About SALAZAR
Salazar was founded in 2008 by Jesse Savath, Bienviendo Cruz, Jeff Petry, and Nathan Drillot as a motion picture collective focusing on music videos and narrative films. All four had been working separately inside the industry in various disciplines. Recognizing natural shared instincts and aesthetics the decision was made to stop competing against each other and join forces as a collective.
We created Salazar with the basic belief that a group is stronger than an individual. We're independent artists who came together collaboratively in order to create the strongest content possible for our clients.
With all the key players onboard Salazar made the transition from solely focusing on music videos and narrative work into the world of advertising and promotional videos. This broadening of our focus came from realizing the power of advertising not only to sell product but to reach a larger and more universal audience. Working with Vancouver based companies looking for fresh, artistic, and cutting edge perspectives on their products and services. Salazar shot online campaigns for Lifetime Collective, Aritiza, and Cause+Affect.
In late 2008 Salazar was approached to direct and produce the debut music video for Vancouver based Neu Disco act Fan Death. The only catch was the budget was nearly non existent. Instead of letting this limit the scope of the video it forced the collective to think outside of our comfort zone and eventually outside of Vancouver. The decision was made to take what little money there was and spend it to fly the band and our crew to Puerto Vallarta Mexico. Once there we spent a week hunting down the most interesting and unique locations available, often hiking hours into the jungle for a single shot.
Our single minded dedication to the project created a video that exceeded all expectations . Upon release it was an immediate hit. Spending 4 days straight as the most posted music video on the internet (according to elbows.com) beating out such heavy weights as Lilly Allen and Madonna and wracking up over a 100,000 hits in it's first few months with out any record label promotion. Subsequently leading to interest from Partizan Ltd. and Warp Films. The video went on to be included as in store content for Topshop UK and Heathrow Airport, reaching over 13 million people.
This dedication to doing whatever it takes to create original and exciting content is the central core of Salazar. In a world of seemingly unending content and distractions we grab attention by creating work that refuses to be ignored.
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