Our editors primarily cut on the latest version Final Cut systems, have a minimum of five years experience with this technology, and are gifted storytellers. You can choose to have us cut at your premises on our mobile equipment or your own systems, in which case we add travel time, mileage and expenses incurred to each day's bill and have a minimum charge of six hours. However, it is much more time and cost efficient for us to work here at our studios, after an initial briefing meeting with you, and then bring updates back to you for notes and direction.   < less

We run four very powerful in-house edit systems. Each system uses a MacPro 8 Core computer, loaded with at least 12 Gig RAM, with HD-SDI digital broadcast video card input and output, audio capabilities and an external sound mixer and speakers, multiple Apple Cinema displays, and a minimum of 8 Tb of fast RAID drive array storage. To this we add the latest version of Final Cut Studio complete with a whole bunch of plug-in effects, in-timeline color correction using Synthetic Aperture Color Finesse software, as well as ProTools audio software, Adobe graphics production software, RED correction and encoding software, and a host of other suites. We can also equip any system with Avid Media Composer should you prefer. < less

We create graphics and 3D animation sequences, along with compositing projects, on Apple and PC workstations running Photoshop, Illustrator, Motion, Discreet Combustion, 3D Max and a wide collection of other specialist software, the day rate is $350/day or a 4 hour half day at $200/half day for these systems unless your schedule requires us to operate two edit systems at the same time. Sound Design and Audio Sweetening use the same core systems, with Pro Tools and Logic audio software and a large library of buy out and licensed music and sound effects, as well as recording hardware including Neumann studio microphones. < less

Our colorist system is available on location or at our studio. It allows us to fine color correct your project by initially applying a full color correction to each scene using the REDCine-X color correction software and our REDRocket accelerator card, and then shot by shot using Synthetic Aperture Color Finesse to even out any differences in the program. We will shortly also be running the edit-system-independent Da Vinci Resolve color correction. On location the colorist system adds the ability to design and show the Director and DP finished looks from RED footage for adjustment and sign off - which can be copied back to the RED camera for perfect true see-it-get-it monitoring or saved as look templates for a post house, used to create one light or fully corrected "hourlies", to place these corrected shots into timelines for live editing or select choices, to allow full speed playback of clips and audio from the RED camera, and to output to tape in HD-SDI with audio as footage is shot. < less

In order to digitize tape-based footage or master final programs to tape (still the best way by far to distribute to broadcasters and archive programs) you need additional hardware and decks. We have edit decks available for digitizing or mastering to/from HDCAM, DVCProHD, HDV, DVCPro50, DVCPro25, Betacam SP, Sony 3/4 SP and MiniDV decks as well as Blu-Ray recorders, DVD-R recorders and duplicators (including full color on-disk printing) and a range of audio format systems including DAT, CD, DVD, MiniDisk and cassette. We can also master DVD projects and Blu-Ray projects on our Scenarist authoring system, and DVD Studio and DVD Lab software, with the ability to run up to fifty DVD-Rs or CDs at a time, with full color face printing, on our Bravo replicator.
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One thing to bear in mind in looking at these budget guidelines is that the post-production process is not the same as making widgets - it is one that tests the creativity and ability of the editor and the sophistication of the equipment he uses in every decision made... and an hourly or daily rate only tells you how much it will cost for an hour or day - not how many times the editor will have to try before getting the timing right for a cut, or how many attempts he will take to tell the story before he hits on a timeline that works, or even how long each edit will physically take to render on is computer before he can move to the next.

So how do you compare an experienced, creative editor on a really powerful edit system to a guy fresh out of college with a laptop sitting in your store cupboard? You can't, of course, until after the production is finished and you see how the piece looks, when it is delivered, whether the storyline works and how large the invoice is.

Suffice to say, as with so many things in life, an hourly sticker price has almost no bearing on your final cost!

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