SubscribeA Place for Filmmakers
Last week PSFK was kind enough to invite The IdeaLists to speak on a panel about LA’s creative industries. In response to a question about the insularity of the city's production community, I shared a complaint I had heard from a producer at Partizan. It went something like this: “Our company arguably represents some of the best visual storytellers in the world of filmmaking, be it long or short form. The fashion industry is eager to work with filmmakers now that they are exploring communications outside photography and print. But we still don’t work together, simply because the production industry and the fashion industry don’t go to the same parties.” After the panel, I had several people come up to me to share similar stories.
Over the past few months, The IdeaLists has set out to help bridge this fashion + film divide and small successes keep mounting. With this in mind, today we announce the first in what we hope to be a ongoing series of “idea” calls by Nowness.
If you aren’t already familiar with Nowness, it is, simply put, the futue of fashion editorial. Being helmed by some of the most influential fashion editors in the business and backed by LVMH, lets just say they know fashion and they are serious about getting to know filmmakers. Let the party begin.
On another LA/film-related note, we were happy to hear that a documentary treatment recently posted on the site has been optioned by a (top-notch) production company here in Hollywood. We intend to increase our focus on getting more documentary films created in the months ahead, so please send us your ideas and well do our best to help get them matched and realized.
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Meet The IdeaLists: James Frost and Mary Fagot of Blip Boutique
James Frost and Mary Fagot have quietly yet steadily had their hands in helping to create some of the most interesting online videos of the past few years. From their ongoing collaborations with viral wunderboys OK GO to enlisting the brilliant information architect Aaron Koblin to create Radiohead's House of Cards and Interpol's Rest my Chemistry. And most recently, Mary returned from graduate studies at Hyper Island in Sweden, having spent part of her time there creating the first (that I’ve seen at least) interactive music video—Robyn's Killing Me—which allows people to interact with the song via twitter APIs. Oh, and its in 3D!
Your company is called Blip Boutique. What's a blip?
Mary: A blip is something that interrupts you and makes you pay attention for a brief amount of time. Then you get on with things.
Mary: A blip is something that interrupts you and makes you pay attention for a brief amount of time. Then you get on with things.
Do blips only live online?
James: The idea originally started before online video was really going. And Blip Boutique has progressed as technology progresses. The Beastie Boys stuff we did… what were they for eCards? So it’s about pushing the (current boundaries).
You guys have collaborated on a number of the OK GO videos that have been extremely successful online.
Mary: It started when I was (a creative director) at Capitol and OK GO was a band that nobody (there) cared too much about. They were doing rehearsals for an upcoming tour and they were dancing in the backyard. I asked them to set up a camera and film themselves. That became their first viral hit.
Just that? It was just a rehearsal that got all those views?
Mary: It took us six months to get the label to put that out. This was just when YouTube was beginning.
It’s surprising their approach hasn't had more of a industry impact. James, you told me that when you judged music videos at the D&AD awards last year, the work was underwhelming. You would think that with production costs being so low and distribution being so accessible, we would see a new golden age of music video.
James: I think the truth with music videos is that it’s a generational thing and that generation is gone. Kids just aren’t that interested in watching a four-minute film. Sad. Good pieces of work do go viral and get spread around, but they are far and few between. But I don’t believe that visuals that accompany music are dead. Now it will be an interactive experience online.
Mary: (Most acts) aren’t making enough money to justify even a halfway decent budget on a video. I think that’s where OK GO is unique because they get funded and then take it upon themselves to source really creative people and give them license to do really creative things. But you can’t do that without any budget.
There is the other side of the argument that says soon everyone will be able to make great films because tools are so accessible.
James: I don’t agree with that. I think anyone can have a video camera and anyone can film anything. That’s a true statement. But at the end of the day you have to have talent.
Have you seen some of the stuff on YouTube that gets 25 million hits?
James: Yup. I rest my case. It’s all like Americas Funniest Home Videos. People like to see disasters. At the end of the day, you still need people that know how to do it. It might be easier to get noticed. When I first started, to be signed as a director you had to beg, borrow and steal to get film from Kodak in order to make stuff and show off your talent. Now you can jump that hurdle.
