Merchant Signs Bestia, Top Latam Directors Fluent in Multiple Visual Languages
Merchant, the production company founded by award-winning filmmaker Tim Godsall and executive producer Ian Webb, will represent Bestia in the Canadian commercial and film market, strengthening the Argentinian creative collective as they look to expand their offering. Specialising in aesthetic craft production (design, materials and lighting), Bestia stands out in different areas; cinema, art direction, advertising, animation, 3D, production, plastic arts, photography and architecture. Launched in 2019 by Pocho Badino, Peto Urruti and Mon Urruti, Bestia has big plans for the future, turning their attention to world domination.
In this interview with LBB, the trio spill the beans on why Merchant feels like the perfect partner, their ability to express themselves in multiple visual languages, and why international success is worth every drop of sweat.
LBB> How did Bestia come to be? And what are some of your biggest achievements so far?
Bestia> Bestia is the result of a lifetime of creative work in different fields such as art direction, architecture and copywriting. Since we were children, the three of us partners have been play-making models, characters and mechanisms on paper, with a fascination for the process of transforming what we imagined into something palpable.
This fascination has remained with us throughout our lives and was the driving force for us to partner up in 2019. We had the idea of creating a studio that could work on any kind of project with a craft aesthetic approach. We have a highly recognisable visual style and have managed to position ourselves as one of the top audiovisual production companies in Argentina, having worked with the biggest agencies and clients around.
Right now, after some great experiences working abroad, we are in the process of expanding Bestia to other parts of the world. We are very proud of having made new partners and alliances, such as Merchant itself, in every continent.
LBB> What appealed to you about joining Merchant?
Bestia> It was essential for us to find a partner in Canada who we could team up with for large projects. When we work with other companies, the first thing we always look at is the roster of directors and the work that they have done with them. We found Merchant very interesting, each of their directors has a particular style, different from the others. We could see how our work and aesthetic would fit perfectly alongside the other talent, while bringing something different to the table. At the same time, we also share a similar approach to work; both Bestia and Merchant are passionately involved with every project, ensuring every single spot reaches its full potential.
LBB> What have been Bestia’s biggest career highlights?
Bestia> Our first experiences working for international clients were very powerful for us. We saw how special and valuable our work was - there are simply not many other studios like ours - and realised we had to take our work abroad.
Our first international project saw us travel to Beirut, to shoot a commercial for NIDO, teaming up with our friends from CINCO production company. We found ourselves in a totally different culture, having to manage a huge team, in order to create three really challenging models. One of them needed to be 15 metres long and had to be filmed in one sequence shot. Those were exhausting days, but the result was worth every drop of sweat.
Another memorable experience was when we were contacted by our German client Zattoo. They sent over a brief that required us to create a solution from scratch, formulating a new concept and writing a new script. We were in the middle of the pandemic and our idea required characters, which was somewhat complicated since it is not easy to find German actors in Argentina, and we could not travel to Germany freely. In the end, we decided to create the Zattoo family of puppets. This way we only needed the audio files to be sent from Germany in order for the puppets to move their mouths correctly. Once again, we loved the result – those characters are the same ones we are using today in the new Zattoo campaign.
LBB> What are you most looking forward to about working with Merchant?
Bestia> This new alliance with Merchant will help us to position ourselves in the Canadian market as the first choice for craft aesthetic commercials. We believe that Canada - along with the US, UK, Mexico, Australia and China - is one of the key markets in which our proposal could adapt perfectly. Also, we want to make more large productions, that is our main goal. If we work with better, bigger budgets we will be able to deliver bigger, better work. There is really no limit to what we can do; if we can imagine it, we can build it and film it!
LBB> What does the next year look like for you? Are you excited about anything in particular?
Bestia>We are very excited about everything that lies ahead for the remainder of this year and for 2023. While we can't show anything yet, we have several projects confirmed, and others that we have already started that will be amazing.
We are currently finishing a campaign in which we made a sequence shot with puppets moving along a really detailed model of a neighbourhood. Once we came up with the idea of the sequence shot with puppets - something we had never seen before - we knew we had to do it. The first edits are looking great.
Although our specialisation is craft, this year we have put together an incredible 3D animation team. We have learned about the infinite solutions 3D animation provides – after all, it is a technique that works with the same logic as craft (design, materials, lighting). We are currently working on a project with the Naked Eye effect, which has never been done in Argentina before.
Last but definitely not least, we are working on a TV programme for children, in which each chapter will explain a different concept of art using our visual style and be full of handmade mechanisms. We are very excited about this one as the storytelling and whole dynamic for a TV show is really different to what we are used to doing. Audiences have not yet seen a TV show that speaks our visual language!
