Metropolis gears up: this company has added to its musical roots with enhanced DVD services - English Beat - Metropolis Group - Company Profile

Post, Jan, 2003 by Bob Pank

LONDON -- Names like Metropolis and The Power House conjure up visions of grandeur which are frtting for both the company and its location. Based in Chiswick, just six miles west of London's Soho post hotbed, its massive structure -- a former tram manufacturing plant -- now helps insulate external noise and vibration, and forms a quiet environment for its modern usage as sound studios. Over the years, many great names have made their hits within its walls, including Queen, Celine Dion, The Verve, Robbie Williams, Elton John, Britney Spears and Massive Attack.

The Metropolis Group (www.metropolis-group.co.uk) includes Metropolis Studios, Metropolis Mastering, Metropolis DVD (London, New York), M Productions and NYC-based Sterling Sound. In August 2002 they took delivery of the Media 100 844/X video editing system. The business has constantly expanded to meet the broader needs of its clientele and the 844/X is just the latest in a long chain of developments for and around its audio roots.

Today, the Metropolis Group has a record of early adoption of major new technology. It was an early investor in Digidesign Pro Tools, which revolutionized the pro studio market in the '90s. Metropolis' head of new business, Mike Gillespie, comments. "Systems like Media 100's 844/X will do for the film and video post markets what Pro Tools did for the pro studio market, Post houses that have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in suites are now faced with a single piece of kit that will do it all for less than $100,000. We've been here before and learned our lessons -- only this time we don't have a substantial legacy of investments to deal with."

The audio business includes two tracking studios, three overdub and mix studios, five programming rooms and five mastering rooms with their attendant production facilities. They boast top-of-the-tree mastering engineers, including Tim Young, Ian Cooper and Tony Cousins, whose credits include work for Oasis, Madonna and Led Zeppelin. With such talent coming through the door (sometimes just for the private bar), there is the opportunity to do much more.

The 844/X is installed in Metropolis DVD, a division set up in 2000 to offer more services to the audio customers and others. In 1998, Metropolis saw DVD as the perfect format for music, By then, they already had 5.1 as well as stereo audio facilities on both sides of the Atlantic, so the addition of a DVD production and authoring facilities followed. The next logical step, says Gillespie, was to "broaden our circle of services into film and TV production." M Productions was founded by former Done & Dusted executive producer Anouk Fontaine in 2000.

DVD SERVICES

The huge success of the DVD market has meant a rapid development of their authoring and design facilities. This is the focus of attention in the creative services department within the DVD section under creative director Nell Johnson. He explains, "People today expect menus to be much more than just thumbnails. The big plus for us is being able to stitch content and menu footage together. We can drop our [Adobe] After Effects or [Discreet] 3D Studio Max compositions directly onto the 844's timeline and open them there without having to render." The 844/X works alongside an existing Media 100 iFinish, which is now only used for more basic editing.

Johnson claims, "Now we can produce big-budget looks for a sensible price." A look at the recently completed DVD for Momentum Pictures' 5/st State feature makes the point. The menu uses a 3DS Max background of the lab where the blue pills, the subject of the movie, are made. Each menu selection swivels and zooms around the seamless 3D view to an appropriate object in the scene, drawn from actual scenes in the movie, with sub-menus appearing in a number of guises such as text on a cell phone and images on a sevenscreen monitor bank. Johnson adds, "The monitor effect was produced in a matter of hours on the 8441X rather than the days it would have taken rendering in the Finish. In reality, if we were doing this level of production before, we'd have to have sent it out."

IT'S ABOUT THE MUSIC

Although Metropolis DVD has authored many features, much of its work is for music releases. The Metroplis Group works very much as a single body, rather than a collection of separate entities. Gillespie points out, "Ideas are pooled, not segregated."

So it was no surprise to find director Dick Carruthers of M Productions using the 844/X to put the finishing touches to the upcoming Led Zeppelin dual DVD. This has involved use of archive material from all types of sources, including PAL TV, and both 16mm and 35mm film. It required hand cleaning and restoration of masters, and "baking" master audio tapes to recover material. Then the work began on re-editing the pictures and mixing the audio in 5.1 and stereo.

Caruthers, a veteran of pop promos and DVDs for artists such as The Rolling Stones, The Who, Elton John, Britney Spears and Oasis, declares this "the hardest job I've ever done." However, tools such as aspect ratio conversion and format handling on the 844/X were there to help.