Design/visual effects firm Safe has opened, headed by creative director Earl Bateman and design director Lee Dyer. The New York-based firm is part of the Crossroads family of businesses, which includes Crossroads Films, bicoastal and Chicago; bicoastal commercial houses X-Ray Productions and X-1 Films; bicoastal creative services agency/production company Crossroads Television; de-sign/editorial postproduction house 89 Greene, New York; and, most recently, the New York-based feature division of Crossroads Films (SHOOT 2/16, p. 1).
Housed on the 89 Greene premises, Safe was masterminded by Crossroads’ chief technology officer, Dean Winkler. When Winkler joined Crossroads last fall, it was announced that he would explore new opportunities for the Crossroads companies, particularly at 89 Greene (SHOOT 10/27/00, p. 7). Said Winkler last week, "We’re looking at doing a series of companies out of Crossroads/89 Greene that leverage the different creative aspects of the company."
Crossroads partner/owner Dan Lindau explained that a design firm was a natural choice for Crossroads’ next venture: "One of the ingredients missing in the company overall was a design component. … We wanted to develop a design capability that could either stand alone or work in partnership with the other entities here."
Bob Cagliero, executive producer at 89 Greene, is also pleased about the new arrangement. "It’s incredibly flexible for our editors, and it enables us to do so much more on a graphics, compositing and effects level. Anyway you look at it, it’s a big plus for us and our clients. We always felt that we had a need for [the design component], and Dean kind of masterminded it, with the feedback of our editors and myself."
Safe has been operating since January. Lindau explained, "It’s been an ongoing process." So far, Safe has designed ads for Dannon Yogurt’s "One on One" via Young & Rubicam, New York; and Kohl’s Department Stores’ "Event" campaign via McCann-Erickson, New York. Safe is also designing Web sites for the various Crossroads companies.
Too, the shop will continue to grow, said Winkler. "At this point we are anticipating ramping it up over the coming year. … We’re extremely happy with where it is, and we just want to be very careful about how we grow it …We are planning on adding some more folks," he noted.
Safe will design for broadcast, commercial and Web media. As Lindau put it, "The execution doesn’t really matter—in concert with Crossroads’ and 89 Greene’s other divisions, and independently, they [Bateman and Deyer] are coming up with smart solutions."
Both Bateman and Deyer joined Safe from New York postproduction facility Post Perfect, where Winkler had been president as well as COO of its holding company, the New York Media Group, prior to leaving there in August ’00 (SHOOT, 8/18/00, p. 7). Winkler commen-ted, "I worked with both Earl and Lee at Post Perfect. I’m familiar with their work and with what they wanted to do. These are two very talented guys who are into the idea of working in different media. … We really were looking for people who were interested in working both as design initiators and as collaborators."
Currently, Safe consists of a control room and a design area—although, "We’ll probably be adding a second room," according to Winkler. He went on, "The system is [Adobe] After Effects based, and part of what made us feel so good about doing this is that only since the last NAB [National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas] have people come out with true, real-time uncompressed imput/output systems. We’ve got two CinéWave systems from Pinnacle Systems that let us do real-time inputting and outputting with no compression.
"Obviously, we don’t believe in compression," continued Winkler. "That’s a quality compromise we’re not willing to tolerate. The big bottleneck in systems like that, traditionally, is that you can’t get material in and out in real time. If you use a traditional digital disc recorder, you spend approximately half a second a frame. That doesn’t sound like a lot—except that on a typical project you have, let’s say, 20 minutes of material at a half-second a frame. That’s 10 hours to input versus 20 minutes [in real time]. CinéWave was premiered at last year’s NAB, and it’s the key enabler of this real-time technology. We also have a lot of software that ties it together, which is all Mac G4 based."
No BOUNDARIES
At Safe, diversity is key, according to creative director Earl Bateman: "We’ll do just about anything. We’ll use all the standards: [Adobe’s] Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, LiveMotion, [Macromedia’s] Flash, Director—whatever application is needed." Bateman explained, "The crossover between Web, broadcast and commercial effects work is pretty complete. I enjoy doing broadcast; and the commercial end of broadcasting, which is promotion, folds into that. And with our commercial effects experience, we’re able to bring some of that magic to the broadcast arena. We really like to cross over those kinds of boundaries."
Safe creative director Bateman has a background in broadcast design, having served as ABC News’ graphics director for eight years. When he left in ’89, he went freelance and helped launch design identities for CNBC, as well as networks in the U.K. and Belgium. In ’90 he joined CBS as the network’s graphics director. Bateman went to UPN for the launch of its flagship station, WWOR, in New York, in ’94. He joined Post Perfect in ’96 as design director. As he told SHOOT, "I had done so much work at Post Perfect over the years that they made me an offer and I shifted gears. I did a lot of commercial effects, broadcast and Web work there."
Dyer is Safe’s design director. The Brit started his design career at Manchester, England-based postproduction/design house Editz, where he was a Quantel Paintbox artist, in ’92. Then, in ’94, he went freelance, working as a Quantel compositing/animation program Hal artist for design firm 4:2:2, which has shops in both Manchester and Bristol, England. Dyer moved to New York at the end of ’95, and joined visual effects house Blink.fx as a designer/digital compositor. While there, he won a ’98 national Emmy for the show open for the Discovery Channel’s Spy Tek. He joined Post Perfect in April ’98 as a de-signer/visual compositor.
The idea of an affiliation was first broached about a year ago, when Bateman and 89 Greene editor Bruce Ashley started talking. "They were mainly pie-in-the-sky kinds of conversations about what a good match it would be between 89 Greene and Lee and me," reported Bateman. "When Dean went to Crossroads and started to put Safe into motion, it was just a natural choice for Lee and me to move over here and see if we could raise the bar a little bit. In October or November we started talking to Dean about going to the Crossroads companies."
Bateman and Dyer work as partners. Said Bateman, "We try to approach every project as a team. Lee and I had worked together very closely at Post Perfect. Through the collaborations that we had, we discovered that though we each had our own styles, we also had a lot of creative flexibility and could shift into other styles very easily."
