Toolbox

The Brooklyn College Barry R. Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema, the USA’s only film school to be built on a working film lot, has embraced Avid Everywhere™ to prepare the next generation of audio and video professionals. Powered by the Avid MediaCentral Platform, Avid solutions will be used for the school’s entire production and postproduction workflows, giving students the opportunity to learn and work with leading audio and video tools.

Opening in fall 2015, The Barry R. Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema is housed at Steiner Studios in Brooklyn, the largest soundstage complex on the East Coast and home to many film and TV productions. The school’s entire facility is designed around Avid Everywhere and the MediaCentral Platform, and all postproduction courses will incorporate Avid solutions, giving students and faculty the freedom to realize and elevate their creative potential, while preparing students for their future careers.

To help students, editors, directors and faculty advisors access media and learn to collaborate on media projects with teams distributed around the world, a reality of modern media creation, the school has implemented advanced media management solutions from the Avid Media Suite. Its workflow includes the Avid Interplay | Production asset management system and Avid MediaCentral | UX, a cloud-based, web front-end to the MediaCentral Platform. Together, the workflow will facilitate real-time, cloud-based collaboration between students and faculty from any location using industry-standard tools.

“Our curriculum is designed to prepare students for careers in the industry after they graduate, and experience in industry-standard Avid solutions will be a critical factor in their success,” said Jonathan Wacks, founding director and professor of the Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema. “Avid Everywhere allows us to provide students with the most current and industry-standard tools to perfect their craft. By using the same tools and workflows used in major studios, production companies and editing houses, our students will be fully prepared to hit the ground running when they graduate.”

The Feirstein school has also deployed Avid Storage Suite solutions, with Avid ISIS l 7500 shared storage systems delivering the power, reliability, and capacity needed for real-time collaborative workflows.

Students will use industry-standard creative tools from the Avid Artist Suite, including Avid Media Composer | Software for video editing, Media Composer | Cloud for remote editing and viewing, and Media Composer | Symphony Option for advanced color correction and finishing. For seamless workflows between video and audio editing, the school has deployed Avid Pro Tools for sound editing, as well as Pro Tools | S6 consoles and an S5 Fusion custom audio console with Pro Tools | HDX and Pro Tools | HD for advanced mixing and music scoring.

“Avid Everywhere enables educational institutions like the Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema to prepare students to excel in the competitive, fast-paced entertainment industry,” said Jennifer Smith, senior vice president and chief marketing officer, Avid. “Giving students valuable hands-on experience with professional tools and collaborative workflows will give Feirstein graduates the skills they need to thrive in real-world production environments.”

Telestream, a provider of video transcoding and workflow automation solutions, has expanded its sales management team to address growth for its enterprise-class video products in the EMEA and Asia Pacific regions. The company reports that overall sales of its Enterprise Products and Services in EMEA and APAC regions have grown by almost 50 percent in the last two years.

Jean-Pierre Bousquet joins Telestream as regional sales manager, enterprise products, managing sales in the ASEAN countries, plus Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. Located in Singapore, Bousquet brings over 15 years of highly relevant technical and commercial experience, having worked in the Asia region for AmberFin, Pixelmetrix and Avid.

Jean-Christophe Albou joins Telestream as regional sales manager, enterprise products, managing sales in the Southern Europe and North African region. Located in Paris, Albou has a region which includes France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece and North Africa. Albou comes to Telestream with 18 years of experience selling video technology products, including for Quantel, Sony, JVC,

Last September Telestream announced significant increase in global sales deployments for its Vantage transcoding and workflow automation systems. A slew of new products fuelled its growth in every geographic region worldwide. With a track record of posting profitable growth for the last 14 years, Telestream reported that sales of its flagship Vantage transcoding and workflow automation systems increased by more than 40 percent last year. George Boath is VP of international sales at Telestream.

As part of its investment in a refurbished Montreal facility, Technicolor has extended its FilmLight color grading capabilities with an additional Baselight system. Montreal now joins the New York, Los Angeles and London facilities that offer Baselight as part of their DI pipeline.

Montreal represents a major film and television production market, and the expansion in Baselight grading reflects the increasing demand from the industry for uncompromised, high-resolution finishing. In addition to working regularly with the international community of experienced filmmakers and producers, Technicolor Montreal supports new and emerging filmmakers on their very first productions.

Technicolor Montreal introduced its first FilmLight grading system to the facility in 2013, with the installation of Baselight equipped with the Blackboard 2 control panel, increasing both the capacity and future scope of work the post house can support.

