Slate Media Group, a leading independent provider of postproduction services to the film and TV industry, announced that its PostWorks New York has acquired the assets of Mega Playground, a post facility in New York’s West Village. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Simultaneously, a long-term lease was finalized at the West Village facility, reflecting the commitment of Slate Media Group and PostWorks to downtown New York, the hub for television and feature finishing.
“This acquisition significantly adds much needed capacity to our New York operations,” said Slate Media Group New York’s COO Rob DeMartin. With Slate Media’s other West Village and Soho footprint, the combined companies will offer 185,000 square feet of space for post services, which the company bills as being NYC’s largest facility.
Slate Media Group provides postproduction services to film and television producers through several brands, including Technicolor-PostWorks New York, PostWorks New York and bicoastal Hula Post Production. Collectively, Slate Media Group companies provide a full range of post services, including dailies, lab services, editorial system rentals, editorial conform, color grading, finishing, graphics, sound editorial and sound finishing.
Mega Playground was formed in 1994 and serves a diverse clientele that includes major film and television studios, broadcasters, independent producers, documentary filmmakers and others.
Sundance Documentary “The Alabama Solution” Shows Horrifying Prison Conditions
Incarcerated men in the Alabama prison system risked their safety to feed shocking footage of their horrifying living conditions to a pair of documentary filmmakers. The result is "The Alabama Solution," which premiered this week at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
Filmmakers Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman became interested in Alabama prisons in 2019. Jarecki, the filmmaker behind "The Jinx" and "Capturing the Friedmans," and Kaufman first gained access to the restricted grounds through a visit with a chaplain during a revival meeting held in the prison yards. There men pulled them aside and whispered shocking stories about the reality of life inside: forced labor, drugs, violence, intimidation, retaliation and the undisclosed truths behind many prisoner deaths.
This process eventually led them to incarcerated activists Melvin Ray and Robert Earl Council (also known as "Kinetik Justice") who had for years been trying to expose the horrifying conditions and deep- seated corruption across the system. They helped feed dispatches to the filmmakers with contraband cellphones.
"We're deeply concerned for their safety, and we have been since the first time we met them," said Kaufman. "They've been doing this work for decades and as you see in the film, they've been retaliated against in very extreme ways. But there are lawyers who are ready to do wellness checks and visit them and respond to any sort of retaliation that may come."
On Tuesday at the first showing of the film, she had Council on the phone listening in. They put the microphone up to the cellphone so that Council could speak.
"We thank you all for listening, for being interested," Council said. "On behalf of the brothers of Alabama, I thank you... Read More