When four successful postproduction operations decide to join forces, their clients and competitors may find themselves asking one question: why? The answer, according to the prime movers behind the merger, is changing technology and a history of cooperation.
Last month, the Santa Monica-based post houses Riot, Digital Magic, and POPs film and animation divisionsaall owned by the publicly held, Burbank, Calif.-based Four Media Company (4MC)aannounced they were merging to form a full-service studio called R!OT. (SHOOT, 3/24, p. 1). The new postproduction facility will offer telecine, editing, compositing, 3-D animation, duplication and support services for a broader lineup of clients.
R!OT will operate as part of The Encore Group, the 4MC division whose president is Larry Chernoff. The three current heads of the merging companies will form R!OTs management team. Jeff Ross, managing director of POP Film and POP Animation, will head R!OTs film services department. Digital Magic managing director Mark Miller will head the entertainment television departments, and Riot managing director Richard Cormier will head the animation, commercial, and music video postproduction departments; hell also oversee the imaging department, which includes telecine.
Chernoff says the combined resources of four postproduction operations was a matter of strategy, not economic necessity. These companies were in the position to continue going it alone, says Chernoff. But once I examined all the synergies and sharing going on between them, I came to the conclusion that it made sense to combine them.
The path toward the merger was smoothed, he says, by the fact that all four companies had a common owner. Had they not been, it wouldnt have been as possible.
The move toward postproduction consolidation isnt the only merger news surrounding R!OT: its parent company, 4MC, was recently acquired by the Engelwood, Colo.-based cable and communications company Liberty Media Corp. 4MC oversees several post/visual effects facilities, including Company 3, Santa Monica; Anderson Video, Universal City, Calif., and Encore, Hollywood. Liberty, like its constituent companies, is exploring convergent mediaathe integration of television and Internet commerce.
Though Chernoff wouldnt make any specific announcement, he says that R!OT has several projects in the works. One of my prime objectives with this company is to make sure that they enter into the world of convergent television, says Chernoff. We will put resources into that area, and we will be assigning people to a department devoted to making convergent TV happen.
Shared Vision
The other aspect of the mergeracooperation among the four postproduction companiesahas been in the works for a while, according to Cormier. Digital Magic and POP were already working together over the past year, because we had complementary 3-D animation departments, says Cormier. The same started to happen with [the old] Riot about eight months ago.
One of the pre-merger shared projects was Chevrolets Twister, directed by Nick Piper of Plum Productions, Santa Monica, out of Campbell-Ewald Advertising, Warren, Mich. The effects-driven spot had an animated characterathe Tasmanian Deviladriving a Chevy Monte Carlo along a rural highway, beneath a stormy sky full of digitally-created tornadoes. Most of the animation effects were done by POP Animation, but the other three R!OT elements also contributed, according to Cormier. (By the time Chevy created a sequelaWindy City, also helmed by Piperathe post work was completed by the new R!OT.)
We all looked at each other and said, were not competingawe are complementary. We were actually cooperating for a long time before we did it for real, says Cormier.
POPs facility site will become R!OTs home for compositing, 3-D animation, editing, duplication, and distribution operations. POP Film and POP Animation have created visual effects for more than 40 feature films over the past five years, most notably for What Dreams May Come, Titanic, and Independence Day. Those three films each won Academy Awards for best visual effects.
Some of POP Animations pre-merger work includes three fanciful spots (Sock Monkey, Kids and Robot) for Intel Pentium III, all directed by Jeffery Plansker, then with bicoastal/international Propaganda Films (he has since shifted representation to bicoastal Anonymous), out of Messner Vetere Berger McNamee Schmetterer EURO RSCG, New York. Each spot features childrens toys exploring Web commerce sites.
Digital Magic has earned several Emmy nominations for its visual effects work on the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager.
Riots recent pre-merger spot credits included the American Legacy Foundations Splode, directed by Jeff Gorman of JGF, Hollywood, out of Crispin Porter + Bogusky Advertising, Miami. Prior to the merger, the company concentrated on commercial, music video, and episodic television projects, including postproduction and visual effects work for the HBO series The Sopranos, and the WBs Dawsons Creek. The old Riot site will become R!OTs telecine department and will feature numerous high definition and standard definition suites, as well as tape-to-tape color correction services. The expansion and renovation of R!OTs buildings is expected to be completed by summer, according to Chernoff.
Riot had a wonderful telecine department, and they also did some compositing, explains Chernoff. POP film and animation had an excellent animation department as well as its compositers. Digital Magic was involved in TV visual effects and compositing, and they also had a wonderful sales department.
Since the merger announcement, R!OT has completed two spots for Capn Crunch, Resolution and Special Pack, directed by James Wahlberg of Visitor, Santa Monica, via FCB Worldwide, Chicago, and Gillettes Arctic Ice, directed by Eugenio Zanetti of Gas Food & Lodging, Culver City, Calif., out of BBDO New York, as well as ads for Lincoln and Boston Market restaurants. The company has a full slate of feature film and TV projects lined up, with commitments to work on the next Star Wars film, which begins shooting in June, as well as the WB networks Angel and Buffy The Vampire Slayer. This month R!IOT is doing finishing work on Geppetto, an ABC movie.
Cormier thinks that other boutique-sized companies may soon move in the same direction as R!OT. In the future, its going to be important to evolve, and to be involved in many market segments. So if film work goes slow, you can compensate with more commercial work or episodic TV work, says Cormier. The idea is not to go with the flow of one specific market and be vulnerable.
I think you can be successful if you are a boutique, but in the future, companies are going to need to be a certain size to survive, Cormier continues. Its going to be very difficult to be a simple boutique, because the technological requirements will be so diverse that it will be difficult to serve different markets. Thats why we are building what we call the biggest boutique in the world. We are going to be big and small at the same time. We think weve achieved that by assembling the best technology, and the best talent. The rest of the challenge will be giving a good experience to our clients.’
