HSI hasn’t had a changing of the guard but rather what founder Stavros Merjos describes as “an expansion of the guard” as his long-time colleagues, executive producer Rebecca Skinner and head of sales Michelle Ross, have been named partners in the company. Merjos now teams with Skinner and Ross to run and shape the future of the venerable production house, which opened in 1986. They plan to continue to diversify HSI’s talent roster as well as extend its reach further into new areas of content while maintaining a solid commercialmaking foundation.
Asked what equity percentage stake Skinner and Ross now have in HSI, Merjos responded that combined the two own the majority of the company. He affirmed with a sense of pride that HSI is now “a majority women-owned business.”
Merjos continues as an integral part of HSI but felt the time was right to share the responsibility for managing the company with two trusted compatriots. He’s worked with Skinner for some 15 years and Ross for the past 10. “People go into business with people they’ve known for a short period of time and it doesn’t always work out,” related Merjos. “I know Rebecca and Michelle so well–and we work so well together. This was a comfortable and easy thing for me to do.”
Since January, Merjos, Skinner and Ross have been operating informally as partners in HSI, overseeing its Culver City, Calif., New York and London offices. Based on how productive and how smoothly that collaboration has gone these past several months, Merjos recently made the partnership official, finalizing the paperwork on the deal. Merjos added that he, Skinner and Ross will continue to benefit greatly from other management team players at HSI, including executive producer Maddi Carlton in the N.Y. office, and Nicola Doring, managing director of HSI, London.
While Skinner will continue to be a hands-on executive producer developing and nurturing relationships with directors and clients, she is freed to take on more big-picture partnership responsibilities by the recent hiring of exec producer Kim Dellara, who has a pedigree in music videos from her tenure at Black Dog Films and then successfully diversified into commercials and other projects via Black Dog parent/sister shop RSA Films. The move to HSI reunites Dellara with directing duo The Malloys–brothers Brendan and Emmett–whom she earlier worked with at RSA.
Bateman, Brambilla
Among the latest moves made by partners Merjos, Skinner and Ross are not only the addition of Dellara about a month ago but also key directorial signings: Jason Bateman for commercials, and Marco Brambilla for longer-form branded content and special projects.
Bateman continues to take on branded entertainment via DumbDumb, the sponsor-driven advertising and production company in which he’s partnered with fellow comedic actor/writer Will Arnett. DumbDumb has displayed smarts in the branded content arena as reflected earlier this year when its Dirty Shorts–The Prom Date, directed by Bateman for Wrigley’s Orbit chewing gum, won a Gold Pencil at the One Club’s third annual One Show Entertainment Awards (SHOOTonline, 2/17). The Dirty Shorts fare teamed DumbDumb with Energy BBDO Chicago and Electus, the branded entertainment company headed by former NBC Entertainment co-chairman Ben Silverman. Bateman, whose signing with HSI marks his first production house representation as a commercials director, brings comedic storytelling chops to the company roster with his directing credits also including an episode of Arrested Development, the critically acclaimed sitcom in which he and Arnett were featured cast members.
As for Brambilla, he recently returned to HSI where he enjoyed a successful commercialmaking career during his first tour of duty at the company. Now, he comes back with a reputation in fine art, having turned out notable art installations in Europe and stateside (including a hell-to-heaven ascending and heaven-to-hell descending elevator ride at N.Y’s Standard Hotel). Brambilla’s experiential art installations have led to his being “rediscovered” by the advertising community for special venue projects and longer form branded content.
Other directors branching out at HSI recently include Ryan Ebner (a 2008 SHOOT New Directors Showcase helmer), Yoann Lemoine who started in HSI’s London office (and whose credits include AIDES’ “Graffiti” which won multiple 2010 Cannes Lions, including two Golds), and Casey Neistat who helmed web films in the Mitchum Hard Working series of shorts (as did legendary documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles via Maysles Films and repped by Nonfiction Unlimited). On a separate front, Neistat (who was included in the 2010 SHOOT New Directors Showcase) has some other short film endeavors which could spawn a TV series pilot. Neistat is no stranger to TV shows as he and brother Van teamed on The Neistat Brothers, a series for HBO.
