This summer was not financially kind to most folks (just take a look at my stock portfolio). But it has been for Creative Bubble, a New York-based editorial, design, sound and production company, thanks to a wide array of projects, growth in its traditional broadcast/cable work, which has long been the company’s bread-and-butter, and new forays into production and creating content for the Web.

Editor/producer/principal Pat Carpenter credits this growth to two main factors. The first was the establishment of a production division a little over a year ago that has allowed the company to offer a soup-to-nuts solution, which, he notes, is becoming increasingly attractive to many clients. The second factor was the company’s initiative to become more nimble in terms of the workflow solutions it offers. We spoke with Carpenter about the shifting landscape of content creation, the dwindling separation between production and post and the Wild West of Web video.

As a post production company, how was the decision made to take the leap into production?
PAT CARPENTER: About three years ago it just seemed logical to set up a production arm and diversify our offerings. A lot of networks just like to have one company handle a project from start to finish. We’ve been seeing that in our post projects where we’ll handle all of the post. Then in terms of the production arm it just seemed logical to have the production service so we could do it from A to Z and produce the show entirely.

How has this changed the way you approach projects?
PQ: Since Paul Iannacchino came on board to head the production division our understanding of workflows based around production needs and demands have definitely shifted and increased tremendously. We still have some clients that come in for the hourly sessions and that’s still pretty traditional when it comes to the broadcast promo work, when it’s clip-driven off of master tapes from shows, usually on Betacam, and is pretty straightforward. But when we’re working in production the workflows are as diverse as can be.

Being able to offer up the solutions has been a real eye opener. To be able to do a project in any of a variety of ways is really the name of the game. If you are set on doing it one particular way you’re either going to get burned or the client is. With all the different flavors of acquisition you have to be able to handle all the workflows that they require and which workflows work best, but also being able to leverage the acquisition options and workflows to tailor each project for your client’s needs.

The production arm having to come up with different options for shows only sharpens our post capabilities. Knowing what to do for all these production situations only makes us a better post facility for other vendors. Since we’ve tested workflows from beginning to end we know which workflows work the best. It’s not like we are just taking what a production gives us and trying to fit it into some sort of standard workflow we devised for a different situation. So now if clients want to come to us just to edit we have a better understanding of all the options out there and can advise clients on the best workflow for their needs and budget.

This summer we shot P2, the Panasonic HDX900, Sony F900 and the Panasonic DV camera (DVX100) on a wide range of projects that we had to determine the most cost-effective way of doing each. In a perfect world we would just work in HD all the time, but it’s not [a perfect world]. We have a lot of resources like our Avids, which pull media off the Unity, that are not all HD. We’re doing a five-episode series for Mojo HD (The Most Interesting Assistant in the World) that we shot on the Sony F900. What we do is downconvert to standard def anamorphic for rough cutting the entire series because the majority of our Avids tied to the Unity are standard def. To maximize our infrastructure we didn’t to be tied down to working in HD so we just up-rez to HD through the Nitris and output to HD. So figuring out how to best use our facility is the big thing.

Has this also changed the way you approach clients that just come to you for post services?
PQ: In the past they’d shoot, get their film transferred to DigiBeta, we’d do our work and then it would be up to them to do a fine-pass color correction. That’s becoming rarer. For post clients we get a lot more conversation and questions up front these days. They come to us in pre-production and tell us what they want to accomplish and we offer them options for how to accomplish it. We find that we’re more and more involved in terms of finding the right solution for each client. You can’t tell clients that “this is our one and only solution and you have to do it this way.”

You mentioned that most of your Avids connected to the Unity server are SD. What are your HD solutions and do you have plans to upgrade your network?
PQ: For HD depending on the project sometimes we’ll do Final Cut or just load it into the Avid Nitris. We do a lot of sports stuff on the Nitris and we cut the series we produced for MojoHD.com in HD on Final Cut. We’re on the fence right now in terms of what the best solution is for HD. We don’t know right now if upgrading our Unity system and Avids is the best solution for us.

