Post-Production House Goes All Fiber in New Location

Expanding the client base of 2G Digital Post presented only one obstacle and it wasn’t an easy one to get around for company founder and President Chuck Filliettaz. After all, it’s not easy to just move the hills separating his Culver City company from the studios in the San Fernando Valley that could use services he offers. So Filliettaz took the step of opening a second facility in Burbank. The new location takes advantage of the well-wired downtown and uses a fiber network to transfer digital files of feature films and television shows. A second location also fits in with the 2G growth strategy that Filliettaz hopes one day will include offices on the East Coast and potentially in China or India. Filliettaz founded 2G Digital Post in 1993 and for the past 10 years has specialized in editing feature films for airlines and television networks, and creating masters used overseas for broadcast and home entertainment. As the biggest small player in Hollywood post-production, G2 doesn’t try to compete with the large post houses. Its decentralized model makes for a more efficient operation by eliminating expensive administrative management. While competitors can do high volume work, Filliettaz finds the work of compression, visual effects and color correction to be too delicate to do well in a high volume environment. Its size there are 55 employees also brings in small-scale visual effects work while not in the category of blockbuster status is needed in feature films and television programs. Having developed expertise in the use of graphics to obscure nudity, blood, wounds and other possibly offensive shots for post-theatrical uses, G2 has been asked by some studio clients if they could do the same for theatrical film prints. So for the Tyler Perry film “Madea Goes to Jail,” the company did 400 shots to enhance or adjust the prosthetic make up Perry wears while portraying multiple characters. “One character is supposed to have bad teeth so we add yellow and stuff to his teeth,” Filliettaz said. This type of visual effects work has picked up in the past six months making for fortunate timing for opening the Burbank facility. The location at Magnolia and Third also proved fortunate in that fiber connections that could handle the high data rate transfers were nearby. An all-fiber infrastructure allows for digital files to move around easier. The Burbank location has all the same capabilities as Culver City but is nearly half the size, the result of Filliettaz consolidating and improving on his model of being “the biggest little guy.” The company could have expanded into space next to its current location but that goes against Filliettaz’s belief that bigger is not better. “This is a better way to do it,” Filliettaz said. “It provides a level of redundancy, it gives us physical and geographical diversity and it allows us to explore different revenue lines in different locations.” Photo Collection In the nearly 18 months since Warner Bros. Studios made available prints from its photo archives, only a small percentage of what is available has been sold to the public. Once rights management issues are sorted out, Warner Bros. Photo Lab Director Greg Dyro looks to add titles to those already available. Prints made from photos taken on the sets of classic Warner gangster films of the 1930s and early Humphrey Bogart movies will join those from “Gone with the Wind,” “The Wizard of Oz,” and contemporary television series like “Friends.” Warner Bros. was already digitizing its photo archive for internal reasons when the studio opened it to collectors and fans in December 2007. Coming from a digital source, the prints are reproduced exactly the same every time, Dyro said. The photo lab has been around since the 1930s so in the case of some Warner Bros. titles, the studio itself processed the film and so the stills from those films are coming from the direct source, an important distinction to many collectors, Dyro said. The Writer’s Helper Online resource center InkTip upgraded its website to introduce new services for entertainment industry professionals. Along with maintaining an organized database of screenplays and writers, the site includes other services to make it faster and easier for actors, directors and producers to find good scripts and writers. Concierge Assistance is available to qualified members to talk with an InkTip executive at no additional charge and no percentage taken from the front or back end. InkTip, based in La Crescenta, has facilitated 144 script sales and 235 writer hires since starting in 2000. Top name actors who have used InkTip to find scripts or starred in films facilitated by the company include Jessica Biel, Vivica A. Fox, and Michael Madsen. Catalogue Purchased Osiris Entertainment Inc. added 400 titles to its catalogue with the acquisition of Westlake Entertainment LLC. Woodland Hill-based Osiris will make the films available through broadcast, DVD and digital formats as well as through its WebMovieNow.com, an online movie download and rental site. The acquisition of Westlake is key to the Osiris growth strategy and will attract new producers and titles, said founder and CEO Evan Crooke. The Quiet One’s Star This is how I justify spending an hour April 14 in front of the Capitol Records tower in Hollywood at the dedication of George Harrison’s star on the Walk of Fame: Among the celebrity guests was Tom Petty, who played with Harrison in the Traveling Wilburys. Tom Petty wrote “Free Fallin’. “Free Fallin’ is a song about the San Fernando Valley. There’s the Valley connection to an event taking place on the other side of the hills. Well, except that Ed Begley Jr. was there too. And ex-ELO front man and Traveling Wilbury Jeff Lynne, Joe Walsh, Tom Hanks, and some guy named McCartney whose presence drew the loudest cheers from the crowd of several hundred people who apparently had nothing else to do on a Tuesday morning. Staff Reporter Mark Madler can be reached at (818) 316-3126 or by e-mail at [email protected]. His third favorite George Harrison song is “Miss O’Dell.”