Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1469942
The company had grown signifi cantly since I founded it in 2009 as a way to invoice the occasional graphic I designed while working as a Playback Engineer on set for supervisors like Matt Morrissey and Dan Dobson. I had only been in the union for a few years at that point, having started my career as an assistant to directors such as Rob Cohen and Nancy Meyers. As I gained experience on the set, I was also drawn to creating the content that we played back on so many TVs and computer monitors. The company was an outlet that allowed me to do that without giving up my time on set—time which I really loved. Within a few years, Modern Motion Pictures grew, especially as I began supervising shows of my own. It soon became unfeasible to operate as a one-man show, which is when I turned to my good friend Chris Cundey to join as a full partner. MODERN MOTION PICTURES At Modern Motion Pictures, a boutique playback/graphics company run by three Local 695 Playback Supervisors (Chris Cundey, Matt Brucell, and myself), we were as busy as we'd ever been—supervising video playback on The Morning Show, For All Mankind, Black-ish, How to Get Away with Murder, and several other shows. On top of that, I was preparing to fly to London to look into opening our first office outside of the U.S. At the same time, we were also expanding the capabilities of the software tools we had created for our team in-house. Chris grew up in a fi lm business family (his father is DP Dean Cundey) and had spent several years running his own video assist company, Graphic Nature; which also created graphics for on-set use and post-production visual effects. When Chris joined Modern Motion Pictures, things really took off. We had complementary skill sets and worked really well together. We would tackle large shows such as the third season of HBO's The Newsroom together (a massive video show, which was originally supervised by Matt Morrissey before schedule confl icts took him to other projects; Steve Irwin was also instrumental to the show's success as Lead Engineer), and assist each other as we ran some shows more or less individually. For example, Chris would run Silicon Valley while I would work on several projects with Director Steven Soderbergh, such as Contagion and Magic Mike. The Playback Company That's Also a Software Developer 48 PRODUCTION SOUND & VIDEO – Summer 2022 by Dave Henri