New Start to work 'higher up the food chain' - It's Always Something

Post, Dec, 2002 by Ken McGorry

SANTA MONICA -- Finish Line president Jack Schaeffer and Craig Price have entered into a partnership that promises to bring high-end post expertise to TV and commercial producers and agencies earlier in the process -- even while they're still only in the pitching stage. With their recent launch of a new venture called Start (www.startefx.com), Schaeffer and Price -- most recently Playground/Click 3X's creative director-- intend to provide visual effects for TV spots, broadcast programming and music videos, but with a twist. They'll work "higher up the food chain," says Schaeffer.

Start's "focus and intent is very different from what the Finish Line does as a traditional regional facility service provider," says Schaeffer, founder of the new compositing/ effects house. "In this case we're reaching out on a creative level, outside the boundaries of Los Angeles, to agencies nationwide or beyond on a creative level. Craig has a client base that includes agencies on the East Coast, in Boston and Chicago, and what we need to do is be more creatively based, collaborating and selling services on that level. The old part of our business, which is the facilities portion, is in the background in support of this venture to provide what it needs when it needs it."

Start's services will provide more collaborative, creative input in a project's design and development than a traditional post facility might. For instance, Schaeffer and Price are offering the expert services of 3D designer Tony Smoller (whose Moving Pixels shop is under the Finish Line's roof, along with Start) as well as the talents of executive producer Lisa Pailet-Bruck And Start will work on a project-oriented basis as opposed to the old "video by the pound' business model.

"That kind of work has declined all over the place as people have gotten access to tools and have been doing even more of their own work," Schaeffer says. Besides the curse of clients doing their own work or setting off for foreign shores to avoid unions and exploit the exchange rate, many consumer mass marketers have simply brought their ad spending down. Sometimes way down. For instance, Schaeffer's experiment in creating a Finish Line (www.thefinline.com) outpost in Orange County a year ago to handle large marketers and agencies based there recently came to an end.

Schaeffer packed up his Quantel Henry and came home with an important finding. "The thing that distinguishes a company now," he says, "is the creative design and problem-solving skills to help agency people and directors realize their vision on screen."

However, Price points out, "Our part is not to try and take the agency's job away. Our part is to help them focus their creative ideas in an achievable way. It's been very traditional with effects people that an agency or a production company will phone up and say, 'Hey, before I present this to my client, is it possible to do this?' What's happening now, especially as budgets are getting tighter is you have agencies pitching about 50 ideas to their clients and finding out that only one of them is going to work. [Clients] now come to us and say, 'We're thinking of doing this -- how would you develop it further?"'

Schaeffer says that Finish Line's Orange County experience served as a kind of microcosm of the advertising industry as a whole but he has "no regrets -- I did get to forge new relationships. You cannot sit still in this business," he adds. "You've always got to be trying something."