People on the Move

Prodigious, the content production arm of Publicis Groupe, has hired Steve Evans and Kevin Palmer as editors, and Andrew Granelli as sr. VFX artist.
 
The trio is the latest addition to the agency’s growing postproduction team, which recently moved into a state-of-the art campus in Brooklyn’s Industry City, where they’ll work on a wide array of projects for Publics Groupe clients, including P&G and Walmart. 
 
Evans has extensive experience editing commercials, web content, presentation videos, short documentaries, promos, music videos and claymation.  He has worked with top brands including Miller High Life, Samsung, ExxonMobil, Frye Boots, Folgers, Verizon Wireless, Old Navy, Jaguar, Microsoft and Intel.
 
Palmer has worked in both advertising and independent film, having cut two-time Academy Award nominee Bill Plympton’s animated features Cheatin’ and Idiots & Angels, as well as Zbigniew Bzymek’s debut feature Utopians.  Recently, Palmer has collaborated with playwright, director and musician Young Jean Lee on her short films Here Come the Girls and A Meaning Full Life.

Granelli, who comes to Prodigious from Click 3X, brings 15 years of visual effects and set supervision experience with high-end brands and complex effects. His addition to the team has driven a seamless experience between production and post on all VFX work.
 
“The hiring of Steve, Kevin and Andrew is part of our continued investment in scaling our filmed content production capability,” said Phil DeZutter, CEO, Publics Communications North America Production Platform. “We have a world-class studios in New York and across North America, and we’re committed to bringing in the best talent in the industry to deliver the highest levels of craft for our clients.”
 
Rounding out the new in-house team are three experienced and highly-talented audio engineers who joined Prodigious in 2016: John Grant, Steve Perski and Mark Turrigiano.

Dress Code has brought on board executive producer Brad Edelstein (Click 3X, Stink Studios) and art director Wes Ebelhar (The Mill, Hush). Edelstein has extensive experience in sales and strategy in the production and agency worlds, positioning him to introduce agencies and brands to the nearly decade-old Dress Code, which has intentionally stayed under the radar creating hyper-designed work for a small staple of loyal partners. 

Founded by Dan Covert and Andre Andreev, Dress Code is a production company active on both the live-action and animation fronts. Recent credits include a Schick campaign for J. Walter Thompson. Dress Code also earned three Vimeo staff picks for a film about Syracuse University, a music video for Violent Sands, and a short documentary profiling the oldest elevator operator in Los Angeles.

Edelstein said of his new roost, “We’re looking to work on a bigger stage, yet still stay small. We just upgraded offices for the first time and let’s just say we have no interest in ‘getting the floor above us,’ so to speak. This keeps us true to the roots of how the company started out: selective, grounded and focused on making dope work.”

Art director Ebelhar was trained at a top tier design school before climbing the ranks as a staff player, then as a freelancer at a “who’s who” of animation studios. He brings a designer’s sensibility and taste to illustration-based animation and motion graphics.

Havas New York has appointed Dan Goldstein to serve as chief strategy officer. In this role, Goldstein reports to Havas New York CEO Laura Maness. He is charged with innovating and driving the overall strategic direction of Havas NY, while leveraging the agency’s bespoke Village model and Together strategy to strengthen its core and further build out its competitive tools, advanced tech capabilities, and IP. 

Goldstein’s arrival comes at an exciting time for the New York flagship office amid a series of recent new business wins. In January the agency won creative duties on Dream Bed by Mattress Firm, and earlier this month, RB handed back to the agency creative duties on its Air Wick and Clearasil accounts. Havas New York currently handles RB’s health and hygiene brands, including K-Y and Amopé, as well as household favorites like d-CON.

Maness said, “From my first meeting with Dan, it was clear that he was the partner we’ve been searching for – not only warm and deeply passionate about understanding people and the culture and societies that shape them, but someone who shared our enthusiasm for intelligent creativity and our Together strategy. Dan will be instrumental in employing our strengths and investments in cognitive and data to unlock evidence-based insights and new levels of creativity for our clients and partners, and we’re thrilled to have him join the team.”

