“One thing we’ve worked hard to avoid are big egos,” said The Refinery’s Founding Partner/Creative Director, Adam Waldman, about his rapidly growing agency with clients on all sides of the entertainment industry.

The goal above is an ambitious one in Los Angeles, but one that Waldman and his colleagues have come to value ever since The Refinery’s humble beginnings as an eight-person studio working out of his home.

Now, The Refinery’s print, AV, motion and interactive divisions can say they have created work for some of the biggest hits on TV including The Walking Dead, Empire, Mad Men and American Horror Story, not to mention the feat of tackling three broadcast upfront presentations in one year.

Waldman and Brad Hochberg founded The Refinery at the end of 2006 after working together with Trailer Park’s print division.

“We started it in my house with eight of us on day one,” said Waldman, “and there were 12 of us by the time we couldn’t take it anymore and found a space in Burbank.”

Within the first year or so, The Refinery had created print work for AMC’s Mad Men, the groundbreaking show known not only for its dedicated fan base but its impressive creative work surrounding the drama. The agency created key art for the series for several years, including its last set of episodes this past spring.


Its relationship with AMC is long standing, starting with Broken Trail, the network’s first-ever original movie, in 2006.

“AMC has been a great partner for us on the print side,” said Waldman. “We’ve been fortunate enough to get to work on some really great projects for AMC at a time when the new golden age of TV was dawning eight or nine years ago.”

The Refinery soon added The Walking Dead to its list of work with AMC, creating key art for the cable hit since the beginning, including its recent sixth season premiere.


Now The Refinery has a long, and continuously growing, client list that includes broadcast networks (Fox, The CW), cable networks (AMC, FX), premium channels (HBO, Showtime) and streaming platforms (Netflix, Hulu and Amazon).

Part of that is thanks to Waldman’s former Trailer Park colleague Brett Winn, who joined the team as partner/creative director of its new AV division, expanding what the agency could offer. From the beginning, Waldman knew that this agency could grow and take on more than print projects, but didn’t yet know what that would look like.

“We intentionally called it The Refinery because that kept it vague,” said Waldman. “It sounded more open, rather than something like ‘Adam and Brad,’ which would have made us about our egos. We saw it as bigger than that – we saw it as something more, but we really had no road map to get there yet.”

Winn says that at first, its entertainment clients didn’t know the agency did television promo work and they didn’t try to force it on clients coming in for print work or key art, but with the addition of Winn and its AV division, The Refinery has been approached by many more TV clients. This includes a few years ago when the company created upfront presentations for ABC, CBS and Fox – all in the same season.

Now, The Refinery AV is celebrating its seventh anniversary, complete with anniversary video:

The Refinery AV also helped to launch Fox’s Empire, which debuted at the network’s upfront and has since taken broadcast TV by storm.

“We’ve been on Empire since the initial upfront presentation, which we cut from dailies,” said Winn. “It was a blast to work on—from the first time we saw the footage, we all knew it was going to be something special.”

Even with the success of its AV division, Waldman and Winn say that their agency has a certain level of separation of church and state. Print has its own creative directors, as does AV, which is led by Winn and Josh Olson, the agency’s SVP of theatrical and creative director. But the teams only combine resources when asked, trying hard not to force their resources on clients.

“If a print job comes in, we take it for print,” said Waldman, “we don’t upsell them for AV as well.”

“There is so much synergy in the broadcast world,” said Winn, “and while we’re working toward making strides to offer clients everything as a package deal, sometimes the clients don’t necessarily mix, so we don’t force it.”

The combination of talent and client relationships have led The Refinery to projects including Netflix’s House of Cards, The CW’s The Flash, Fox’s Scream Queens and Fargo, and American Horror Story on FX, including the oft-recognized (and double-take terrifying) blue-and-red poster for The Strain and snakes in AHS: Coven.

Most recently, The Refinery created the key art for AMC’s latest drama, Into the Badlands, which debuts Nov. 15.

“That’s been a pretty phenomenal evolution for us,” said Waldman. “A lot of this is because there’s been a huge explosion of creative need and delivery in the last several years. With all of the new shows, there obviously has to be. And we’ve sort of been fortunate enough to ride the crest of that wave.”

That wave has brought the agency with eight employees crowded in a house to more than 85 employees overall throughout several divisions and wide-ranging talents, aiming for a boutique feel but plenty of resources, making clients feel like The Refinery is at once “a juggernaut and also very small and nimble,” according to Waldman.

Lately The Refinery has created work for The Peanuts Movie, ABC’s Whispers, Fox’s Sleepy Hollow, Syfy’s The Expanse, Disney XD’s Star Wars Rebels and Fox’s upcoming Urban Cowboy.

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