Producer Shawe brings her New York chops to Leviathan

Leviathan producer Lauren Shawe

When post producer Lauren Shawe returned to Chicago after seven years in New York, Leviathan’s Chad Hutson, recognizing how the quality of her internet, visual effects and post experience would fit in, hired her for a freelance experiential project. 

When that assignment was flawlessly accomplished, Shawe was officially added to Leviathan’s full-time staff of 17 last week.

“We’d been looking for team members who showed some diversity in their careers,” says Hutson, Leviathan partner/executive producer.  “While Lauren’s strongest focus is broadcast, she has years of interactive and experiential experience, which is important to us,” as one of Leviathan’s strong suites is experiential event production.

Shawe says what drew her to Leviathan was their good reputation.  “Going to work for them was a no brainer to me.  I’d heard so many wonderful things about their innovative and exciting work.”

A Palatine native, Shawe’s first job after attending Columbia College was with Taproot Interactive Studios in 1994.  Within four years she had worked her way up to producer and contributed to many innovative consumer- and business-focused CD-ROM titles and websites. 

That was followed by “moving up in the internet world” with stints at Black Dog Interactive, Beepnet and twohundredtwelve, where she contributed to the front-end design for orbitz.com and other high-profiles websites and launches.

“When I went to New York I knew it was going to be competitive and hard.  I wanted to open myself beyond internet as a full-time focus, to learn new types of media,” says Shawe.

Her first New York job was with Final Cut editorial/sound, based in London with New York and L.A. offices.  “They took a chance and thought my internet experience would translate into broadcast.  I learned the general principles of project management, where managing team and budget is the main thing.”

Final Cut was followed by freelance assignments at Run, Lost Planet and Transistor Studio.  Her last New York job was three years as senior visual effects producer for Smoke and Mirrors.

Among the projects she worked on were Delta/Wieden+Kennedy’s black and white spots; the 2010 iPad launch spot for Verizon/McGarryBowen; American Express spots directed Wes Anderson and M. Night Shyamalan, music videos for The Dead Weather and La Roux, and numerous of Spike Lee’s short- and long-form films.

Shawe’ recent Leviathan projects were mapping the 3D motion graphics for presentation of Toyota’s new Scion car at the Milk Studios in Los Angeles and producing the interactive graphics to highlight the introduction of Hewlett Packard’s new Touchscreen computer at a live event.  She is currently producing a commercial for Leo Burnett.

“I absolutely loved New York and taught me a lot that furthered my career, but I always loved Chicago,” says Shawe.  “Chicago is doing fantastic work and has everything New York has and the people here make me happy.”

To see a compilation of Shawe’s work, click here.