Richman Films started in Manhattan in the ’80s. Today we’re in NJ/NY, still writing, shooting and lighting commercials, now for TV and for the phone.
We’re behind some of the most famous TV advertisers in history.
Joseph Goryeb came to us when his company had only four employees. During a downturn in the lending industry, we developed a strategy that made it the highest-grossing retail subprime lender in the country.
In a field of 10,000 competitors, he was #1.In the ’80s, Americans couldn’t get enough denim. We were just starting out, but somehow we became the go-to production house for jeans and fashion commercials: twenty or so Sergio spots, plus Seruchi, Arpel, Chams de Baron, Bonjour, Jesse James and at least a dozen others.
We also wrote more tacky jingles than you could imagine. We’re still waiting for Time-Life to release the collection. One suggested title: “Nothing But Butt Songs.”
From an article on NJ.com
“In Manhattan, we mostly produced commercials and corporate films for mid-sized and larger companies. But we didn’t start that way. In the beginning we worked for very small companies, a lot of startups,” Sheldon explains. “We became the masters at turning out high-end-looking productions with minuscule budgets. This formula worked really well for our clients. So well, that quite a few of them became famous for their marketing successes.”
“In the late eighties we started making commercials for a tiny mortgage company which grew to become the largest in the industry. We developed campaigns for a tiny fashion company that became a major department store brand. We took a start-up food product and got it onto supermarket shelves nationwide.”
“This break had two national spots and two local. All four of the commercials were spots I had directed. Unfortunately no one else was there to witness it.”
By the late nineties, Richman Films was one of the most prolific production companies in New York.
In the mid-2000s the production world changed. Everything the $800-an-hour edit suite could do became available on a laptop. The film-quality image that used to need big crews and big budgets became possible with small digital cameras, as long as you had the experience to light it like film.
“We’re showing people that they should expect much more from their video productions,” Sheldon says. “And that just because our productions look expensive, it doesn’t mean that they were expensive.”
Sheldon, on how he learned to light
Back in the day, I was a production manager at a busy Manhattan TV studio. Celia was an NYU Film School graduate and a CBS camerawoman with her own video camera. Our friend Alan was a young editor who already had a Daytime Emmy. We were an energetic young brain trust, ready to unleash our talent on the TV commercial industry.
Our first client was Evelyn’s Beauty Land, a hair weaving salon in East Harlem. It was a thrill seeing our footage on TV at four in the morning. But something nagged at me when I watched our spots next to the big guys’. Our stuff didn’t look that good. I told myself it was the equipment.
About a year later, the jeans craze hit and we landed our biggest budget yet. I shot it on 35mm film with a good camera. The outdoor scenes, shot at golden hour, looked fine. The indoor scenes were still nowhere close to the big spots.
I asked a friend at Grey Advertising, a mid-level art director, to be brutally honest. What she told me defied everything I knew:
“It’s your lighting.”
The lighting they teach in film school isn’t the lighting major advertisers use. They hire cinematographers who are artists. Back then, a commercial DP of any note made $3,000 to $6,000 a day, and they were worth every penny.
Our break came when a national vitamin company hired us and we budgeted for a real DP. Lights went in counter-intuitive places. Every lamp was modified and bounced in ways I’d never imagined. When we screened the dailies, we sat in stunned silence. There was a texture and vibrance to the footage I had never seen in our work.
The vitamin spot opened agency doors that had been shut. From then on I hired top DPs who specialized in hair, food, beauty and automotive, and spent every spare moment practicing what I’d watched them do. Eventually, on a multi-day shoot where the DP was only available for one day, I lit the other days myself. The client and I were both happy with everything we saw.
With rare exceptions, I’ve been the director and DP ever since. Today we handle some of the toughest specialties there are: food, hair, beauty and automotive. We aim for a national look on every production, because it makes a real difference to how well the work sells.
Sheldon has won awards for both stage direction and TV. His background directing dramatic plays is why business owners who’ve never been on camera come across as natural on screen.
TV commercials, social media videos and corporate films. We’ll get back to you within one business day.
Richman