By Nicole Rivard

Samantha Hart, creative director/owner of Foundation Post, Chicago, has no intentions of abandoning the company’s postproduction roots. But when the company launched in 2004, she saw the industry changes ahead and decided to operate on the philosophy that one must be a little more innovative, a little “more clutter buster,” to stand out in the crowd. That has translated into taking a proactive stance to accommodate changes brought on by viral, web-based types of campaigns and interactive websites.
    “A year ago websites were just kind of add-ons. You had to have one but no one knew why. Now you start with the strong creative for the website and the TV spot is being used to drive people to the website,” she says.
    A little over a year ago, when websites were still add-ons, Foundation Post decided to launch a production arm, Foundation Content. About a month ago the company built a stage to further diversify and facilitate the move into the production arena.
    And almost all of the editors have grown into directing and they are supported by the company to do so. “We’ve made it quite a large part of our business plan as well,” Hart explains. Devin Bousquet, for example, just directed a five spot package for BFGoodrich via the Martin Agency, Va. “We still love postproduction. We’re still as excited about boards coming in that we get to edit as we are any of these productions. One doesn’t replace the other or supersede the other. But I think more and more our clients are looking to us to be more innovative and give them ideas that they might have overlooked.”
    At Optimus in Chicago, Tom Duff, president, reports the company is getting its feet wet in production as well. “Where we are making more of a mark now is in full up design spots and in actual production.  For the design work, these assignments have little or no actual off-line cutting, the spots are created and finished all by our design team in their After Effects and Flame boxes. These design editors do it all, from initial creative boards to actual new design to shooting products and model building. We also have a stage now for this shooting and model building.  We own our building and have plenty of space for this type of expansion, that’s a huge edge for us, ” says Duff, who is also president of AICE’s Chicago Chapter. 
    Other edit houses are not necessarily thinking of themselves as production companies, but they have recognized the importance of possessing the flexibility and talent to adapt to certain projects with limited production needs. Take bicoastal 89 Editorial, for example. Detecting the need to diversify, a few years ago the company created Headlight, a design and visual effects division. Bob Cagliero, 89’s New York-based executive producer and president of the AICE New York Chapter, says that having that division has made it easier for the company to approach more budget conscious web films and virals. “Headlight has purchased an HD camera package within the last year and has used it for shooting various elements in visual effects projects. “We have begun to occasionally use the camera for very down and dirty situations where our editors have directed–primarily virals, web films or a regional political advertisements. We are starting to see that agency clients and the advertisers themselves are more open to these situations.”

Virtual Editors    Being open-minded and flexible is probably the biggest key to surviving in today’s marketplace, according to Scott Carleton, VP of Nomad Editing Co., Santa Monica, which recently opened a shop in New York. “The Internet has completely changed the way people collaborate during post. Many of our projects involve an edit on one coast, visual effects on another and sound design happening on both. In order to meet these challenges, a company has to be very flexible to accommodate the needs of a specific project,” Carleton says. “An editor has to be willing to travel the world to be on location or to just edit on the other coast. After years of four-walling in New York, we felt we had to open up a shop to better service our clients.”
    Conversely technology can cut down on travel expenses.
    “If a client wants to work with an editor in London but they don’t have the funds to bring in the editor, we’ve got the technology to have them be able to–either from offices in their own agency or by going to one of our offices–work remotely with them. Nowadays the technology is even better. We are constantly upgrading our servers and connections,” says Melissa Thornley, managing director of The Whitehouse, bicoastal, Chicago and London. If a client is shooting in L.A. or London but they are cutting in New York, we move media wicked fast.”
    New York-based Crew Cuts also continues to evolve technologically with the changing landscape of the advertising industry. A few years ago the entire company switched from Avid to Final Cut Pro.
    “Final Cut’s ability to integrate with any current or future form of graphic applications allows Crew Cuts to stay on the forefront of postproduction technology,” says Nancy Shames, partner/executive producer. “We have also taken steps internally to better facilitate the general needs of agencies, setting up our own in-house facility for finishing in both SD and HD. We employ in-house graphic designers and compositors, both of whom work in tandem to make jobs both seamless and cost effective. Our editors also use Shake and Motion, which enables us to cut costs for the clients, eliminate complex timelines and, overall, continue to create pro-quality results on every job we take on.”
    On the new media front, Crew Cuts is further growing its capabilities in the interactive and long-form categories. It has brought on new talent across the board, both international and regional, with extensive experience in Web film, short film and feature-length realms. “As consumers demand more intricate marketing platforms,” says Shames, “we work closely with clients to create work that functions appropriately and efficiently in its designated media environment.”
    Nomad’s Carleton also points out that while flexibility is key, companies need to always look after their core business. “You have to be willing to invest in people and technology in order to service your core business as well as to put you in a position where you can take advantage of opportunities that come up,” he says.
    “A company has to be able to offer tiered services in order to be able to meet the budgetary restrictions of some projects. However, we feel that we can’t invest too heavily in one area or another or it takes away much of our flexibility. Many of our clients prefer to work with specialists in each phase of the post process.  There is no way we would be able to compete with those specialists. Instead, it is important to be able to creatively collaborate with these people in as concise and efficient manner as possible.”

