Crawford Post Production: All-Digital Post Workflow Delivers Speed, Flexibility for Clients

Crawford Post Production, a division of Crawford Communications, Inc., has seen it all and done it all before. Since 1981, the Atlanta-based post house has worked with top advertising agencies, corporations, broadcasters, production companies, and cable companies on a wide range of projects, solidifying its position as a leading provider of post-production services in the Southeastern U.S.

Crawford Post has built its reputation on providing technologically sophisticated post solutions for any sized budget. Clients can enjoy the full services of a one-stop shop or choose selected services to meet their needs, including HD and SD creative editorial, visual effects and animation, 5.1 surround sound and mixing, Blu-ray and DVD authoring, and film transfer.

Technology that performs flawlessly day in and day out is essential for Crawford Post, which caters to the needs of thousands of clients each year, many under the tightest of deadlines. The staff relies on a streamlined digital editing and shared-storage environment with complete fiber optic networking to enable editors to simultaneously share projects and media for the fastest possible workflow. The editing setup includes six Windows-based Media Composer Adrenaline systems connected to the Avid Unity MediaNetwork shared-storage solution. Two additional systems  a Macintosh-based Media Composer Adrenaline workstation and a Windows-based laptop with Media Composer software  are used primarily for HD projects, while three Avid DS Nitris systems are used for the company’s effects-intensive finishing jobs. All of the Avid workstations are equipped with After Effects software and various effects plugs-ins that enable editors at any workstation to create effects on demand.

Reliability and flexibility are essential elements of Crawford Post’s workflow, and the company has used Avid systems since the 1990s as the cornerstone of its post environment. “Avid is built like a tank compared with other systems,” says senior editor Tom Roche, a 22-year Crawford Post veteran. “It’s astonishingly stable. It’s the best system for companies that work with top-quality, deadline-oriented material where there is zero room for error.”

“Avid is built like a tank compared with other systems … It’s the best system for companies that work with top-quality, deadline-oriented material where there is zero room for error.”
- Tom Roche, Senior Editor, Crawford Post Production

Telling Compelling Stories, Fast

A worry-free post setup enables the nearly 50-person team to keep its focus firmly on the creative aspects of editing projects for high-profile clients such as The Coca-Cola Company, Frederick Swanston, JWT Atlanta, Matlock Advertising and PR, the Varnson Group, and UPS - whether it is a film, a television show, a corporate video, or a commercial spot. “Ours is a very streamlined operation,” says Roche. “I can just sit down and tell the story.”

One story that Crawford Post completed was a one-hour program for PBS’s Nature series. A joint production of PBS and National Geographic Television, “Katrina’s Animal Rescue” focused on the volunteers who raced to save starving animals abandoned by their owners in advance of Hurricane Katrina’s arrival. The owners expected to be back days later to retrieve their pets, but the levees broke and flooded hundreds of homes. Some 250,000 pets were left stranded, and the clock was ticking to rescue as many animals as possible.

“We were taking viewers into a war zone,” says Roche about the dramatic show, which utilized all of his creative editing skills. “This was not some exercise in editing smoke and mirrors where excess effects are used to pump up nonexistent drama. This was real; this was a historic and tragic situation. If anything, we had to rein in much of the sadness and realism. We had to somehow balance the rescue effort’s solemn drama with a good measure of success and optimism.”

The creative challenge was equaled by the practical challenge of producing the show within five weeks to meet the high standards of National Geographic and PBS. “We used Avid Media Composer Adrenaline systems and the Avid Unity network to set up two suites, working four weeks straight, ten hours a day,” says Roche. “The beauty of the Avid workflow is how fast the systems worked and how dependable they were. There were no crashes or breakdowns, which was good because we couldn’t afford any.”

The media management capabilities inherent in the Avid setup were also essential for meeting the tight deadline. Roche explains, “Producer Kim Woodard and chief cinematographer Brian Harvey amassed some 50 hours of footage, plus hundreds of news stock clips from numerous archives. We had to quickly evaluate what were the most compelling stories to tell, and then determine which edit suite would tackle which segments. The speed at which we could clip and sub-clip and share bins enabled us to deliver a rough 90-minute cut within two weeks. Two weeks later, we had it down to PBS deliverable specs of 54 minutes.”

“Having the Avid systems helps us be more flexible for our clients.”
- Kathleen Fitch, Vice President, Crawford Post Production

One Step Ahead

Producing top-quality work on deadline is a given at Crawford Post, along with suggesting the optimum technical workflow for clients. “Today, every project is different from the last one,” says Roche. “We’ve done so much work on so many different kinds of projects, we can advise our clients on the best path to take.”

Staying one step ahead of technology trends is also the norm. “We’ve always been at the cutting edge. We have to support all of the different technologies available,” says vice president of post production Kathleen Fitch, who began working with HD in the 1990s. “We want to understand the latest technology, explore it, and use it in-house before we work with clients. Now our biggest challenge is keeping up with all the HD acquisition formats. How are they going to work in the post environment? How large are the files? Where are they stored?”

Crawford Post’s HD editing environment enables editors to view visually rich images in any format while working with storage-efficient HD files for the fastest possible workflow. The post team has used the Avid DNxHD codec for creative offline editing and screening, streamlining the post process for a variety of HD projects, including films, commercial spots, and broadcast pieces.

Whatever their technology needs, Crawford Post has found that Avid systems have continued to evolve in a way that supports their business model. “We always ask ourselves, ‘What makes the most business sense? What helps make us more competitive?,’” says Fitch, who has made a long-term commitment to using Avid equipment. “Having the Avid systems helps us be more flexible for our clients.” And that is what keeps so many customers coming back for more.