American Cinematographer - February 2008 - (Page 67) benefit of tying everything back to the machine room is that menial tasks can be carried out there, rather than taking up clients’ time in the bays. “Space is the premium, and we’ve found that we can be bigger than we appear by being able to run systems simultaneously in the machine room,” he says. “Because we mostly do finishing work, we’re somewhat at the mercy of the editing system the clients started with,” he continues. “Some of those systems have proprietary storage that we’ve traditionally been stuck with. For example, we have a Unity for the Avids, and the Final Cuts have Xserve RAIDs. It is shared storage within a given family of systems, and we can certainly pass media from any one system to another, but ultimately, we want to integrate everything into one mass store that everybody can pull from simultaneously.” Mindful of the shifting trends in the post arena, Brown emphasizes the flexibility inherent in West Post’s layout, even down to the pre-harnessed shelf space within the machine room. “We can rent any equipment we don’t currently own, plug it in and go. There’s also room to expand and add more racks. There isn’t a prescribed path you take through post anymore; there are so many different acquisition formats, editing and effects formats, deliverable formats, frame rates and resolutions — it’s a huge puzzle.” Umberger adds, “Part of our job is educating clients about which path best suits their needs. We’re one of the places where people can bring their strangely shot and nonstandard workflows, and we’ll take the time to figure them out.” “Our clients’ best interest is our best interest,” adds Brown. “We encourage them to come to us before budgeting, before deciding what camera to shoot with, so we can help them figure out a workflow that will make sense down the line.” Leading AC into his office, which doubles as the hub of Elicit, Umberger underscores Brown’s point: “When we’re there from the beginning, we can really take ownership with the client, S TAT E - O F - T H E - A R T T E C H N O L O G Y M A D E S I M P L E NOW WORKING IN FIVE COUNTRIES WORLDWIDE . . . AND GROWING T H E N E X T S T E P I N T H E E V O L U T I O N OF THE CAMERA JIB TELESCOPIC LLC www.telescopicjib.com . 818.917.5677 . 661.510.7150 67 http://stwo-corp.com http://stwo-corp.com http://www.telescopicjib.com http://www.telescopicjib.com
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