Well known for its commercialmaking and music videos over the years, HSI also has extensive branded content exploits–among the most notable examples being The Malloys’ documentary for rock band Oasis and Warner Records, which was an integral part of the integrated “Dig Out Your Soul In The Streets” campaign out of BBH New York. The campaign won assorted accolades, including the Best of Show GRANDY at the ’09 International ANDY Awards, a Gold Pencil, Gold Clio, and AICP Next’s Integrated Campaign and Audience Award honors.
Skinner and Ross said they hope to attain a higher profile for HSI in the branded content arena, a reputation more in line with the high level of such work already being done at the company. On the sales front, Ross is looking to secure a wide creative range of sponsored content/entertainment opportunities as well as traditional mainstream spotmaking for a diverse HSI roster of some 20-plus directors spanning varied talents, genres, styles, disciplines and media.
Skinner said that part of her charge is to ensure that all these directors and their clients have full production and creative support from HSI in all forms of content, from commercials to music videos, to short and long-form fare, and emerging media projects across multiple platforms.
MADRE Launches Creative Storytelling Lab Motherwolf
Production company MADRE has launched Motherwolf, a creative storytelling lab built exclusively for directors at sister shops MADRE and Madrefoca. Led by chief creative officer Todd Iorio, along with managing director and founding partner Jonathon Ker, Motherwolf serves as a taste, creativity, and judgment multiplier for directors from treatment to air, using cutting-edge tools to deliver high-fidelity renders from the first frame so directors can make every decision with expertise, intentionality, and craft.
The premise is about the director, not the technology. “Our directors are proven storytellers first,” said Iorio. “What we’re doing is getting them fluent in what’s now possible, and getting in early enough that the tool serves the story instead of the other way around. AI is one instrument among several. It’s not the business.”
In practice, ideas come to Motherwolf first as boards and conversations, and the team builds out the world that a director needs to develop a vision. From there, it produces real-time previs that the directors can drive themselves, along with repeatable generative tools for adding nuance and practicality to images. Motherwolf’s creative infrastructure then continues to support the work through production and into edit, color, and audio.
Because that capability sits in-house, MADRE can take on more ambitious work and finish it under one roof rather than sending it elsewhere, an increasingly desirable solution as agencies look to sourcing production and post together. “It’s not a sales line,” said Ker. “It’s a statement about the scale and the kind of project we can now execute.”
Iorio brings more than 25 years at the leading edge of visual storytelling to Motherwolf, having been... Read More
Review: Director Destin Daniel Cretton’s “Spider-Man: Brand New Day”
Are the ears playing tricks on us? Or does Tom Holland's Peter Parker sound, at the beginning of "Spider-Man: Brand New Day," like more of a native New Yorker than before? The cadence, the sort-of Queens accent — it's striking, as we watch Peter chat on the phone with police captain Jean DeWolff (Liza Colón-Zayas) about the crimes plaguing the city that'll have him springing into action, because he's a full-time Spidey now. But behind the chipper banter, there's an underlying melancholy. Anyone who saw the last movie, of course, knows we've embarked on a lonely era for Spider-Man. When we last saw Peter, he was buying the saddest takeout coffee of his web-slinging life. Girlfriend MJ was at the doughnut shop counter, but had no idea who he was, her memory of Peter erased as part of a sacrifice he'd made to save the world. "It would be as though you never existed," Doctor Strange had told him before casting the fateful spell at the end of "Spider-Man: No Way Home." But Peter was resolute: "Do it." And now, four years later, he's paying the emotional price. Peter lives alone in a drab apartment; beloved Aunt May, of course, died in the last film. He's been watching via social media as MJ (Zendaya) and best buddy Ned (Jacob Batalon) have the time of their lives at MIT. That was once the dream for all three: living and learning together at school. Didn't quite work out that way. These early moments of "Brand New Day" set the tone for a different kind of movie. It's not the surprise-a-minute, fan-funfest of "No Way Home," which, in piercing open the multiverse, brought us a hugely satisfying set of reunions. There were all the old villains — Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Electro, Sandman. But nothing beat the return of our two previous Spideys, with... Read More
