Lightning Will Oversee All Digital Media Work, While Runway Handles System and Offline Room Rentals

After 37 years of operation as an independent Hollywood post house, The Post Group is no more. A restructuring announced today will bring all operations of The Post Group and iO Film under the purview of sister companies Lightning Media and Runway.
The strategy refocuses the remaining companies in a family known as Post Start 2 Finish on business areas that have had continued success in tough economic times. “We are streamlining our operations to focus on our most successful divisions moving forward,” said owner Matt Cooper in a prepared statement. “We’ve seen our client base for these services grow and diversify, and this change will allow both Lightning Media and Runway greater flexibility and room to grow.”

Lightning Media, lead by Dave Wright, will be the digital media division, handling duplication and replication, editorial, DVD, Blu-ray, and digital conversions. Runway, run by Daniel Bernato and Daniel McGilvray, will provide system rentals as well as, with Celena Martirossian, offline room rentals for facilities including the former iO Film Cahuenga Theater.


In recent years, The Post Group was providing its services mainly to TV series such as House and CSI, with restoration and remastering work making up another 25 percent of the business. For example, iO Film last year worked on The Post Group’s 2K remaster of Apocalypse Now Redux for Blu-ray and DCP. That category of work will now be handled under the Lightning Media umbrella. A spokesperson said DI services will no longer be offered after currently contracted work is finished, but that DI rooms and equipment will be available for rent by companies and colorists.

The Post Group was originally founded as Off-Line Inc. by Fred Rheinstein in 1974. Brothers Matt and David Cooper, two of the original owners of Lightning Media, bought iO Film in 2004 and added The Post Group and Novastar Digital Sound Services (later The Boulevard Sound Services) to their portfolio in 2005. The company left its original location on Homewood Avenue in 2009, when it was co-located with iO Film and Lightning Media on Cahuenga Boulevard.

Runway, so named because it was founded at the Santa Monica airport back in 1992, relocated to a Vine Street location in Hollywood after almost a decade in Culver City earlier this year, bringing all of the companies in the Post Start 2 Finish family into the same area code.