Editorial house Beast has expanded its Austin facility with the addition of a Smoke room for finishing projects and the hiring of senior editor Ariel Quintans and Smoke artist Jim Reed. In addition, Beast Austin has partnered with sister company Company 3 to provide virtual telecine services.
Quintans has been an editor in Austin for over 12 years, cutting spots, music videos and longer-form fare. On the latter front, he served as lead editor on Rollergirls, a 13-episode reality series for A&E, was the supervising editor for four seasons of the Emmy Award-winning documentary series Downtown, and has been a contributing editor and motion designer on feature length features and documentaries.
An industry veteran with over 30 years of experience, Reed joins Beast from 501 Post, where as senior editor and postproduction supervisor he worked on feature film projects such as Sin City and Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. Reed also has a long list of commercial credits for brands including AT&T, BMW, Burger King, Kohler, Land Rover, Snickers and Wal-Mart.
Company 3 will employ its remote technology for postproduction services on commercials and features, enabling clients at Beast Austin to collaborate in real time with Company 3 artists on color grading projects. A high-resolution monitor calibrated by a certified Company 3 engineer coupled with a video conferencing system ensures that client feedback reaches their Company 3 colorist in Los Angeles or New York without delays or color discrepancies.
Beast also maintains shops in Santa Monica, New York, Detroit, Chicago and San Francisco.
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More