Kerstin Emhoff’s production company brings artistic visions to life
David Bowie had died one month earlier, and Lady Gaga was performing an homage to the music icon at the 2016 Grammy Awards. Digital projections morphed her face into his alter ego, Ziggy Stardust. Paint seemed to spill down her forehead, staining her face with Ziggy’s trademark lightning bolt. A virtual spider skittered from her eye socket. Glowing rings inset with computer chips allowed her to choreograph holograms on a vast screen. Nothing like this had ever been attempted on live TV, and the performance picked up awards including Gold Clios for Innovation and Partnerships.
Gaga’s Bowie tribute was brought to life with help from production company Prettybird, which worked with Lady Gaga, technology corporation Intel, filmmaker Ruth Hogben and fashion pioneers Studio XO. Cofounded in 2008 by Kerstin Emhoff (COM ’90), Prettybird has become the go-to firm for artists and companies seeking new ways to engage audiences and stretch themselves creatively. It specializes in genre-bending music videos and inventive brand promotions, like Gaga’s Intel-driven Grammy performance. Prettybird also produces feature films and documentaries, and helps companies develop commercials and campaigns that stand out from the crowd.
Emhoff, a film & television major, moved to Los Angeles after graduation to become a film director, but discovered a quicker route to the top. In music videos and commercials, “I was able to jump right into production, because it was such a strong industry and it was looking for lots of young people.” After a few years, she became a freelancer; she says her projects included production management for the music video for Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer.”
Starting a family shifted Emhoff’s career: “After my son was born in 1994, I didn’t want to be on the road all of the time for projects.” She took a job as an executive producer at HSI Productions, which she says involved less travel but still allowed her to collaborate with directors like Samuel Bayer, Matthew Rolston, Hype Williams and her now-partner at Prettybird, Paul Hunter, with whom she worked on the Emmy-nominated 2001 Nike “Freestyle” commercial.
Late in 2007, Emhoff left HSI to launch her own company with Hunter. The pair founded Prettybird as a hybrid production company and creative agency, “where we could develop all kinds of projects, not just commercials or music videos,” says Emhoff, the company’s president. One of their first moves was to partner with documentary producer John Battsek on Sergio, a film about an operation that attempted to rescue Sergio Vieira de Mello, then–United Nations high commissioner for human rights, after a bombing at UN headquarters in Baghdad, Iraq, in 2003. Prettybird and Battsek have since coproduced seven films, Emhoff says.
Working on a film was “exactly what we needed to break out of the traditional production company model,” and helped Emhoff and Hunter “evolve Prettybird into a combination of creative development, talent management and production and distribution,” she adds.
The founders bill the company as a “creative think tank,” and Emhoff says they make a conscious decision to hire staff based on ambition and ingenuity, as opposed to titles and résumés. “We don’t care where you went to school, we don’t care if you didn’t go to school—once you walk in the door, you have the opportunity to develop yourself. We have people who were interns and production assistants here who are now our directors.”
Prettybird is renowned for setting new standards in entertainment. Advertising Age named Prettybird the 2015 Production Company of the Year and put it on its 2017 Production Company A-List. The company’s most celebrated projects include the 2017 Nike “Equality” campaign, which Adweek called “gorgeous” and “powerful.” In the commercial directed by Prettybird’s Melina Matsoukas, celebrity athletes like Serena Williams and LeBron James take to the city streets with the message that the equality promoted on the court should extend to the community.
Not all of Prettybird’s work can rely on star power to reach audiences. In 2014, Interlude (now Eko), a media and technology company, asked Prettybird to develop projects using its new software, which can be used to create interactive videos. Prettybird came up with the short film, Possibilia, a sophisticated take on the choose-your-own-adventure narrative directed by the duo known as Daniels. Powered by Interlude’s software, it allows the viewer to shift between 16 versions of the story, following a couple on the verge of a breakup. At key points in the film, viewers get to choose the scene that comes next: In one, the couple kiss; in another, they smash their belongings.
“It’s our job to continue to show the possibilities of these types of projects and to keep working with brands to get them to feel good about taking those risks,” Emhoff says. For Interlude, the risk paid off: Possibilia was an official selection of the 2015 Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier category, and was highlighted in a 2017 New Yorker article suggesting interactive films could be “this century’s defining art form.”
Creating innovative work at Prettybird sometimes means steering clients away from their original vision toward a more powerful way to tell their story. The directors of The Hunting Ground, a 2015 documentary about college rape, approached Prettybird to produce a music video to accompany the film, but Emhoff suggested that wasn’t the best vehicle for their message. “We wanted to work with them to develop a campaign that could actually create some kind of action,” she says. Emhoff and her team pitched a full-fledged campaign that included a public service announcement (PSA) encouraging students to hold their colleges accountable for on-campus rape.
The PSA is a chilling twist on the college acceptance letter. The letter’s content, read by a series of high school students in a montage, turns disturbing: “Prepare for a challenging year ahead, which includes losing your virginity to a rapist.” The letter also describes the lack of action victims might expect from administrators. It ends with the tag line, “If they accept you, don’t accept this,” and urges students to contact their college administrators and speak up online, using the hashtag #DontAcceptRape.
“The Hunting Ground filmmakers were scared about how shocking it was,” Emhoff says. “When we showed it to the kids, they thought it was great, that it needed to be shocking to raise awareness. That is the whole reason for the campaign. The kids were like, ‘It has to be shocking to get people’s attention, otherwise it’s not going to cut through the clutter.’ ”
Prettybird is making noise across media platforms, racking up Grammys, Clios, an Emmy and a Cannes Entertainment Lion for Music Grand Prix. Emhoff says that’s winning them new clients and ongoing opportunities for creative work. “People will call us and say, ‘Hey, could you guys do this?’ And of course, we always say yes. Even if we don’t 100 percent know what to do—we do it. We want everyone to ask, ‘What would Prettybird do?’”
