Production house Free Society, a Toronto shop that’s part of the Radke family of companies in Canada, has expanded its representation of tabletop director Etienne Proulx to span North America except for Quebec (where he is handled by Gorditos).
Proulx had most recently been repping himself in the U.S. while Free Society had served as his Canadian roost. Now Free Society extends its reach with Proulx to include the American ad market. This geographic expansion comes at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has challenged and changed the way nearly every sector works, including tabletop where physical studios and specialized equipment are required.
Free Society has found that tabletop talent can serve clients beyond borders and often without face-to-face participation. In the past year, Proulx has been able to apply his artistry and technical wherewithal for shooting tabletop and liquids to work for U.S. clients, including PepsiCo, Nespresso, McDonald’s and Budweiser. Thanks to a zero-latency 1080p communication system at Free Society, Proulx has been able to share his work in Toronto remotely with clients, regardless of their location. “They see everything that I see in real time,” said Proulx, noting that the system allows clients to have a deeply participatory experience without having to deal with the expense and time associated with travel.
“People have learned that with Zoom, shooting remotely is really easy and people no longer need to sit in a studio to get great work done,” related Edie Weiss, president and CEO, Radke Film Group, Proulx has tapped into the considerable tabletop resources at Free Society while traveling only when needed to other markets. Free Society maintains a 3,000 square foot main stage, an 1,100 square foot insert stage, a complete rigging shop, high-speed motion control equipment including three high-speed motion control cranes/model movers, two Phantom 4K cameras, three Red Dragon cameras, and a wide assortment of 35mm cine lenses. It also has a custom-built convection glass shooting oven with broiler attachment, a complete commercial prep kitchen and in-house previz artists, SFX team, retouchers, and full 3D and large format printing capabilities.
That said, through strategic partnerships that Free Society has made with other studios, Proulx is also able to work in person in Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago. “What we have here in Toronto is a highly specialized facility but it also has highly specialized talent to support Etienne. It’s better for the project to work in the ecosystem we have built around him. But we can pick up and go to Miami or Chicago if it best serves the client,” said Free Society EP, managing partner Tony DiMarco.
The environment in the Toronto studio is what allows Proulx to remain committed to research and development, a hallmark of his approach. He focuses on texture, practical rigging and FX to find the best never seen images.
“I want to be the one who knows the most about what we’re discussing in every meeting after the pitch. I do my own work and we have a great treatment team and a top-of-the-line previz team that rivals any top post house,” said Proulx. “At the start of every job, I spend about a week in the studio with the product doing R&D to find an epic angle, interesting movements to use in the work or a new way to transition from one shot to another. Free Society has the best system I’ve ever seen and that’s my canvas for the whole job.”
That approach to innovation brought a spry levity to recent work for Pepsi wherein Proulx painstakingly perfected ice stunts and worked with an ice carver to bring personality to ice cubes. He coaxed a velvety vision of coffee for Starbucks’ canned Nitro blend. And for Nespresso, he used modern camera movements and seamless transitions to transform powerful cinema light into a sun-like source to create perfect shadows in-camera throughout the spot.
As he said, “I shoot stuff on camera that a lot of people do in post.”
