Oruga Cine: Revaluing Imperfection
L-R: Jonsi Mesz, Ioni Borisonik and Nicolás Espinosa
Argentine production company Oruga has consolidated its presence in Mexico and is now one of the preferred choices for agencies and advertisers. This year, it won a Bronze Lion at Cannes for 'Custom Billboards,' created by GUT Buenos Aires for Mercado Libre. Ioni Borisonik, partner and managing director of Oruga global; Jonsi Mesz, who holds the same position for the Mexico, Chile and Ecuador offices; and Nicolás Espinoza, based in Mexico, explain how they manage to support creativity and make a difference.
Q> How long has Oruga Cine been based in Mexico, and how has the company evolved?
Jonsi Mesz> We have been based in Mexico for three years now, and it has really been a gradual evolution. During the first year, we established solid foundations and built the production company’s identity in Mexico, with a very positive response. Starting in the second half of that first year, we began to see a very high level of projects coming through. In the second year, when you might expect things to slow down a little because you are coming from another market and another country, the truth is that we continued to grow. The company expanded significantly, and so did the number of people we brought on specifically for the market, including executive producers and post-production coordinators. And thankfully, the third year was more of the same: delivering projects, adding clients and agencies, which makes us incredibly happy. Coming from another country also helps you change your mindset and start believing that something better can always come along - and when it does, allowing ourselves to enjoy that is important.
Q> What differences do you see between the audio visual production industry, particularly advertising, in Mexico and Argentina?
Jonsi> Creatively, since we arrived until now, three years later, things have improved tremendously. Obviously, it depends on the brands, and not so much on the agencies, and there are different levels of reach and quality. The advertising market here is very broad. To begin with, it is much more massive than in Argentina. And then, by being involved with the Mexican Creative Circle, you realise that the overall level has become much more consistent than it used to be. Last year was a very good year, and this year has been as well. The quality and execution of the work we are seeing are impeccable. I feel that creativity is continuing to grow, and at some point Mexico will have its year. Surely very soon. I think that is where things are heading.
Q> What is the role of a creative producer?
Jonsi>They are not only responsible for the numbers and logistics, but also for adding that extra value to each project that it may need creatively, in terms of production design, while remaining functional to the creative idea.
Ioni Borisonik> What I mean is that the crisis is global. There is no script or agency that doesn’t come to you saying, “We already know we have half the budget, or three-quarters of what we should have.” That is when you start working through co-creation and realise that the budget isn’t enough because you have a two-day script and enough money to shoot for one day. But creatively, you can talk to directors and creatives and try not to destroy the scripts together, but rather make them grow while bringing the budget down. That is where the work comes in, and I think they call us because they realised that this happens a lot in Argentina. They have a lot of trust in us, and the producers get involved almost as if they were directors. It’s not about cutting the most expensive shot, or the most beautiful one, just to make the project fit. We find a way to make sure the film doesn’t suffer and can still be produced. That is the most important thing.
Q> What differences have you found between the profiles of directors from Argentina and Mexico?
Jonsi> The truth is that the directors under the Oruga umbrella share, above all, the same way of working as the production company: they push forward, try to add value to the agency, and want the pieces to be not only visually beautiful but also, with the production support we mentioned earlier, to feel like a collaborative effort with the agency and the clients. We don’t really see differences, but rather complementary qualities between the directors from Mexico and Argentina.
Q> What do you look for in directors, particularly new filmmakers?
Jonsi> First, that they are good people. Second, that they have hunger, both professionally and aesthetically. Not much more than that. With those two things, they always end up adapting in a positive way and bringing out the best in one another, together with the producers.
Q> How did Oruga Cine do at the latest edition of the Cannes Lions festival?
Ioni> We’re very happy. We worked on a piece with the guys at GUT, who called us in to help with Oruga’s typical production muscle. It was a great piece that basically helped Mercado Libre consumers navigate the platform. We brought in Lola, one of Oruga’s young and promising directors, and together with Federica, the executive producer, they managed to deliver the project in record time, and it turned out beautifully. And thankfully, we took home a Bronze Lion, which is no small achievement this year, particularly for Argentine production companies. So we’re very happy.
Q> AI has also made its way into the world of production. In fact, in Argentina, Oruga worked on a project for BGH. How are you incorporating it into your day-to-day work?
Ioni> I think AI impacts each advertising market differently. Obviously, it is a transformative tool, but its impact varies. If you have emerging markets or markets in a deep crisis, like Argentina, where the economy is complicated and budgets are therefore tighter, it becomes a kind of perfect storm that accelerates the adoption of AI because budgets can no longer cover the high costs of production. So hybrid and fully AI-generated projects appear much more frequently on the table. The path becomes more intense, you learn a lot, you get good and bad results, but it is used much more, almost as an all-encompassing tool. In Mexico, even though, as we said, the crisis is global, it is not having the same impact. AI is used more selectively: sometimes fully, sometimes as a post-production tool. Some clients are very receptive to AI, while others are not at all and still want the human creative muscle. So you have to find the right way and format for this tool. Sometimes it works for everything, sometimes for nothing, and sometimes for half of the process.
Jonsi> That said, we have a lot of experience. We have been working with AI for two years now, and we were fortunate enough to create the first fully AI-generated project for Grupo Modelo in Mexico, a collaboration between Cerveza Modelo and Chocolate Turín. The World Cup campaign we recently made for Jumex, featuring all the hydration breaks that people could scan, was also 90% AI-generated. In Argentina, we have done fully AI-generated work for BGH, DirecTV, Getnet, Banco Provincia, among others. And in Mexico, it was also a huge boom. But now, in many places, there is a growing appreciation for imperfection and the human eye.
Q> How do you see this from a production standpoint, and in terms of what agencies and clients are asking for?
Jonsi> I think there are certain types of scripts that can be solved with AI, and there is a part of micro-expression and more storytelling-driven films where viewers, whether they are familiar with AI or not, still feel a certain distance. And like every new technology that emerges, there is initially a lot of scepticism. I think it has now become more of a tool that, particularly in the Mexican market, is being adopted naturally to solve certain creative challenges. But I don’t think it will ever replace the real work of directors with actors. That is still some way off.
