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Filed under: Autodesk •Editing •GentryMedia Sister Sites •ProVideo Coalition •Post Production •

Smoke Scene

Based in Greenville, South Carolina, Skyline Post is many things to many people. Founded by ad agency and post-production veteran - and current Skyline CEO - Randall Owens six years ago, Skyline combines qualities of an ad agency, a post facility, a boutique production house, and a branding consulting group into a unique blend that has attracted a wide variety of customers.

With a recent expansion of services and a growth of employees to 15 strong, Skyline is feeling good about its future. Part of that future will include Autodesk Smoke professional video editing software, which the company licensed to enhance its editing, finishing, and color correction services.

“I’ve been involved in production and post-production for just about as long as I can remember,” says Owens. “There has been a massive amount of change in the industry during my career, but Autodesk has always been a well-respected company. To stay on top of our game and our market, we needed much more powerful editing software, and from a company that our existing and prospective customers would know they could trust. Autodesk Smoke fit that bill perfectly.”

The Challenge

A significant portion of Skyline customers, according to Owens, are large advertising agencies and corporate marketing groups in large companies. As other commercial editing software and systems were growing more basic in an attempt to garner more general consumer interest, Owens noticed a somewhat disturbing trend.

“More customers were trying to do in-house what they previously asked us to do,” he says. “What we do for our customers is about much more than software, of course, but some people saw it as a way to cut costs. We needed to show them how much more we bring to the table. For editing, finishing, and color correction, Smoke is much more powerful than anything they could use in-house, and it gives us more chances to show what we can do.”

It wasn’t long before Skyline had a chance to try out its new tools. After creating a couple of web videos to bring himself up to speed, Skyline Smoke Artist Brian Cooper got to work on a challenging national spot for Craftsman.

“With the tight deadline on the spot, I initially thought I would cut everything in other, more familiar software, and then bring it into Smoke for finishing,” he says. “After getting more comfortable in Smoke, though, I decided to do everything in one system. In fact, when I went back to our old software, it felt way too basic. With Smoke, I’m able to do in minutes what would have taken me forever in any other software.”

In addition to fast turnaround, the Craftsman spot held a number of challenges ideally suited to Smoke, says Cooper.

“There were all kinds of cool things I was able to do on the spot that would not have happened with another software package. Probably the biggest thing was the amount of on-screen text the spot required. Every shot had moving elements, a dolly or jib move in every scene. With all that movement, the text just seemed to sit there.”

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