by Herman Manson (@marklives) Anton Visser and Zayd Halim, the Velocity Films director and producer team, are entering the market as independents with the launch this month of their new company, Patriot. We asked Visser about what has gone wrong with the production-company model, how the business is changing and what Patriot brings to the market.
Anton Visser: The production company model has been a hot button issue for a while now. There are a lot of interesting changes afoot at the moment and, with some directors leaving Velocity and setting up their own shops, it’s all coming into sharp relief. There’s evidence that the traditional model of a big mothership production company that provides big infrastructure is no longer working. It was inevitable that some kind of downscaling had to happen in our industry, but I think one could argue that something valuable to clients has been lost along the way.
Having said that, there is an interesting ecosystem out there now at the moment, with various players all trying to cannibalise each other — you have agencies doing in-house production, production houses working direct with clients, editing houses offering post-production, and even agencies doing deals with post-production facilities. But, at the end of the day, I believe whomever you work with is still looking for creative and collaborative value; that won’t change. Production houses are specialist “makers”, and brands and agencies will always have a need for that. I think what is important is to be more maneuverable, more collaborative, while still offering high-end craft.
We have a combined 36 years in advertising that cover my time as a copywriter and commercials director and Zayd’s time in the production trenches and we believe that that experience and expertise are worth gold. So the real ‘arms race’ is to make sure that you’re someone who offers something special.
So how do we see ourselves in that picture? Our strength is performance, storytelling, character, finding the human truths in scripts — whether it’s narrative or pure comedy. What’s exciting is that we’re in an era where brands want to communicate with people in a more real, honest and engaging way, so those are good strengths to have at the moment. And maybe it’s time to see that kind of storytelling as a professional skill? No matter the platform, whether it’s gaming or ads or content or whatever, you need to structure a narrative, structure an experience, work out the arcs, the subtexts, create enjoyable characters and bring it all together into a coherent tonality. So maybe we should start looking at ourselves as “story architects” and make people see the value of that. Because, as much as we see our new company as nimble and maneuverable, we’re loathe to create the impression that, because we’re small, now we’re cheap. To do something right still costs money, and we believe that, because storytelling has become so important to marketers this skill, we offer has real value.
At the same time, we’re incredibly excited about where the industry’s going because we’re able to take what we’ve learnt at Velocity — the focus on the work, the attention to detail, the exacting production process — and apply it in a more flexible, maneuverable way. It’s like we’ve been trained in the ways of the samurai but, as a smaller shop, we can be more like ninjas. For instance, time frames are just crazy at the moment, so what we’ve found is that we’re being brought on board earlier to help develop ideas and work as a collaborator. That’s exciting, and it’s incredibly rewarding for us, for the agency and the client. Going forward, we’d like to work direct with some clients, too, as we see ourselves as “makers” first and a creative entity unto ourselves. But, obviously, that wave hasn’t quite hit South Africa yet and it’s a touchy subject.
The name Patriot for us evokes strength, truth, passion and all that lovely stuff, but it also represents our longer-term desire to help develop the industry and make it more inclusive. Zayd and I are patriots in that we believe in the importance and power of transformation. That has two pillars for us: first to train people who have previously been denied opportunities and, secondly, to try and employ them.
Unfortunately, the ad game isn’t an ideal training ground as we shoot for one or two days and then wait another six weeks for the next shoot, so ultimately we’d want to broaden the scope of what we do so that we can run more work through our system.
Herman Manson (@marklives) is the founder and editor of MarkLives.com.
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