Merge
Merge moves images and audiences in uniquely powerful ways by unifying processes that have traditionally been kept separate. They fuse photography and motion pictures, blend improvisation and art direction, integrate production and post production and most importantly, we unite old and new media. This process transforms clients into collaborators and leads to disarmingly powerful visual solutions for multiple media.Merge and Horny Toad have been collaborating for years now. We met David McLain through a friend of a friend (there seems to be a theme here) and he introduced us to the ever talented and culinarily adventuresome Jerome Thelia. Together they produce incredible pieces and have really become part of the Toad family.
David McLain regularly shoots feature length assignments around the world for National Geographic Magazine. His job is “simply” to work with every kind of person under any kind of condition and create timeless images for a client with the highest visual standards on earth. Simply put, he tells authentic stories that engage people and inspire them to dream.
This experience informs his commercial work which revolves around bringing brands to life in ways people recognize as authentic and real. David says, “I want people to look at the images I create for companies and feel inspired, not sold to. In this sense, my commercial work is very personal and I seek collaborations with like-minded clients who want to create work that is perceived as genuine, like Horny Toad.”
More recently he has become passionate about the shifting media landscape and new possibilities for visual communication. To embrace these changes, he co-founded Merge, a boutique production company dedicated to telling brand stories through still photographs and moving images that unfold seamlessly across an array of media - from print to web to television and back.
He lives with his family in a 200-year-old farmhouse with a big post beam barn on two beautiful acres just outside of Portland, Maine, a place, he says, “that has always triggered an instinctual sense of belonging in me. My family, my home and Maine ground me and fuel the boundless sense of possibility and hope I bring to my work. I continually marvel at how endless the opportunities are. Now is the time to start exploring them.”
Jerome Thelia draws on 14 years of post-production experience working on a variety of projects that include commercials, TV series, feature films, documentaries and the distance learning projects that brought David and Jerome on location all over the world.
He’s currently a member of the staff and faculty of the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. Clients, colleagues and students rely on his skills because he is one of the rare people who is as creative with technology and computers as he is with ideas and storytelling. It is precisely his ability to excel in two different worlds that drew Jerome to Merge. Jerome is responsible for the post-production work in the Merge movies in addition to helping co-produce them.
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