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Revelator: Inside the Art of Commercial Storytelling

19/10/2022
Production Company
Austin, USA
585
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Company partners Chris Ohlson, Matt Muir, and Jonn Herschend tell LBB why the world of commercial production is such fertile ground for creative storytelling in 2022 and beyond

Above: Partners Jonn Herschend, Chris Ohlson, and Matt Muir (back row, center) with some of the Revelator Team. Photo by Annie Ray.

In a crowded marketplace, there’s no fate worse than being samey. But that sense of ‘sameness’ can be tricky to avoid, especially in the context of shrinking budgets and tightening timelines. Amidst that landscape, the power of storytelling - the ability to grip an audience and take them on a journey with your brand at its heart - comes into its own. 

“It’s rarely enough to rely simply on a prevailing aesthetic or a small bag of tricks to make an impression”, explains Matt Muir, a director and co-founder of the creative production company Revelator. “It’s our job to be very rigorous about creating a story and ensure the penny drops in the viewer’s mind, in order to get to the rewarding takeaway that comes with a clean storytelling process”. 

That appreciation for - and dedication to - storytelling is the bedrock on which Revelator was built. Initially the brainchild of Matt and Chris Ohlson, and later adding writer and director Jonn Herschend to its leadership team, the production studio has never shied away from its specialty and focus. 

“Our priority isn’t production services, gear, and tech specs - it’s executing a creative vision”, says Chris. “The Revelator partners and all of our directors have a storytelling background, with their own unique creative vision. And we feed that vision - we trade ideas, read scripts, give feedback and help support our director’s creative lives and personal projects. That’s ultimately going to result in more creative muscle and inspiration when it comes to commercial projects with our clients, too”. 

That deep-rooted expertise and appreciation for filmmaking has won many plaudits. In 2015, Chris won The Film Independent Spirit Awards’ Producers Award, honouring ‘an emerging producer who demonstrates the creativity, tenacity and vision required to produce quality, independent films’. Chris produced two independent films that year, The Zellner Brothers’ Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter and Matt Muir’s Thank You A Lot.

For Revelator, then, storytelling is a serious business - in fact, it’s the only business in town. To find out more about what difference that approach makes for Revelator’s clients, and just why it became such a fascination and focus for the company’s partners in the first place, LBB sat down with Chris, Matt, and Jonn. 


Early Revelations

To fully explain the origins of Revelator, one needs to go back to its founders’ filmmaking roots. In order to pay his way to getting a master’s degree at the University of Texas, Matt was working on film sets. Chris, meanwhile, found himself producing indie films in Austin. Before long, fate ensured that the two began working on those film sets together - where they first began to hone their collaborative storytelling skills. 

“We already had a great working relationship having made films of all shapes and sizes, and when the opportunity presented itself to work on the commercial side of production we jumped at it”, recalls Chris. “More and more opportunities started to present themselves, so we said to ourselves ‘we better name this partnership and get a reel and a website’. There was no greater plan than that - it wasn’t even written out on a napkin. We were just trying to keep up with the opportunities coming our way”.

If that suggests a haphazard start to life in the industry, it didn’t take long for things to crystalise and for the shape of what Revelator has become to form. “We grew organically, adding to our roster and beefing up our team on the production and admin sides of things, building out a wildly nimble and flexible swiss-army-knife company”, says Matt. “Early on, we realised that the commercial production world was such a practical way to tell stories. It was also a great opportunity to work with collaborators on campaigns that leveraged our skill in telling those stories”. 

And so it has. Not long after the gears of Revelator first started to churn, they added the talents of Jonn Herschend into the mix. “What attracted me to Revelator was the fact that Matt and Chris were filmmakers and artists first”, he says. “Matt has a distributed feature and several short films under his belt, and Chris is a Sundance Fellow and a Spirit Award winner. These guys weren’t just making commercials. They were making interesting, creative, and sometimes brilliantly weird projects”. 

As Jonn goes on to explain, his own creative origins can be traced back to the worlds of art and experimental film. His projects can be seen in exhibitions throughout the world, including the Whitney Biennale, SFMOMA, Den Frie in Copenhagen and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo. In fact, he and Chris met at the San Francisco film festival when they both had films on the festival circuit. “Jonn was immediately interesting to us because of his work as an artist, with clients like Nike and Levis”, recalls Chris. “We liked the fact that he was a creative thinker first and foremost, but he knew how to collaborate with brands in interesting ways”. 

Ultimately, it’s the work that truly puts Revelator’s storytelling-first approach to the test. In recent times, projects such as Stella Artois’ Stella Supper Club - in collaboration with Pop-Up Magazine - have been turning heads. In that instance, The Revelator team was brought on board to help with creative strategy, bringing a unique physical event to life on-screen.  

“It was literally a story that needed to come to life”, says Jonn. “The idea was that a person of note tells a story to guests, in a great restaurant somewhere in the world. The person they selected was Will Butler, formerly of Arcade Fire and the restaurant they chose was Besharam Restaurant in San Francisco. We worked with the restaurant along with Stella and Pop-Up to create a cinematic environment that would highlight the energy of the evening”. 

