Producing Memorable Identity: Jeff Pangman
Most of us fall into a career which started as a job, usually the one that allowed us to make a living. If we’re lucky, we can become successful at one job we truly love. If you’re Jeff Pangman you get to do this twice. After years as a successful actor in Canadian TV productions like the Golden Globe nominated Covert Affairs, Primetime Emmy nominated Eureka, The Strain, and others, Pangman found himself drawn to producing. It’s a career shift which has him jet-setting across the planet and offers new adventures only glimpsed by most actors. This midstream switch tells a little about who Jeff is as a producer and an actor but mostly as a person. The Vancouver native affirms that the excitement he has experienced as a producer exceeds that he felt as an actor, noting that producing “pulled me in.” Though most of us don’t think of a producer as having a style, a review of Pangman’s work displays that he loves action and the idea that the potential for exceptionalism is attainable by everyone rather than a chosen few. It’s an idea that is recognizable in his work with some of the most recognized companies/entities in business today; ones which otherwise seem to have no connection between them.
Wrangler is a one-hundred-sixteen-year-old company based in North Carolina with a long established brand identity and customer base. As a producer on the groundbreaking “Wear With Abandon” commercial campaign which pushed the reset button on Wrangler’s appeal, Jeff was the glue and compass of this thirty-second long production which expanded Wrangler’s bull rider ethos to everything from female rock bands to BMX bikers. https://www.ispot.tv/ad/oWTE/wrangler-back-of-a-bull
Wrangler global brand president Tom Waldron referred to it as, “a significant milestone for our Wrangler brand.” Shot nearly around the clock at such cinematic locations as the John Scott Productions ranch (location for Oscar winning film The Revenant starring Leonardo DiCaprio), the experience may have been arduous for Pangman and his team but it offered magnificent vistas as a trade-off.
Pangman’s work for Walmart’s “I’m Wearing Walmart” was undertaken simply with the request that the final product manifest a fashion show with everyday people. Jeff, with Asymetric Media, Caviar and director Toby Dye flexed their creative muscles to cast, orchestrate, and manifest a high end fashion event in Paris Ontario (Canada) that successfully informed affordable and fun fashion is available to everyone.
Some work is as much about the experience as the final product. The shoot days in Iceland for Garmin’s “The Face of Adventure” were taxing and demanding like no other; precisely the reason for Pangman agreeing to accept his role as producer. It’s not common for a watch marketing campaign to feature real people battling nature; it’s a message that Jeff connected with. He notes, “There was almost nothing easy about this shoot. Freezing cold, constantly changing hazardous conditions in the mountains and in the ocean…quite an adventure. You have to be vigilant and constantly alert when you’re producing a production like this. It’s not often that the story behind making something is as exciting as the finished product but this was certainly one. It’s good to shake things up and push yourself to the limit sometimes.”
We are all playing some version of ourselves that we want others to see. Ask any actor and they will relate that when they are at their best is when they find the true version of themselves in the character. Producer Jeff Pangman has taken this concept to his professional life on the other side of the camera, creating the best version of the productions he works on and presenting the brands while experiencing all that truly embracing life’s adventure offers a successful producer in the modern era.
