unit KEVIN HILTON visits UNIT’s new, purpose-built facilities in Soho. post production L ike people, all <strong>com</strong>panies experience growing pains. The difference is that a <strong>com</strong>pany can choose not to get any bigger and just stay the same size in its original little niche. The only drawback is having to turn away work, which could affect what it has already. UNIT Post in London started out with a very defined offering – it was the first all-Apple Final Cut Pro (FCP) facility in town – but client requests for new technologies and services forced a re-think, culminating in building new premises. UNIT moved into purpose-built facilities in Great Marlborough Street at the end of February. Over five floors the <strong>com</strong>pany now has three Pro Tools audio suites and rooms for picture grading, editing rooms, and visuals effects design. The move came about when UNIT's previous building on Carlisle Street was stretched to capacity. A sign that something had to change was when Chief Executive Adam Luckwell gave up his office and meeting room so an additional edit suite could be built. Established as an off-line editing facility for the corporate and music promos market in May 2006, UNIT initially had six FCP HD suites. This grew to ten and then 18. After that, Luckwell says, clients started asking for things beyond off-line cutting; effects and graphics, which were ac<strong>com</strong>modated by Adobe After Effects systems, Apple Shake, and Autodesk Combustion; colour grading on Apple Final Touch; and then audio, so a Pro Tools HD suite was added. As part of this expansion UNIT took over the building next door to house the additional suites and a new master control room (MCR) As TV started to be<strong>com</strong>e a more substantial part of UNIT's work Luckwell was getting regular requests for technology he didn't have, including Autodesk Smoke on the Mac, Flame and the FilmLight Baselight, a much more sophisticated colour correction system than Final Touch. Luckwell says that although UNIT started out targeting off-line editing using FCP, which, at the time was still considered a semi-professional desktop system, he was not so evangelical about his <strong>com</strong>pany's approach that switching to other systems was out of the question. A Specialist Unit Despite the appearance over the last ten years of the onestop-shop post-production house, Luckwell observes that very few facilities <strong>com</strong>panies do absolutely everything. “More and more we are <strong>com</strong>missioned to provide an integrated design and project supervision role on large, multidiscipline media projects and not just acoustic consultancy for studios…” There are, he says, the big groups and <strong>com</strong>panies, including Ascent (Deluxe), Prime Focus, and Envy, but also specialists, such as Grand Central and Jungle in the audio sector. So while UNIT has grown both in size and in terms of what it does, Luckwell has attempted to keep a separation between different markets. Which partly explains the name UNIT: "At the beginning it was meant to be lots of units around the world," Luckwell says. "We were going to set up in London and then expand to New York and Los Angeles. But as we got to capacity in Soho the idea changed to different units of services within the UNIT structure." The move to Great Marlborough Street has allowed UNIT to properly establish and brand three business units that exist alongside each other but offer different, stand-alone services: The Cut, The Mix, and The Finish. Each has its own spaces and colour-coded signs so there is a feeling of a separate operation, albeit under a single corporate umbrella. Audio <strong>com</strong>es under the heading of The Mix. Luckwell looked at Fairlight as a possibility for the sound editing and mixing system but decided to stay with Pro Tools, which he says, "is almost the industry standard", particularly for TV post work. "The Pro Tools won hands down because it's what the clients wanted," he explains. "It's the same with colour grading. Look at the top 20 facilities and most of those offering colour correction are using Baselight." There are three audio suites, two with voice booths. The 9,400 square feet building also houses three Flame/ Smoke finishing rooms, 12 off-line suites, the Baselight colour grading room, and 28 bays of visual effects in open-plan areas. Behind the reception area on the ground floor is an airy, modern looking vestibule and a bar for clients. Making A Mark These premises were not built to house a post-production facility but as a speculative general-purpose office development. UNIT brought in acoustic and studio design consultancy White Mark to not just work on the audio element of the project but also handle project management for the entire build. "More and more we are <strong>com</strong>missioned to provide an integrated design and project supervision role on large, multi-discipline media projects and not just acoustic consultancy for studios," <strong>com</strong>ments David > 44 AUDIO MEDIA JUNE 2011
31 ST CONFERENCE October 20-23, 2011 EXHIBITS October 21-23, 2011 Jacob K. Javits Convention Center New York, NY AES CONVENTION www.aes.org
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