New Zealand Marketing magazine

Screening process

by Graham Medcalf

Originally published in NZ Marketing March-April 2010, page 86

The times they are a-changin’ for the television commercial production industry. And, as Graham Medcalf writes, a number of local companies are putting the hard times of 2009 behind them and focusing instead on the opportunities the rapidly morphing communications landscape now offers

Independent director Roger Tompkins has been in the television commercial trenches for a long time. Starting out in 1980, he has built an international reputation for award-winning work and his company Cranbrook Films has long been regarded as one of Australasia’s leading production and facilitation houses. His commitment to quality work shot on 35mm and great ideas are renowned in the industry, as will be seen in the coming months when a series of new bank commercials featuring a major talent are released.

But big-budget TVC productions have been few and far between in the past couple of difficult years. Tompkins, who now resides in Queenstown, says he probably worked no more than 20 days in 2009 and he thinks the industry is in a delicate state, caught between the burgeoning opportunities offered by the internet, New Zealand’s yet-to-be established first-world broadband delivery service and the tightening of clients’ budgets and production houses’ margins.

Winds of change

It is most definitely a time of change in the industry. And one only has to look at Auckland’s visual effects and animation studio Oktobor (no longer referred to as a post-production house) to see how rapidly those changes are occurring. New general manager Bruce Everett and vocal front-man Ganesh Raj are expounding, to all who will listen, the new philosophy of “collaborative convergence”. Everett has brought a hands-on, craft producer and film-maker’s eye to Oktobor, while Raj is preaching the advantages of deeper collaboration with agency creatives, directors and even a few savvy marketers who are starting to involve themselves in the process of producing work across multiple screens.

Oktobor is discovering that to cater for the new digital space and acknowledge the need to re-purpose assets across a number of different communications platforms, the company has had to build its own iPod applications and Twitter tools. And the new attitude is one of ‘by whatever means necessary’ to ensure that good ideas work everywhere.

The major challenge in 2010 will be matching reduced budgets with clients’ expectations. It is a constant battle for post-production companies to supply clients with the latest equipment and technology while budgets keep shrinking

Images & Sound is also able to encode any video project to specifications requested for the “small screen”. Over the coming years, it also predicts that “made for web or mobile” content will continue to increase. To cope with a huge influx of data-based, post-production work-flows, Images & Sound has incorporated data stations into its arsenal of tools. And the post house is already employing full time data wranglers to work on larger projects.

The upswing of things

These opportunities are the upside of an industry that appears to have a markedly different, more optimistic attitude compared with last year.

“I think everyone knows budgets were a lot tighter in the recession and competition for work increased,” says Toybox senior producer James Hudson. As a result, production companies looked at new cost-effective ways to produce material, which led to an increase in material shot on the digital RED camera and also saw the introduction of stills cameras shooting high definition (HD) video for TVCs.

“As always, TVC production in this country is a changing beast,” says Kaleidoscope director Glen Robson, who has also noticed a shift to more targeted and cost-effective TVC production.

With agencies wanting higher production values for their online communications and more integrated and consistent communication across a variety of media, Kaleidoscope has been working on more projects that re-purpose digital assets across those different platforms. Despite this shift, however, it seems difficult to secure budgets for projects that originate online.

Kaleidescope has refocused on its core business of digital production while exploring new ways of distributing media online, through a personalisation and recommendation engine it is developing called LuvitOrShuvit, which integrates the power of YouTube, Facebook, Bebo, Amazon, LastFm and Google.

Overall shrinkage

The Sweet Shop managing director George Mackenzie says that while there is less money to make TVCs, the current demand for authenticity has placed skill on a pedestal. And that is good news for directors and production companies.

Hoverlion’s Rollo Wenlock has noticed a slow move over the past few years to high-concept, low-budget answers to its clients’ advertising needs. And he believes as budgets get smaller, the production companies that can offer versatility and interesting work will win over those only offering quality at a high price.

More production companies, directors and producers are being asked to participate in the creative process earlier than in the past. Arguably, this is a result of agencies having smaller creative departments and TVC budgets

Advertising agencies have also felt the pinch, with many being forced to let their in-house producers go. As a result, if production companies hope to take up the slack and obtain the material needed to produce the TVC, they will have to be more assertive.

Marko Klijn, a producer at Cirkus, thinks the trend towards smaller budgets and less time will continue apace, which will force production companies to be even more flexible and ‘out of the box’ in their approach. This in itself is a good thing, he says, because it shakes up the industry and forces agencies to look beyond “reassuringly expensive plus a leather couch equals good”.

“However, there is a breaking point,” he says. “One cannot expect to get the same value for a third of the price. Planning issues cannot always be solved by production. Once again, smaller budgets working with less time than before create problems.”

The major challenge in 2010 will be for post-production companies to supply clients with the latest equipment and technology while budgets keep shrinking. And maintain profitability and creative integrity at the same time.

As The Sweet Shop’s Mackenzie says: “There is no shortage of opportunity, so the biggest challenge for all production companies is the hard cost of production.”

Automatic Film’s Declan Cahill says it’s essential to analyse the medium and rationalise the tools being used.

“An example of this is HD, which needs a lot more attention to detail and quality, whereas a viral going on the web needs less. So we can structure the jobs with the appropriate resources for the final medium.”

Creative processes

Most in the TVC production and post-production arena are optimistic about the year ahead. Kaleidoscope’s Robson is expecting to see a shift of brand to online media, video and social media distribution, where people are more open to brand experience and where they expect to see entertaining and compelling content they can choose to interact with.

Peter Grasse of Curious Films is even predicting the release of Apple’s iPad will, like iTunes, change the landscape, with paid-for content possibly leading to more commercials being made.

More production companies, directors and producers are being asked to participate in the creative process earlier than in the past. Arguably, this is a result of agencies having smaller creative departments and TVC budgets. But for those willing to share, bringing the conceptual and executional components of the process together earlier has to be beneficial, even if the result is simply helping each side understand the other better.

Graham Medcalf is a freelance writer.
graham.medcalf@ihug.co.nz