Celebrating the creative community in our own backyard. Our inaugural interview is with Garth Collins of Timelapse Media House.

What is Timelapse Media House and how was it born?

Timelapse Media House is a commercial production company who partners with brands and agencies to create campaigns, commercials and branded content. Our diverse roster of directors represents the next generation of creative storytellers and visual communicators.   TMH was founded in 2014 by Mark Chisholm and was truly grown in a 5 bedroom home in Burnaby the first 3 years. Me and my partners Mark Chisholm, Trevor Lang and Brayden Wiebe converted this home into a makeshift office where we would live, grow the brand, run production meetings and even shoot at. This created a family first dynamic which remains at the core of every decision made to this day. 

 Give me your take on the production service scene here in Vancouver.

Vancouver has long been known as a service town, but I think this has been truly changing over the last few years. There is a ton of creative talent on the west coast. Maybe it's a geographical thing with the mountains and ocean, but it really feels like the community is working together to raise the tides collectively - we’re proud to (hopefully) be a small part of that, and are always willing to lend an ear, or open up the rolodex to the next generation of creatives who are looking for a little support getting to the next level!

Timelapse is a company with brand intelligence. You believe in a smarter way to plan, create and activate stunning content for global agencies and brands. How have you discovered clients and how do you keep the relationship with them strong? What makes a fruitful collaboration? What do you do to enhance the collaborative process?

We’ve built our relationships the old fashioned way; with persistence over time.

Being the newer group kicking around town, we initially needed to communicate that we could be trusted with larger budgets, so we would take xx dollars and put absolutely everything we had into it. I don’t know if this is necessarily accurate, but we felt like if we failed the clients or agency in any way, we would be written up in a little black book somewhere and banished from the industry forever - thankfully this didn’t happen. Once we got a couple of these under our belts, and things started heading in the right direction, I transitioned the line of communication from, “Hey, you can trust us, please give us a shot!”  to: “Hey, here’s another way we can bring value to your next project”. This was usually in the form of showcasing new directors or work, with the hopes of getting lucky with timing and really just staying on their radar.

When it comes to collaboration, I really like to simplify things by front loading the process - let’s clearly understand the finish line together first. As long as we understand the measurements of success, we can have fun trusting we’re all pulling the rope in the same direction, and trying to achieve the same things. We’re pretty lucky to do what we do.

It all starts with the boards (usually). How do you choose your directors to pitch, and what is your process of getting it there?

This is arguably the most important part of the project.

We do things a little backwards here. We will evaluate the clients, agents and really do a deep dive into which sandbox we’re playing in here - intangibly speaking. Then, we will go through our roster and identify the right personality that will compliment the chemistry already in place. That is so important. I think most of our directors could be capable of shooting (most) of the boards we get, unless it’s a highly specific car or food commercial I suppose. So with this in mind, we want to add the right ingredient to the dish, the rest will fall into place from there, we’ve found.

Now, we certainly need to consider the certain strengths and passions our directors have from an artistic style perspective, but we’re very passionate about putting our directors into comfortable situations where they’ll be set up to succeed.

 What makes a commercial great for you? Are there certain qualities that make a commercial better for you?

Connect me to it. Music, dialogue, color, emotion, anything. If I can relate, I’ll remember it. But don’t throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and see what sticks. Own a direction and run with it. That’s what I respect, and that’s what makes a commercial great to me.

Finally, name a person or company here on the West Coast who you think is killin’ it and stands out as an excellent human being.

My heart of heart answers would be you, Jason Mackay ;) A very close second would be Carson Ting. He’s been a great ally to TL when he didn’t need to give us the time of day a few years back.

If you like what you see, check out more from Timelapse Media House or reach out to Garth at garth@timelapsefilm.ca