PARTICIPANTS
ETHEL RUBINSTEIN, president Blue Rock Editing Company, New York
MINOUCHE KOOL, managing director, Condor Post Production, London
DAVE KOZA, editor/partner, MacKenzie Cutler, New York
LINDA CARLSON, president/executive producer,
Rock Paper Scissors/A52, LA
RICK HASSEN, managing director, Rock Paper Scissors/A52, LA

Boards: It's a crowded market and, compared to a few years ago, dollars are hard to come by. In terms of marketing yourselves, do you focus on branding your editors and artists, or branding the company?

RUBINSTEIN: The answer is both. There is no doubt that a name editor associated with quality and creativity draws people in. Your reel is your brand and everything else you do adds or subtracts from that. But people identify and remember the individual editors in a company.

HASSEN: Editors who have names continue to draw clients but it's also the service and environment. We don't formally brand individual editors; we sell the company because we view ourselves as a group coming together to service a client's needs.

KOOL: I brand the company name more than my visual effects or telecine guys because as soon as they get big they get poached. So always sell the reel. I hardly ever give out individual reels.

Boards: How does the movement of talent, and in particular the poaching of talent, affect your company?

CARLSON: People call all the time to approach editors, fortunately I married one so he won't leave me. I made a code for myself: when I hear about an editor or get called by an editor that wants to leave, I call the executive producer of the other company and let them know their editor is looking and ask if it's okay to approach them.

RUBINSTEIN: We pride ourselves on not only making the clients happy but making sure that our editors are content. We work hard to get the work they want to do and make sure there's the right environment and support for them.

HASSEN: There are times when people need to move on, often to start their own company. The other part is continuing to develop new talent. It's a cyclical, evolutionary process where people move on and others move up. It's an organic system.

KOOL: London is a completely different market. We all try to create the best environment possible for our guys, but they move continuously. It always happens around spring and just now. They all move from Framestore, to me, to the Mill, back to Framestore. I agree that people have to go for their personal development. Unfortunately lots of people here go for the money. I think that's a bit sad, but that's very much London.

Boards: There's been talk of runaway production here in the US, and we're living in what's been dubbed a global economy - are you seeing more or fewer boards from outside your home city?

CARLSON (LA): We have been bidding jobs from out of town - a few of which have actually been awarded and agencies have flown here. We've been asked if we have New York counterparts or if we could fly our editors there, but for the most part if they're thinking of finishing in New York, they'd rather edit there.

RUBINSTEIN (NY): My strong sense is that New York agencies are doing much more post in New York. Agency people don't want to travel and clients don't want to pay for it. We have a couple of LA editors that we represent and they've spent most of the year working here.

KOZA (NY): Things have been pretty much the same for us working with the New York agencies. Sometimes we'll have an agency come to town to work with us, or if the job warrants it we can certainly travel to work in LA or wherever.

KOOL (London): We're actually working on a commercial at the moment for a New York client. In London, the industry is very much director-led. If an agency decides to work with a director from London, they come over and do the post here.

Boards: How do you feel about the industry's economic outlook for the coming year?

CARLSON: Because of the times and the economic crunch that we've all been under, production and post companies and agencies have begun to rely on each other to get work done. The partnerships we've formed this year have kept us going because the volume has made up for the lack of larger budgets.

KOZA: Through this economic downturn we've managed to stay pretty busy but it has been harder to get the best quality boards. Linda's right, you have to be resourceful to work within budgets and be as responsible as possible.

KOOL: It was tough a year. One of the biggest advertisers in the world just told me 30% less commercials are going to be made this year. Lots of production companies have gone out of business and that's a sad sign. I agree with what was said earlier, I think the relationships you form now with agencies and production companies are there to stay because they're solid and built on trust.

RUBINSTEIN: The mood in New York has definitely picked up. Over the summer we saw larger packages of four or five commercials. I think there's been a shake out. People who are going to thrive and survive are doing it.

Boards: What new technology do you expect to affect your business in the coming years?

HASSEN: You're looking at smaller systems working inside a bigger network. Systems of half a million dollars each can't be supported by the economics right now. We're going to see improvements in the technology we already have such as Discreet, and Apple is being very aggressive with Final Cut Pro. We'll see delivery via Internet finally and a lot more remote-type systems like Beam.TV and certainly Telestream.

RUBINSTEIN: Sometimes it's as important to wait and see as it is to be out front. Within the next year or two reels will be distributed exclusively on DVD. The other question is whether HDTV will emerge as a mainstream technology. If it does, how do we deal with that? Do we edit everything twice? How do we finance all the necessary equipment? We just don't know.

KOOL: Networking is extremely important at the moment. Especially for us because we have companies all over Europe. Telestream and real-time transfer of MPEG2 images are going to be our future. In a few years, this will give clients the opportunity to stay in Amsterdam and work in real time with one of my operators here.

Boards: In terms of new markets to explore and new services to offer clients, where do you see the business evolving?

RUBINSTEIN: You have to be multifunctional to stay competitive. We've been doing finishing and sound design but we're called upon more and more to not only get involved with directors, but also with agencies. We're going to see more involvement early on, coming up with and supporting creative ideas.

KOZA: That's a good assessment. It's good for us to take a leading role in the way the spot is handled. We mainly do commercials but we want to keep open to whatever changes come along, maybe DVDs or short films that have to do with the product. Maybe there will be a more efficient way of getting dailies in the future. (Laughter from the others.)

KOOL: In London, you work very closely with agencies - always. Maybe in the states that's different. What we try to offer them more now is Telestream: pictures at their desktops whenever they want them. The people we work with from New York, we send their clients little movies every day. That's the thing we are improving.

CARLSON: Many times editors are on set, working on laptops, traveling around the country, trying to remove any barriers from the past. We have tried to change it to: how can we do it better? How can we be there quicker? How can we be there for you? We've torn the walls down and we're able to be anywhere we need to be, which is truly how the agencies and the production companies need us to function.