Post house partners    Speaking of creative collaboration, in general postproduction facilities are becoming more a part of the overall creative process. Wendy Brovetto, exec producer of design studio PureNYC says that agency clients are approaching the company before they go to the advertisers. This scenario came into play in a seven spot campaign the studio recently worked on for Glade, which also included some live-action work. Creative director Aaron King saw the project through from beginning to end. Draft FCB Chicago came to Pure with a storyboard for Glade’s new Flameless candle and scented oil candles campaign and King designed the boards, creating the graphic elements and how they would interact with the on camera principals. He directed the live action, was involved with the edit (with Damien Massingham from Chemistry, New York) and oversaw all animation from After Effects through CG and comping in Flame for all seven spots.
    “Getting involved in the beginning is beneficial because you can design based on the time frame given and how long it’s going to take you to execute something. You don’t oversell what you can deliver, ” says Brovetto.
   Edit house JumP, NYC and design studio Manic have also been more active in partnering with agencies on pitches for TV and alternative advertising. “On recent projects of this kind, agency partners have tapped into our talents and technology in editing, graphics, animation, sound design and music, collaborating on content development. It represents deeper involvement at an earlier stage of the game than has been typical historically, and in some cases we’ve been extremely successful,” explains editor Michael Saia of jumP.
    He adds that the companies’ recent evolutions have taken the form of work outside of advertising. Among other projects completed or in the works, jumP is co-producing and cutting Dave Herman’s feature film Able Danger, with VFX and graphics being done at Manic. Lin Polito (of jumP) is cutting Benita Raphan’s documentary Great Genius And Profound Stupidity. In the past year, Luis Moreno (of jumP) has been a contributing editor and graphic designer on Douglas Keeve’s feature, Seamless, and Saia has been involved in developing and cutting a documentary about Chi Modu, the photographer at The Source magazine in the 1990’s.
    Likewise there’s been diversification at The Whitehouse. In August, the edit house finished a branded entertainment piece called SCHOOLED for OfficeMax via The Escape Pod, Chicago.
In the 60-minute reality show SCHOOLED, students at New Jersey’s New Milford High School are tricked into believing their school is “musically deficient.”
    The anxious students must attend a “music rehabilitation” program in order for the school to keep its state funding. Hidden TV cameras recorded the  students as they were led through absurd oral exams climaxing with their mandatory performance of Richard Strauss’ “Thus Spoke Zarathustra.” The prank’s grand finale was a live, surprise performance for the students by the rock band The All-American Rejects.
    “There’s always something going on in our company that involves long form or alternative media. So the differences that have been coming up more often are dealing with HD workflow and dealing with Final Cut Pro. Those are different technologies and areas that we have become better versed in because you really have to be fluent in those technologies,” says The Whitehouse’s Thornley.
    Bicoastal edit house Beast, which now has an office in Austin, also recently worked on a branded content project, Toyota’s Line of Scrimmage, created by Saatchi & Saatchi LA. In the show, two hosts travel around the country in a 2007 Toyota Tundra profiling the high school football programs with the most intriguing traditions and biggest rivalries. The documentary-style show runs during the NBC Sunday Night Football Halftime Show.

