I will research my client: Passion Pictures.
The Passion Pictures logo:
What Passion Pictures does:
Animated commercials and music videos, Long-form animation and short film, Documentaries, Games Trailers and Cinematics
Revenue: $22 million
Employees: 126
Competitors: studioaka.co.uk, slurpystudios.com, picnicstudio.tv, moth.studio & gizmosite.tv
Passion pictures
Passion Pictures is an award-winning independent international film production company created by Andrew Ruhemann in 1987 as a studio where the best creatives can come together to tell stories in film and work on both animation and live-action. It is a British company. However, because of their success, they now have studios in many places around the world, for example, New York, Melbourne, Toronto and Paris, but the major studio is in London. Passion Pictures have won multiple Oscars. They are home to unique combinations of world-leading talent in animation and documentary filming. Passion is committed to telling grand stories regardless of length, genre, or style.
‘One Day in September’ was Passion Pictures first film documentary produced by John Battsek to win an Academy Award in 1999. Since then the company has been very successful at producing documentary productions and multi-award-winning films, and as of 2019, a fantastic fourteen consecutive years premiering films at the world-renowned Sundance Film Festival.
Subsidiaries of Passion Pictures
Passion Pictures has many sub-brands within its group, which over time had grown visually different. A company called ‘Made Thought’ was appointed to rebrand Passion into one coherent look. The identity is used across Passion Pictures, five company divisions, and its offices are in London, New York and Paris. The newest companies which make commercials, Passion Raw and Strange Beast have their brand but this relates to the primary parent one. Passion Planet is the same. This company deals with wildlife and nature documentaries such as The Serengeti Rules.
Here we have two brands that are similar in font type used but have their quirks: New York Passion company and Strange Beast company.
There is also a sister studio in France called Passion Paris, run by Marc Bodin-Joyeux with its own quintessentially French roster of animation directors mainly working on game trailers, commercials, and long-form, Paris is also the home of the Lego City TV series. Strange Beast has a director-led animation studio that is very much gender-balanced, the only one in Europe. They have and are producing some great Netflix series such as ‘Headspace’, films for ‘Breast Cancer Now’ and ‘Bloody Good Period’ with award-winning documentary makers, Keo Films. Passion Planet is a department set up by four-time Emmy Award-winning producer/director David Allen to focus on natural history and specialist factual documentaries. ‘The Serengeti Rules’ is Passion Planet’s latest feature-length production.
Passion has been behind some of the most well known animated commercials, such as the iconic Aleksandr the Meerkat, the virtual band Gorillaz, and handled hundreds of Play-Doh bunnies that took over New York. They have also made over 90 documentaries. Their latest achievement is for Barbour, where they have produced an animated Christmas film featuring none other than Paddington Bear. This has been directed by Againstallodds, who were also behind McDonald’s’ Inner Child’ Christmas add 2020. This is the first time the original Paddington illustrations have been brought to life in animation.
Target Audience: Apart from Specialist Factual and Documentary, everything that Passion creates is largely animation In one form or another. Animation mostly appeals to the younger audience, from young children to young adults. I think Passion is trying to appeal to every age bracket as they are trying to capture everyone’s attention. From making films like 101 Dalmatian street and Lego City adventures to appeal to the very young children and producing documentaries like the life and trials of Oscar Pistorius and Hillsborough which would appeal to the older Demographic. Then you have commercials like Beano ‘so Beano’ and Dominos Master Pizza advert which would interest the young adult/ teenager. As Passion makes animation or film for TV, their target audience appears to be aimed towards different age groups, as their work comprises different genres.
The psychographic Passion Pictures gets are varied, as they make content for different age groups. The content they make fits closely with explorers because they seek discovery, energy, individualism, and experience. Value difference and adventure, who are typically the younger demographic. Mainstreamers, because they seek security, be domestic, conformist, conventional, sentimental, favourable for money family brands. This is the largest group, about 40% of the general population.
Ditroit
Ditroit is an award-winning motion studio founded in 2009, led by the director Salvo Giunta. It involves a team of passionate art directors, designers and animators who work together to make creative motion design content for international brands, tv networks and advertising agencies.
Example of something Ditroit has made:
Russell Brooke
Russell Brooke is an animator and director from the UK who works across different techniques, but he is best known for his cheerful 2D art style that has found its way on several international campaigns.
Example of something Russel Brooke has made:
The Kinder chocolate advert
I feel like this person’s work style resonates with me because their art style is quite similar to mine, and I felt like it looked the closest to how I draw, almost. Russell Brooke likes to animate in 2D, which is also my preferred method at the moment.
I hope that my animation ideas for the brief and art style will be suited and liked by Passion Pictures. Like Russell Brooke, I too like to make my animations fun and playful. My very first animation, ‘the pencil case’, for example, is an excellent illustration of this. Also, I like to animate for the younger audience, which is another similarity. If I was to choose a category group Passion Pictures works on for this brief idea, I would choose Long-form animation and short films, this is because I am planning to make a trailer for a short animation film so it should fit into this category very well.