Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/49492
OUTLOOK POST BUSINESS more. Studios are coming up with on-set or near-set solutions to stay with their clients, wherever they are working. I think it's a bit of an evolutionary time. It sounds very cliché to say the world is shrinking. You have to be able to move data quickly and efficiently. The opportunities are pretty big. The economy is insane. The technology is changing every single day. And everybody is confused about things. Clients are con- stantly coming to us with these wacky workflows and we have to fig- ure them out. I have a brain trust now that can figure that out, and if we get stumped, we pick up the phone and call Los Angeles. It's a scary time but it's a very exciting time." THREATS: "If you were to call it a threat, [it] would be the tech- FotoKem's provides post services for Californication. One of their DI suites is pictured. — all present challenges for companies in our business. They are sig- nificant and do favor the larger organizations. Infrastructure, bandwidth and sophisticated digital asset management make the barrier to entry a little higher for those working in a garage. That puts the focus on medium to large businesses. That was a conscious decision on our part: to emphasize file-based infrastructure, bandwidth and connectivity. Anyone in my position will be faced with same thing." DOMENIC ROM Executive VP, Post Production Technicolor/Postworks www.technicolor.com New York Technicolor provides production, post and distribution services to content creators, network service providers and broadcast- ers. The company recently acquired the assets of LaserPacific and entered into an agreement with PostWorks that expands its finishing and dailies capabilities. STRENGTHS: "Globally, I think New York is a microcosm of what you see. There's a strong post community in New York. There is the Post Alliance, which never existed before. It's all about encouraging people to come to New York, stay in New York and work in New York. There's a real sense of community. It was always there, but it was loose knit. Now it is formal, and you have competitors working together really well. Everyone has one goal: [to] get more work into the city." WEAKNESSES: "There are always weaknesses. It could be the perception that 'They are too big.' An independent might think that they will get lost in this big machine, but a studio feels better with a bigger company because they know that there's is ownership there. There's accountability, and we if can't fix it in New York, we can fix it in LA or wherever it happens to be, so I think studios have more security in the bigger companies. It's more the independents I worry about. I don't want them to feel like they are just a small, little cog in the machine." OPPORTUNITIES: "Everyone is realizing there are new oppor- tunities. It's an interesting time. It's not such a localized economy any- 30 Post • December 2011 www.postmagazine.com nology. It may threaten the future of a post house. I think what we do is going to change and we have to adapt with the times. More things that used to be done in a traditional post house are being done in the field. We have to adapt to that because what we have to offer is expertise in managing the data. I think the threat is that there's a per- ception that technology is going to change everything about workflow and make the post house obsolete. I don't think that's true, but we do have to adapt. The traditional way of doing things is going to change, and if you don't think so, you are fooling yourself." OUTLOOK FOR 2012: "I think you are going to see more joining of forces — smaller guys being absorbed or disappearing. I think locally, we are going have a good year. Tax incentives in New York are helping. Globally, there are new opportunities: on-set, near-set, 3D, digital deliv- ery. Creation of digital media, the shifting of the industry from a film base in many areas to a total digital workflow will create a lot of opportunities for companies staying on top of technology. It could be expensive, even for the right company. In 2000, when I left Duart, forecasters were saying in four to five years there will be no film. It will all be digital. It's really happened in the past two years. And in 2011 more than ever before with [Arri] Alexa. We're at the 'silent to sound' transition. It's here and its real. And it's not going away. 2012 might be last year of film." MIKE BRODERSEN VP FotoKem www.fotokem.com Burbank, New York, New Orleans Fotokem is a family-owned operation in business since 1963. The company began by offering traditional film post services and has grown over the years to offer SD, HD, data and file-based post ser- vices. FotoKem's clients range from major studios to independents. Col- lectively they produce features, commercials, TV shows, music videos, and specialty projects. STRENGTHS: "I think that the understanding of digital technol- ogy has grown quite a bit. It was new. The transition happened quickly and there was a lot of confusion when it came on board, but people are starting to understand a lot better how to move media around and speak the same language, so I think that has helped quite a bit in terms of interoperability. From our standpoint, we have been able to find people and create software divisions that understand post production. Finding someone who knows software and soft- ware technology, but also understands finishing and media would have been very hard a decade ago or even five years ago. We've been able [and need] to grow teams of people that really understand