Editorial boutique embraces clips and spots.
When Chris Hafner, co-owner/head creative at Brass Knuckles, Venice, Calif., began taking film and video courses at Palmar College, San Diego, he could not have foreseen how quickly he’d be in the ring with the heavyweights of postproduction. During his first year of studies, one of his assignments was to create six public service announcements about the local fire department. The PSAs earned six nominations for regional Emmy awards, and Hafner won two for directing ("Drugs Won’t Make You Cool" and "Your Last Bag"). He then transferred to New York University’s Tisch School Of The Arts, and directed music videos on the side. "But [I was] always editing, always cut my own stuff," Hafner says.
Hafner’s college internship with editor Judy Minot at RVI Editorial, New York, led to his meeting Jeff Brian, an in-house director for Sony, who enlisted him to help edit a longform home video for Ozzy Osbourne. While traveling with Osbourne’s band, Hafner impressed the tour’s opening act, Prong, who asked him to direct a longform video for them. "I was still in school," says Hafner, who also cut the project. "I just kept getting freelance calls. I had no plans to move to California, but I kept working and working and working. I called my roommate at college and said ‘I just bought a car. I’ve moved; send my stuff.’"
For two years, Hafner worked as a freelance director and editor until he and his former college roommate, Doug Johnson, pooled their savings to buy an Avid 400, rent an office, and set up their own shop in West Hollywood. That small operation was the beginning of Brass Knuckles, which today counts among its clients the Gap, Mazda, Budweiser, McDonald’s, Disney, Kids Footlocker and Snickers.
As Brass Knuckles expanded, one of Hafner’s editors, Scott Canning, introduced him to Greg Laube, who is now Brass Knuckles’ CEO, as well as president of the Los Angeles chapter of the Association of Independent Commercial Editors (AICE), and VP of the national AICE (SHOOT, 11/12/99, p.1).
In ’80, Laube opened Laube-Roth & Associates with Roger Roth. Upon Roth’s retirement in ’97, the company name was changed to X-Stream Post, and it merged with Brass Knuckles in ’98. "Brass Knuckles was just skyrocketing. I bought out Doug Johnson, and we merged [X-Stream Post] into Brass Knuckles. Then we moved over to Venice," says Hafner.
