Helping Agencies to Curate the Production Experience

Helping Agencies to Curate the Production Experience
 
The UK-based 'moving image culture' consultant Rob Hughes has carved out a niche helping agencies and production companies tap into new, non-traditional talent for ad assignments. He talks about the process and how it relates to having a cultural point of view.
 
By Anthony Vagnoni

Rob Hughes consults for agencies such as Mother London, as well as for production companies and directors.

Rob Hughes has an interesting job.  He's not an agency producer, he's not a production company executive producer, he's not a rep or an agent or a headhunter.  But many of the things he does touches on these functions. The UK-based Hughes is something of a moving image maven, an independent talent scout – he used the term 'moving image culture consultant' – who works for agencies such as Mother London and others, as well as for production companies and directors. For agencies, he helps them not only develop new sources of directorial and artistic talent, but evaluate more traditional production companies and directors as well.  For production houses, he consults on a wide range of areas, from its directorial roster to its sales and marketing to helping them determine what their cultural tone of voice in a crowded and noisy marketplace should be.  And for directors, he helps them get signed to production houses and mentors them on how best to present not only their work but their ideas.
 
All together, this neatly puts him at a unique intersection between what agencies are looking for in terms of directorial talent and how production companies and directors can adapt to meet those needs.  He recently sat with SourceEcreative to talk about his work and what insights he can bring to the process.
 
So how do you work for agencies? Can you explain your role?
 
I act as a central point of contact between agencies and production companies and provide objective director recommendations on a job-by-job basis. The stress here is on allowing agencies to lead the conversation with production companies, establishing a unique tone of voice when it comes to production (and not being dictated by external aggregators such as The Reel or Shots), and help them break down the monoculture that forces agencies to work with the "usual suspects" and allow them to engage with and nourish fresher talent.
 
What does it mean to consult on moving image culture?  How do you define this?
 
As the form and varieties of content shift, and agencies struggle more and more to garner some kind of cultural credibility amidst the moving image in general, the need for this kind of work is going to explode. I advise agencies on such things as artists' film and video installations, festival programming, independent cinema exhibitions, short-form and fashion films and the like. That's the interesting side of things. The less interesting side covers anything that demands a film nerd!
 
What about production companies?  How do you work with them?
 
I offer detailed and hopefully constructive criticism of all parts of a production company's business, whether that's their roster, their reels, the science of repping and a culture-backed approach to how the industry is changing and what form a production company will take in ten years time.

____________________________

"I think there's a tendency, especially in the UK,
to judge people by what other people think of the the work,
and I don't really buy that.  I think it's a complacent attitude."

____________________________
 

In terms of directors, I work as a kind of director's agent/mentor for both young and established directors. I help get them signed. Once that's done, I support them and help them develop their reel, usually working off a five-year plan that I concoct with the director. Young directors get rather histrionic advice from all-comers. It's very rare that it comes from a position of objectivity, which is the value of what I offer.

 
What criteria do you use when evaluating directors and production companies for an agency? What do you look for?
 
It depends on the agency.  Different agencies have different needs in terms of what they're looking for culturally.  From my point of view it always has to come down to the work. And when you deal with the kinds of talents that I do, which typically come from outside the industry, you need to evaluate them based on their non-commercial work.  There are other issues you examine, such as what they're like to work with.  
 
Generally, I think there's a tendency, especially so in the UK, to judge people by what other people think of the quality of the work, and I don't really buy that.  I think it's a complacent attitude. And I so encourage agencies to be a bit more strident about what they think is important, and not necessarily rely on things like web sites or listings to define what they think is important culturally.   They need to have a unique point of view for themselves about choosing directors.  And what's really important here is that agencies have a kind of very well-defined cultural position on what they like and what they don't.
 
Define what you mean by a 'cultural position.' Does that reflect their internal corporate culture as an agency?
 
It can mean different things in different situations.  In a general sense, it means having a very strong opinion internally about the kind of work that is good and the kind that isn't. Advertising is part of moving picture culture, and generally you need to have an understanding of which part of that culture you're interested in; which parts of it you want to be engaging with and which you don't. 
 
At agencies, planners try and get their heads around what they call culture-backed thinking.  Traditionally, advertising has been kind of interruptive.  It gets between people and the culture that they value.  Part of this thinking holds that successful brands are brands that make positive contributions to this culture. To be honest, lots of planners talk about this, but I'm not sure that many agencies have yet nailed how to do it successfully.  There are agencies that have done successful TV shows or art exhibitions or feature films, but these seem to be one-offs, and there's a struggle at the moment.  And part of what I do is hand-holding agency people through the process of creating and producing non-traditional moving image work, and doing it with credibility, so they can actually do something that people respond to and value.
 
Agencies often say they want the excitement of working with talents from outside the traditional channels, but how open are they to actually working with them? In this regard, do you work directly with artists that your agency clients are interested in, helping create a framework for them to work within the agency system?
 