With 20 years of industry experience, Goldstein brings a blend of creatively driven agency and start-up experience to Havas, most recently as co-founder and chief strategy officer of Los Angeles based db5, a quantitative research consultancy and one of the fastest-growing privately held companies in the US, with such clients as Audi, Google, Lyft, McDonald’s, Twitter, and Ralph Lauren. Prior to db5, Goldstein was executive head of planning at TBWA\Chiat\Day, where he both built and led one of the industry’s largest strategy groups, servicing clients such as Pepsi, Gatorade, Visa, Nissan, and Infiniti. During his five-year tenure at TBWA, Goldstein was instrumental in the agency’s impressive new business wins, including the agency’s global Visa account, for which he led strategy and innovation; he was also a member of Chiat’s Executive Board Committee and management team. Prior to joining TBWA, he was group planning director at Goodby Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco, where he led the strategy for Saturn, Motorola, and the agency’s winning pitch for Sprint. Goldstein started his career at BBH London.

Goldstein said, “I was really impressed with Havas and everyone I met at the agency. I believe its Village model – which brings together disciplines across media, creative, data, fast content, business strategy, and more – makes it uniquely placed to succeed in a fast-changing industry. It is in effect a holding company that goes to market as an ad agency. Something the other guys can’t replicate easily and a truly exciting proposition.”

Deluxe has named long-time media technology executive Craig Zerouni to serve as head of technology, Deluxe Visual Effects (VFX). In this role Zerouni will focus on continuing to unify software development and systems architecture across Deluxe’s Method studios in Los Angeles, Vancouver, New York, and India, and its Iloura studios in Sydney and Melbourne, as well as Deluxe VR, based in Los Angeles, to integrate and expand global production capacity.

Based in Los Angeles and reporting to president and GM of Deluxe VFX and VR Ed Ulbrich, Zerouni will lead VFX and VR R&D and software development teams and systems worldwide, working closely with technology teams across Deluxe’s Creative division to benefit from and contribute to the deep pool of IP, knowledge, and resources across the global Deluxe technology organization.

Ulbrich said, “Our VFX work serves both the features world, which is increasingly global, and the advertising community, which is increasingly local. Behind the curtain at Method, Iloura, and Deluxe in general, we have been working to integrate our studios to give clients the ability to tap into integrated global capacity, technology and talent anywhere in the world, while offering a high-quality local experience. Craig’s experience leading global technology organizations and distributed development teams, and building and integrating pipelines is right in line with our focus. He has done amazing work improving workflow and optimizing systems at VFX and animation companies of all sizes, and he’s a great team leader.”

Zerouni has been working in media technology and production for nearly three decades, joining Deluxe most recently from DreamWorks, where he was Director of Technology at its Bangalore, India facility overseeing all technology. Prior to that he spent nine years at Digital Domain, where he was first head of R&D responsible for software strategy and teams in five locations across three countries, then sr. director of technology overseeing all aspects of technology including software, systems, production technology, technical directors and media systems. He has also directed engineering, products and teams at software/tech companies Silicon Grail, Side Effects Software, and Critical Path, and was a co-founder of pioneering London computer animation company CFX. Zerouni’s work has contributed to features including TRON: Legacy, Iron Man 3, Maleficent, X-Men: Days of Future Past, and Ender’s Game as well as more than 400 commercials, TV idents and titles. He is a member of BAFTA, ACM/SIGGRAPH, IEEE, the Visual Effects Society, has served on the AMPAS Digital Imaging Technology Subcommittee, and is the author of the technical reference book “Houdini on the Spot.” 

Zerouni said, “I’m excited to come on board with Deluxe right at this time--the company is expanding and integrating its VFX studios around the world and what comes through strongly is a commitment to growth and innovation. There’s a great opportunity to harness all of the worldwide VFX talent and technology skill sets across these companies to support clients on an even bigger, broader scale.”

Artists from Iloura have been recognized with Academy Award nominations for Visual Effects two years running, for Mad Max: Fury Road and Deepwater Horizon, and earned the 2016 VFX Emmy Award for work on Game of Thrones. Recent work from Method Studios includes VFX Academy Award-nominated Doctor Strange, along with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Captain America: Civil War, and award-winning commercials. Method is currently in production on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Knights of the Round Table: King Arthur and other features and advertising projects.