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22 Post • June 2014 www.postmagazine.com environment with DCI projection and sur- round sound. Another works in tandem with a Mac 4K system; Autodesk Flame, Sony OLED monitors and Adobe After Effects are also on hand. "Our biggest advantage is flexibility," says Salvo. "Large operations sometimes find it difficult to alter their course when the indus- try changes so quickly. But it's very simple for us. We can always adjust the workflow to fit client expectations." It was Salvo's goal to open a "lean, agile and aggressive company that never compro- mises on the quality of the finished product. If we're not arbiters of quality, we're failing our clients." He likes the idea of being a "boutique" but doesn't define boutique merely by size. "To me, it means focused and finely tuned," he says. "It's all about craftsmanship. Color isn't about having the big scanner or telecine anymore. It's about craft and quality work. That's why the boutique moniker is a positive one for us." The only drawback he sees to size is that as a proprietor he has to wear many hats tak- ing on sales and marketing duties while dem- onstrating his color and finishing skills daily. TheColourSpace has forged strategic partnerships to broaden its offerings for cli- ents seeking sound and VFX capabilities. "We're able to take advantage of the advanced skill sets of The Sound Distillery here in town and That Studio in San Fran- cisco [for VFX] and bundle our services," Salvo reports. "This is especially helpful for feature clients who want a seamless experi- ence for picture, sound and VFX." One of the company's first DIs was done for The Living, an indie feature shot with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera and finished in 2K. It screened at the Tribeca Film Festival this spring. TheColourSpace just finished a cine- ma spot for Hasbro with a Transformers tie-in and is busy with the indie short, This Is Mary. THE VANITY Sean Cochrane, Naveen Srivastava and Stephanie Pennington opened The Vanity (www.thevanity.tv) in Toronto four years ago with two edit suites and a small CG depart- ment. "I was at another company that started small and got big," says Cochrane. "The Vanity was about simplifying, about get- ting back to our roots." Being small means "being nimble, choosing the projects you want to work on and giving them as much time and care as they need to be as good as they can be," he says. Clients come mainly from the Canadian national advertising market. The Vanity has nine people on staff. Two Flames are the finishing platforms of choice with Flame support coming from a Flare and Small Post Houses NICE SHOES/ PLUTO With some 70 people at its New York City location, Nice Shoes (www.niceshoes.com) is no small post house. But the end-to-end post production company has established remote partnerships with a number of smaller post houses offering its renowned color grad- ing services to Industry & Co. (Atlanta), EngineRoomEdit (Boston), Optimus (Chicago and Santa Monica), Republic Editorial (Dallas), Pluto (Detroit), Vapor Post (Miami) and Storyville (New Orleans). "We do remote grading better than anybody else," says Nice Shoes' CEO Dominic Pandolfino. "Small companies want to pro- vide full packages to their clients but aren't able to do that with- out color grading. We offer them that ability at a level that their competitors won't be able to compete with." Nice Shoes developed a model for remote color grading that's definitely a win-win for Nice Shoes and its partners. Engine Room Edit, with whom they enjoyed a cordial relationship, was the first to test it. "We supply the color grading platform, Film- Light's Baselight, and the work is done here," Pandolfino explains. "We have a telepresence solution with our artist here and anoth- er one with our remote partner so everyone can participate in collaborative and real time sessions." The remote partner's monitor is calibrated in New York and installed at the partner's location by a Nice Shoes engineer to ensure that both viewing environments match precisely. "We'd love everyone across the country to come to our place for color grading, but the dollar dynamics don't always make that possible," says Pandolfino. "But with remote grading we get busi- ness nationwide, and our partners get access to all of our color- ists at Nice Shoes. It opens up a new business dynamic." A design and VFX studio and content company, Pluto (www. hellopluto.com) is headquartered in Birmingham, Michigan where it has three Avid Pro Tools audio rooms, four software- based finishing rooms, three edit suites, plus motion design and interactive design. Its smaller Detroit office has two edit suites with Avid, Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere platforms, a sound design suite, and CG. About 30 people work in both locations. "Detroit is a very large post production market, but clients often go out of town for services," says Dave Corbett, Pluto's co- owner and creative director. "We needed to offer more than we have in-house; we wanted to hook up with the best to offer the same level of quality we're known for while enabling our clients to remain in Detroit." Pluto taps Nice Shoes remote grading several times a week for national spots and CG projects. "It's a really great solution," Cor- bett says. "You're face to face with some of the best colorists in the country. There's no lag — it's seamless. You don't miss a beat. It helps us offer a complete finishing package, and clients love it." Corbett notes that the idea of partnering with another com- pany used to be frowned upon. "You were looked down on as not being able to do it all yourself. But now it makes sense to reach out to talent across the country. "I think we're the perfect size," he says. "We're nimble and able to adapt when the business takes a turn, as budgets and processes change." Nice Shoes plans to launch more remote partnerships with smaller post houses, like its suc- cessful relationship with Michigan design and VFX studio Pluto (inset). Originally a mega-shop, Atomic Imaging retrenched as a small, Chicago-based facility.