Last fall, when Eric Bonniot returned to Los Angeles from London to run 525 Studios, he found that in the two-plus years he had been away, the U.S. production business had changed radically. But so had his ideas on how to approach the business.
"What I’ve walked back into in the last six months is not what I left two-and-a-half years ago," says Bonniot, who started at 525 as a runner 10 years ago when it was still 525 Post Production, and worked his way up to general manager. "It’s tough right now. The industry has become more competitive-rate structures are upside down from what they were."
Bonniot’s two-and-a-half years in London were spent as managing director of Rushes, sister company of 525, both of which are owned by Virgin Digital Studios, an arm of the U.K.-based Virgin Group. Upon returning last October, he was named president/CEO of 525.
While overseas, Bonniot was impressed by the way Rushes was brought into the creative process from the earliest stages of planning a commercial, and he came to believe that it was the way to success and survival in the competitive U.S. market. "I definitely felt that being more in touch, directly in tune with the creative directors at advertising agencies was critical," Bonniot says. "On a couple of the big things we got involved with at Rushes, we got involved at the pitch level. The agency would say, ‘Do you have any footage of old movie stars driving cars?’ We’d say, ‘No, but let’s talk about the concept. Let’s do a test.’ They would then pitch it at that level and win the job and we would be involved from the conception. I’d like to do the same thing at 525, get involved at that level, not just get a board and be asked, ‘Can you do this?’ "
That approach was a big part of Rushes’ success, Bonniot believes, and he stresses that the secret to getting involved at the creative level was the talent there. "People were very much looking for new ways to push the envelope and see what the tools could do," he says. "If you don’t have talent that can do that, people aren’t going to ask you to get involved at that level."
Last summer, 525 Studios adopted its new name-reflecting the direction in which Bonniot is driving it-and recently moved from area code 323 in Hollywood to new facilities in area code 310 in Santa Monica (while still retaining its original seven-digit phone number). The company philosophy today, according to Bonniot, is less focused on the hardware and software and more focused on the people and talent who work there.
"We’re trying to change from being a service bureau to being part of the creative process," he says. "The only way you can do that is to have creative talent that can be doing tests, pitching concepts and getting involved at a creative level to make itself a valuable part of the process, rather than just edit it and add some nifty effects. We’re trying to push ourselves more in that direction."
That kind of involvement has existed in the music video side of 525’s business, where directors are always trying to push concepts further on tight budgets, but Bonniot notes now that it is becoming more evident in some recent commercial work.
"On the latest Gap Kids holiday spot ["Snow"], we worked directly with directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris [of bicoastal Bob Industries] and the Gap in-house agency people," Bonniot says. "It was very much a collaborative thing between [525 creative director and Inferno artist] Geoff McAuliffe, who was the principal effects artist on the spot, and Dayton and Faris. They asked Geoff to come up with some different ideas and tests. They took some of the test composites that Geoff did and pitched them directly to the Gap agency people to create the concept and the whole design of the spot."
The ad features brightly clad children moving and dancing in time to a rendition of "Jingle Bells" sung by Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters. The spot is deceptively simple, but each shot includes anywhere from five to 60 layers composited together. For the opening shot, the children were filmed separately and in post the images were off-timed in layers to create a ripple motion effect. Dayton, Faris, McAuliffe and former 525 effects artist Nancy Hyland used the same kind of collaboration in the ESPN Winter X-Games series of six promotional spots out of Wieden & Kennedy’s New York office.
The concept of the spots was derived from the energy, humor and experimental nature of Japanese television. Characters included a Japanese announcer, an X-Games groupie, a hyperactive mascot and actual X-Games athletes. "Geoff got a bunch of Japanese television footage, went through it all and then created some test commercials for Jonathan and Valerie to look at and then pitch to Wieden & Kennedy," Bonniot says.
There are no plans to hire directors and turn 525 into a production company, but Bonniot is interested in attracting people with the potential to move in that direction. "We’re looking to hire people who can make that crossover," he says. "Maybe they can make that crossover and still remain artists in a traditional sense in a postproduction company, the way some of the [Industrial Light+Magic] people like Steve Beck have done. That’s a good model to be looking at, allowing strong talent to be able to evolve in that direction. You get to a point where someone who is very talented and creative is going to want to move into the next step in his career, directing or graphic design. The only way to let them do that and to keep talent is to have an environment where they can do both. That’s what we’re trying to push toward."
Recent hires include effects artist Jon Merrifield last fall and colorist Jais Thierry Lamaire last month. Merrifield, a 17-year veteran of the post industry, was freelancing before joining 525. He has been on staff at Video Post & Transfer, Dallas, and The Finish Line in Santa Monica. His commercial work includes "Looks Empty" for Bud Light, directed by Rob Pritts of Backyard Productions, Venice and Chicago, via DDB Needham, Chicago, and "Road to Canterbury" for Lexus, directed by David Wagreich through Plum Productions, Santa Monica, for Team One Advertising, El Segundo, Calif. (Wagreich later joined bicoastal/international @radical.media.)
Lamaire, who began his career in Paris, joined 525 from Encore, Santa Monica (now called Riot). He is considered an industry leader in telecine and was one of the first artists to test Cintel’s new C-Reality system and offer input in its development. His work includes the current Dodge Neon spots "Amore," "Heaven," and "Stars" directed by Randy Roberts of Rhythm & Hues Studios, Los Angeles, for BBDO/Penta Mark, Detroit.
Virgin Sisters
Bringing 525 Studios artists closer to the creative process will no doubt be enhanced by the company’s relocation to its new 17,000 square foot studio in Santa Monica, where so much of the agency and commercial production business has migrated in recent years. The company, which was until recently in the same building as Virgin Digital Studios’ production and broadcast design firm Studio V12 and the independent 3-D animation house Computer Cafe (a Santa Maria-headquartered house with a new Santa Monica office), still maintains loose relationships with the two companies. "V12 is a sister company. It allows our artists the opportunity to transition and cross over into a graphic design area and still maintain their presence on a Henry or an Inferno or whatever box they’re operating," Bonniot says. "We feel strongly that 3-D is critical to the work we do. We have an in-house 3-D solution, but we also rely on relationships with Computer Cafe and other companies for the bigger projects we get involved in."
Computer Cafe, which is not currently working on any projects with 525, contributed 3-D graphic effects to two of a series of ID spots for NBC’s ’98 fall campaign, directed by Juan Delcan of Lee Hunt Associates, New York. Brian Buongiorno of 525 was the visual effects supervisor on the job, which used "runaway liquid colors" from the NBC Peacock logo as a theme. Music videos and visual effects remain a major part of 525’s business, but Bonniot says the basic focus of the company will remain on commercials and he frequently comes back to the company’s role in the creative process. "Just as the offline companies are moving more into having finishing solutions, we’re looking at ways of maintaining our creative involvement. We want to let our talent do that and not have them tied to a Henry or an Inferno or whatever. Tools are part of it, but the goal is a combination of creative talent who are looking to move forward and not just be artists, and operators who are looking to evolve further and are open to different technologies in hardware and software."
