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POST MAY 2015

AVENGERS ASSEMBLED

CREATING VFX FOR THE SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER

PLUS: NAB POST PICKS

PRIMETIME: MAD MEN

FOCUS ON CAMERAS

NEW YORK STUDIOS

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www.postmagazine.com40 POST MAY 2015

ew York has played a key role in the film industry since the dawn of

motion pictures. With moving image pioneer Thomas Edison across the river in New Jer-sey and early studios and distributors setting up shop in New York City, business thrived. Until a little town across the country with year-round sunny skies and endless open space launched an exodus to Hollywood.

In subsequent years, the film industry ebbed and flowed in New York. But the fledgling TV business took hold in post-war New York and remained strong for decades. Madison Avenue has long ruled advertising, making the city the country’s unrivaled commercial production center.

The last decade has witnessed a resur-gence in film and TV production in the city thanks to generous tax incentives. Films and television series have returned to the unique locations, robust industry infrastructure and deep talent pool. Post is on the upswing, too. Here, Post speaks with some of the city’s top studios.

THE POST NEW YORK ALLIANCE LOBBIES FOR POST TAX INCENTIVESThe Post New York Alliance, Inc. (PNYA)

(www.postnewyork.org) was formed by 13 post houses and Local 700, IATSE Ed-itors in December 2009 for the purpose of lobbying the statehouse to pass a post-only tax incentive for film and tele-vision. “We’d all seen the benefits from the production tax incentive of 2004,” says Yana Collins Lehman, co-chair of PNYA. Local 700 eastern executive director “Paul Moore had lobbied alone for a post credit years before we formed. Then PNYA came together to encourage the legislature to introduce the first of

its kind post-only tax credit: no matter where a project was shot, there would be an incentive to finish it here.”

PNYA was successful, and a 10 per-cent Empire State Post Production Credit debuted in 2010. “We quickly realized that wasn’t going to cut it, so we lobbied for an increase to 30 percent, with an additional five percent credit for upstate New York. And that passed in 2013,” Lehman says.

The fully-refundable tax credit applies to projects that spend 75 percent of their

The Post New York Alliance's (L-R) Clark Henderson (Technicolor-PostWorks NY), Jennifer Lane, Yana Collins Lehman and Zak Tucker (Harbor Picture Company).

NBY CHRISTINE BUNISH

Post for Movies and TV Benefits from Tax Incentives; Spot Post Remains Strong Through Advertising Transition

New York Post Market- On The Upswing

Napoleon Group has been a factor in New York's advertising scene since '85, when it was known for previs.

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www.postmagazine.com 41POSTMAY 2015

post production costs in New York. Almost all costs qualify for the credit: editing, post audio, music recording, VFX, titles and lab finishing.

PNYA now counts 50 companies, 300 post professionals and one more union (AFM Local 802) among its members. The collegial group hosts bi-monthly "Post Intelligence Gatherings" to share info on work coming to New York. “We all rise and fall together,” says Lehman about the collaborative nature of the organization.

A significant amount of time also is dedicat-ed to educating the workforce of tomorrow via helping to develop school curricula, offering professional internships, making financial do-nations to educational programs and creating informational podcasts. “People tend to know about jobs in production, but not know about all the jobs in post production,” notes Lehman.

And the post marketplace is “growing mas-sively,” she reports. “We didn’t anticipate how much TV would take advantage of the post tax credit. Eighty-seven pilots shot here last year and many remained to post.”

Post houses are opening in New York or expanding their existing facilities. “Post Facto-ry is now leasing an entire building in TriBeCa,” Lehman says. “Harbor Picture Company is about to open a big mix stage that New York has long needed. The music scoring company Fall On Your Sword has opened in Brooklyn.” Other power-houses include Phosphene; Mr. X Inc., which has offices in Toronto and New York; and Buffa-lo-based Empire Visual Effects, which has ties to the academic program at Daemen College.

“It’s a very vibrant, diverse, artistic communi-ty,” says Lehman. “We haven’t created an indus-try here, we’ve expanded it. Film commissions from other states call us and ask how we did it.”

