An alternate route to visual effects: located a bit off the beaten path, this studio often bids against the big boys - Open House - Alternate Route Studios - Brief Article

Post, August, 2002 by Ann Fisher

Cary, NC -- What's the use of a secret if you can't tell someone? That's what Robin Massin figured when he took the job of director of sales for Alternate Route Studios. Having left AFI/Filmworks Miami after a decade, this former executive producer joined last summer and has helped Alternate Route stay up in a down market, mostly, by spreading the word.

This North Carolina studio, owned by statistical software maker SAS, offers full service visual effects services on par with industry heavyweights like ILM and Digital Domain -- sometimes it even bids on the same projects, says Massin. Alternate Route is large and diversified in the services it offers: it is a turnkey production/post facility that can design, create and integrate CGI, sets, miniatures, props, live action and sound design. Its personnel write, produce and finish.

"I came here to share with the world what SAS has kept to themselves for many years:' says Massin. "We offer everything: from regular studios to complete greenscreen studios to a humongous set-building construction facility that can do anything from the smallest miniature models to gigantic sets for the Carolina Ballet."

THE GEAR

Alternate Route houses two 4,500-square-foot acoustical soundstages; two linear video suites offering Grass Valley 2200 component digital switchers, with Krystal DVE and CMX Omni; and nonlinear suites with Avid Meridien and Avid JDS systems, respectively For audio, there are two SADiE Artemis suites and one AMS Neve AudioFile studio. There is also a 12,000square-foot set and model shop and a 70-machine renderfarm. The graphics department has I 6 artists working on 3D, 2D and compositing, using primarily Softimage/3D or Softimage\XSI running on Dell Precision workstations. One workstation runs Alias\Wavefront Maya and there are eight for Adobe After Effects.

SAS established the post facility in I 992 for internal use and, initially, dabbled in the commercial market In I 996, some programmers developed and patented the VideoReality technique for making games, which caused SAS to get out of the commercial business and form Alternate Route (the facility) and SouthPeak Interactive (the game company). Alternate Route was used solely to produce film and graphic assets for games. In 2000, SAS sold the game technology but still had that huge facility. Back into commercial work it went, this time with a larger staff and more varied expertise.

Are they trying to coax East and West Coast clients into coming to North Carolina? Massin says they don't really have to since clients can go to FTP sites and watch works in progress, though graphics design manager Greg Shank adds that clients who do come are so enchanted with the place that, more than likely they will come back Alternate Route's client base comes from all over: from Tokyo to North Carolina.

SPOT WORK

Alternate Route recently completed a trio of :30s for the College Fund of North Carolina. The client was agency Cassels Caywood Love from WinstonSalem, NC. Louis Korner was the independent director. It was shot in Wilmington, NC, on 35mm and posted at Alternate Route. Each spot begins with a live action vignette -- a mother and daughter selling lemonade or a boy filling out endless piles of financial aid forms, both asking, "Need a better way to fund college?" -- then segues into a graphics section that guides viewers through the CFNC Web site.

The animators used Softimage\XSI to pump up some Web site elements to 3D. They also used Adobe's Photoshop, Illustrator and some After Effects, also running on Dell workstations, but a lot of the layering was done on the Avid\DS. The spots aired this spring in North Carolina.

For Duke University and the Pratt Institute, it met another client with a funding message. Animator Paul Graham used Softimage\XSI to create a :30 that clearly outlined the different initiatives of the four schools involved. The complete animation, and four cutdown individual ones, were used in a larger video piece at Duke. The job was completed this spring.

For Richard Taylor of Beachhouse Films, Alternate Route created a :30 for Accu Chek diabetic strips. A team of four artists, including art director Jeff McFall, provided animation and compositing using XSI. Additional compositing was done on an Avid\DS.

Taylor has worked with the studio before, notably on the award-winning Flood and Harvest spots for SAS, touting its e-intelligence software. The spots combined live action, CGI, post and models into various worlds bombarded by data. The challenge was to blend abstract data into realistic settings. In Flood, data falls out of the sky like rain. Taylor and McFall worked on digital matte paintings and sky replacements using Photoshop, After Effects and Softimage's Eddie. The studio's model shop created a 14-foot, .1 /20 scale model of a skyscraper which was then shot greenscreen. Finally the action showed falling data crashing onto sidewalks and exploding on contact. The spots aired last summer.

Alternate Route's Web site (www. altroutestudios.com) says its has the "talent and tools to get around any reality roadblock" In the past, the roadblock might have been its location, but today that doesn't matter.