Post Office Reloaded: Optimizing postproduction services and reducing fixed costs
In an ongoing attempt to optimize, improve and reduce fixed costs, BRW Spa moved to new offices in Milan a few months ago and consolidated the various companies belonging to the Group.
The BRW Group is made up of BRW Filmland, a commercials production company, Post Office Reloaded a post production facility, Independent Films London, a commercials production company for the UK market and BRW USA Los Angeles, a commercials production company covering the US market.
Post Office Reloaded's new headquarters at Via Savona 16 occupy an office space of 250 square metres with a beautiful outdoor terrace and is located in a very convenient downtown area just a few steps away from public transport services which makes it easily reachable for our Clients coming from advertising agencies in the city centre who wish to attend postproduction sessions. The offices are also closer to its new department of creative postproduction, Revolution Department that is located on Corso Magenta 7 still in the city centre vicinity.
After undergoing some renovation work, the company was soon up and running again offering it services from "ingest" to the production of broadcast material, using a 3D suite that has 8 workstations, Maya and Softimage. All of the suites are networked and there are two edit suites for Avid offline and Final Cut. Another suite is designated for color grading using the DaVinci Resolve system and there is a separate suite with the Flame 2016 system for online delivery and a backup Flame system in another side suite.
Rendering is done in-house where there are 12 machines including 8 workstations and the others geared solely for rendering plus another one in the machine room so very rarely do they need to revert to outside render farms.
They also operate in 4K despite the fact that the finished job is always delivered in HD and sometimes in SD to meet high-level networks and customer requirements.
Giovanni Morelli, former President of Post Office Reloaded says: "We continue to use specialized external resources for colour correction only when requested to do so by customers given that we are equipped to do it all in-house with the support of several very skilled freelancers. We always leave it up to the production company to decide in compliance with the DOP's or Director's requirements as to where this final editing phase of any video should be done.
The workflow process follows a traditional course from offline at the start right up to approval and finally online editing. Revolution Department, on the other hand, is engaged in slightly different activities doing more 360-degree videos and work for fashion brands, videos for events, the web and anything at all that requires animation creativity and motion graphics.
Everyone's talking about cloud post production but we are mainly doing all that we can to streamline processes for the maximum rationalization of costs by using our internal resources and focus on our core business in order to offer a top service to our "main client", the production company, BRW.
So, bearing in mind that our ultimate mission is to guarantee the quality of our work and the service we give to our clients, it is absolutely necessary nowadays to keep an eye on costs and implement timesaving solutions.
International hub
Another important piece of news is that Post Office Reloaded has become the international hub for the delivery of all of Barilla's videos globally. In fact, whereas in the past each film was produced and shot in Italy and then its international version was edited and sent to the respective country for local online editing and delivery, today every single finished film is delivered right in Milan.
This is a new and very positive concept that has been welcomed by our client who, first of all, is able to keep everything under control during the entire postproduction process of the film right up to its delivery and, secondly, has now only to deal with one interlocutor. This helps to reduce costs and proves to be an important work and timesaving element in obtaining film approval.
Specialization
Morelli goes on to say: "The Italian audiovisual market and, in particular, the advertising industry is suffering and forcing structures like ourselves to possess great elasticity during the whole production process. The 3D animation sector has been hit the most by this difficult situation. The computer graphics industry has increasingly less jobs and often whenever there are any, they are produced abroad.
I think the value of this market segment will continue to increase just like it has in the film industry, although in Italy today investing in this area, which will definitely offer a wealth of opportunities for the future, does require a lot of courage. Clients need to place more trust in Italian companies in order to create a solid market that invests in talents and technologies."
Morelli is now passing the baton and underlines Unapost's values: "The market wants fairness and honesty.
Giovanni Morelli says: "I am the Chairman of Post Office Reloaded and after nearly 40 years of service I have now decided to pass the baton for health reasons. The name of my successor will be announced shortly and I'm happy for the fact that among the most important things that I'm handing over we are a member of Unapost, the National Union of Post Production Companies, whose chief objective is to protect the industry and likewise our customers by guaranteeing them quality and professionalism with a profound respect for the principles of honesty and good faith.
April 2016 © Unapost-PressPool.it
POSTOFFICE RELOADED S.R.L.
VIA SAVONA 16
20144 MILANO
TEL +39 02 48958570