FILM AND TV POST GET INCENTIVIZEDFilm and television in New York “isn’t going to slow down any time soon,” observes Rob Mor-lano, senior vice president of post production at Prime Focus Technologies (www.primefo-custechnologies.com) in New York. Headquar-tered in Mumbai, India, PFT has offices in LA, London, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Toronto

and, of course, New York.“With the tax incentives, we’ve seen a big

increase in scripted shows, but a ton of reality content doesn’t qualify for incentives,” he notes. “That’s a shame — it could really help them because their budgets aren’t growing with the demand for new technology.”

Still, Morlano cites the large number of script-ed pilots in town and the new deal between Dis-ney-Marvel and Netflix for four live-action series based in New York. “Shows used to shoot here then go back to LA, but now they’re staying for post and keeping everyone busy.”

Brooklyn-based post and finishing house WorleyWorks (www.worleyworks.com) believes the post tax incentives have “created a lot of energy” in town. Minah Worley, who co-owns the facility with husband Greg, says, “Boutique companies like ours have really seen a differ-ence in the quality of work coming through. Filmmakers from LA, London and even Korea are interested in the incentives — places that have strong post markets of their own. It’s a really good time to be in business here.”

WorleyWorks caters to indie features and feature-length documentaries. It grew into the post business in 2014 after offering motion capture and stereoscopic 3D services. “Direc-tor Ang Lee wanted to do a project requiring 60fps 4K stereo and nobody was placed to do that in LA or New York,” says WorleyWorks’ director of post production, Jack Reynolds. “Greg had some solutions, so Ang Lee became our first post client.”

The company recently performed the DI for the new feature doc, Song of Lahore, codi-rected by Academy Award-winner Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy. WorleyWorks also donated its motion-capture system to the filmmaker for her next project, Pakistan’s first animated feature.

To meet the demand for 4K finishing, Wor-leyWorks has invested in the city’s first Mistika color correction system, Barco 4K projector and Canon 4K monitor for its DI theater. “Everyone is interested in finishing in 4K or higher for longev-ity, if nothing else,” Reynolds notes. “Amazon is talking about requiring 6K finishing.”

FUSEFX COMPLETES WORK ON THE BLACKLIST & POWERSNEW YORK — FuseFX New York (www.fusefx.com) recently wrapped up work on The Blacklist and Powers, both for Sony Pictures Television. The studio is a satel-lite of FuseFX, Burbank, and launched last fall, initially with a staff of six, but has since grown to a team of 27.

FuseFX produced a wide range of VFX for the two shows, which included 22 episodes for The Blacklist and 10 for Powers. Creative demands for the two series were markedly different. For The Blacklist, in which James Spader plays a former fugitive now assisting the FBI, the work was primarily supporting VFX and included a lot of pyrotechnics — enhancing gun battles, explosions and the like. The effects team also produced numerous matte paintings and set extensions to support the exot-

ic, international locations where the show takes place.Powers, in contrast, features a cast with super hero

abilities. The effects work here had a more fantastical bent, with FuseFX called on to create everything from super power simulations to full CG characters. Each episode featured hundreds of effects shots.

“The work was interesting because the shows were so very different,” recalls VFX supervisor Greg Ander-son. “The Blacklist had a tight schedule and we had to get into a rhythm very quickly. With Powers, there were only 10 episodes, but they involved highly-com-plex CG effects.”

FuseFX employs a proprietary pipeline capable of servicing 30 or more productions simultaneously. Anderson says the New York facility is optimistic about landing more television projects, thanks to the state’s generous state tax incentives. They are also looking at the area’s burgeoning independent film community, as well as at commercials requiring major VFX components.

Rob Morlano (left) says Prime Focus could benefit from tax incentives for reality TV, such as Too Cute (shown).

FuseFX enhanced explosions for NBC's The Blacklist.

Powers required digital characters and super power VFX.

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“We believe in futureproofing,” says Worley. “We can do high frame rates and even 8K.”

