2415 Michigan Avenue
Building H, Suite 100
Santa Monica, CA 90404
ph. 310.315.9959
What They Do
Design-driven production and visual effects
Who They Are
Jonathan Notaro
Founder/Creative Director/Director
Jens Gehlhaar
Creative Director/Director
Technology
Hardware: Mac and Windows PC computers; Linux Flame 2008; Maximum Throughput Sledgehammer Server; 37 node render farm with dual-, quad- and eight-core nodes
Software: Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, In Design, Bridge and After Effects; Maya 2008; Final Cut Studio 2; Fusion; Shake; Flame 2008; Renderman (Air)
When Jonathan Notaro opened the doors of Brand New School, his production and visual effects house, he was a whopping 23 years old. "I was working for a company and they got bought out and I wasn’t very happy there," explains Notaro. That company was Fuel, who had recruited him while he was a junior studying design at CalArts. "Plus, I had just lost my father (to a fatal heart attack), so I was searching." The convergence of an unstable work environment with the early death of his 52-year-old father made him re-evaluate his own road ahead, which eventually led him to Brand New School.
What’s Their Gig?
Brand New School launched in LA in 2000, and its NY office opened when Notoro was losing out on a lucrative job because his NY-based client wanted a local firm. Within the month Brand New School had a staffed office in Manhattan and the gig. Notaro says with a smirk, "Clients were only comfortable if they could hop in a cab and yell at us." BNS now supports about 40 full-time staffers plus an array of freelancers, on both coasts.
The Cool Factor
To be clear, Brand New School is more than a visual effects house; the shop also produces and directs commercials and video. Still, Notaro’s design aesthetic pervades every frame. One of its recent campaigns, a co-branded spot for The American Express Plum Card and Pinkberry frozen yogurt features an overhead tracking shot of vibrant Pinkberry toppings: buckets of Coco Puffs, bananas and pineapples. While the spot isn’t effects-laden, there’s a controlled chaos to the visuals that captures the essentials of the brand; it really does look good enough to eat.
"Advertisers have to appeal to a visually savvy culture," explains Notaro. "They come to us to nail the voice for their brand."
One of the facility’s best-known spots is probably for the iPod Shuffle Clip. It starts with a simple shot of a person wearing a Shuffle Clip. That person strips off their shirt to reveal another person underneath wearing another iPod Shuffle; then another and another. It’s clever, quirky and a little random, just like the product it promotes.
The Green Geek Factor
When Al Gore’s book, An Inconvenient Truth, hit the shelves Notaro bought 50 copies and distributed them to his staff. "You’re only as green as you act," he explains.
Brand New School is carbon neutral; they pay a voluntary tax to offset their carbon footprint. Bottled water has been banished from their offices, which, by the way, run on wind power; an option that’s available to most businesses and residences.
BNS posts its work to FTP sites as opposed to delivering them to clients on DVD. Data storage for both offces is completely digital and practically paperless. Indeed, a quick glance around the New York office reveals a surprising lack of paper; it’s not stacked in piles on desks or stuffed into filing cabinets. At the end of each day staffers are instructed to turn off their monitors to save electricity.
In the end perhaps Brand New School will teach its clients a thing or two about going green. If someone feels the need to jump in a cab, it better be a hybrid.
