Postproduction industry veteran Larry Chernoff is the new CEO of Mathematical Technologies Inc. (MTI), a Providence-headquartered manufacturer of tools to assist the Digital Intermediate (DI) and film restoration processes.
Chernoff, who will be based in the company’s Hollywood office, has been a member of the MTI board of directors for the past three years and contributed his ideas heavily in the development of its unique Control Dailies workflow technology. During this time he also worked closely with MTI to introduce and demonstrate the technology to potential customers.
Arguably one of the most influential leaders in commercial post for more than three decades, Chernoff–along with commercial vets Steve Lewis and Charlie Chubak–co-founded commercial editorial shop Filmcore in ’74, following by post house Encore Hollywood in ’85 and Encore Santa Monica (now R!OT) in ’96. In the late ’90s, the companies were acquired by what is today Santa Monica-headquartered Ascent Media Group. Chernoff served as president of Ascent Media Creative Services after the merging of the post entities into one group, until 2002.
Then, he retained the title of chairman of Ascent Creative Services, while pursuing other interests including his work at MTI and co-founding Beverly Hills-based consulting firm
Chernoff Touber Associates with former Ascent Media Creative Services COO Joshua Touber.
MTI was founded in ’81 and has long carried a strong reputation for its high level engineering expertise–a key draw for Chernoff, who plans to further evolve the company by combining this talent with his practical perspective from the postproduction industry.
“My intent is to turn MTI into a world class DI company, offering tools for DI and the film restoration process,” he explained, adding that the direction would be toward 4k data-supported technologies. “One of the most significantly hard parts of DI is the coordination of applications in terms of metadata and media– Our objective is a suite of applications that harmonizes the DI process from beginning to end, [as well as] tools for restoration.”
Chernoff reported that most recently, version 5 of MTI’s Correct restoration tool went into beta, and he expects to show a final release by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention next spring. He also aims to show 2k data support in Control Dailies for NAB, while working on the longer term objectives.
With regard to his Ascent affiliation, Chernoff emphasized that he will be devoting 100 percent of his time to MTI, although he currently remains under contract at Ascent with the chairman title; that is slated for review in the near future, he related.
Steve Lewis is the Current president of bicoastal The Directors network.