City Llama.

We started City Llama because of two things we kept seeing, and not seeing each other. Brands hiring agencies that didn't really understand story. Filmmakers pushed out of the room the moment the word strategy entered it. Both rooms full of smart people. Neither room talking to the other.

So we built one room.

Our rule is small. We take on a short list of films each year, some under a brand name, some under their own, and we stay in the room from the first page of the treatment to the last minute of the color. The people who write it, shoot it. The people who shoot it, cut it. We don't hand work off.

Strategy belongs in the same room. The AI tools we build are not a separate offering. They are how we listen. To audience, to archive, to the language of a place. We use them the way a cinematographer uses a light meter. Quietly. Before the take. Not to replace the eye. To check it.

What we will not do: work we'd be embarrassed to screen in a room of filmmakers we respect.

What we will do: read every brief, reply within the week, say no often, and yes with our whole weight behind it.

Brooklyn is a city of small rooms doing serious work. We're trying to be one of them.

— Alex Argiles, Brooklyn, MMXXVI