Grand Large Gets Super-Sized
Steve Hortonulls New York and Paris-based company expands to L.A. and signs Jonathan Miller as it continues to add directorial talent.
Grand Large Gets Super-Sized
Steve Horton's New York and Paris-based production house expands
to L.A., adds EP Jonathan Miller and signs director Andy Tennant.
By Anthony Vagnoni
The first question we have for Steve Horton, the affable native New Yorker whose international production company, Grand Large, just expanded to the West Coast, is an easy one. How's your French?
He laughs and says, "I'm no Voltaire, but I can get by."
Horton's French should actually be pretty good, considering that he's married to a French woman, he runs one of the few production companies that are based in both New York and Paris and he spent ten years working there before returning to Manhattan in 2006.
He's probably going to have to add a little San Fernando Valley drawl to his linguistic repertoire, as he'll likely be spending more time in California now that Grand Large has opened its first office on the West Coast. The office is actually in L.A., not in the valley, and to run it Grand Large has tapped the veteran production executive Jonathan Miller, who just signed on as Executive Producer.
If that's not large enough for you, Horton, who's President, EP and CEO of Grand Large, and Miller have gone a step farther by adding a noted feature talent to their directorial roster, Andy Tennant. He's directed hits such as "Hitch," starring Will Smith, along with the popular romantic comedies "Sweet Home Alabama," starring Reese Witherspoon, and "Fools Rush In," "The Bounty Hunter" and "Fool's Gold." He also directed Drew Barrymore in "Ever After" and Jodi Foster and Chow Yun-Fat in "Anna and the King," which was nominated for two Academy Awards.
"Andy's an exceptional talent with a seemingly effortless ability to connect with people," says Horton. "He's got a flair for creating performances that are both compelling and original. We're excited about taking his commercial career to the next level." Tennant has shot for such brands as McDonalds and Quaker Oats.
As with Tennant's filmography, Miller's CV is varied and deep. He served as EP at several large production companies headquartered in Los Angeles, and was President of Image Point Productions and Harmony Pictures in the '80s and '90s. He was also Managing Director of Mutiny, the in-house production service company of TBWA\Chiat\Day in L.A. from 2001 to 2004.
In addition to his activities in advertising and new media, Miller was the Managing Director of a major motion picture studio and service company in Europe, and recently returned from India where he was the Head of Studio Operations for Reliance MediaWorks, one of the largest production studios in Mumbai.
Miller says he got to know Horton and the company while working for them as their West Coast marketing consultant. He came away from the experience impressed. "I love companies that clearly stand out by the quality of the work of their directors," he says. "It's an exciting prospect to be with a group that so clearly differentiates and defines themselves from the rest of production companies and directors around the world."
Horton started in the business as an agency producer and spent a total of 13 years with the New York offices of Grey and then FCB before moving to France in 1996 with his wife to join Premiere Heure. His mission there, as he recalls, was to "export their directors outside of France," and he proved to be there at the right time. The ad market then was wide open to new talent, particularly international talents. For example, Horton landed director Frederic Planchon his first US job. "We had the directors going all over the place," he says.
From there he started Grand Large in 2001 on his own, first in Paris and then, five years later, opening an office in New York. His goal was to replicate his previous success, and his approach was simple: "To go out into the international marketplace with exceptional talent," he says. What makes them so? "These directors are not just great storytellers or great visualists, but they know how to reach into a creative team's concept and develop it. They add those little things that often make the images come alive."
The challenge these days, says Horton, is to be able to do that across every level of production-from the super-sized jobs to the more compact new media project so fashionable. "So many of these internet projects today have lower budgets, so it's a process we're dealing with," he says, "along with everyone else in the industry."
Horton says that the opening in L.A. is more about working with Miller than it is about just being on the West Coast. "I wanted someone who understood how to navigate the highly delicate job of being an executive producer today," he says. "Jobs demand more attention, often because of the integrated demands of the campaign, and they often have to deliver these for less money. What they need are better solutions, so it's a real challenge.
"Jonathan's joining us at an opportune time, and he's a perfect fit," Horton continues. "We have a shared aesthetic toward the work and towards things like working on an international scale or dealing with new media. His experience and charisma are a plus, not just in terms of managing our director but in dealing with clients as well. So it's pretty exciting for us, not just to be expanding to the West Coast but doing so with someone of his caliber and reputation."
While its offices are in Paris, New York and L.A., Horton takes a wider view of the production universe. "We really have no boundaries," he says, and points out that the shop boasts a roster of directors from all over the world. "They're French, Australian, Japanese and American, and they all have distinct styles," he says of the roster, which includes such talents as Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Tom Kan, Bettina Rheims, Tracey Rowe, Gaysorn Thavat and Tran Anh Hung.
Among its recent signings is the multidisciplinary collective that goes by the name Tall Black Girls, which is led by Chad Ostrom, who often directs, and Tomas Alvear, who frequently takes the DP role. New York-based, the group has worked a lot in the fashion area as well as with documentary-style content. Among their more recent projects was a web series for the jeweler Cartier, co-produced by the US-based business magazine Fast Company. Titled "Make Your Move," it highlights innovative entrepreneurs in a series of video interviews. The first two of these feature Naveen Selvadurai, Co-Founder of Foursquare (you can view it here) and Ben Lerer, Co-Founder and CEO of Thrillist.com (you can screen that one here).
Tall Black Girls is part of Grand Large's GL-X division, which Horton describes as being tailored to meet the demands of the content side of the business. "It's set up to package jobs with editorial and be able to deliver longer format work that's often produced for lower budgets," he says. "We did a lot of work through GL-X last year, and it's been very successful."
What Horton likes about it is that its directors, mostly a younger crew that's used to sharing titles and functions, seem better suited to dealing with the complexities of these multi-layered integrated projects than more established talents or companies might. "Tall Black Girls, for example, knows how to wrap their heads around these things, and it's not easy," he says. "But they're not fazed by anything."
Horton was born in Manhattan, on the upper East Side, one block from where he currently resides. Does he have a preference for one city over the other? It's hard to say. "I love the creative juices that you get in Paris," he says. "I'm not sure what it is, but for the people who live in such an artistic environment, I think it makes them appreciate things more. It really is an art director's dream, and I think it shows in the production companies that are based there. They take an artisanal approach to their work, and they're highly selective."
The Parisian approach to production is one that Horton finds appealing. "Directors have a different relationship with the work there," he explains. "They're involved with every facet of it, from music to editorial to graphics. It's a larger responsibility."
The issue of scale impacts him in other ways, too. Take complexity. "The work has become so complicated these days, the layers and layers that each job now demands," he says. "It's one of the reasons I wanted to work with Jonathan, because of the experience he brings. It's the same with the rest of our team-I've worked with the same producer in Paris for ten years. We're smaller than a lot of the other production companies that have offices in different countries, but I think we make up for it in experience and the talent that we have. It's a hand-picked team that we feel very strongly about. We know that no matter what the job is, we can deliver."
In that regard, it seems, Grand Large is huge.
Published 26 August, 2011
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