Production house Florida Film & Tape (FF&T) has bought Cutting Edge Productions, an Orlando-based production/post house. The purchase price was not disclosed.
Orlando-based FF&T does a mix of both corporate and spot work, as did Cutting Edge.
Cutting Edge will become part of Blue Island Design, the post, design and graphics division of FF&T formed in March. FF&T president Brad Fuller explained, "We’ve always had some postproduction presence, but we’ve never been comfortable presenting ourselves as a postproduction company. But with the advent of the digital realm, it started to make more sense for us to do more and more of our own post."
John Dussling, FF&T’s director of marketing and sales, added, "We’ve been a very visible and well-respected production company, and in the past few years we’ve recognized that because of the credibility of the company name, we could expand and get into more post work."
However, the company moniker might have been problematic for certain potential clients as "our competitors in the production industry would not come to us to edit," Fuller pointed out. "And we like to make some of those people feel more comfortable. So Blue Island Design is, in fact, a separate company"-though FT&T owns the majority stake in it. Besides handling all of FT&T’s post work, Blue Island Design pursues outside business.
The expansion benefits the client as well, said Dussling: "With control over both creativity and budgeting, if we find that we’re in post and we need to do a little extra tweaking, we don’t have to go over budget. We’re able to go in and do a little additional work."
Part of the appeal of Cutting Edge was a company client whose identity FF&T will not divulge: "Along with Cutting Edge comes a client, and we were very interested in doing business with this client. When the owner of Cutting Edge, Ed McCobb, decided to sell, he contacted us. So we looked the offer over, ran some numbers and actually it looked pretty good to us," said Fuller.
FF&T’s specialties are marine, aviation and motor sports filming; and with the potential addition of the mystery client, work will include theme attraction work. According to Dussling, the client "is an attraction that has locations internationally, and it has given us opportunities to get into the attractions area pretty quickly." Having acquired Cutting Edge, FF&T will concentrate on increasing its number of clients rather than its operations. As Fuller stated, "We have a great list of clients who are very loyal to us. We made a determination that we wanted to grow the business, and hopefully with that comes making a little bit more money. To do that, we’ve got to add to our current client base."
FT&T’s directors are Fuller, George Burkitt and Robert Perry. Dussling serves as the company’s national rep.
