Beast's Rising Stars Are on the Prowl
We take a look at a quartet of rising stars at Beast--Adam Svatek, Amanda Moreau, Ariel Quintans and Derek Swanson--whose work for brands like Walmart (seen here) is getting them noticed.
Beast's Rising Editorial Stars Are on the Prowl
Nurturing talent is key for any editorial shop, says EP Jon Ettinger.
Here we look at a rising foursome of Beast editors who
are making waves around the company's network.
By Anthony Vagnoni
"Mentorship is the backbone of any good company," claims Jon Ettinger, Executive Producer at the San Francisco office of Beast, the national network of creative editorial shops. And while the concept of mentorship has suffered in places like ad agencies, where there's little time or inclination for companies to carefully groom talent, the process is ingrained in editorial.
Editors traditionally work their way up the ladder, starting as assistants and then eventually being allowed to tackle their own projects. And, as with directing, editorial shops are careful to make sure that the junior members of their rosters are given projects that match their backgrounds and experience, not just in terms of their creative abilities but also in terms of their being able to guide complex projects, work closely with clients and manage expectations.
At Beast, this process goes on in much the same way it does at smaller editorial companies. While sharing common ownership, the Beast offices in the US – there are six, including New York, Santa Monica, Detroit, Chicago and Austin – all reflect their own individual regions and their respective clienteles, according to Managing Director Valerie Petrusson. It functions more like a collection of boutiques rather than as a mega-shop.
But there are advantages when it comes to scale. The Beast offices are able to mix and match talent when needed for big projects, and have a wide enough range of editors within the network to ensure that they're taking the time to properly develop their own crop of rising stars.
"We're able to take advantage of our size by often assigning young talent with more senior editors in an effort to help them gain experience and develop a reel," says Ettinger. "It's one of the reasons we often move people around between offices."
Doug Walker, one of the senior editors at Beast in San Francisco, says there are times when you just can sense that the perfect mix of experience, skills, savvy and sensitivity are all there. "As a leader, you know when you've got the right team in place," he notes. "It happens when you look around and know that everybody is totally in it on a daily basis. And then it's great when you give someone a chance and they surprise you. That's the magic of our industry."
SourceEcreative asked the managers at Beast to cite some examples of editorial talent that's been making waves in the company, and they offered up a handful they feel represent the next generation of talent at Beast. The group includes Adam Svatek, Amanda Moreau, Ariel Quintans and Derek Swanson. Here's a look at what makes them special.
Telling Stories Without Restrictions
Adam Svatek's eureka moment came back when he was working at a small TV station while attending the University of Iowa. There he had to literally piece elements together "tape to tape," as he recalls, "which made it very difficult to go back and change the beginning of the story if you wanted." While in school he got his first taste of non-linear editing and was hooked. "Working into the late hours of the night, I was completely engrossed in the project I was doing," he says. "And I realized I could create and change any story without restrictions. It was at that moment I knew what I wanted to do with my life."
Heading west after graduation, he taught himself Avid and Final Cut Pro and eventually landed at Ground Zero Advertising as the agency's in-house editor. In 2005 he moved to Filmcore (now Beast) in Santa Monica, where he was mentored by Editors Livio Sanchez, Doug Walker and Gordon Carey. "I realized from each of them that there is a lot more to editing than just sitting in a chair and pushing buttons," Svatek says. "For me, these guys revealed the invisible strings."
As an editor, Svatek has benefited from the strong creative relationships he's forged with agencies such as The Martin Agency, for which he's cut Walmart (his "Stuck" spot made it into the Communication Arts Advertising Annual), Pizza Hut and Ping spots, as well as with 180 LA (for Mitsubishi) and Publicis Seattle (for T-Mobile), among others. His recent work includes spots for BMW, the Call of Duty video game, ESPN, AT&T and a celebrity-laden appeal for Haitian earthquake relief produced for the Red Cross and the Ad Council.
