Video vanguard

Antler Films producer Sach Baylin-Stern keeps busy with top-quality music videos and straight-up hustle

PRODUCTION POWERHOUSE: Baylin-Stern

In this city of Peter Pans, where 40-year-olds often behave like they’re 14, it’s rare to meet a native Montrealer who’s reluctant to admit how young he is. It’s also rare to meet one who has been as pro­ductive in the past few years as Sach Baylin-Stern, executive producer and president of video production company Antler Films.

Born and raised in NDG, Baylin-Stern painted, composed music, produced a short film, acted in commercials, hung out with his bestie Jay Baruchel—all of this while he was still attending artsy high school FACE. During his first year at Concordia (studying psychology and electroacoustics, of course), he approached the producers of a music video he was cast in and offered to work as a pro­duction assistant for their company NuFilms.

“I’m never able to stop working—I like to keep on moving, keep on doing stuff,” explains Baylin-Stern. After he graduated, NuFilms offered him a permanent position as a producer. “When I started, two of the producers there quit, so a shitload of work was thrown on my shoulders…I produced around 150–160 projects,” he says. One of these was the Grammy-nominated video for Beast’s “Mr. Hur­ricane,” directed by Ben Steiger Levine.

When NuFilms folded in 2009, Baylin-Stern decided to band together the group of talented filmmakers he had worked with and form his own company. And so, with the help of his associates, director Jérémie Saindon and cinematographer Christophe Collette, he founded Antler Films in 2010, aiming to focus on quality over quantity when it comes to video production. “If there’s no money to be made, might as well make the best product possible. That’s really the number-one defining characteristic concept of Antler Films: we’re going to give you something that could be featured in a museum and not at a diner,” specifies Baylin-Stern about his company’s mandate.

Since its creation, Antler Films has produced videos for Sam Roberts, Broken Social Scene, Patrick Watson, Cœur de Pirate, Yelle and the list goes on. “We could arguably say we do the best music video content in the country,” says Baylin-Stern confidently. It would take a lot more space to discuss all the notable video projects his company has produced (just check out antler.tv).

This year, he is working towards expanding to film and television. Projects include a pilot for a children’s show, a feature-length film (in early development), a short 3D film and scripts for a spy thriller and a romantic comedy (that he wrote himself). Again, I could go on; this guy’s a ginger powerhouse.

But even if the TV and film projects kick off, Baylin-Stern says he’ll always try to do at least two or three music videos a year. “With music videos, you have a smaller budget; you can almost do what­ever the hell you want, use whatever technology you want and try weird crazy aesthetics. Music videos are good for the soul, not for the wallet, but that’s okay,” concludes the young producer—who, for the record, is only 29. ★

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