LA Special: Caviar

Caviar LA’s managing partner/executive producer Michael Sagol and head of integrated/branded content Max Knies tell Iain Blair how this international production company is now a stable for shooting stars at the centre of the movie universe

It’s a year since international Belgian production company Caviar threw a big party for the opening of its chic new LA headquarters, “to celebrate Caviar in LA and also show off our fantastic new offices here,” as Bert Hamelinck, CEO of the Caviar group of companies, explained at the time. The impressive 17,000 sq ft facility, on Sunset Boulevard in the heart of a newly revitalised Hollywood, occupies a former bank building next door to the ArcLight multiplex and Amoeba Music. It features a mix of open-plan floor space, production facilities, conference rooms and private offices, with a stylish, minimalist décor of poured concrete floors and walls, plenty of distressed stainless steel panels and soaring ceilings.

Caviar’s got talent

Since making the move, Caviar, which started in 2006 as a merger of two production companies – Hamelinck’s Roses are Blue and Pix and Motion, owned by Belgian media group Corelio – has both consolidated its various operations and continued to ramp up its busy commercial division.

“We’d burst the seams of our last place, and our film and digital offices both had to move as well, and we needed to be all under one roof,” notes Michael Sagol, the managing partner/executive producer who runs Caviar LA. “Now we’re trying to bring the best potential creative and creator to a project, and then really collaborate with the changing times – and whether we’re fighting over an amazing board, trying to do a crazy low-budget job, follow a crazy approach, or on an insane timeline, it’s about trying to have the structure so you can bend to whatever’s needed while keeping your vision.”

Caviar has a history of grooming visionary new talent, “whether they’re known to the advertising world or not,” Sagol points out, and in the past year the company has particularly focused on young talent. “Maybe they’ve done just a few music videos or commercials, and they’ve come here, and being under the Caviar banner has really helped propel their career,” he says. He cites hot new director Karim Huu Do, who shot the acclaimed, highly stylized and atmospheric, 10-minute music video for Last Night In Paris’ EP Pure. “His first job for the US is the new branded global campaign for adidas,” Sagol reports. “He beat out all his peers. And that just reaffirms what we believe in – being the catalyst for talent,” he adds, “and it’s so cool that we have a place where younger visionaries can come and spread their wings at a far faster pace.” These visionaries include Arnaud Uyttenhove (“doing the Gatorade spot for the World Cup was really amazing”) and Keith Schofield (O2, Be More Dog/IKEA, Carousel).

He also cites another hot young talent, Hugo Stenson who just started working with Caviar. “And after just two or three jobs (check out his Zoosk spots) he’s also ascending pretty quickly,” notes Sagol, “so it’s fun for us to see that, as we grow, the way we grow is by helping talent. Obviously it’s what we do as a production company, but we’re very proud of being able to create the next wave of filmmakers.”

Moving the millennials

Caviar’s eye for new talent isn’t just confined to its directors roster. Max Knies, the new head of integrated and branded content, joined the LA office just a few months ago, and says that moving back to California was like a homecoming for him. “I went to school here some 10 years ago, and then moved to New York for seven years where I ran the small boutique production company Greencard Pictures, and produced ads for clients like Google, Stella Artois and NBC.” Quite apart from the obvious differences – the weather, LA’s sprawl versus Manhattan’s compactness – he notes that the two cities’ production approaches are startlingly different: “LA is very systematic and formal, whereas New York’s like controlling chaos on a location shoot.”

Knies decided to move back to the West Coast after meeting Sagol and fellow managing partner/EP Jasper Thomlinson and talking with them about “the future of commercial work, and how it’s been evolving into this branded/integrated world,” he recalls. “And almost immediately I realised that Caviar’s a place that’s really harnessing a lot of this creativity in new media.

“It’s not just about the integration between digital and live-action capabilities. The story and how it’s selling brands is changing a lot, and what’s most interesting to me is the more non-traditional way of selling a brand.

“Commercial work’s really changed a lot as a result of how people are ingesting media in general. A lot of the under-25s in our office don’t even own TVs. They watch a lot of commercials and content in general on computers, tablets and mobile devices, and that’s all changing the way we tell stories and transforming how commercial content’s being seen and heard.”

He notes that many millennials tend to be “immune” to traditional advertising, “so finding new creative ways to position brands is becoming a big challenge for strategists and creatives at agencies, and a big portion of our roster is really interested in crafting stories and approaching commercials in a more non-traditional way.”

Both Knies and Sagol stress that content is king, which is why Caviar produces across all formats – commercials, music videos, TV drama, shorts and feature films – and produces so much. In the future, the aim is to collaborate more with mid-level agencies “that have interesting opportunities to bring in brands in creative ways,” says Knies.

Caviar reps about 60 directors worldwide and over 30 from the LA office, which underscores the importance of the operation. “We also live and die a lot by availability,” says Sagol, giving Caviar director Rian Johnson as an example. “He did a great Samsung campaign for 72andSunny recently, and now he’ll be unavailable till 2019 as he’s doing the next two Star Wars films. But we love that. It’s really fun to have a director like Jonathan Krisel, who had a very successful year doing commercials, and now in the fall he’s going to be doing this new TV project called Baskets with Zach Galifianakis and Louis CK. We have nothing to do with the show, but it’s really cool for us as he’s obviously right at the epicentre of what comedy is now.”

The future’s in features

As this town is the de facto centre of gravity for filmmakers all over the world, it’s not surprising that Caviar, which co-produced Lars Von Trier’s Nymphomaniac Vol 1&2, also plans to ramp up its LA film production arm.

“Caviar LA produced its first feature last year, called The Diary Of A Teenage Girl, based on the graphic novel of the same name, and it’s been accepted at Sundance,” reports Sagol. “It was directed by Marielle Heller, who’s not a commercials director yet – but now I think she will be, and I’m really looking forward to breaking her in this world. We’ve made maybe 15 movies in Europe, but that’s another reason for the move to Hollywood, to put it all under one roof and take it to the next level.”

There’s one more reason for Caviar to celebrate its new LA lease of life.

“We do so much bi-coastal work, and I try not to mention the great weather here on a call, when it’s 40-degrees warmer than New York,” admits Knies, only half-joking.