Effective April 5, Encore Santa Monica becomes RIOT, adopting the moniker that its visual effects department has carried for the past year-plus. According to the companys managing director Michael Taylor, the name change reflects a philosophic shift away from the model of a traditional postproduction facility and toward that of a creative studio.
Taylor noted that in marketing the original RIOT effects operation, emphasis was put on the talents of its digital effects artists. That approach, he said, proved successful in that it wasnt based on selling technological services but more on providing creative solutions via a team of resident artisans. Our clients reacted very favorably to the concept and the name, explained Taylor. The noun Ariot has many connotations. We are using it to express a profusion or abundance of light, color and sound.
A shift to the studio concept is a natural move in an industry where the cost of technology is falling almost as fast as the need for skilled artists is skyrocketing, according to Larry Chernoff, president of The Encore Group, the Four Media Company division whose member companies include: RIOT; Encore Hollywood; 4MC Burbank; Anderson Video, Universal City; Digital Magic Company, Santa Monica; and Video Symphony, Burbank. RIOT is staffed by high-quality, creative people, who have been hand-picked and have gone through a grilling in order to have arrived at a job there, said Chernoff. They are artists and need to be presented as artists, and not as paid-by-the-hour operators. That is the essence of this change.
Chernoff added that clients will still go to RIOT for traditional finishing services. We will continue to offer the finest technology and the same diversity of services, he said. What we are doing is instituting a new way of thinking about the business, of thinking of it as a studio, a place you go to do good work.
The name change also signifies the companys maturation and growing independence from its sister facility, Encore Hollywood. In three years, the Santa Monica facility has matured into a full-grown entity with its own personality and culture, said Taylor. Recently, we have become increasingly independent and less reliant on the parent. While not forgetting our origins, the time is right to seek our own identity and recognition.
RIOT will, however, remain part of The Encore Group and continue to work closely with the Hollywood facility. Encore/ Hollywood and RIOT will always have a special relationship, Chernoff noted, but this is clearly an opportunity for both companies to recreate themselves. Encore/Hollywood has been doing that for several months without a name change.
While gaining independence, RIOT will retain the benefits of belonging to a large organization, Taylor observed. We will still have sufficient financial backing to continue pioneering new technology, like high definition. Well have the tools when we need them.
