US Focus: Dirty Robber

Since emerging just two years ago as the offshoot of a post house, Dirty Robber, has blossomed into a successful production and content creation outfit. It has produced a host of commercials requiring innovative solutions, including the Cannes Lion-winning, bacon-scented alarm clock for Oscar Mayer and an ‘upside-down’ ad for Axona shot on inverted sets. It’s also done promos, documentaries and narrative films, including the Oscar-nominated short Buzkashi Boys. As the company prepares to move into its flash new Hollywood HQ, Iain Blair talks to co-founder Martin Roe about how the robber stole the spotlight

Commercials and music have always been happy travelling companions, so it makes perfect sense that LA-based production company Dirty Robber took its name from a song. “It’s by The Sonics, a 60s garage band from Tacoma, Washington. I’ve always loved the song,” says Martin Roe, the company’s creative director and co-founder. “Everyone seems to have some crazy name for their production company, it’s suitably silly and fun and dirtyrobber.com was available, so it was a done deal.” He admits that the company lawyers begged him to change it, “but they’ve given in now,” he says.

Dirty Robber started out as a post company six years ago, “but that company split off and is now called Coyote Post, and from that Dirty Robber was born about two years ago,” explains Roe. “We focus mainly on ads and long form, and we’ve done some 20 commercials in the past 18 months, including spots for Oscar Mayer (through 360i), Huawei (through Ogilvy, Hong Kong) and Hurley, who have their own in-house agency.”

“We call ourselves a content creation studio as we do a lot of different forms of media deliverables,” adds Roe who’s currently working on several big commercials, a high-profile Kobe Bryant documentary for Showtime and a raft of music videos. He’s also busy with the company’s move to brand new Hollywood offices to open at the start of next year. “We’re doubling our space to 10,000ft sq, it has studio and theatre spaces and high-end colour correction capabilities.”

From leaving Latin to loving LA

Roe’s journey to running the successful company has been somewhat unconventional. The Brit attended Oxford, “ostensibly to study Latin and Ancient Greek”, but got sidetracked by theatre. “I fell in love with it, then after university, I realised I wanted to be in movies,” he reports. “I applied to USC [University of Southern California] in Los Angeles, as my mother was living in California at the time. Then I also fell in love with LA in 2001. I’ve been here ever since and still love it.”

After USC, Roe began working as an editor, and initially co-founded the company with a colourist, Charles Haine. “We were doing finishing solutions for people; everything from feature films for clients like MTV and Lionsgate, to TV work,” he explains. “We grew very quickly and were able to take on post services for a lot of TV and film.” When his [first partner – TC] left a few years ago, Roe partnered with EP Chris Uettwiller, formerly the head of production at The Orphanage and before that, the head of digital production at GreeneStreet Films. “He was very interested in growing the company from a financial marketing side, which was never my strength. He’s great at client and financial management and has actually been the key figure in growing our commercial division.” One of the first projects the new partners undertook was a 29-minute drama shot in Kabul, Afghanistan, titled Buzkashi Boys, which received an Oscar nomination last year for Best Live Action Short. It was directed by Sam French, who has two feature films in development and has recently finished a short documentary for the Afghan National Army called Afghanistan Rising. Uettwiller was able to leverage the Buzkashi Boys’ success into the start of the company’s now thriving commercials business. “Chris got out there into the whole world of commercials and met all the agencies and reps,” notes Roe. “That was the driving force that got us our start, and it changed our fortunes pretty dramatically.”

Since that big break, Dirty Robber has produced spots for such high-profile clients as Dell, Hasbro, Warner Brothers and Simon & Schuster. “I love doing commercials and we’ve worked with some really interesting creatives,” Roe says. “It’s an amazing world and system where these genius people come up with fantastic ideas – but don’t necessarily have any idea how to execute them. So it’s our job to take their ideas and make them work; to make something fabulous out of them. I love the challenge of solving these huge, unique puzzles on every job.”

Waking up to a pork product

Other key creatives in the team include Nick Frew, Roe’s directing partner  “and long-time best friend. He’s directed music videos for Pixie Lott, Mark Ronson and I Blame Coco, and directed spots with me for Hurley, Axona and Hyundai,” says Roe; plus Michael Younesi, the youngest creative on the roster, who focuses on children’s spots, producing over 30 in the past two years; and Andy Hines, who’s directed over 50 rap videos. Recently moving into commercials Hines has done spots for Sketchers, Baxter of California and is currently shooting a project for Gillette.

Roe notes that the company has been “incredibly lucky – especially in terms of the key partners we’ve worked with”. He cites 360i, the well-known New York digital agency, who they hooked up with very early on. Last year, Dirty Robber ended up doing a whole range of spots for client Oscar Mayer, a meat production company owned by Kraft Foods. “[360i] came up with these really crazy ideas about a device you could attach to your iPhone that you could set as an alarm,” he explains. “And in the morning, it’d wake you up with the wonderful scent of bacon wafting through your bedroom.” The campaign, named Wake Up and Smell the Bacon, not only addressed the bacon-alarm challenge, but ended up winning a silver Lion at Cannes, too (although maybe a silver Pig would have been more appropriate).

Roe also cites a big healthcare spot they did last year for agency Brandkarma and the Axona medical food product used in the treatment of Alzheimer’s , titled Upside Down. Directed by Roe and Frew, “it was pretty challenging because of the huge scale of it,” he reports. “They wanted to illustrate the confusion of Alzheimer’s patients and how this product can help delay the onset of the disease. So the concept was that this person started on the ceiling of this room, with the whole world upside down, and then it gets reset to the right way up.” To solve the visual puzzle, the team built two separate inverted sets “with very complicated motion control and visual effects,” reports Roe. “It was basically a big cinematic challenge, and you have to approach jobs like that from an aesthetic, creative and brand point of view. It was a learning curve for me, but I find it really fun, plus you get to collaborate with so many talented people and great DPs.”

The company is currently working on a major campaign for Kayak, “but we’re not allowed to talk about it yet,” says Roe, who’s also one of the company’s writers and producers. “One of my jobs is to help grow our roster and find new directors we can work with. And something we’re most excited about right now is that one of our directors, Andy Hines, has just landed a spot with Grey, but it’s another job we’re not allowed to talk about yet.” It’s a coup for a young outfit that isn’t composed of industry vets and insiders who have come from established companies. “It’s all very new to us,” admits Roe. “So we watched all the client’s spots, read up on Grey, did our research, and then it was very rewarding to land the job.”

Bryant’s big deal and branching out

The company’s new sporting hero documentary, Kobe Bryant’s Muse, directed by Gotham Chopra and due to air later this year, is another coup. “It’s a pretty big deal for us, as we produced this along with Kobe’s company,” reports Roe. “Kobe gave us incredible access for 14 months.” Dirty Robber has also worked on two indie narrative features released last year – Here Comes The Night, directed by Peter Shanel and Peter Kline, and Angel’s Perch, directed by Charles Haine. “Most companies our size really focus on a very specific aspect of commercial production – such as comedy,” he sums up. “It’s the smart thing to do. But we’ve been able to do commercials, narrative features and documentaries, and grow them all.”