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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Byte-Sized Revolution

David Dobson works out of the garage of his Burbank home but he is not a mechanic. Instead, Dobson spends his time in the cinderblock-walled room with a black and white cat – and in front of four widescreen monitors. That’s where Dobson creates title graphics as a freelance video editor, and has worked on such shows as “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve,” the “American Music Awards” and the “Golden Globes.” Welcome to the new world of post production. But he’s far from the only post pro holed up at home. A producer Dobson knows in Studio City carved out three edit bays in a garage. What’s more, he generally collaborates with others in the process via file transfers online. “We do not have to meet or exchange anything physical,” he said. “You just need a high-speed connection.” Dobson, 50, can work like this because of a revolution in the post production side of the entertainment industry – as digital files are used to create and manipulate television shows, feature films, commercial, videos and short form content made exclusively for the Internet. In short, just about anything produced these days. Indeed, the digital revolution has leveled the playing field for freelancers such as Dobson, as well as smaller post-production houses. They have updated to portable, less expensive equipment run by sophisticated software that costs just a few thousand dollars. Editing, color correction, sound design and mixing are no longer the domain of major Hollywood studios and large production companies. In the San Fernando Valley, much of the post-production work is done in and around Burbank, Studio City and North Hollywood. These areas are in close proximity to the major studios such as Warner Bros. Studios and Walt Disney Co., which also have been swept up in the digital post-production revolution. That’s not to say all of the advancements that digital files and workflow promised have arrived. The portability of digital post-production equipment means that it is entering the creative process earlier. Cloud computing and ultra-high definition cameras, monitors and television sets will bring additional changes to the industry. All this takes place in a competitive environment where post houses are squeezed to deliver services more cheaply while also investing in the required up-to-date equipment. “They have to be on top of their company and on top of management to make sure they have a good balance of new equipment and just being ahead of the market,” said Marty Shindler, principal of Encino entertainment industry consultancy Shindler Perspective. Cutting film The traditional method of post-production was a time-consuming and arduous process. It involved cutting and splicing film on a Moviola, a device that dates back to the 1920s; color correction to give the film a unified tone or look; and adding of visual and special effects, sometimes shot on a green screen. Music, sound effects, additional dialogue recorded on tape loops and background or ambient noises – also called Foley effects after its creator Jack Donovan Foley – are mixed on audio equipment and synchronized with the picture. Digital video editing equipment made its first appearance in the early 1970s but did not gain wider acceptance until the 1990s with the release of the groundbreaking Media Composer software from Burlington, Mass. company Avid Technology Inc. and its main competitor, Final Cut Pro, from Apple Inc. Today, the digital revolution has made the film splicer and Moviola antiques, replacing them with computers using software for so-called “non-linear” editing – a process in which the source material is never physically altered and instead copies are made of digital or audio files during editing. Most films today are shot on digital cameras, but even for those directors who continue to shoot in 35 mm film – Steven Spielberg among the most prominent – the film is converted into a digital file for edits and improvements. The final version can be converted back to film, but most final products stay digital since major theater chain have converted to digital projection. Andromeda Studios, a small independent production company, has invested about $12,000 in post equipment and software over the past few years. At its space in a Van Nuys industrial park, the company uses a variety of software to handle projects ranging from short film “Another Round,” a commercial for the Motoguzzi V7 racer to a special with stand-up comedian Mike Marino. The company’s arsenal includes Apple Macs with Final Cut Studio 3 by Apple, Avid software, Smoke from Autodesk Inc. and the Adobe Systems Inc. editing suite software, said Derek Nickell, the executive producer at Andromeda. This software efficiently combines images shot directly on digital files and sound. Final Cut Studio 3, for example, contains programs for editing video; audio editing and sound design; color grading; and encoding the digital files into different formats. Digital post-production is a more collaborative process as files can be easily shared. “With some systems you are ready to edit footage when it comes out of the camera,” Nickell said. “You plug into the software and can go from production to post-production in 15 minutes.” Studio upgrades Mike Cavanagh, of KeyCode Media, a Burbank post equipment supplier, said the digital revolution has completely upended his side of the business too. Components the company used to sell in the millions of dollars have all but disappeared. There was a time when receiving a $1 million-plus order for Sony videotape playback machines was not unusual at KeyCode. “That is now a complete rarity,” he said. Now, KeyCode deals with the two biggest names in video editing hardware and software, Avid and Adobe. The company also distributes Sony, Panasonic, Autodesk and other brands. And like other forms of software, each