Winston Churchill referred to the United Kingdom and the United States as two great countries separated by a common language. There’s both truth and fiction in that quip relative to industry shops that maintain operations on both sides of the Atlantic.
The fiction is that despite being separated by considerable geographical distance, companies with offices stateside and in the U.K. have often attained a close-knit working relationship, with each operation positively influencing and informing the other. And this mutual education and collaboration is an ongoing process, giving new meaning to the term “exchange rate.” Indeed the rate of exchange has been favorable for both parties.
At the same time, the truth in Churchill’s observation is that there are creative and business practices that differ in each country, at times causing industry entrepreneurs to wish that some of the best of what the U.K. has to offer would gain traction in the U.S. and vice versa.
So in the spirit of this truth and fiction scenario, SHOOT offered a pair of questions to a cross-section of commercial production and postproduction folk who have one industry foot in the U.K. and the other in the U.S. The two multi-part queries are:
A. With houses on both sides of the Atlantic, how does one operation inform or influence the other creatively? From a business standpoint?
B. What U.K. creative approach and/or business practice would you like to see embraced in the U.S.? Conversely, what American creative approach/business practice would you like to see take hold in the U.K.?
Here’s a sampling of the feedback we received with some respondents choosing to answer both questions, while others focused one but one:
Stephanie Apt,
president, Final Cut U.S.A.
B. I think that when we started Final Cut in the U.S. almost nine years ago, we saw a U.S. model for editorial that was more agency led, and a U.K. approach that was director/production company-driven. What has emerged increasingly is a hybrid approach, which works exceptionally well. Agencies really care about who the directors have been editing with, and directors collaborate with agencies to achieve the best results. For the editor, this is an opportunity to synthesize input from sometimes differing points of view. The editor is at the center of where this all converges, and true success is achieved when all parties walk away knowing that they contributed to a work that would not have been the same without their involvement.
Graham Bird,
managing director, Commercials and TV, MPC, London
A. By opening an office in L.A. the intention was always to create a studio that would be completely linked to the London office both creatively and technically. We have established the L.A. office with a core group of creative and production talent from MPC London so the bond is naturally strong.
MPC has always looked to provide our clients with the finest international talent. The L.A. studio has become home to a blend of local and international talent, with European and U.K. artists bringing a strong creative aesthetic and sensitivity to visual effects work that is being well received in the U.S. Complementing this is access to the latest R&D, software and workflow developments created by London’s in house R&D department which gives MPC in L.A. the same creative edge as London and is coupled with the ability to deliver complex VFX projects efficiently.
B. From a creative point of view, it is always rewarding to have a director involved throughout the process. From a visual effects perspective, their being involved right from the initial conceptualization and pre-visualization through to the final delivery makes the process into one that feels like a creative collaboration.
Don Block,
executive producer, Outsider USA
A. Outsider has two great anchor offices, one in London and one in Los Angeles. Since it’s founding in London by my partner Robert Campbell, the company has stood for the highest level of talent and creative. That DNA is the greatest single influence on the U.S. company and our approach to the projects that we do.
B. One of the practices in the U.K. that helps contribute to their great creative success is the process of the director working with his/her editor on the first edit. The director is indeed expected to be available and committed to the edit and this natural component of the film making process inevitably produces a vastly better product. Years ago, directors in the U.S. seceded their role in the editorial process to move on to the next shoot and we have been paying for it creatively ever since. We find that the better creative agencies today understand this and endeavor to work this way, however this is a practice in the U.K. that we would definitely like to see more widely embraced here in the U.S.
The producer/director system in the U.K. is another practice that may have both creative and business advantages. Typically, a producer and director will team up over a long period of time and the producer will bid the job, produce it and then follow through with the postproduction. This makes for a far more personal experience in production and in the end, a far greater degree of continuity and accountability.
Michelle Burke,
U.S. managing director, Cut + Run
A. Cut + Run is committed to being a global, holistic company for these exact reasons, the benefit of influences from other countries on the creative and business model. Each office broadens the perspective of the other with the cultural differences they have to offer, their varying creative approaches, how talent in each country is trained and how they approach their craft in different ways. It is this melting pot of thinking and the merging of unique approaches that allow us to offer a wide breadth of talent resources. With this structure, we are able to offer a diverse group of talent in any office, in any city around the world. To enhance this approach, Cut + Run welcomed us as a new leadership team to work side-by-side to grow and nurture the vision of the company. We are fortunate to have both worked closely with some of the most talented directors and creatives in the world and understand each of our clients’ businesses from an inside perspective based on our past roles at Partizan and TBWA/Chiat/Day. As such, are able to offer the clients better insight, project management and heightened resources to match our editorial talent. After all, life is all about feeling proud of the work and happy clients.
Nicola Doring,
managing director, HSI London
A. HSI Productions has a sister office in London, HSI London. The office was set up with the ethos of being an English company, with English directors who happen to be owned by an American company and also represent their American directors. We have all worked together for many many years. I grew up in production in the States, so the flow of creative and business practices between offices is a natural, everyday occurrence. We believe that we offer a natural, broad depth of knowledge between the two offices, with all of us adapting to each job in each country. A perfect example is that we have just shot a Burger King Ad for Crispin Porter in London with an English director, based in L.A., and the creative director is English.
