PROJECT PROFILE:
Galerie Michael - Seven Pictures Works With an Aesthetic Eye

A Video Business Card that features the CEO, Michael Schwartz.

Situation

Galerie Michael is an international fine art gallery located on the renowned Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, CA. From Rembrandt to Picasso, this gallery is committed to exhibiting centuries of top quality European art. The gallery carries a worldwide reputation for its collection of French pre-impressionist works. The gallery is lead by founder Michael Schwartz, who offers over 40 years of experience and expertise to each one of his clients as if they were business partners. Schwartz holds solid relationships with the families and working colleagues of prominent European artists. Michael Schwartz has organized multiple exhibitions in the United States, Europe, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan and Canada. 

After many years of experience, there came a time for Galerie Michael to update their website and company videos. One of the first steps to moving forward included a new welcome video that would serve as an introduction to their new website. This video had to represent the gallery atmosphere, give a tour of the gallery layout and showcasing, as well as feature the gallery's CEO, Michael Schwartz – all within 3 minutes.

Project type

Welcome video for company website

Project span

April 2011 – June 2011

Production challenges

The main focus of the welcome video for Galerie Michael was to introduce the gallery and it's CEO, Michael Schwartz, with cinematic style. Being that this video is showcasing a fine art gallery and a CEO with a keen eye for aesthetics, it became Seven Pictures' goal to present the video with both professional and artistic taste. It was important for Seven Pictures to match the video with the gallery's company image. This video is the first preview of the gallery that viewers will see on the Galerie Michael website. A welcome video is an opportunity to make a positive first impression. Therefore, Seven Pictures worked to create a video that would captivate the viewer's attention and lead them into the site, while remaining informative.

Solutions

Under 2 minutes and 20 seconds, Seven Pictures presented an aesthetically pleasing and captivating welcome video for Galerie Michael. After a few hours of filming, a great amount of material was collected. This brought so much depth into the video and helped to deliver a powerful and everlasting impression. The footage was carefully selected to relate the philosophy and expertise of Michael Schwartz to the gallery. Seven Pictures also featured the friendly faces of the staff at Galerie Michael. The gallery atmosphere was elegantly portrayed and highly developed.

Benefits to client

With the completion of their welcome video, Galerie Michael is able to launch their new website! On the face of their website, they are able to display a video business card that features the CEO, Michael Schwartz, as well as a preview of the gallery environment. Being able to see the CEO and hear his philosophy about art collecting gives the viewer a more personable relationship to the gallery. The final results inspired Michael Schwartz to transition their gallery presentations and scholarly material into video. After viewing the final product, Schwartz and the gallery staff immediately projected several potential video projects to be produced by Seven Pictures.

From the customer

"… pending…"

About Seven Pictures

Seven Pictures Film & Video Production specializes in creating corporate videos with a cinematic artistic look. The objective behind Seven Pictures is creating attractive corporate videos that are captivating to watch while clearly getting your company's message across, whether it is a welcome video, product video, or a commercial.

 

 

Video transcription:

"Many, many years ago when I first became a dealer, the gentleman I talked to, he became my mentor in the business, and he told me, 'Michael, you must always buy your pictures.' I said, 'but why would I buy them when I can get them from you on consignment?' He said, 'Michael, you're a guide. People will come to you for your expertise and you must provide them with great, honest, ethical advice… and the only way you can do that, Michael, is you have to buy the art. You have to make the commitment. And you have to have the eye.'

Everything that I know, if you're my client, you know. We've been dealers for 40 some odd years. Many of our clients are still collecting with us after 20 years… and their children come in, and they're collecting.

I was reading an article about contemporary art, about - they listed three artists. They said they'd have trouble selling their work today for three or four thousand dollars, yet those artists were selling for three hundred, four hundred, a million dollars just a decade ago because socially, that was the prominent thing. If you lived in New York and you were a go-go Wall Street guy, you had to have one of these painter's work because that was your badge of arrival… that was your trophy. That meant that you were a part of what was happening today - socially, culturally. That's the wrong way to buy art. You don't want to buy that kind of art. You want to buy art that will be relevant, that will be a continuum at even three, four, five centuries from now. It's going to be deemed significant and deemed important because it was ground breaking. It was historic; it was part of the whole evolution of what art is and what art was in our age. That's the kind of art we sell at Galerie Michael."