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www.postmagazine.com 43 POST MAY 2015 Napoleon's business acumen has allowed the company to grow and thrive for 30 years "despite the economy," Johnson notes. "Starting with the recession in 2008 there's been a disconnect between what client procurement is willing to pay and the value of the creative process. They want high-quality, global advertising on a short turnaround at drastically-slashed prices." Still, Johnson is optimistic that the next few years will see "the cost- for-services equation balance out in a more appropriate way. More spending in the digital space will offset less spending for broadcast and meet somewhere in the middle. People are starting to understand the importance of high-quality, creative storytelling no matter what the distribution method." Napoleon moved to a custom-built facility in the Flatiron District in 2013. The 14,500 square-foot space includes Vicon motion capture, a greenscreen stage, and full editorial finishing and audio suites. The company did "a monster eight-spot Web project" for Procter & Gamble's Dreft recently, which tapped Napoleon's "concept-to-air" capabilities. "We worked start to finish, lining up the director, doing the storyboards, casting, live-action production, the greenscreen product shoot for print, and all the editorial and post audio," says Johnson. Napoleon also did 2D and 3D animation for a short online film for Con Edison about the importance of restoring power after a storm. The "Pixar-esque" short generated such a positive response that Napoleon was asked to adapt the animation for the utility's affiliate in Orange and Rockland counties in New York, plus PSE&G in NJ, PSEG Long Island, Entergy, and NB Power and Toronto Hydro in Canada. "Since then we've developed other short films for them on energy efficiency, billing and safety," says Johnson. Most recently, Napoleon produced two shorts that combine live ac- tion and 3D animation for One World Explorer Productions in New York, one of which is featured on the One World Observatory Website and the other in a point-of-purchase kiosk at the top of the new One World Trade Center, which opens on Memorial Day. "The quality of work coming out of New York will always be superior," says Johnson. "The cachet of New York attracts creative people from around the world; talent flocks here. I'd just like to see the legislature write a post tax incentive for advertising, too!" TECHNICOLOR-POSTWORKS NY COMPLETES SINATRA & JOBS DOCS NEW YORK — Technicolor-PostWorks NY (www.postworks.com) has continued its eight-year collaboration with Alex Gibney and Jigsaw New York by contributing to two documentaries for HBO and CNN. The studio recently provided final mastering services for Sinatra: All or Nothing at All and Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, which will debut on HBO and CNN, respectively. Editorial conforming and final color grading for both projects was performed by a small team of artists and technicians working under the direction of Techni- color-PostWorks VP/creative services Ben Murray, who worked in close collabora- tion with Gibney's production team and editors from Jigsaw, New York. The same line-up has worked together on a more than a half dozen previous documentaries, including Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief. "We have an all-Avid workflow that we have honed with Jigsaw and the Gibney team, and it works very well," says Murray, whose team included colorist Jack Lew- ars and finishing editor Allie Ames for Sinatra, and Lewars and finishing editor Jeff Cornell for Jobs. HBO's Sinatra: All or Nothing at All is a four-hour mini-series about the late sing- er, produced with the authorization of his estate. It tells the story of Sinatra's life and career leading up to his famous 1971 "retirement concert" in Los Angeles. The documentary is composed almost entirely from archival material, with recordings of Sinatra himself providing the narrative thread. Jigsaw prepared a conformed version of the documentary in-house before passing it on to Technicolor-PostWorks for final editorial adjustment and color grading. Murray's team handled clean-up, formatting, titling, opticals and effects, including camera moves on still images. "We also received a significant amount of PAL and NTSC footage that we need- ed to make look as good as possible," adds finishing editor Allie Ames. Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine is a two-hour documentary that looks at the life and work of Steve Jobs. It screened at the South by Southwest Film Festival in advance of its TV premiere on CNN. Jobs was edited for Jigsaw by Michael J. Palmer and produced for Jigsaw by Viva Van Loock. As Jobs was born 40 years later than Sinatra, archival material docu- menting his life is of more recent vintage and derives from more modern types of sources, so fewer items needed significant post processing. Additionally, the Jobs documentary includes new interviews with people who knew and worked with him. All that made for a different finishing process. One notable difference involved color grading. Whereas Sinatra, with its mix of black & white and color material, was given a naturalistic grade, Jobs has a more stylized look, particularly in its archival segments. "We colored it in a very electronic way," recalls colorist Jack Lewars. "The colors are almost hyper-saturated, especially the blues. On computer screens, the blues are almost bleeding out of their boundaries." Lewars says the unusual color treatment has a narrative purpose and is meant to subtly underscore Jobs' personality and the digital revolution that he helped bring about. "It feels like a throwback," Lewars says. "While we are describing someone who modernized the world, he's presented in a very low-fi setting. The contrast works really well." Napoleon Group's Paul Johnson (right), and the studio's 2D/3D animation for PSE&G (below). Jobs Sinatra NEW YORK POST HOUSES