I’m beginning to question if it's not actually getting harder to get noticed above all the noise.
James: Because there’s so much stuff, there’s so much stuff to go through.
So if you were running the marketing dept at a major label what would you be doing differently?
Mary: I wouldn’t even bother with a music video. I'd have everything online. One of the most interesting aspects of the Robyn video was letting people get involved. It’s a scary thing in some ways. You don’t want to do some crowdsourced production of your album—that’s entirely too frightening. But to let people have a voice in that video was really interesting. It’s the first time in my career that I had immediate, direct feedback from the fans.
Mary, you were an established creative in the music industry, then you took time off to enlist in the Hyper Island interactive program. What did you learn that you would recommend others in your space learn as well?
Mary: The thing that was most interesting was (to see the) very broad landscape of what’s out there. The stuff that works is not advertising in a way that we’re telling you what you should believe. It has to be creative and good looking, but it also has to serve a purpose. The other thing that Hyper Island teaches is group dynamics. A lot of theory about how you work with others in the creative space to get out the best result. Which is very much in contrast to my past history at a record label where you’re a dept head, your responsible for being a genius, then you have your troops marching behind you.
A more collaborative approach to ideation.
Mary: It's way more collaborative and that is more true for digital than anything else because the (technology) is an inherent part of the original idea.
Speaking of that, data visualization is an area where you guys are pushing the boundaries by applying data to more traditional storytelling approaches.
James: I did an IBM spot at the beginning of the year where the entire spot was sourced from actual data. So when you see a hospital gurney, the points of data are actually received from medical information that we’ve received from IBM. So once you have that point cloud data you can pretty much manipulate it wherever you want it to go.
Radiohead was different in the sense that we collected the data through scanning. So they are true renditions of what you’re seeing on the screen. IBM was a combination: we started off scanning, then it got more abstract as it went along until it got to the point of pure data being visualized.
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Aggregators & Generators
During my brief tenure working within ad agencies I was twice described by coworkers—both of whom were career agency men—as “a guy that puts the right people together.”
I assume this wasn’t a compliment.
That’s because the agency model isn’t predicated on collaborative ideation as much as it is controlled access to ideation. So if an idea didn’t originate within the agency, it's not valid, regardless of who might have the best solution.
But in a media environment that now requires lots of little executions as opposed to single broad campaigns, is it possible that any one team can truly create the best range of options and opportunities from scratch? And in a cultural environment made up from mixes, mashups and op-eds, is it possible that editors/curators will be the new creative directors?
With all this in mind, we propose agencies might think more like idea aggregates and less like idea generators.
For my money, the most interesting creative director of the moment isn’t at an agency at all. Some might even argue that he is not as much a “creator” as he is a sampler, remixer and cultural re-appropriator. I’m talking about the producer/DJ/label owner Diplo. Diplo is probably best known for taking a Clash song, layering in a drumbeat and adding M.I.A.’s vocals to make the ‘08 summer banger Paper Planes. A year later, this white kid from Mississippi went on to make the best Jamaican dancehall record of the past few years.
When MIA first heard Diplo's music she described it as: "(having a) homelessness about it. It didn't have a particular genre, which is what people always say to me: 'your song doesn't fit anywhere.' So I went on a mad mission to find other people like that, because then we could make a home."
And that’s what I believe The IdeaLists is growing to become: a house party filled with all kinds of different people and ideas. Some faces are familiar, most are brand new. But rest assured you'll meet new people and discuss new ideas that you wouldn't have come across had you not arrived.
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Summer Reboot
Well, it has been a little over half a year since The IdeaLists launch and in that time we continue to learn daily about what is working and what isn't. With this knowledge in mind, we now plan to focus the rest of the summer months to making a number of tweaks and changes to the site. This means an entire site rebuild with new functionalities, hiring new key staff and focusing on a number of client-related projects currently in the pipeline.
So you might notice postings slow down a bit as we head deeper into the summer. Being a new start-up, please bear with us as we learn to walk and chew gum at the same time. But rest assured we are still here plugging away and expect a relaunch with more of everything sometime in September.