Above: Stella Supper Club is a unique storytelling initiative that pairs a great storyteller with an audience in an incredible restaurant, with the result being an intoxicating mix of food and narrative. In order to bring the project to life on-screen, the brand enlisted Revelator. 

As Jonn recalls, creating the film was a uniquely enjoyable challenge. “I set up a three-camera approach and worked with our D.P. to create a warm, low-key lighting look that honoured the Besharam space”, he says. “I also collaborated with Will Butler on how and when to hit his narrative beats in the story in order to make sure we maintained the naturalism and visual energy we were looking for in the original creative strategy. We were also very diligent about selecting our supporting audience members, making sure we established the relaxed and warm tone we envisioned. The end result - which involved several cases of Stella - is a genuinely enjoyable storytelling experience”. 

In many ways, the Stella Supper Club is symbolic of the kind of content which has become Revelator’s speciality. Perhaps that’s no surprise, given the history of pursuing storytelling passion which is rooted in the company’s DNA. 


Born Storytellers

Crucially, Revelator’s success can be identified in the way that the studio has taken their passion and expertise in indie filmmaking, and applied it to the commercial world.

“I think early lessons from indie filmmaking absolutely apply when I’m working on creative strategy with clients”, says Matt. An example of that approach bearing fruit is a memorable ad for the automotive lifestyle brand Hagerty. 

“Hagerty offers insurance and is a marketplace for classic cars, and it’s a brand we really love”, continues the filmmaker. “They approached us about developing two different campaigns at the same time, with both speaking to the next generation of classic car customers. Their internal team brought us funny concepts and scripts, but wanted our help in fine-tuning the storytelling process”. 

Above: Whilst raising a smile, Revelator’s work for Hagerty also plays with a key insight regarding the next generation of classic car buyers. 

As part of the creative process, Matt’s aforementioned indie filming experience came to the fore. “We treated it like an indie film shoot, finding savings by simplifying shoot days and the number of locations we were considering”, he says. “In filmmaking, you’ll always have actors with limited availability and locations which need to double and be shared. It’s always a puzzle you’re trying to solve, with limited pieces. But there’s no doubt that experience helps you to find the right solution”. 

But, as Matt goes on to explain, the value of the team’s indie and artistic expertise extends beyond the practical and into the creative. “As an indie film director, you’re also trying to see how you can make the storytelling as direct and clear as possible without sacrificing the uniqueness of the characters” he continues. “Thanks to that process, we had a ton of additional lines and options ready by the time we locked in the script. That was the final lesson I took to the set from my filmmaking experience - you can have a solid plan and script, but when you’re on set with a great actor. they’re going to find something unique and charming in the moment. I want to be ready to embrace it, improvise with them, and see what else we can discover”.  

Fittingly, Matt’s indie experience is also reflected in Chris’ own storytelling and filmmaking journey. “In Revelator’s earlier days, I produced a number of independent feature-length films. I learned a bevy of life and professional lessons working on the front lines of creating challenging stories with very limited resources”, says Chris. “Each of them made me a better producer and a better filmmaker, but I also came to learn how very important it was for me  to create a collaborative and safe environment - how it was my job, in many ways, to ‘build the house’ that our cast, crew, and collaborators would all work within”. 

For an example of those lessons bearing fruit, Chris points to a project on behalf of Western Union and Pandora named SideStage. 

“While creating SideStage featuring Vance Joy, we weren’t able to fly any crew in for budgetary reasons - and so we relied on local partners and vendors”, he recalls. “This is sometimes the case, but in this instance Matt wanted a very specific visual approach to the storytelling, to capture a unique tone. So we had to communicate a thoughtful and detailed story approach to a completely unknown crew in a very short amount of time”. 

Fortunately, the Revelator team’s filmmaking know-how ensured that the project was a success. “Our preparation – and our communication in the prep phase of things with a crew that was almost entirely new to us – allowed us to roll with the punches”, he continues. “We found answers to all the tricky production questions we encountered, with an agency and client along with us for the live-ride. It was a valuable lesson and reminder that all the pre-production, and talking through all the what-ifs, is an essential piece of the production puzzle”. 

Above: The Australian singer-songwriter Vance Joy took fans on a beautifully-shot backstage tour of a show at The Greek Theatre in Berkeley, California in this project brought to life by the Revelator team. 

Above all else, it’s easy to get a sense of Revelator as a group of creative minds who simply love what they do. But, more than that, the studio’s collective passion for storytelling looks to have found its perfect moment as brands look to assert an identity in an unprecedentedly saturated communications landscape. 

Through their work with brands including Stella, Indian Motorcycle, Aetna, IBM, Google, Capital One, Pandora, Harlem Globetrotters and more, they’ve been quietly yet effectively demonstrating the value of that approach. And, as with any good story, the most exciting part is what comes next. 

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