Talk about the television series for Mojo HD, how that came about and what was involved?
PQ: We got a call from Emilio Nunez the VP of programming for Mojo Productions. Heineken had a big campaign for Dos Equis called “The Most Interesting Man in the World.” They wanted to support the ad campaign. They came up with the story that the assistant to the Most Interesting Man in the World had an untimely death so they are searching for the new Most Interesting Assistant. They wanted to create a five-episode, travel/search show with contestants that do interesting tasks and at the end they have the right to apply for the position of assistant to the Most Interesting Man. There’s an episode in Vegas, Istanbul, Mexico, San Diego and Colorado.

We went out and shot with the Sony F900, which worked great. There was a big debate on workflow. John Tierney took the lead on coming up with the best workflow to maximize our facility’s capacity to handle high def. Since we have more SD equipment, tying up all our HD machines from start to finish would not maximize our ability. If we went in HD with the Nitris or Final Cuts then we were stuck if we found we needed to throw five editors at it at once. So we shot on the 900, loaded it in offline to our Avid Symphonies and Media Composers. We loaded it in anamorphic so the placement of the graphics were correct. If we just loaded in standard def letterbox everything you did for the graphics in low-rez would have to be re-done for the high-rez version. That was the key decision. Now we just have to tweak the graphics when we up-rez it: mostly fixing kerning and type which is pretty common for Avid product when you go between Mac-based and PC-based platforms. But the placement and everything else you do for the graphics transfers right over.

You also created a series for the Website MojoHD called The Circuit. How did that come about?
PQ: We were friends with the creators of the show, Scott Broock and Emery Wells, and Mojo came to us to produce it. It was our first time as a production company involved with a scripted original. We took it from the pitch and we cast it, directed it, designed the graphics, edited, and produced the whole show. Producing content for the Web is definitely something we are interested in and this was a golden opportunity.

It was completely high def. A full HD production for a Web show was pretty crazy. The render time was pretty robust because we shot it on greenscreen and had a ton of graphics. That was an HD delivery that had higher production delivery than some of the promos we do. We shot in our studio here with the HVX200, edited in Final Cut and delivered a QuickTime so it never saw tape.

Do you approach a project differently when it is for the Web?
PQ: Not really. Maybe on the acquisition side. For a series of videos for the Food Network web site we shot on a Panasonic DV (DVX100) and then edited it traditionally, went to the mix and out to tape. The DV stuff looked great. It was shot in one of their studios so it was lit great and it was a fine format for what we were delivering.

I think if you say, ‘it’s just going to be for the Web, the quality is not an issue’ then you can shoot yourself in the foot. The stuff for The Circuit ended up on their television network. There is a division right now between the Web divisions and broadcast promotional divisions. They are not seamless yet. So once one finds out that the other has something often the broadcast division will decide to use something on air so you have to protect yourself. A lot of people are starting to realize that Web video has to have similar or equal production value to broadcast.

What is your view of Web video today?
PQ: Web video is only going to keep growing. That said, people haven’t figured it all out yet. People always say to me that they don’t know where Web video is going and the industry is at a crossroads. To me, that’s the exciting part. How many times have you ever worked in an industry where you can have a voice in defining that industry? That window will probably close in a few years so I’m excited about the ability to get content out on the Web. I drank the Kool-Aid a couple years ago with Web video. It’s kind of like the Wild West: no one has been able to define it and no one has been able to pinpoint it and say ‘this is the model.’

Are the budgets for Web video adequate?
PQ: The situation with Web video now is that since it hasn’t been defined there is not much investment, at least behind the production of it, so they want you do a ton of stuff for cheap, but there’s usually way to produce it in a manner that can be profitable. I say, ‘Tell us what you got and we can try to come up with a way to fit that budget.’ If a client wants you to produce a show for X dollars, well, you may have to tell them that you’ll produce 100 shows for them, then you can amortize the cost.

Are clients and vendors becoming more realistic about the cost of video for the Web?
PQ: A lot of people wanted to get into the game of Web video so they’d produce a show once. But you can’t sustain that. As a client you can’t deliver if you think people will do that for you time and time again. We find the money is there if both parties are realistic about it. We’ve walked away from a lot of Web projects.

We’ve been pleasantly surprised with the budgets for the Web projects. For the Food Network (webisodes) we went back to them and told them they really needed a little extra to accomplish what they wanted and they agreed. They don’t want garbage either. Gone are the days that you can just throw up anything and think people are going to tune in. There’s just too much to watch. But there’s more and more ways to produce shows so there is some middle ground.