Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/10459
TheChanging Business of Post FeedTheWalrus … virtually year or longer.Working here, they can access support and services they really can’t get elsewhere. Right now our value lies in the ability to provide the digital mastering machines, HD datacine, color correction rooms, surround sound mix- ing and quality control that aren’t cost effective for indepen- dent producers to address on their own.” POST: Have your companies reconfigured your space in the last few years to accommodate changes in the business or to meet the new needs of your clients? CURREN: “Our finishing rooms were the size of old lin- ear bays, so when HD became prevalent and you needed larger monitors, the rooms proved to be the right size:The technology grew to fill the space. In our finishing rooms you can put up a 50-inch plasma and not get a sunburn! We started with smaller sound rooms compared to other places doing audio for TV, but now sound rooms around town have gotten smaller and consequently ours are bigger by compar- ison.We even pre-mix features in them.We have added of- fice and offline rental rooms for clients who suddenly get a show and don’t have a standing office. It’s scaleable for pro- duction companies and feeds our finishing services.” MCGUIRE: “At the end of ‘06 we retooled our space to provide more collaborative work environments for our de- signers at Sol Design, and at the same time expanded our CGI capabilities. Each of our four companies has its own entrance to our 33,000 square-foot space.We’re fully networked and have a very large data storage system that all the creatives in the company are able to access.We have also invested in very fast pipelines to create efficiencies in our workflow.” POST: You’re both veteran editors who have worked around the world — Adam in New Zealand,Australia, London and New York, and Jeff in Hong Kong, Singa- pore and New York — in traditional cre- ative editing houses.What prompted you to launch the rather unconventional FeedTheWalrus earlier this year? JEFF STEVENS:“We met at Final Cut in New York five or six years ago and had kept in touch.After the financial crisis hit we got to talking about a new,more rele- vant way of doing post — something that would be more flexible and could evolve with the trends we saw happening. Since it’s no longer cost prohibitive to have your own edit suites, agencies, production companies, and ef- fects houses started to create or build up their in-house editing facili- ties.We found they still needed talent to run them.” ADAM JENKINS: “Our ethos is to build teams for projects — ADAM JENKINS JEFF STEVENS, Co-founders/Editors FeedTheWalrus New York City www.feedthewalrus.com from creative editing to color grading, graphics, animation and finish- ing.We’ll go on set, edit in-house or work at an outside facility. It’s a much more malleable system than offering four walls and an edit system.We’re in the process of building a high-end portable Final Cut/After Effects/Avid system — we have a prototype that can be carried in a Pelican case that we can take to a shoot, into a house or a conference room.” POST: So you don’t have a brick-and-mortar edit facility of your own? JENKINS: No.We were looking for an alternative streamlined, cost-effective way to edit…” STEVENS: “…and we figured if we lost the 10,000-square-foot Our collection of Hi-Def video and stills brings the world’s most exotic animals within reach and within budget. Get the shot you need at a fraction of the cost to shoot on-site. Access compelling footage of highly trained animals shot against a keyable green backdrop for use anywhere. space and the ping pong table,we could bid jobs without the over- head.We understand our clients needs and how much more ‘cost’ becomes the deciding factor. Most agencies now have pretty decent edit suites. Some have had systems for a while and have recently up- graded them, some have pieced together systems over the years, some have followed the trend of edit houses that have purchased Flames for HD finishing. But at the high end it gets trickier for equipment to talk to each other and work smoothly.We have a full technical department that makes sure that the clients’ systems we use work; they go in and debug and upgrade the edit systems so we don’t encounter the unexpected.” JENKINS: Our tech service gets clients’ systems working ten times better than they ever have before! POST: Is there a different pricing model for what FeedTheWalrus does? JENKINS:“Everything now is a negotiation; everything is project www.greenscreenanimals.com Mention this ad, and get 25% off your first clip purchase. 18 Post • May 2010 www.postmagazine.com by project. There’s no rule of thumb anymore, and we do our best to be flexible.We work closely with agency cost consultants;we also work direct with clients.Working direct with clients means fewer mark ups and real value for money:We create whatever con- tent they need — in the case of NX Energy Drink, they needed a photo shoot and we arranged for a photographer, and they wanted animation for their Website and we got it done.We are branding and merchandising for them.We’re also talking about developing a phone app for them.” T R E N D S