself crying as much as the characters do — in their case, with huge droplets leaking from bulging, egg-shaped eyes so authentic-looking, you expect the screen to get wet. But those are just a few of the unique things about Adam Elliot's "Memoir of a Snail," a film that's as heart-tugging as it is technically impressive, a work of both emotional resonance and great physical detail using only clay, wire, paper and paint. One thing Elliot's film is not, though, is for kids. So please take note before heading to the multiplex with family in tow: this film earns its R rating, as you'll discover as soon as young Grace, voiced by Sarah Snook, tells us she thought masturbation was about chewing your food properly. Sex, nudity, drunk driving, a fat fetish — like we said, it's R-rated for a reason. But let's start at the beginning. In this, his seventh "clayography" (for "clay" and "biography"), the Australian writer-director explores the process of collecting unnecessary objects. Otherwise known as hoarding, it's something that weighs us down in ways we can't see, for all the clutter. Elliot also argues that it helps us build constrictive shells around ourselves — like snail shells, perhaps. Our protagonist is Grace Pudel, voiced with a quirky warmth and plenty of empathy by the wonderfully agile Snook. We first encounter Grace as a grown woman, telling her long, lonely life story to her pet garden snail, Sylvia (named after Plath), at a moment of deep sadness. Then we flash... Read More