The last few years have seen a number of leading players in the postproduction arena expand their businesses in new directions. No longer are they simply offline vendors, spot cutters or technology enablers of agency creatives. Many of them are moving online, into the select company of visual effects creators, a rapidly growing industry. To gain insight into what is behind this trend, SHOOT went outside the L.A. and N.Y. meccas to speak to Pinnacle Studios in Seattle and Western Images in San Francisco-two companies that have recently made the transition from post to effects in what seems almost a seamless manner.
Prior to its current incarnation, Pinnacle Studios was set up in Seattle with two divisions, Pinnacle Post and Pinnacle Effects. "It had built its reputation doing broadcast design and graphics in the Pinnacle Effects group for such clients as ABC’s Monday Night Football and Turner Sports, some national clients in broadcast design and identity," says Warren Franklin, Pinnacle’s president/CEO. "At the same time, it was offering postproduction services in Seattle to local advertising agencies, directors, producers and production companies. It was a pretty traditional setup with sound stages, online, offline and telecine."
Formerly VP/COO of Eastman Kodak’s Cinesite in Hollywood and VP/general manager of Industrial Light+Magic, Marin County, Calif., Franklin joined Pinnacle in September ’97 and set out to chart a new direction for the company. "It had become apparent to me that the services that Pinnacle was offering as just a postproduction company needed to be integrated into what we were offering in terms of effects and broadcast design," he says. "We really needed to be a creative production company, instead of just a post house. The market for visual effects is much bigger."
As well as offering the full range of post services, Pinnacle currently has five commercial directors/visual effects supervisors, and a computer graphics animator dedicated to both visual effects and live action production. Clients, most of whom are concentrated in the Northwest, can go there for traditional post services, which are then integrated with effects by project teams. Pinnacle staffers include veteran effects specialist and director Dale Fay and the recently hired Bruce Nicholson, a 20-year vet of ILM. Both of them hold the hybrid position of director/visual effects supervisor. The company has invested in both SGI and NT workstations with the latest software tools such as Alias|Wavefront’s Maya, Side Effects Houdini, and Avid’s Softimage.
"A lot of our work is 3-D based," Franklin says. "We focus on character animation for commercials. We brought on supervisor Mike Necci, who was a supervisor on T-Rex, a 3-D Imax film, so we have a lot of expertise there."
Tapping the skill of its hybrid directors/visual effects supervisors, Pinnacle is concentrating on integrating visual effects with live action. Recent projects include a campaign for Home Depot, via Dallas-based The Richards Group. Directed by Fay, the spots, including "Hampton Bay Fans," involve motion control and CG animation. Pinnacle also helped create a package of six spots for the Bank of Hawaii via Starr, Seigle and McCombs, Honolulu, that entail live action and effects. Director and editor Jack Barrett helmed four and Fay directed two of the spots. In addition to their spotwork, Pinnacle has been doing some work on features, including the Disney release I’ll Be Home For Christmas and Book of Stars, which was produced by ShadowCatcher Entertainment.
West World
San Francisco-based Western Images, a 13-year-old postproduction facility, has also made the transition from a post house to a visual effects company over the past few years. "We became known as a post house that went a little farther," says Western president Mike Cunningham.
About two years ago, Western Images decided as a company to do two things, Cunningham says. One was to aggressively include computer-generated imagery and animation into its offerings by bringing in talented people. And the second was to transition from a postproduction facility that works on a time and material basis to one that could, in addition, get involved in projects on a fixed-price or more of a full-project basis. "We needed to provide the infrastructure to support that so producing levels became more sophisticated," he comments. "We introduced a design component, a creative director to the company. And the company itself began to look at work from both perspectives: It could now look at work as … a very competent post facility as well as part of a creative team."
In terms of attracting talent for the new venture, Western Images had a stroke of luck. It was able to tap Rocket Science, a San Francisco developer of interactive games to form the core of its CGI unit. It hired executive producers Susanna Richards and Matthew Fassberg, supervising animator Chris Hamilton, and animators Greg Gladstone and Richard McBride. Most of this team, however, had little commercial production experience.
"They became the nucleus of our CGI operation, as well as provided some technology that Rocket Science was trying to liquidate," relates Cunningham. "This was not an acquisition: There was talent there that had worked together as a team. The challenge was to introduce them to the commercial marketplace."
From all indications, taking the risk and making the investment has paid off. Western Images has received acclaim for special effects on such spots as Honda’s "Robots" directed by Mark Dippe, and Lexus "Skeleton," directed by Steve "Spaz" Williams, both of Complete Pandemonium in San Francisco. Western has also worked on several shots for the effects-heavy feature film Spawn, directed by Dippe. Reportedly, 75% of their billings now come from the visual effects arena.
"We feel that we have made this transition, but it continues to present additional challenges," Cunningham says.