Among the projects he's most proud of have been a series of two-to-three minute shorts for the Children's Defense Fund and its "Beat the Odds" campaign. "Each project is extremely challenging and sensitive, as it tells the story of a child who has overcome tremendous adversity, excelled academically, and given back to their community," he explains.
Working closely with the director, he says the editorial team "tries to tell their story in a way that honors them for all they've achieved. It's often difficult to do these stories justice, truly showing all that these kids have achieved. It makes me realize how lucky I am and how important it is to always help others by using your abilities to give back to the community."
Building Emotions, Making Connections
Editor Amanda Moreau sees her work as being somewhat akin to creating spaces. "My first love has always been film, but my second interest is architecture," she explains. "At an earlier point in my life I was at a fork in the road as to which path I would take, and in the end I decided to go to film school. I had a specific moment when I realized editing is like working through a design or creating a blueprint.
"I love building story structure, breaking it down, taking it apart and rebuilding it again differently," Moreau continues. "Making visual and emotional connections between seemingly unrelated items that contribute to a theme is part of what excites me about editing. There is a mysterious and magical element to cutting - it becomes more like a process of discovery."
Following her graduation from the film program at CUNY New York, Moreau eventually landed a job at Company X in New York, where she was mentored by Editor Adam Schwartz. When Schwartz left to start Beast in 2006 she followed, and began cutting her own jobs, collaborating on spots for Reebok, Brahma Beer, Method (the hilarious and controversial "Shiny Suds" spot) and Samsung, among others.
What's special about Beast? "I think it's the community," she observes. "We have a great creative support system. We screen each other's work and have open discussions. It's important to have a creative culture like that. It helps you grow."
Highly influenced by feature film editors such as Walter Murch, Mary Sweeney and John Wilson, Moreau says one of her professional goals would be to juggle editing films with her work in advertising. She's just begun to tackle longer-form projects at Beast, and enjoys the sense of space and time these afford her.
"I started out making scenes very tight and precise like how you'd cut a spot," she says of the work. "I quickly saw that I needed to take a step back, breathe, and loosen up. You need to be more rough and flexible in the beginning, to see if where you're going is the right path. Once the scenes are in place and the rhythm is right, you tighten and perfect. It was also a pleasure when I realized a scene can just be what it wants to be – you can give it the time it needs to play out.
"On the flip side, I love the challenge of cutting a thirty," she adds. "Trying to tell a story in the most effective way, using all the shots you love while keeping it to time. There is an art and beauty to it."
Building Relationships, Expanding Talents
Ariel Quintans joined Beast in 2010, so he's one of the newest additions to the talent pool. His background is also a bit more eclectic-he got his start working at a small production company that had a post production arm, where he did a little bit of everything - cutting, writing, directing, producing, even acting as his own assistant in post. "I had a very non-traditional upbringing in the business," he explains, "and it had a big influence on me. It showed me what I really liked doing and what I didn't like."
One thing that came out of this was his passion for editorial. "It's something I always paid attention to in film and TV, even before I knew what it was," says the Dallas native. "Some people would gravitate towards the acting, the writing or the cinematography, but for me, it was always the editing."
Indeed, he was led towards the craft not just through his work in production, but in his outside work as a DJ. "Manipulating pictures and sound seemed like a natural progression from what I was doing in clubs," Quintans recalls. He began to fiddle around with splicing images on an old videocassette machine before graduating to more polished editing gear. "I realized just how similar the two disciplines are," he adds. "They're both about rhythm, about rearranging pieces, and they both revolve around commanding your audience and getting them to feel a certain way."
His work as an editor has done just that, whether it's been the offbeat comedy of a multi-spot Jarritos campaign, documentary-style work for the Whataburger chain or L. L. Bean, his song and dance number for T. J. Maxx, Home Goods and Marshalls or any of the oodles of spots he's cut for Austin's GSD&M for brands such as Southwest Airlines, Zales, BMW, AARP and others.