So you might notice postings slow down a bit as we head deeper into the summer. Being a new start-up, please bear with us as we learn to walk and chew gum at the same time. But rest assured we are still here plugging away and expect a relaunch with more of everything sometime in September.
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Meet an IdeaList: Hotel Creative Director Claire Darrow
So when hotel creative director Claire Darrow casually mentioned over dinner party conversation that she launched an entire hotel chain's initial branding from a Kinkos on Sunset Blvd, my ears perked up. Clare is VP and Creative Director for André Balazs Properties, a group of eight of the most exclusive hotels in America that includes the Mercer, Chateau Marmont, the Standard and more). I asked her to share the story here.
I'm curious to hear more about the early days of the Standard Hotel and how it's possible to create the identity for a top-class hotel chain from a copy shop? I always assumed a huge amount of assets and resources would be needed for an endeavor like that.
I came onboard after the hotel was halfway under renovation, about a month before the first guest stayed there. We literally opened the hotel one room at a time. The first guest was basically in the middle of a construction site--the hotel had no graphics, no sign--I guess Andre just made a few phone calls and invited a few people to stay for $95 dollars a night.
I came onboard after the hotel was halfway under renovation, about a month before the first guest stayed there. We literally opened the hotel one room at a time. The first guest was basically in the middle of a construction site--the hotel had no graphics, no sign--I guess Andre just made a few phone calls and invited a few people to stay for $95 dollars a night.
Since (this was) before people really, really used email, I didn’t even have my own computer. I would use the sales directors Mac after she left for the night and would save files on floppy disk and walk down Sunset Blvd to Kinkos to print signs: Do Not Disturb signs and mini bar menus. We didn’t even talk about budgets, it was just “make this happen,” do it the cheapest way possible.
Inspiring. So how did you get from that one room to four hotels around the country?
It was a long process. Generally hotels operate this way, the rooms open first then the public space opens after. We look to those people as being guinea pigs in a way. People that are going to be understanding of what we are, a preview of what will be.
So how does branding a hotel differ from, say, product branding?
With the Standard, André came up with the idea of doing a hotel that is basic, but at the same time it wasn’t standard—everything in the hotel is in good taste but comes from really humble places. Almost everything in there came from a catalog called the American Hotel Register. It's a catalog about 800 pages thick and every motel and hotel in the country orders their trash cans there, their room service trays, Do Not Disturb signs, blankets, pillows. So it was mining that catalog for the things that are actually kind of cool… accidentally.
What are the daily duties of a hotel creative director?
I style the hotels—make sure they have a personality and a voice that’s consistent and fresh and they always feel like someone’s touched everything. All the uniforms, the shops, the minibars, the execution of all the marketing materials, the websites.
How has technology changed that?
Huge. I spent half my time now working on our online presence. Whether it’s marketing, PR, improving our websites, thinking about SEO. It's interesting to me the kind of statistics your able to get now about your guest. We found out recently that 80% of people that come to our website come from a smart phone, which is a lot. I think it says something about our clientele. They call it “look to book”, which is how many visits turn into a transaction. So we modified our sites very quickly after that.
And maybe it’s because of some of the collaborations we have been doing, but the online shop has an audience that is much bigger than the people that actually stay at the hotel.
It’s become a larger brand at this point, not just a hotel.
I’d like hotel rooms to be just one aspect of what the Standard does. And I think the Internet has allowed that to happen. The new site has a culture section, calendar of events, a panel of guest bloggers. So someone can participate in the culture even if you’re never going to stay at the hotel. Flavorpill is doing the editorial. Downtown Records is providing Standard Sounds. We’re going to be doing more things with Downtown: for instance when you get your keycard there’s a code to download a specific mix. Or when you get your confirmation letter staying at the hotel it also has a code, giving people The Standard Spirit before they get there, and while they are there something they can take home with them… music is a great one.
This is our main focus right now, growing this aspect of the business. The Standard is like its own little city within a city in a way. So everything comes together through the site.
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