The legendary VFX studio reclaims its brand, expands its roster of services and still produces work that kicks ass.

QuietMan EP and Partner Carey Gattyan credits Steve Humble with showing her the light.

It wasn't a religious experience she had, but it came close. She was in Cannes last year, hanging out with The Martin Agency's Director of Integrated Production, and he decided to play out a little experiment with her. He'd introduce her to people as the partner and EP of Semerad, and they'd gauge the reaction, which was usually polite. Then he'd add, "They used to be known as QuietMan," and they'd watch what happened.

It was sort of like the old Pepsi Challenge blind taste tests-back in the days before QuietMan's Johnnie Semerad and Director Joe Pytka got their hands on Pepsi's ad campaign.

The response was immediate, Gattyan recalls. "Their faces would light up and they'd go, 'Oh my God, QuietMan! They do great work! How's Johnnie?' And that sort of did it for us."

So last fall, after spending three years going by the name Semerad, the visual effects and production studio formerly known as QuietMan returned to its roots and re-claimed its identity. What they never gave up, says Gattyan, were the Emmys, the Cannes Lions, the Grammy, the Clios and One Show Pencils and other awards that the studio's work has won, or the drive, determination and persistence that helped them win these medals in the first place.

The studio started in 1995 when the former Charlex visual effects artist started his own small boutique. At the time it was affiliated with the New York-based editorial shop Crew Cuts, which owned an equity stake in the business, and was housed one floor below their offices on West 44th Street in Manhattan.

What follows is legend: Semerad started working on high-profile TV spots, often comic in nature, in which his deft use of Flame and Inferno managed to create the kinds of visual effects that made even seasoned vets wonder how they were pulled off. This included work like the Fox Sports campaign from Cliff Freeman that won the Grand Prix in Cannes, or Joe Pytka's "Free as a Bird" Beatles music video that won Semerad a Grammy.

But there were some drawbacks to its lofty status. "They had this great body of work and these great associations," says former DDB New York Director of Broadcast Production Bob Nelson, who joined QuietMan in February of this year as an Executive Producer, "but in some respects they were limited by their associations."  For example, he notes, the studio was often perceived as an extension of Crew Cuts.

Semerad bought out the Crew Cuts stake  in 2006, and a year later relocated to its current loft space on West 29th Street, right above the Art Directors Club. (Semerad, a graduate of the fine arts program at Pratt, liked the vibe of the building.) That was when they changed the name to Semerad and began to expand their services beyond just the visual effects work they were famous for.

They had increasingly begun to handle production as well, usually in support of their VFX jobs but also because the marketplace had changed and agencies needed more efficient, turnkey solutions. "There are so many additional elements that clients need on just about every job we do," Gattyan explains. "Our production capabilities grew out of that." It included things like tabletop work, motion capture and other forms of live action, which in turn became the foundation for a production department at the studio that now handles everything from print deliverables to elements for web sites and apps.

What the move downtown earned them was a variety of benefits, both tangible and intangible, the partners explain. "We gained independence and reinvention," says Semerad, "along with an ability to redefine who we were." There was a new space, which they designed to fit the way they wanted to work, along with a new sense of energy. They also gained a chance to start building new relationships with agencies, directors and editors, adds Gattyan.

On the flip side, there was this perception that they'd somehow fallen off the industry's radar. This was top of mind when Nelson joined. He says his first two objectives were to communicate that QuietMan as a brand was back, while the second was to find a way to communicate the personal experience client get when working there.

"The fact is, the company and people never went away," Nelson says. "They have this amazing legacy-the dozen Lions, the fact that we've done close to a hundred Super Bowl spots, the work for HBO and Fox and Budget and Pepsi.

That tradition-and the family-like vibe at the studio-were big lures in getting Nelson to sign on. "Johnnie has surrounded himself with a loyal group of people," says Nelson. "Carey's been by his side since the early days, and his core group of artists and producers are like part of his family. Some of our competitors have grown into large global entities, and with that you get a degree of impersonality. Yet QuietMan remains a family. You get the top people personally overseeing your project when you work here. If Johnnie isn't physically on the box himself, he's in and out of the room half a dozen times a day.

Today the new and improved QuietMan is handling a wide range of projects, not all of which are traditional TV spots. They're still busy on that front, for sure: TV audiences in New York have seen Semerad's handiwork on the ongoing "Little Bit of Luck" campaign for New York Lottery, starring a pint-sized character aptly named "Little Bit of Luck" who's got a slightly oversized head pasted on his body. It's classic QuietMan shtick: the gag doesn't work if the effects don't nail it, which they do.

Nationally, sports fans were able to track the ongoing competition between the Pepsi Max delivery man and the Coke Zero delivery guy in a series of spots for which QuietMan delivered seamless effects. The launch of that campaign was a Joe Pytka remake of a classic Pepsi spot featuring rival deliverymen in a diner, sharing a taste of each other's soda and ending up coming to blows.

The studio recently produced a spot for Givenchy that was done client-direct, and for which they handled everything, from the shoot (which took place right in their office) to creative editorial to the visual effects. On a broader scale, QuietMan produced a series of cute animated shorts featuring Lego characters dancing ballroom-style that run on the brand's web site. The studio worked on the concept with Lego's in-house creative team and shot the dancing figures in motion capture before delivering finished clips.

While many aspects of QuietMan have remained unchanged, the environment in which it works today is radically different.  "There's been a tremendous amount of change in the industry within the last three years," says Gattyan.  "There's a lot more competition than there used to be. In addition, agencies, production companies and editorial companies have opened in-house divisions. The key is to continue to adapt to the changing climate.

"What sets us apart is Johnnie and his abilities as an artist," she continues. "His work with directors like Joe Pytka, Baker Smith and so many others really distinguishes him from how other visual effects artists work. He always tells them, 'You shoot your spot, I'll make it work.' They never have to shoot for the effects, but can always work towards capturing their vision of the spot, trusting that Johnnie will make it look great."

A collaborative group effort has always marked the studio's approach and helped define its persona. Given Semerad's shy personality – the name 'QuietMan' was always apt – their booming self-confidence stands in stark contrast. Gattyan and Nelson contend it's well-earned. "We have our clients' backs, and at the end of the day nothing but excellence will do. They may move on to their next project, but we're going to stay on it for them and make sure everything is perfect," she says. "Their work not only has their name on it, it has ours, too. When we took back the QuietMan name, we took back something else as well: the QuietMan pride."

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