We feel strongly that we can not be too American in the U.K. and we can not be too British in the States…we are an AMER-LISH company! Despite the fact that we are 5,000 miles apart, we do not feel the distance.
B. The creative process in Britain feels a little looser whilst the American process feels a little more structured. However we have a mutual respect for the working practices within each culture. That is the beauty of it all, the best of both worlds.
With this understanding, we have easily adapted accordingly.
Robert Fernandez,
CEO, Moxie Pictures, U.S. & U.K.
A. All of our offices operate in a seamless fashion. One of the main reason to have our own offices, is to provide cohesive and consistent management to our directors as well as to our clients. We made a conscious decision to enter into the London market because of the high level of creative opportunities that originate from there. We can manage the process in a much more efficient fashion for our directors which totally makes an impact to the end product. Business wise, I did not want to open our office in London until we found the right person, from that market, to run it. In order to be embraced by the market, you need to have someone who comes from it and is accustomed to how the business there works, no matter how subtle the differences.
Dawn Laren,
managing partner, Moxie Pictures, U.K.
B. I think that the director’s involvement in the offline edit whereby he presents a director’s cut to the agency is a valuable practice that we employ in the U.K. It seems strange to me that an agency asks a director to create his interpretation of their script via a series of elements that in his vision, will piece together a certain way. And yet in the U.S., he is not invited to be involved in putting the pieces together.
Another element that often differs affects the business aspect of the job, rather than the creative. Over here it is always the production company who provides the production insurance package for the job, where as in the U.S. the client often provides wrap up insurance and in practice, the cover provided via the two routes can vary quite substantially Wrap up cover mostly excludes fees and mark-up in the case of a claim and production company cover includes it. A way to overcome this is for there to be a ‘difference of cover’ clause addendum added to the job contract which means in practice that the client wrap up policy is obliged to match any element of cover that the production company package would have provided. I experienced this problem on a U.S. job and the difference in cover clause saved the day!
Robin Shenfield,
CEO, The Mill, U.K. and U.S.
A. We have a long history of successfully growing and nurturing staff at The Mill on both sides of the Atlantic. We are in a unique position with our three offices in London, NY and LA to make this talent available where it is most needed. It benefits our clients when they have a relationship with a particular operator and want to continue to work with them regardless of location.
This includes sharing the workflow in all three locations on larger projects to communicating ideas and solutions around all three offices by tapping in to our huge resource of people talent.
As we continue to develop our new talent we keep The Mill’s ethos throughout all the regional offices, never diluting the creative solutions, ideas, client collaboration and expertise while adapting to the local markets. Transatlantic collaboration!
Example: Nike – Next level.
B. In the U.K. via both The Mill and our Beam.TV company, we have the expertise for not only originating but for adapting content for different platforms and geographies. In the U.S., this diversity is probably less well understood so we are working to change that!
Demand for high quality web based advertising is developing a faster rate in the USA but the U.K. is catching up quickly.
John Smith,
editor/partner, The Whitehouse, London
A. The Whitehouse offices continuously influence each other through the sharing of jobs and talent. Our editors and assistants travel frequently to different cities sharing their experiences and ideas within our office and with our clients. Having roots in the U.K., we’ve been able to embrace the European model of director-driven editorial choice here in the U.S. And conversely, with our depth of direct agency experience, we’ve been able to serve as a bridge for both models; creating a unified process for the project. We’ve found that communications have to be much clearer dependent on location. In London, you’re able to pop round the corner to brief your Flame artist; whereas in the U.S., much more is done by conference calls because you might be in L.A. and your Flame work might be done in N.Y. Editing styles are different; humor for example in the U.S. is a bit broader because the market’s bigger. In the U.K., we can afford to be a little subtler; both very good, just different cultures. We share work via our website to keep an eye on what other offices are doing and to keep up with the creative changes. We have technology that allows us real time remote editing or chatting. Good editing is key here as long as we influence each other to do better work, that’s what’s important.
Helen Stanley,
managing director, commercials, Framestore, London
A. Creative and technical approaches to jobs received on both sides of the Atlantic are shared, giving us greater diversification of methodology. Members of the London team who want to work abroad get a chance to do this without leaving Framestore. It is a huge benefit to keep creative talent within the company satisfied with avenues to grow and develop. Also there are more markets to get work from; if one is quiet, can help the other one. We can work longer hours whilst they are asleep and vice versa. In markets where overheads are lower, we still have our top talent but they cost us less on a daily basis, enabling us to do jobs that sometimes we would not be able to afford to do.
B. Business practices. We appreciate the U.K. practice of the director’s serious hands-on involvement for longer in the VFX process. In the U.S. however, it appears that there is more of an appreciation of what visual effects and post actually cost us and a willingness to pay fairly for changes at appropriate times. This is healthier than the U.K. expectation that post companies will simply cover costs however global and blue chip the client and often results in awkward conversations about budget rather than a fair conversation about the value and a price for the additional work completed.
