Feed The Walrus co-founders Adam Jenkins and Jeff Stevens.

While the economic upheaval of the last 18 months has proved dire for some, it’s provided opportunities for others, like the founders of upstart New York-based post-production collective Feed The Walrus.

Launched by veteran editors and long-time friends Jeff Stevens and Adam Jenkins, the collective aims to take advantage of the advances in cheap, mobile post-production technology and agency cutbacks, which have left in-house agency post-production facilities unmanned.

Feed The Walrus essentially works as a talent agency, parachuting a hand-picked selection of top editors, producers, assistants and graphics personnel into agencies and client offices to fill a variety of roles: from an assistant all the way up to the whole four-wall, post-production nine yards.

Why set up Feed The Walrus?
Jeff Stevens: In the last year and a half we started to see some trends happening that were facing post-production. We were wondering: if we created a small shift in the way things are done, wouldn’t this answer a lot of what we’re hearing our clients say, their concerns, and how they’re going about doing business in the new advertising landscape: being cost conscious, calendar conscious and all this crazy stuff?

What trends and concerns have you seen and heard?
JS: Budgets, number one, have been slashed quite a bit. Agencies had to make changes quickly, and the post world was seemingly slow to adapt to this new way that things were being done.

The other trend was technological. It no longer costs $100,000 to have an edit suite. A lot of agencies have in-house editorial and a lot of graphics companies have in-house editorials. A lot of people started stepping into each other’s worlds. But there was also this perception of people having these machines, but also this huge talent gap. That was what we realized: there’s a lot of great talent out there, producers, assistants, graphics guys that we know, have worked with and are amazing. We can be a little more flexible, smarter and leaner than most companies.

Smarter and leaner in what way?
Adam Jenkins: We’re leaner in that we’re a virtual space, so we don’t have the massive overheads that some of these places have taken on or are burdened with. We’ve stripped it right back.

Have we moved on to where you don’t need the big, plush edit suites any more?

JS: There’s definitely a need for it, and there’s always going to be high-end edit facilities with their great spaces. There may not be as many in a year, I mean there are obviously lots of companies that are now merging, that’s the survival mentality kicking in. The industry may not have as many editorial boutiques as it did two years ago. But over the last five to seven years people now have their own technology. Editors now have Final Cut Pro at home, or Avid; it’s not cost prohibitive any more. For agencies to be in a stranglehold as they are by their clients, with this equipment sitting there, having editorials and what not, fighting to have people in... we’re just saying we know you have it, and we think you should be using it with the right people. We’re the right people. Q

www.feedthewalrus.com