A lesson from the recording industry - Post Script

Post, Nov, 2002 by Marc Loftus

Dave Amlen has a pretty good view of the studio market. As president of SPARS, Amlen regularly hears about the challenges facing studios.And as principal of NYC'S recording/post studio Sound On Sound, he sees it first hand.

SPARS held its annual meeting last month in conjunction with the AES show in LA, and what Amlen learned about the economy in other markets somewhat surprised him.

"We were led to believe that New York got the brunt of it, and that's kind of a fallacy," he says. Amlen also notes that many facilities are reluctant to share the details of their struggles, fearing what competitors might think. "They are very careful about what they want to share and not share, and a lot of information is lost."

The way Amlen sees it, the post production business is up against the same challenging times that the recording business faced a decade ago. Tools such as Apple's Final Cut Pro and Adobe's Premiere are having the same effect on the post studio business today that the Alesis ADAT, TASCAM DA-88 and Digidesign Pro Tools Ill had on music studios in the early '90s.

"It was the beginning of redefining how work would be done," he says of those 1990's technologies. "For $5,000 you could set up a studio with fidelity that would rival a million-dollar place. There was a definite tipping of the scale."

Only a portion of Sound On Sound's total business is post work, and that's helped it weather the tough times. Amlen also credits the facility's reputation, as well as a sensible business model, for keeping rooms busy.

"My business model has always been 20 days a month," he notes on room bookings. "On the post side, that equates to about five hours a day. Dave Porter at Annex Digital in San Francisco always said 5 1/2 hours a day."

Post studios, he says, should take a cue from music studios' relationships with freelance mixers, as many editors are going a similar route these days. As freelancers, they are not invested in high-priced equipment and can work wherever they choose, bringing business with them.

And while the economy struggles, Amlen is feeling somewhat optimistic. When I spoke to him, he was putting the finishing touches on two new rooms at Sound On Sound. One is a stereo room; the other is for 5.1 work. Both were acoustically treated, but unlike Sound On Sound's SSL rooms, you won't find any big consoles here. Digidesign's Pro Tools and control surfaces will be used throughout.