I do both, in a sense. A lot of agencies are open to doing that, and a lot of creatives want to work with people from outside advertising – with directors like Wes Anderson or Pedro Almovodar, let's say.  They like having the influence of a prestigious rainmaker on their project.  But that's not really about working with up-and-coming talents. 
 
Agencies that have done this kind of work before are used to negotiating with talent agencies and artists' agents, while others are just dipping their toe in it and need a bit of hand-holding.  I often come in as a kind of middle-management person who helps make things palatable to both sides.  For example, this might include helping a production company present the work of a filmmaker who's never done an ad, and doing it in such a way that it feels as though he or she can help fulfill the brief.  I might suggest that they shape the reel or the treatment in different ways to reassure everyone involved. 
 
And there's also a level of education you have to go through with agencies, too. They have to understand that they cannot expect the same level of knowledge or competence from this kind of director as they might from a Jonathan Glazer. So they may have to be more present during the shoot, and more aware of explaining how things are done.
 
As an outside consultant, what can you bring to the often intuitive management style of running a production company?
 
These are companies that are often run on lots of charm and enthusiasm, and as boutiques they're often expressions of the personalities of those involved.  The idea that there might be some kind of generalized science or strategy on how best to develop their directors and sell them is often difficult for some to accept. And a lot of the companies I work with recognize that there's something wrong with what they're doing, they recognize that they're not where they should be, and they want someone who has an objective point of view on what all the companies out there are doing.
 
This started off as production companies finding out that I was kind of an encyclopedia of interesting directors and what they were up to, and from there it grew into my coming in and doing a fairly detailed audit of their roster - you know, looking at who's doing well, who's just kind of sitting there not doing much, who doesn't make sense to be on the roster, and then suggesting directors they might want to talk to. 
 
And then I realized that this is kind of like bringing someone in at the end of the movie. Before you do that, you really need to work out what you stand for as a production company, and that goes back again to having that cultural point of view thing that I keep banging on. What do you believe about advertising? What do you believe is good and bad in culture? From there you talk to them about directors, about what other kinds of cultural things they can do that isn't about making thirty-second ads.  Once you've got that, you have to ask, how do you sell yourself?  Is there a way of being more sophisticated in the way you represent yourself?
 
I think there are ways that production houses can sell themselves in more sophisticated ways.  A small film company that might be coming out of fashion or music videos and is just starting in commercials will behave differently from how Partizan or @radical.media will behave, but I think there are specific commonalities in terms of how you think about how agencies engage your work. For example, what's on their minds when they're talking to you? What kind of information do they value, and what kind of information is essentially noise?
 
It can be pretty simple.  A lot of production companies brand their DVDs, but don't bother to think about how agencies actually engage with those discs.  Often when an agency is looking for directors, they're rushing about at the last minute.  This is a very simple example.  Some production companies have their DVDs in lots of sleeves, and you have to pull each one out, and there's a piece of paper that lists what's on it, and maybe that doesn't list when the work was done - there's a time investment that goes into just finding out what's on that reel. And lots of production companies don't think about how that time is going to impact on how willingly a producer is going to look at their work. It can come down to the ergonomics of even opening a DVD box. It's pretty basic.
 
If you want to predict the behavior of people you need to get inside people's minds, and I think at times production companies are not that good at putting themselves in the place of producers or creatives who need to get the right information. Even production company web sites – some don't immediately present you with the directors or the work. I help with those kinds of things.
 
What's your vision of the production company of the future? What do you tell people when they ask you, 'where will we be in five years?' What should they be preparing themselves for?
 
I think there's going to be a huge diversification, and it's going to take lots of different forms. 
 
At the movement, the general model is to see a production company as a house for a fairly arbitrary collection of directors, where the production company sells the directors. I think increasingly you'll find directors selling production companies, where the directors are simply one intellectual creative asset of a cultural brand that is a production company.  And you'll see production companies offering much more than directors. So I think you'll see production companies talking much less to producers, slightly less to creatives but increasingly talking more to planners., trying to get upstream. I can imagine a situation where a production company gets a creative brief from a strategist or a planner before the creatives do, and they're working as consultants. 
 
Another thing I think is going to happen is that there's not going to be balanced rosters anymore. Production companies will be kind of focused on doing one thing really well. So they might be the documentary people. And if you've got a documentary project, a company like this would advise you on all aspects of the project.  Part of that will obviously be the directors you should use. They may or may not be the production company's but they'll have access to documentary directors.  Here, the production company will act almost as creative/production consultancies. 
 
You'll also see more production companies being able to work direct with clients, and taking agencies out of the leap, and agencies are increasingly building their in-house production wings to take production companies out of the leap.  That's happening.  A lot of clients have ex-agency people working on the marketing side. And there are a lot of directors who've had experience on the agency creative side. So you have creatives and you have planners: you basically have all the elements of an agency, you just don't have the agency. And I think that's going to increasingly happen. 

Published 27 February, 2011