New York City-based full-service production and post company Hayden5 is expanding to Los Angeles after 12 years in business in New York, said Hayden5 Founder and Creative Director Todd Wiseman Jr., who has opened an office in Venice’s Abbot Kinney neighborhood.

To make its presence known, Hayden5 bought billboards in Venice and West Hollywood and produced 50,000 branded fortune cookies with messages about the future of production that are being distributed at local Chinese restaurants.

During the pandemic, Hayden5 introduced two systems to help companies complete live-action production in a contactless environment: Drop Crews and Cloud Cuts. Drop Crews provides live viewing of remote productions via local crews, while Cloud Cuts enables real-time editing, fast media delivery and cloud storage – all executed by a seasoned staff of producers and a team of remote editors from around the world.

“I can’t think of anything more quirky and quintessentially Hayden5 than the announcement campaign we put together for our coming-out party in LA,” said Wiseman Jr. in a statement. “Hayden5 is the anti-production company in a lot of ways. Without a traditional roster of directors, we’ve taken a service-first approach to our business model, building it around Drop Crews, Cloud Cuts, and a growing, dedicated staff of 30-plus folks to handle volume production and post needs around the world.”

While the pandemic is finally fading, Hayden5 has always had its eye on the future of production and developing towards that vision, Wiseman Jr. said.

“We realize the Drop Kits we developed in response to the pandemic, optimized for contactless production, won’t have the same demand once things get back to normal,” said Wiseman.

“But having deployed more than 3,000 Drop Kits over the last year, it’s clear that remote production and remote monitoring are here to stay. With reduced costs, a smaller carbon footprint, and the ease of real-time monitoring and communication through our remote offerings, including Crew Cam, it’s an attractive alternative to the status quo of production.”

Hayden5’s clients include A&E Networks, Amazon, Edelman PR, FCB Health and Salesforce, among others.

With the LA expansion, Hayden5 plans to increase its staff by more than 30 percent, while growing its originals division, which produces unscripted content such as Netflix documentary Long Shot. The company is currently in development on Blood, Sweat, and Pixels, a behind-the-scenes look at how video games are made, and American Exile, a 2021 documentary following the experiences of US-born individuals who were deported back to their countries of origin. For the latter, Hayden5 interviewed subjects in places such as Mexico, Indonesia, and Ethiopia, relying on a network of local crews while Wiseman directed from his New York office.

“This is an exciting time for us at Hayden5,” said Wiseman. “We’re thrilled to be building a bicoastal operation that embraces a distributed workforce and underscores the power of local and diverse talent, from directors to DPs to editors.”

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