new generation not only makes for more powerful creative tools but the cost has gone down as well. Apple kept dropping the price of Final Cut to the point that KeyCode stopped selling it, given how it could be bought off the shelf at many stores. Consider this: 10 years ago, an Avid Media Composer system could cost upward of $90,000. That price is now down to $7,000, said Cavanagh, who also reports decreasing data storage costs. The Sony XDCAM disc, for example, costs about $40 and proved popular with storing content for unscripted reality shows just a few years back. Now, linear tape-open, a magnetic data storage tape format used for backup, comes with the same $40 price tag – but it can store the equivalent of 30 XDCAM discs. “The challenge is that now there is acquisition of more amounts of media and so storage requirements are different,” Cavanagh said. “Those are the growth opportunities in terms of services and products.” Indeed, it’s the falling prices of digital equipment, whether for cameras or the computers and software for editing, audio and visual effects that have made it easier for a small production company or a freelancer to provide post services. When Dobson started in the industry in the early 1990s, he had to rent an edit bay at one of the large post houses. He now skips that expense by working at his home, or even from a coffeehouse with a Wi-fi connection. Nickell traveled the world with motivational speaker Tony Robbins, shooting footage with a DSLR camera and then editing, putting in effects and color correcting on a laptop. “It is something that I can travel with in a shoulder bag,” he said. But it’s not only the independents and small production houses that have benefited. For 20 years, Warner Bros. Studios has used digital audio workstation Pro Tools, made by Avid, for re-recording, dialogue replacement and other tasks in post-production sound. The studio upgrades the main software every two years and adds plug-ins, a component that adds a specific feature, nearly every week, said Kim Waugh, senior vice president of post-production services. “It is a technology chase but the changes are worth the investment,” he said. Waugh said both studio employees and outside professionals use the studio’s post facilities and digital technology improves the collaborative creative environment – both for young professionals and veterans. “This creates an innovative generation of individuals in sound work and legacy individuals who have embraced the new technology,” Waugh said. Editing on set The flipside to all this high-tech but low-cost portable equipment is it creates a lot of competition. Nickell and Dobson have found themselves underbid by rivals who they feel don’t necessarily deliver the same quality. Prior to the recession, Dobson had worked on DVD extras for the home entertainment division of Sony Pictures. When that worked dried up, he had to find replacement jobs but it was hard as a freelancer because of the cheaper competition. “Things cost less and less to do and they started paying us less and less to do it,” he said. And staying current with the constant change brought on by digitization is not easy but it’s necessary to stay competitive. “It’s a lot of research and keeping up with the latest and greatest from the major manufacturers,” Nickell said. At meetings of industry professionals, such as the Los Angeles Post Production Group, there are presentations from the software and hardware developers and discussions about best practices, said Woody Woodhall, the founder of the group and owner of an audio post-production facility in Santa Monica. “We are always looking at workflow,” Woodhall said. “When (content) is on a chip it is how do we (copy) the chip, back it up, store it, get it from the camera to editing to color mastering.” There seems to be agreement among industry professionals on the direction post-production is heading. For one, the work is being done earlier in the creative process, a reflection of the availability of portable, inexpensive equipment that can be brought on location or to a studio set. Fading are the days of shooting on film and finishing up the post work in an edit bay, said Michael Kadenacy, chief executive of My Eye Media, a Burbank technical services and post-production firm. “Now we’ve got technicians doing rough edits on set and reviewing dailies on an iPad,” Kadenacy said. “By the time we get it into a facility, it has already been pushed pretty far down the process.” Getting involved earlier makes for a smooth and collaborative production that is vital in an industry with compressed time lines for feature films and TV shows, said Shindler, the Encino consultant. “If people from post production are not involved from day one in the planning process it will potentially cause hiccups when the going gets tough,” he said. However, with the arrival of cloud computing, which allows storing of content on huge servers that can be accessed anywhere in the world, the local post-production industry fears cheaper worldwide competition. The door has opened, said Cavanagh, to having post production now done domestically to shift to countries with lower pay structures. This dynamic has already devastated domestic special effects houses, sending groundbreaking Rhythm & Hues Studios into bankruptcy this year. “In three to five years I could see it happening,” he warned of outsourcing.

Mark Madler
Mark Madler
Mark R. Madler covers aviation & aerospace, manufacturing, technology, automotive & transportation, media & entertainment and the Antelope Valley. He joined the company in February 2006. Madler previously worked as a reporter for the Burbank Leader. Before that, he was a reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago and several daily newspapers in the suburban Chicago area. He has a bachelor’s of science degree in journalism from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

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