For ELMNTL, Craft is Never Formulaic
Arriving at ELMNTL’s chic East London studio, I’m baffled by their door. The instructions on the building’s buzzer system are cryptic to say the least. “It’s like a reverse escape room, you have to work out how to get in,” laughs Greg White, founding partner, before offering the stat that only about 30% of people manage to code-break past the entrance on the first attempt. I am however assured that a good old-fashioned intercom system is being installed the very next day. As cliché as it sounds, if it ain’t broke - why fix it?
Speaking to Greg, Danny (Whybrow, founding partner), and Jenna (Le Noury, EP/MD) it’s clear that they started ELMNTL to fix the things they did think were broken and to double down on the things that aren’t. “We had this opportunity to sit down and look at how things have been done previously, to look at what other companies were doing really well and also not so well,” says Greg.
Above: ELMNTL's studio in East London
Billed as an independent creative studio offering visual and audio craft, ELMNTL started to officially operate in January ‘23 though all the company’s leaders, naturally, have extensive industry experience under their belts. In what seems like an intensely short period of time, ELMNTL has already worked on multiple spots for Lego, Adidas, Nike, Audi and, most recently, Tesco’s F+F autumn campaign. How did the company start on such a strong path so fast? While the trio doesn’t think there’s any one formula to success, for them, it all goes back to reiterating what makes this industry such a great one to work in.
Relationships at the centre
“We’ve put the emphasis back on relationships,” says Danny. “Not that they weren’t there before - they’ve always been important - but it’s about really understanding how fundamental relationships are to good work and collaboration.” Jenna sees the company’s boutique size as an advantage in fostering solid, creative connections between staff, clients, and other collaborators. “It’s easy for us to have that direct communication, to share information and to work together towards one goal,” she explains.
One of the earliest examples of this collaboration in action can be seen in Lego’s ‘Play Unstoppable’ campaign for the FIFA Women’s World Cup, where ELMNTL worked with creative agency Brave and director Caroline Paris. The campaign resonated with ELMNTL on an ideological as well as a creative level since it was about helping women to break down professional barriers in football and beyond. For a company that’s already 45% female, it was the perfect message to aid in executing. As for the work itself, ELMNTL’s deft fingerprints are all over the ‘90s-tinged spot featuring the footballer, Lauren Hemp. “We handled the VFX supervision on set, the grade took place with our colourist Henry Howard, all of the online finishing and compositing of the animated graphics was undertaken by our senior flame artist Martin Waller. Lastly, Joe Marsden provided the sound design to wrap the entire piece up,” explains Jenna. ELMNTL continued the good work it started for Lego with another spot under the ‘Play Unstoppable’ campaign umbrella, this time featuring American footballer Megan Rapinoe, and championing the same positive message.
Working with ELMNTL means working directly with the founders - there’s no bait and switch from the pitch to execution. “Greg and Danny are here every day. They’re in it with you. They’re responsible, responsive, and engaged,” Jenna adds. Of course the team are not doing it all themselves, even if the desire is sometimes there, but are surrounded by a tight-knit team of creatives who all share their philosophy. In turn, the team offers “a massive amount of trust,” per Danny, which means freedom and autonomy to do one’s work. “We don’t want to micromanage. We know if someone is working on a project, they’re doing their absolute best because there’s no complacency in the team,” Danny adds.
If anything scares Greg, Danny, and Jenna, it’s complacency. That’s why the team celebrates every pitch it doesn’t win alongside every one that they do. It’s a fresh approach and one they truly subscribe to, not just pay lip service to. “We don’t actually want to win every pitch,” Danny says with a genuine smile. “If you win every one, it does lead to complacency however much you don’t want it to and we never want to be those people. We don’t want to get comfortable. Every pitch we’ve not won has taught us something, made us better, made us learn a lesson so we can adapt as a team.”
One of the main benefits of working together as ELMNTL is having the ability - the agility - to learn and adapt whenever the situation calls for it. For Danny this looks like “having the ability to influence everything we do,” while Jenna similarly sees the flexibility the team can pass onto clients. “If a client wants to work a certain way, we have the freedom to implement that. If someone wants to bring in a piece of a process they know works, we can do that - we have a clean slate,” says Jenna.
There’s nothing ‘post’ to see here
With a clean slate comes the opportunity to self-define in a way that’s most reflective of the team’s evolving process and practices. For ELMNTL that meant leaving behind the ‘post production’ descriptor to embrace a ‘creative studio’ one instead. With this, the company is firmly looking to the ‘value added’ role it plays in the creative process; there’s nothing ‘post’ about how they work. “Post production has always been one of those terms that sounds like an afterthought to me,” Danny says. “In the past the process was very linear. First the shoot happened, and then you worked on the footage. Now, we’re often getting involved before a project has been fully conceived. I’ve been pushing it to get involved at an earlier stage for the past twenty years, and now we’re really doing it so to me post production is an antiquated term.”
Today’s VFX-heavy spots, even the invisible ones, require a different kind of approach to the time when post production was seen as basically a finishing resource. “Budgets are what they are,” Jenna laughs knowingly. “Everyone has to be savvy, know your craft, and be really aware of the workflows. You need to have the right artists and resources, you have to be smart, or you won’t stay in business for long.” Greg is seeing how much can be achieved when all the experts are in the room together from the start. “Sometimes there’s an idea and we can see that the budget isn’t there or the director has a different approach, whatever it is, there’s a solution that we can find.”
Thankfully there’s less and less resistance to this way of working. “There used to be a ring fence between production and post production but actually there’s a lot more openness now,” Danny confirms. Jenna, an ex-agency producer, intimately understands “the full spectrum of what we’re dealing with.”
The team recently wrapped on a fashion and beauty spot for Tesco’s brand, F+F, working with BBH and Anonymous Content’s director Elena Pettiti di Roreto. The resulting collaboration is funny and epic at once, with a dose of romance thrown in for good measure. The team executed the post and VFX in the resulting brand 30” TVC as well as a series of idents for ITVBe and LittleBe.
Big things to come
Unsurprisingly for a company that fears complacency above all, none of the success that’s been hard-won this year is a permission for the team to slow down. If anything, it’s only adding fuel and motivation to a fire that’s burning hungrily. Recruitment is an ongoing conversation. “It’s constant at the moment, we’re talking about how to keep making the team strong and how to add even more quality,” says Greg. Danny tells me that they’re already looking at additional project spaces too. “We’re exploring other premises and the possibility of adding new locations. We’re not locked into this particular geography.”
Building out their sound offering is likewise high on the agenda - and they want to do it properly. “Sound is such an integral part of the finished creative and I’ve always been fascinated by why it’s treated so separately,” comments Danny. “We want to do sound in a considered manner. We see it sitting within its own environment and very much standing on its own merits,” adds Greg. As such, it’s not a case of ‘if’ but ‘when’ with the team making headway in that direction already.
At the start of our conversation Jenna, Danny, and Greg summed up why they started ELMNTL in four words: freedom, opportunity, flexibility, agility. If you’ll excuse the pun, it’s exactly these elements that proliferate throughout their working philosophy. After spending some time with the team, I’d like to add a fifth element to the mix - fun - as it’s clear that the three are not going to lose sight of the levity that makes the work in this industry great to show up for.
Greg has the final words. “We’re loving what we’re doing, it’s everything we hoped it would be. There’s a lot of hunger in every one of us to keep growing and making the best work we possibly can.”