Making sense of it all    Beast is newer to the industry, having opened its doors in 2006. The company’s managing partner Valerie Petrusson explains that Beast was not set up with the traditional business model of having “lots of staff and lots of high paid editors. We are much leaner and meaner than traditional editing shops. So when there are slower times in the industry, I don’t have to worry about laying staff off. And I use freelancers, not a lot, but for extra projects. So staff is consistent and my clients are taken care of and they know who to go to, but I don’t have bodies sitting around, which some of the traditional houses did for years.”
    Petrusson believes that the industry is in flux right now and that while businesses may be diversifying, she doesn’t don’t feel that THE model has appeared. “The business is going to change dramatically in the next three to seven years depending on what happens with virals and the monetization of the web.
    She points out that in 2008, Screen Actors Guild and Writers Guild of America members are going to be taking a stance on the web monetization issue and what that means to them. “How that is resolved is going to be a clearinghouse for what is going to happen. That will be the bearer of good and bad news for the industry. They may throw the gauntlet down and say no more using us for free. What does that mean to traditional advertising and how does that streamline down to postproduction? Will clients pay more for virals or use them less?” wonders Petrusson.

Despite the lack of quanitification, she points out on a more positive note that since virals are often done by the younger editors, they are providing a great opportuniy for junior editors who are cutting their teeth. “It’s good because for a while there wasn’t enough work to bring younger editors up,” she said.

Jon Ettinger, managing director of FilmCore, with shops in New York, Santa Monica and San Francisco, said the company had been set up to do middle to higher-end jobs, which poses a problem relative to the state of the industry.
    “At the beginning of the year we as a company sat down and said, ‘Where is the industry heading?’ Most of our editors and people who work for us are pretty well compensated and are dependent on a model that has jobs that have good margins.
    “We see that there’s still a lot of great margin jobs at the higher end, but all of a sudden there is nothing in the middle and there’s a bunch of crappy margin jobs at the bottom, so what do we do?” asked Ettinger who is also president of the AICE’s San Francisco chapter.
He said FilmCore has signed on for lower margin jobs, but almost inevitably another job will want to book in during that time that’s a much higher margin.
    “So we are sort of cannibalizing ourselves. It would be easy to say we are just not going to do it. But I think that is missing it too. There’s a lot of work. It may be a classic case where you figure out a way to aggregate all these projects together. You might have low margins but really high volume, so maybe there is still a way to do it.
    “You may have multiple people working on multiple projects as opposed to the old business model, which is one editor working on one project. That’s definitely a trend I see.”
    Ettinger adds that he is also seeing lot of competition in the business. There used to be three players in the field–production companies, postproduction companies and ad agencies and there was very little in the way of genuine competition between the three.
    “Basically everyone depended on one another and what was good for one was typically good for another. Now an ad agency is likely to edit, a production company is likely to come up with content or a postproduction company is likely to shoot stuff. There are these blurring of lines in what was traditionally people who were very dependent on one another. Now it seems like there is potential for conflict and competition in those traditional sectors.”
    For now, FilmCore is sticking to what it does best, editing and working with ad agency and production company partners. Likewise Beast’s focus is on creative editorial. But one way Beast has diversified is by entering into an alliance with Panic & Bob in Canada (see sidebar), gaining U.S. representation for some of that Toronto shop’s leading talent.
    In terms of the “Beasties” getting into directing, Petrusson says, “Should the unique opportunity come up, that is something we would take up on a case-by-case basis. We are a new company. We want to get our legs before we jump into that.”

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