"2000 was HD year for Optimus," says company president Tom Duff. "We made a commitment a few years ago and this is the year we went into doing full HD projects." The company worked on roughly a dozen HD projects over the year, including its first major foray in the format, a ten-minute video for Anheuser-Busch that the brewco debuted at the Super Bowl and which traveled the Bud sports event circuit. The project was followed by several cinema spots, including an American Cancer Society effort out of DDB Chicago and a Nintendo spot for the Zelda's Mask game out of Leo Burnett, for which Optimus completed different standard and high-definition versions as well as a two-minute Web video.

Looking ahead, Duff explains: "We're changing into more of a creative services shop rather than a strict post facility." The company is exploring the interactive realm, with Dan Brown acting as manager of interactive media. "As we look into the future, we're also looking at how interactivity is going to become more a component of the whole company itself, allowing more seamless creative processes," he says, including the current capacity for editors to share work with clients on the Web. Optimus has also explored initiatives in the digital archiving area, commencing with a project for McDonald's for which the company archived over 1,500 commercials dating back to the 1960s as a Web-based creative research tool for McDonald's agencies around the world. "It's an area of expertise we can isolate on for a lot of companies that are already our clients," says Duff.

Duff says while the company held HD sessions for clients through 2000, the shop will now focus on imparting to agencies not only the HD capabilities, but the full creative services angle, and the numerous output options available with the shop's configuration and its gear, including the Spirit Datacine.

Optimus editor and partner Randy Palmer, who has worked on the shop's multi-format initiatives, including editing the Anheuser-Busch HD video, says the company is aiming at a fully open system in which all media is accessible to all editors. "With that we'll implement a server through the rest of the facility to send things back and forth -- whether it's through audio or online, so everyone can access information." Palmer says it will likely be late summer when that plan is realized. In the meantime, Palmer is busying himself with numerous editing projects, including a trio of spots for Gatorade directed by Zak Snyder out of HSI and the national Verizon account out of Chicago's Burrell Communications directed by Errol Morris out of @radical.media. Palmer also recently worked with Breck Eisner out of Palomar Pictures as well as with Palomar's Neil Abramson for McDonald's.