Post Magazine

March 2010

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www.postmagazine.com March 2010 • Post 43 POST MAGAZINE (ISSN 0891-5628) is published monthly by Post,LLC, a COP Communications company, 620 West Elk Avenue, Glendale, California 91204. Subscription rates: $63 for one year in the United States & Possessions; $94 for one year in Canada and Mexico; all other countries $133 for one year. For air-expedit- ed service, include an additional $75 per order annually. Single copies (prepaid only): $16 in the United States; $32 in Canada and Mexico; $47 all other countries. Back issues, if available, are $32 for the U.S. & Possessions; $63 for Canada and Mexico; $94 for all other countries. Include $8.00 per order plus $3 per additional copy for U.S. postage and handling. If shipping outside the U.S., include an addi- tional $14 per order plus $5 per additional copy. Periodicals postage paid at Glendale CA 91205 and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Please send address changes to POST, P.O. Box 3551, Northbrook, IL 60065-3551. Canadian G.S.T. number: R-124213133RT001. Publications Mail Agreement Number 40017597. Printed in the U.S.A. ©Copyright 2010 POST, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including by photocopy, recording or information storage and retrieval system, with- out permission in writing from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use, or the internal or personal use of specific clients, is grant- ed by is granted by POST, LLC for libraries and other users registered with the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Dr. Danvers, MA 01923 phone: 978- 750-8400 fax 978-750-4470; call for copying beyond that permitted by Sections 107 or 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law. For those not registered with the CCC, send permission request in writing to Permissions Dept. POST, LLC 620 West Elk Avenue, Glendale, California 91204. F I N A L T H O U G H T S After testing out this back-up appliance for a span of about two months, we felt that it performed very strongly in our post produc- tion environment. The best aspects of this product are how easy it is to set up and the amount of flexibility you have when it comes to using it with different network protocols, such as AFP, NFS, SMB, FTP and SSH. We were even surprised that we could configure our Autodesk Inferno system to directly mount to the Pro-Cache and archive projects to be backed up to LTO4A tape. This didn't work out of the box, but worked perfectly when configured properly. Autodesk Inferno uses a lot of data, and archiving has always been the one thing that was most difficult. Furthermore, backing up worked flawlessly when connecting over SMB on Windows or AFP on a Mac and dragging and dropping a pre-organized folder to the 'vtape' volume. Ever ything was pretty much set it and forget it. The only setback that my editors had was when having to use two interfaces with more advanced back-up workflows. For example, they would drag and drop their folder via AFP, but then have to use the Web browser inter- face to double check their work or delete a tape or check to see how much space they have left on a tape. The main issue they had was that the file browser within the Web browser interface wasn't robust enough to be a one-stop solution. They found they needed to go back to the Finder AFP interface to do most of their file/folder organization. Then they would go back to the Web interface to make sure ever ything was going as planned. This wasn't as seamless as it could be and might be resolved in a future release Another gotcha that we ran into was when dealing with spanned tapes and files/folders with long file names. In the end this slight neg- ative issue turned into a positive because of how quickly we were able to work with Cache-A's technical support to find a solution. They issued us an update within a few days, which fixed the problem of long names. Hav- ing great technical suppor t gave us the peace of mind that Cache-A stands by their product. This is paramount with owning any product used for the post. Overall, we feel this product is definitely the best in breed when it comes to LTO4A back- up devices. It's a top performer because of its multi-user network accessibility and ease of use. To date, nothing has had the feature set and ease of use of the Pro-Cache. This could easily set and become the industr y standard back-up solution. It thrived until the dot-bomb fell. "It was always the vision that the growth of broadband consumer ubiquity would mean that companies that combined skills in creating rich media and interactivity, like Click 3X/Media Circus, would be in a perfect place. I just had to wait a while," says Corbett. Three years ago Corbett opened ClickFire Media. "The dream that I had actually star ted to come into fruition with widespread proliferation of online videos on mass medium and the ubiquity of