Morlano likens the transition to 4K to the industry’s migration from SD to HD and says PFT is “already ahead of the curve with expanded 4K post and finishing.” The company recently finished its first 4K reality series: four parts of Animal Planet’s Too Cute franchise. The company worked closely with the client and equipment vendors to create a 4K workflow that best suited the project.

“True Entertainment cut the shows on Avid and brought them to us for the 4K conform and color correction in Resolve,” says Morlano. “We went to Blackmagic Design for some proprietary patches for Resolve; we also worked with Adobe Pre-miere — it was the only system capable of handling Discovery Networks’ specific 4K codec. It was exciting to figure out.”

WorleyWorks has had inquiries about virtual reality, “from a narrative story-telling standpoint,” says Reynolds, but there’s been no direct VR work yet. Stereo 3D projects, though, have come to a standstill. “We had two projects last year that cancelled, but there’s not even a sniff this year,” he reports.

Morlano believes that PFT is well positioned to become “one of the big players” on the New York post scene. It’s his job to ensure that PFT has “a bigger

presence in New York,” and to support its growth, the company had made addi-tional executive hires: Tris Baer as vice president of business solutions and Rick Crosta as vice president of sales.

“After we get post humming we want to integrate CLEAR, our Hybrid Cloud-enabled Media ERP Suite and cloud media services, including Dax, our production workflow application and digital dailies service, into the facility,” says Morlano. “Eighty percent of scripted content in the US is delivered by Dax to networks; we could [increase] that if real-ity programming also took advantage.”

WorleyWorks defines itself “as very niche” market and plans “to remain small,” says Reynolds. The company also offers creative production packages to filmmakers and has an inventory of Sony F55 cameras, Steadicams, Cooke and Fujinon lenses, and lights.

“We’re buying a pair of Arri Alexas,” says Worley. "We also have Briese and Arri flicker-free lights for high frame rates. We want to outfit filmmakers with the best technology for the highest quality production and post. New York’s produc-tion and post tax incentives both apply to us, so it’s a real win-win situation.”

COMMERCIAL POST EVOLVES ON MADISON AVENUECommercial advertising does not qualify

for New York post tax incentives so stu-dios specializing in the spot market hav-en’t experienced the boom that facilities catering to film and television have seen.

The 21st century ad business is healthy but changing. Traditional :30 broadcast spots still play a central role in many ad campaigns, but marketers are also cre-ating online spots, messages for social media and longer-form online content. There’s a shift of budgets, too, as ad platforms broaden. This isn’t exclusive to New York: It’s happening nationwide.

In the transition from broadcast to digital, commercial post houses are seeing a wider scope of clients than just ad agencies: PR and branding compa-nies, small marketers direct and even production companies tasked with doing turnkey projects.

To facilitate efficiency and possibly cut costs across all platforms some of these clients seek post houses with under-one-roof services, either from a single company or a collective of specialist partners. They’re looking for more bang for the buck: Campaigns may start with a :30 broadcast spot then add social media pieces, a behind-the-scenes film, and maybe longer-form content that resides on a Website. From this “360” perspective, one shoot yields a host of deliverables.

Napoleon Group (www.napo leongroup.com) has been a factor on New York’s advertising scene since 1985, when it was known for its previs work. “We were a formidable force in previs for high-end test commercials,” says director of business development, Paul Johnson. “Then clients began coming to us with other problems to solve. We grew our services and pipeline, and now we have a turnkey facility with all the bells and whistles. But we’re the only post house in New York with an in-house art studio; character development and storyboard-ing are in our DNA.”

Brooklyn-based audio post studio Fall On Your Sword (www.fallonyoursword.com) recently opened a new 700-square-foot mix room it calls “The Foundry.” The Dolby-certified studio can handle 5.1 and 7.1 projects, and is based around Avid’s Pro Tools 11 HD and an S6 M40 control surface. Since opening, the room has been used to mix Queen of Earth; It's Me, Hilary; Contra; Muckland; and Bodies at War.

Greg and Minah Worley say they've seen a difference in the quality of work coming through their Brooklyn-based studio, Worleyworks, thanks to tax incentives.

NEW YORK POST HOUSES

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