Asylum Artists Offers One-Stop-Shop For Multimedia Photography

Gail Chiasson, North American Editor

A new Canadian company, which has just opened its doors in Toronto as the pioneer of a process that converges still photography and HD motion picture for the first time under one roof, is also expanding its talents into content for digital out-of-home.

Asylum Artists is the brainchild of successful commercial photographer Don Dixon, a top choice for creative directors across Canada for high profile national campaigns for such clients as Ford, Mercedes, Tim Hortons, Air Miles, Heineken, American Express and RBC.

The specificity of Asylum is that it can produce for multiple media applications using one crew, one budget and one seamless execution, marrying photography and motion picture, transforming the still world into an interactive one, including editing and finishing, all under one roof, at a significant time and cost saving.

According to Dixon, digital motion is the most sensible method of joining together the inherently different technologies of still image and moving picture to produce connected creative for the widest variety of media options, now and in the future.

“We can bring talent in to do all shoots at once: still, TV, digital screens, Web, all at a massive cost benefit for the client,” says Dixon. “What used to take four steps – and four different suppliers – now takes one step and one supplier. Can you imagine how many less steps this means for the art director?”

A significant key to Asylum Artists’ ability to provide infinite media assets from a single budget is the depth of the Studio’s image library. Asylum Artists owns over 500,000 color and black and white images that represent one of the largest libraries of independent photographic material in Canada.

According to Dixon, today’s content creators want it all: the TV commercial, the print ad, the billboard – digital and traditional – the Web banner and everything in-between. “Our process does it all effortlessly,” he says.

Dixon, considered one of a new breed of creative professional who has cornered a niche of the creative content technology sector, has been on the leading edge of advancements in the field since 1980, when he opened his first studio in Toronto.


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