broadband among the general population," he says. "In addition, that space become more interested in adver tising again, so it became a good time for a company like Click 3x to take a strong initiative in that area. That is the circuitous route to ClickFire Media." Click 3x (www.click3x.com) and ClickFire Media (www.clickfiremedia. com) are housed on one floor in the Click 3x space on West 22nd Street. "We saw the resources and capabilities of Click becoming absolutely key to everything we do in the interactive space," ex- plains Corbett."The needs we have in that area are just as much as spots sometimes.You have to be integrated. If you try to silo it you just don't get the benefit of cre- ating these really cool experiences." Initially Corbett thought that they would get more requests to do both broadcast and interactive cam- paigns together, but that has turned out to rarely be the case. "It doesn't happen like that. We have done a couple of projects that were integrated, but very, very rarely." And that doesn't seem to bother him. "We want to be the architect of the entire experience and not just creating the assets." So at times they are re- sponsible for the creative on down, and sometimes they will work collaboratively to bring it to life. While ClickFire does take advantage of some of the Click 3x tools — the studio is home to Autodesk Flame, Smoke, Maya and Flare, as well as Adobe prod- ucts and Final Cut Pro — they have separate project managers and producers, and a lot of their time is spent managing the writing of the code for each partic- ular project as needed."It's very different," reports Cor- bett. Where it intersects, for example, is on a project they did for Par ty City and the Zimmerman agency. The client wanted an interactive haunted house, the House of Halloweenies, which featured frankfur ters dressed in Halloween costumes. Click 3x created the 3D animated characters, the viral video, sound design, a game component and the Facebook Connect hook-up, which allowed visitors to put their friends' names on the tombstones in the graveyard. "There was software development, 3D ani- mation and a tremendous amount of design," explains Corbett. "All of those are quite complex products, but it was a very tricky piece of code writing as well.The inter- active [team] uses the Click 3x tools when shooting for the Web, but in the end it ends up being application de- velopment.That is a totally different discipline." Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter play a big role in ClickFire's work. A recent Valentine's project for agency Hill Holiday and Dunkin' Donuts, called Get Dunk'd, involved visitors to the site making themselves into chocolate characters and sending that character off to their valentine. The application was imbedded in Facebook so users could upload a picture of them- selves and send it to a friend. And while Click has worked with Hill Holiday on Dunkin' broadcast spots, this one was strictly interactive. A recent Estee Lauder project for its Beauty Bank division was totally integrated into Facebook, and a job for cigar maker E.P. Carillo via DeVito/Verdi mashed Twitter and Google Maps. "It combs through Twitter and searches for any mention of 'cigar' and maps wher- ever the Tweet comes from to the location on the map in realtime," Corbett explains. Ann Quinn is ClickFire's digital engagement strate- gist. "She works on the strategy, but that involves not just the type of content we create, but how you deal with the outreach," explains Corbett. "It's a serious part of the business because it doesn't really apply to agen- cies who have their own capabilities in that area, but for clients who come to us directly.They need to know that not only will we create something, but how are we going to get the targeted traffic to the experience." At press time, ClickFire had just completed two iPhone apps, a shoot for an LG netcast, launched a Ford Urban site and was in the middle of building the WAPsite for Ford as well. (A WAPsite provides all of the basic services of a computer-based Web browser but simplified to operate within the restrictions of a mobile phone, such as its smaller view screen.) With ClickFire being asked to provide so many var- ied solutions for clients, budgets are all over the map, says Corbett, which is challenging when you need to create a lot of CG characters for a site. "Minutes of an- imation as opposed to seconds — so the budgets are pretty fine, but you have to get a lot more assets out of the same budget." And it's all worth it, according to Corbett. "This is a really exciting and obviously challenging economic time for a lot of people, but we actually increased our head count here. "We went from 33 to 45 people in the last year, and a lot of that was due to this new work. It opens up a lot of creative doors that you just don't see often." [ cont. from 20] N E W M E D I A

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