Vendetta post is a hit: this online post boutique targets commercial clients - Open House

Post, June, 2003 by Ann Fisher

Los ANGELES--A little levity is a great thing. When asked about the name of her company Andrea Aron replied that her partner Sandy Beladino is an insane Italian New Yorker who has an obsession with The Godfather movies. Actually, Beladino thought the name would be great for a wine bar but decided, instead, to open a special little post finishing house this past December. She is personality on wheels," says Aron.

Those who need commercial online and compositing services in the Los Angeles area have it made. They actually get to work with a consigliere (Aron), godmother (Beladino) and wise guys (their two Henry/Flame artists James Bygrave and Pete Mayor, aided ably by assistant Shauna Prescott).

Aron and Beladino are having fun with this venture and their joy is evident. At one time or another, all Vendetta Post employees had worked together at larger companies, most recently at The Finish Line, which Beladino helped found in 1995. Aron says their levity and nonconformity "is a complete reaction to larger corporations."

Though they may be lighthearted, they are quite serious about their business. They have the national advertising jobs: agency spots for Apple Computers, Michelob, Dockers, Merrill Lynch and Dial Soap. They have the set-up: a facility within a facility (Margarita Mix de Santa Monica, an audio post house), with whom they share reception, machine room resources and even clients. They have the personnel: Bygrave and Mayor are well known and fluent with their tools.

"The traditional facility model--of building out a machine room, having big space, heavily decorated--that costs money. When you see how many places are going under, we realized that creating something small and incredibly service-oriented, sharing resources with another symbiotic company, was the only way we felt it would ever work,' says Aron, "Margarita Mix, where we sublease our space, has their own machine room built out with the Digi Beta decks and the D- Is and the 3/4-inch dub rack

THE SET-UP

An engineer routed Vendetta's two Quantel Henry Infinity workstations and Discreet Flame to the central machine room, added a couple of racks for their equipment, and they were in business. In a unique configuration, the Flame has been installed and routed to both Vendetta edit bays. The editor/artists use it as an adjunct to each room's Henry workstation, with a complementary toolset for things like morphs and warps. Clients can watch editors use two tablets with two monitors on the same job at the same time. Each bay also has Mac G4 computers for creating legal titles or taking animated sequences into Henry. Usually, the assistant sits in the bay and does that work right as the editors are creating effects.

Margarita Mix, part of LA Studios, had earmarked 1,200 square feet of space for a tenant since it didn't want to expand in this economic climate. They sought a company that would share clients, not compete with them, and that is how it has worked out Company 3, the renowned Los Angeles telecine house, is located two floors up in the four-story building.

"You can park your car and do everything here. It's like a mini-mall of post," says Aron. "We're using the convenience factor as a selling point. No one wants to lower their rates, if they can help it. I don't think there would have been a better time for us to open because five years ago the equipment that we bought would have been obscenely expensive."

THE WORK

A recent job included five :30 Tiger Woods spots for Nike Golf. Vendetta worked with joint Editorial, the offline wing of Weiden & Kennedy. The spots began airing nationally during the Masters golf tournament week in April. In them, a golf sock, that thing that protects the club heads, starts talking back to Tiger and won't stop. Vendetta provided all online and compositing; the latter was challenging because of the sock's script changes and variety of background plates. The majority of work was done in Henry, though Flame was used to cut puppet mattes.

At this year's NAB, Beladino and some of the Vendetta editor/artists were looking at Discreet offerings, including HD equipment. "With these other two dedicated workstations, they each have video cards in them, you can output full video rez images from the Henry to the Macintosh. There may be able things that we're able to maximize those two workstations for as well," says Aron. "The day of buying the million-dollar machine is over. If it wasn't over, we wouldn't be here."

MAKE CONTACT

Vendetta Post 1661 Lincoln Blvd. Santa Monica, CA (310) 664-8810 www.vendettapost.com

Clients: Dockers, Dial Soap, Michelob, Coca-Cola, Nike

Principals: Sandy Beladino Andrea Aron

Equipment: Quantel Henry, Discreet Flame and Combustion, Adobe After Effects, Photoshop and Illustrator, Apple Mac G4