David Baxter

Editor, The Partners’ Film Company

Generally speaking, I don’t see advertising dying away, by any means, from what it is.

Technology is advancing and the desktop editing systems will soon become finishing tools in their own right. From the post side of things, I think more and more it’s going to be a gray area between offline editors and online editors. Creative (offline) editors are going to be doing finishes within the same realm that they work in now, which I think could very well allow more post-production on smaller end products that have to go into a wide range of television.

If they want to develop different ads and swing them differently for each category, it’s going to allow an option that’s less expensive than going into a full digital one-inch suite. Avids already, in some capacity, are doing finishes; people are doing series on them – it’s Betacam quality and it’s airable quality.

Obviously, for an interactive Internet kind of commercial, the advertising itself is going to have to be more interactive and bring something to the party that’s different. In that capacity, there’s going to be a whole new technology from the post side of things.

The city may scale down slightly, but whether it’s versioning or Hi-8 shoots or whatever you have to do to churn out 40 permutations for all the different categories, I think it will still be within a division of the same company.

With all the competition and the amount of production that goes on, I don’t see any split coming between the high and low end. The talent pool is spread around enough that the business is always going to be spread around.

As technology has been advancing, and as feature films tend to drive audiences’ sophistication levels, we see more special effects and post-driven commercials – due to the fact that so much more can be done in post now.

The new technology just opens up more avenues to making things unique, and is certainly becoming more prominent. Running out of good ideas in commercials, they can default to visual effects to bring a spark to it.

If you’re telling a story, editorially speaking, you do what the footage drives you towards. If the commercial needs a little something, you can enhance it with style. But if the commercial is falling down from a conceptual standpoint, I don’t know if the style adds to the net takeaway.

The funny thing is, budgets aren’t becoming bigger to accommodate all this sophistication. They continue to be lowered and more is expected for less money. I often see ideas that go beyond the budget, and we end up making that work in some form or another.

Clients ask for a Jurassic Park sort of thing, but the budget doesn’t reflect it, so quite often they’ll have to scale back the idea.

The bottom line is, it’s still going to be years before you can do Jurassic Park type of effects for low-budget commercials.

At the same time, we try our best, through deals or finding new ways of doing things, to achieve the effect and make it look as good as possible. In some respects it has pushed us into new areas.

It’s been evolving steadily from blue screen. As keyers and Henrys get better, you end up not having to spend so much time lighting the blue screen; little details like that on the post side save money and time on the production side.

For example, there was a ‘Sitting Bull Heritage Minute’ where they wanted to create a huge open-field encampment of cavalry, but didn’t have the money to build a camp and fill it with 600 extras.

They had about 20 extras, five tents and a couple of wagons. We took a camera with a lockoff and a camera that roamed around and found smaller elements. They shot the people and the tents in the field and moved them around and had them do different setups, then digitally composited the whole thing in the Henry to make it look like a field full of cavalry. It looked amazing, and it didn’t cost that much.

I think most advertising people still believe the idea is the premise, the technique doesn’t sell the product. When you look back at the commercials that have been award winners, technique is sometimes part of it, but usually there’s a very good core idea.

What is crucial, is keeping the production and creative side of things as vibrant as possible.

I think we’re losing an awful lot of business to the u.s. The only way we’re going to keep it is by keeping up the good work. It’s imperative we try to hold on to as much as possible and to do as much work as we can.