Mark Polyocan
Mark Polyocan has always been interested in the theater. He pursued a Masters degree in theater at New York University and "dabbled" in acting, directing and playwriting. Today, as president and cofounder of The Tape House, he manages a theater company of his own.
"A group of talented people working in the postproduction environment is like a theater: There’s an enormous cast of characters, we’re constantly performing, and there’s a new audience all the time," he explains. "This is the closest I get to putting on a play. We’re doing a live show every day."
A former junior high school and high school teacher, Polyocan was introduced to postproduction at New York’s KB&D in 1967 where he trained as an editor and served as an assistant director, assistant cameraman and PA. "It was a small shop, and I learned a lot there," he recalls.
In 1969, Polyocan met Arthur Williams who asked Polyocan to join him in opening the creative film editing house, Editing Concepts. Williams was senior editor in the firm, with Polyocan starting as an assistant and achieving full editor status.
By 1979, the major postproduction facilities in New York were EUE Screen Gems, Reeves and Teletronics, and Williams and Polyocan felt the market was ripe for expansion. They launched The Tape House with a Rank MkIIIB telecine and soon had a flourishing business in transferring film rough cuts to tape for the other editors in town. Then colorist John J. Dowdell III began transferring negative. "At the time, convincing editors we could do that was quite a feat," Polyocan reports. "Now we take it for granted."
With Polyocan at the helm, The Tape House began to add offline and online editing and moved to its present location. It spun off Tape House Digital (now Black Logic), Tape House Digital Film, Tape House Toons and, most recently, The Tape House Advanced Imaging Center.
"The whole 20-year ride has been fun," declares Polyocan. But he admits that continual hardware and software upgrades "make working in the industry difficult and challenging. You no longer have the ability to maintain one system long enough to recoup your investment before you’re running onto the next piece of equipment," he says. "We’re faced with the challenge of maintaining all video formats while moving into HD. That’s a lot to ask of any facility. That’s why a lot of facilities limit the scope of their services."
Having seen the postproduction industry evolve from Moviola to Avid, Polyocan plans to continue The Tape House’s evolution too. "As the industry changes, we will re-invent ourselves as we need to," he says. "The ability of boutiques to do more and more diminishes the amount of work for a facility like ours. So we have to keep discovering new areas where we can lead."
mark@tapehouse.com