One of the things he likes about focusing on editorial is his ability to not only work at a higher level of production and post production quality than he did in his jack of all trades days, but also about being able to build relationships with clients. "The post process can be such an intimate affair at times," he points out. "You really have to achieve a certain comfort level so that everyone can be honest and upfront about getting the best possible outcome."
Quintans freelanced at a number of different post houses before landing at Beast two years ago, and he's impressed by the value the shop places on the editors themselves. "It seems obvious, but I've seen it before where a company can lose sight of the talent base, and that's never been an issue here," he says. "And the company I get to keep is pretty amazing - there are so many talented editors here, it's ridiculous."
Staying Flexible and Keep Adapting
Maybe it was his take on Otto Schindler as Tony Montana that turned people's heads. Editor Derek Swanson, who's with Beast in Detroit, won the 2006 edition of the AICE's trailer editing competition for the Detroit Chapter (then called Filmspotting, now known as Camp Kuleshov) for his re-working of the classic "Schindler's List" as the story of a drug kingpin rather than a wartime hero.
Swanson re-visited the AICE winners circle three years later, winning the Best of Detroit award for his Ad Council "Cheerleader" spot, created by Campbell-Ewald, in which a dad works out a cheerleading routine with his little girl, to the consternation of his neighbors.
Swanson got the editorial bug right out of Columbia College's film school in Chicago, but ended up moving back to Michigan, where he's originally from. Why? "For a girl and a band," he explains, adding that "neither worked out very well."
He landed at a shop called Blue Highway, first working in dubs, then color correction, then editorial. He was working as an assistant when the shop hit the end of the road; it closed two days before Thanksgiving, Swanson says, prompting him to fall in with an old friend who had a business installing flooring. Flooring? "It was kind of cool, and as different from advertising as you could get," he says. "At the end of the day, you could look at the finished project and say, 'I did that.'"
It wasn't long before he was back in creative editorial, however, joining what was then the Detroit office of Mad River Post. He next moved over to Filmcore, which later joined the Beast network of companies. What does he like best about the gig? "You get the intimacy of a boutique-sized shop with all the resources of our multinational parent company," Swanson says.
His work for clients like, Ford, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, Coleman, the Detroit Zoo and Del Taco shows off a range of styles, from comedy to documentary-style to heartfelt testimonials.
A self-described foodie (ask him what his favorite restaurants are and he'll gladly rattle off a list in different cities), Swanson says what appeals to him most about being an editor is that "it plays very well to my mild OCD and extreme ADHD. Organization, rhythm and restructuring are things that come naturally to me." He cites as influences on his work the editors he worked with as an assistant, such as Cam Khoury, and the three editors he works with now at Beast in Detroit, Stewart Shevin, Rich Smith and Chris Chynoweth.
As for where he sees the craft headed, he predicts it's going to be more about storytelling and managing the often-conflicting demands of the workload. "I've been seeing a lot of DSLR long-form projects in the last year," he says. "The amount of footage directors are shooting has increased five times on average, but the deadlines remain the same.
"As for technology, it's really starting to democratize the editorial process," he adds. "Solutions that used to cost tens of thousands are now available, albeit in vastly limited form, for 99 cents on my smart phone. Editors are going to have to be a lot more flexible and adaptable in the future to remain competitive."
Talent as Lifeblood
Editors like these are seen by Beast's management as positioning the company well for an industry that's in constant change.
"We have an incredibly deep bench of talent, both senior and developing," says Ettinger. "Clearly the most salient change with new talent is the level of technical knowledge they bring to the business. While many of our more senior staff have mastered the technical aspects of digital production and post, our younger staffers have been immersed in this their whole lives."
"It's so different," adds Walker of the way editors work today. "So fast, lean and mean. In some respects it's still the same, though – the work remains a proving ground for showing your talents as well as creating relationships."
"This is the best business in the world," Ettinger continues, "and we want to constantly strive to expose our younger editors to every aspect of it. They're our lifeblood, especially in smaller markets, where it's mandatory to develop your own talents. Our job is to bring them appropriate projects and help them manage their careers."
Published 29 March, 2012
