Particle6 Productions, the UK indie founded by Eline van der Velden, has made three new appointments to the team, and is doubling down on its commitment to AI.
The new hires are Zoë Hustwitt, who joins the team as production manager, Daria Golubkova who joins as a producer/director and Moses Rathbone, who starts at Particle6 as a production analyst.
Zoë Hustwitt comes to Particle6 from BBC Studios, where she was a production manager, primarily working across music, events and entertainment, as well as factual, current affairs and science. Her credits include several years as part of the BBC’s Glastonbury team, as well as Later with Jools Holland, The BRIT Awards, The Royal Wedding: Harry & Meghan and Soul America.
Daria (Dasha) Golubkova, an experienced, multi-lingual producer/director from Ukraine, joins the team as a producer/director. Most recently, she was a senior producer and executive producer at TRBC Ukraine, the country’s leading broadcast media production and distribution company and home to major event content including the UEFA European League and The Oscars Live, as well as primetime shows such as The Masked Singer and All Together Now. She has also held posts at StarLight Media and Inter TV Channel. During her career, she has worked across numerous areas of the business including film, entertainment shows, documentary and formats, and has created several award-winning promos and advertising campaigns.
Moses Rathbone joins from Digitas, where he was a product strategist, and coincidentally part of the team that built the award-winning 2022 Glastonbury app. Prior to that he worked at Ogilvy as a strategist, focusing on delivering behavioural solutions to client communications problems as well as crafting stories for brand campaigns. At Particle6, he will be combining AI and development, driving the delivery of technology to the creative process. Both Moses and Zoë will report into Particle6 founder Eline van der Velden, while Dasha will report into Zoë.
Particle6, best known to date for BBC Three comedy series Miss Holland and Sky Kids series Look See Wow!, as well as being the UK production house for massive role-playing game Genshin Impact, is a forward-thinking and broad-based experimental indie with a passionate belief in research, testing and analytics.
Founder Eline van der Velden, a graduate of both Tring Park School for the Performing Arts and Imperial College, where she did an MSc in Physics, is now using her creative and scientific backgrounds to recalibrate the business to ensure that it can be screen agnostic, working across a number of sectors to create content that reaches the widest possible audiences, with the biggest impact. Part of that process is fully embracing AI to help streamline tasks, manage workload and generate new opportunities. And, as these new appointments demonstrate, it’s also about creating new jobs, rather than replacing them.
Eline van der Velden comments: “Alongside our regular research and testing activity, the use of AI has already played a small part in our company’s development, not least in post, where head of post-production Filip Parulski has used it to transform our processes. Now, I’m actively encouraging everyone else to use it, especially as it has tremendous potential in supporting basic tasks and managing workload. However, as a technology, it is still a little ‘dumb’ and needs clever, forward-thinking people to help shape how it is used for maximum effect across the board – and that’s where Zoë, Dasha and Moses come in as we kick-start this new phase for the business. Together, they bring a mix of traditional and new skills to our team, plus alternative ways of thinking that will keep us cutting-edge in both our creative and commercial approaches, while always remaining very focused on audience impact. AI will, in effect, act as another employee that they can lean into and on to for support, helping to stimulate activity as well as free up capacity.”
Eline continues: “As Particle6 has evolved over time, we have found ourselves working on everything from TV series and educational content to social / digital campaigns and music video to support popular games. As budgets get ever more challenging and the routes to audience ever more complex, we now believe the time is right to formalise this breadth and really grow our expertise as a producer and storyteller for all types of screens. Our mindset is all about working efficiently with our partners and clients to create maximum impact, and the content – whether comedy, kids, drama, gaming video or even a commercial – is the conduit, not the end point. And AI, used effectively, can really help with that.”
Eline van der Velden will be talking about embracing AI at MIPCOM in October, in a MIP Talk entitled “Embracing the AI Revolution in Entertainment: Shaping Human-AI Collaboration in Production”, as well as speaking at Broadcast’s AI Creative summit in November.
Pippa Considine
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