The colorists at Technicolor Montreal attract work from the international market as well as the local Quebec industry. Head colorist of the digital intermediate division, Nico Ilies, brings an impressive portfolio; he recently completed Henri Henri and the Hollywood movie, Serena, with Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper. He just finished The Girl King, which paints a portrait of the brilliant, extravagant Kristina of Sweden.

“For Serena, I met the director and DoP in London to decide the look of the movie,” explained Ilies. “The conform had been completed in Montreal, prior to my journey to the UK, with the RED RAW files de-Bayered into DPX. Due to Baselight’s ability to work with native RAW footage and camera color spaces, I could access the original files in real-time. This was a huge advantage as it meant I was not limited to working with just the DPX files.”

Ilies just finished grading the BBC television co-production Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, a seven-part adaptation of Susanna Clarke’s novel set in the Napoleonic Wars.

“Baselight to me is the best grading system in the market,” he added. “Not only does it perform well, it allows each colorist to personalize their system, so you always feel you have a logical, intuitive, creative way of working. The OpenEXR format read natively in Baselight has also considerably improved the workflow with VFX companies and helped unify both worlds.”

Ilies’ colleague, Anne Boyle, colorist and workflow specialist, joined Technicolor recently and was integral in the set up of the overall DI workflow and Baselight integration within the Montreal facility. “The support we receive from FilmLight goes above and beyond solving technical issues,” she commented. “It’s like having access to a huge variety of industry experts, always on hand to guide and advise.” Boyle is currently working on season 2 of Helix, a US sci-fi thriller TV show distributed by Sony Productions--on SyFy and Showcase.

“It is with profound sorrow that I must share the passing of my friend and the original founder of Matthews Studio Equipment, Roy Isaia,” said MSE owner and president Ed Phillips. “On February 16, Roy lost his battle with leukemia but in keeping with his feisty personality never gave up the fight.”

Isaia pioneered so much of what is still used today by production communities all over the world. “We had a lot of fun together developing many of the tools of our trade with the industry’s best cinematographers, key grips and gaffers,” Phillips recalled. “Roy was a very clever guy and a good conversationalist with always something to say and with a great sense of humor. Most importantly, Roy was a very kind and thoughtful human being.”

Isaia climbed up the ladder in the industry the right way--with hard work and a strong sense of himself and what was needed in the production community. In the 1960s, as a young key grip and head of the sewing room at Paramount, he worked on iconic movies like The Odd Couple, Rosemary’s Baby, Barefoot in the Park and True Grit. He was simply fed up with the equipment and, one day when someone dared him to make something different, he quit Paramount and did just that.

By day he worked as a grip on commercials for Sandler Studios and FilmFair--and on his own time began creating equipment on the side. His Dots and Fingers (made for Bardwell & McAllister) got noticed by people like Bill White Sr.--and his tools began to sell in Canada to what eventually became the William F. White Company.

A relationship fostered at FilmFair with a young future cinematographer, Fuad Said, proved to be key to Isaia’s move into equipment. Said’s idea was to construct “little trucks”--customized vans. Isaia saw a problem--the interior storage was a system of pigeonholes. It was then Isaia realized that, with the right equipment, production didn’t need separate grip and electric trucks--but Universal stands, so everything could be packed into one truck.

By 1970 Isaia gave up his “day job” and formed Matthews (named after his son). He began outfitting Cinemobile Systems trucks, with construction supervised by a young man by the name of Ed Phillips. The trucks began servicing movies like The Organization and Little Big Man.

They started to build folding C-stands, and incorporating Phillips’ spring-load the folding mechanism. Phillips left Cinemobile for Matthews. “It became the place to be on Saturday,” Phillips recalled. “There would often be a couple of six packs and a group of top notch professional cinematographers, gaffers or grips fielding needs to spark our creativity.” Soon the two were consulting for cinematographers like John Alonso ASC on the Steve McQueen film Bullet and on Chinatown with Jack Nicholson.

“One of the reasons Matthews became so well-known was Roy’s enthusiasm,” said Phillips. “He didn’t wait for customers to come to him --he went to the far corners, literally, to introduce his products. With the ink still wet on the corporation’s papers, he took off to Paris to show everyone overseas what Matthews could do. Orders came pouring in.”

In the later part of 1976, Isaia sold the company to Phillips and moved on to pursue other new and challenging opportunities. But he always had a word of encouragement and insight for his “baby” Matthews Studio Equipment. That will be sorely missed.