For the first time we’ve leveled the playing field in our annual round-up of the year’s top production companies, putting traditional and digital shops on the same list. Two rose to the top: Los Angeles-based MJZ, with its singular focus on bidding the best boards in Adland, and London-based Stink, which significantly boosted its digital offering this year and snagged the Film Grand Prix at Cannes in the process. Finding it impossible to pick between the best apples and oranges, we decided to order fruit salad and call this year a tie.

If advertising is all about distraction, David Zander is an anomaly among producers.

As many production companies continue to grapple with adapting to digital, animation, branded content and social media, the MJZ president and co-founder has maintained a relatively small roster with an unwavering focus on simply pursuing the best commercial scripts. As a result, the company produced some of the year’s most lauded work.

“David’s on every conference call that we do,” says MJZ director Rupert Sanders. “He’s an ever present part of it. He’s not off developing features, he’s not going off to the music video department; he’s not in the 3D department. He’s totally focused on the 12 films on everybody’s reel.”

Sanders had a particularly good year. Much of his work looked and felt more like original content than commercials, namely “The Life”, a two-minute war epic for Halo 3 ODST and the colorfully conceptual Puma “Lift”. To those standouts he added many of the year’s bigger, cinematic outings including adidas “The Spark”, Brand Jordan “Field Generals” and Verizon/Droid “Stealth”.

He added a hint of whimsy and color to his normally gritty reel in 2009 in the form of “Lift” and the ITV spot “The Brighter Side”. “David helped change the work I was doing to be less dark,” he says. “The reel he put out is a little bit lighter.”

MJZ’s other big names managed to land a few hits, to say the least. Tom Kuntz got the ball rolling with viral smash “Eyebrow Dance” for Cadbury. Dante Ariola followed with Pepsi “Refresh Anthem” and Nicolai Fuglsig created a cardboard cutout world in “Fake” for Barclays. The company even found time to produce Juan Cabral’s “Power Of Sound”, for the Sony Bravia franchise.

There were underrated gems: Harmony Korine delivered unsettling web films for Liberty Mutual and UK-signing David Shane helmed “Alan”, an unlikely behind-the-music viral for Doritos.

Kuntz continued to shine to his king of commercial comedy crown with a 22-minute rock opera “Battle for Milkquarius” for California Milk Board, the farcical, droll Fruit by the Foot campaign, the brilliantly-scripted Old Spice “Different Scents for Different Gents” and Careerbuilder.com “Tips”.

When TAG SF, needed a director who could focus on a big idea full of little details specific to the Halo franchise, producer Joyce Chen bid three companies. When she dropped the budget, only Sanders and MJZ remained undaunted.

“MJZ was so invested in the creative,” says Chen. “They really worked hard to find a way to get things done for the money. We wouldn’t have been able to pull this off without them. Everything they brought to the table was of the highest caliber and they didn’t sacrifice anything creatively.”

Going forward Zander plans to keep the roster small and the focus on film. The only new addition was Pleix, a signing that resulted from a combination of spark and timing, Zander says, not a desire to produce more 3D-animated work.

“I don’t think that way,” he says. “Before you meet a director you have to on one level or another respond to their work. You have to feel like you can talk to this person every day and share common goals. It’s about where they are in their lives and where they are in their careers.

“If I can work with people that push me to think and grow and see the world a little differently, it’s fun,” he says. Q

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