HOW TO BE A CUT ABOVE
The Director of IT at Crewcuts, Christopher Keenan, talks about the Internet age, its evolution and its impact on post-production companies.
In 1999, the Internet was booming and emerged as a place to not only promote yourself, but also a tool. Crewcuts realized that in the industry of film, editing, post production and graphics, they could transfer files using FTP or messengers, communicate using email, and post and share film using the Internet. However if they could consolidate these process, all seamlessly within their website, they realized it would save them time, money and productivity, and could win new business and strengthen their brand. So they set off into a brave new world to consolidate all these efforts.
Christopher Keenan, Director of IT at Crewcuts, explains how they got to where they are today.
"Back in 1998 and 1999 we first started with a hosted server and FTP program, but this process quickly became cumbersome. Trying to keep track of different jobs, different clients, different passwords, who was responsible for what while making the process user friendly for clients and administrators was impossible. It's obvious FTP was never meant to be used to organize files for use by multiple people for multiple clients. It became too time consuming and clunky to manage across the whole company."
"We looked into hosted solutions, but there were drawbacks. Firstly, we didn't want to have to teach our clients how to use complex hosted products, just to find, view, comment or download files. We also know people are using search engines to look up our talent. Putting our spots and reels on a hosted solution pointed search engines away from our main corporate site. We needed a solution that would live on our website, be simple for the client and feel seamless."
"This led to a build versus buy option, so we hired a web firm to build us a custom system for our website. However, we quickly realized that the company didn't have the in-depth knowledge of our industry to know how to design a system to fit our needs. Also a custom system would be costly to upgrade and maintain. That's when we found baxtage software. Because it's a system made for film and television professionals, it made our decision easy. It was customized to integrate seamlessly into our website. Also, since Curtaintech installs and customizes it themselves, there was no IT required."
"Because Curtaintech is dedicated to our field, we're confident baxtage upgrades are made with our needs in mind. For seven years they have lived up to our expectations."
"We know the Internet is a great tool and will always be constantly changing. What makes us great is not the technology, but the creative style we bring to the story. We like to focus on that and not technology and our website, which is why we have been with Curtaintech for so long."
CREW CUTS, is one of New York's pre-eminent creative shops, providing complete post-production services for editing, graphics, special effects & compositing, sound design, and digital mixing. The company has evolved over 20+ years to develop an expertise in editing and post-production for commercials, feature films, television series, and music videos - in addition to emerging web and mobile media.
For more information visit Crewcuts at: crewcuts.com
