cineSync brings Creatives together

Thursday, 05 August 2010

The Creative-Cartel is a relatively new company, founded by experienced VFX Exec Producer Jenny Fulle (Charlie's Angels, LOTR: The Two Towers, Surf's Up, Hancock, the Matrix films and numerous others).

The Creative-Cartel has recently been involved in overseeing the creation of 780 VFX shots for the new Screen Gems production Priest, a 3D apocalyptic vampire horror film.

Jenny describes the central idea of The Creative-Cartel as being to work with any number of individuals and companies domestically and internationally, putting together teams that are specifically tailored to each in-coming project. This means having only a small core group of employees and creating a "virtual office" that all the various collaborators can work within - a disciplined digital community.

To manage communication within the virtual office, a number of tools are used, ranging from conference calls to iChat and Skype - and of course, cineSync.

Quoted from Resource411:

“The climate in the visual effects industry has evolved and changed quite a bit,” said Fulle. “While I was at Imageworks I helped set up Imageworks India, and that was an amazing experience. It opened my eyes to the fact that the digital community is continuing to spread all over the world. In England they are doing it, in Canada they’re doing it, and doing it for a lot less money. If we don’t do a little self help, we’re going to see more and more of the work go away.”

To minimize overhead, Fulle redefined the centralized structure of a brick and mortar building which would be filled with a full time staff. She established a core group of employees, including an asset manager and production coordinator, and this set up became the hub for a production management and digital access based company. The goal of The Creative-Cartel is to work with any number of individuals and companies domestically and internationally, putting together teams that are specifically tailored to each in-coming project.

“I certainly do have go-to people, but because no two shows are the same, and the requirements of shows vary, I wouldn’t want to have to go to the same person, because it wouldn’t always be the right fit,” said Fulle. “I don’t want to have to feel like I need to go to the same person or full timers or artist types – we go to whoever is best suited for the work.”

Avoiding the need for a physical base, The Creative-Cartel is able to expand its storage space because those individuals working on a project are bringing the capabilities of their equipment to that project.

“What we end up having is massive storage, to keep all the assets and final images in any iteration along the way that are important to the studio to hold on to,” said Fulle. “At the end of the day when the show is done, we package up all those assets, we put them on a drive, and we pass it over to the client in a way they can still access in the future.”

While eliminating the overhead costs of a facility and large in-house pipeline for storage and information, Fulle does have a collection of individuals working in various time zones and environments. This fractured workforce has neither slowed down productivity nor communication between staff significantly, however. Software such as cineSync allows all artists working on a clip to connect to review and discuss changes simultaneously. Files can be sent between individuals in less than sixty seconds. iChat, cell phones, and conference calls keep everyone informed and up-to-date on the progression of a project’s direction.

“I believe in the idea of a virtual studio,” said Fulle. “I think that when you find talented people, you actually get a lot more boom for your buck when you let them stay in their own environment and work more comfortably.”

For more information on The Creative-Cartel (who are incidentally a really great bunch of people!), check them out here.

You can read the rest of the article - and it's worth reading for a great insider perspective on where the industry's going - here.

And finally, Priest's offical website is here.