AlphaDogs Editorial: A Cross Platform House

Creative COW by Terence Curren

When I founded AlphaDogs Editorial in 2002, it was because I saw that technological trends made it possible for producers and editors to buy their own equipment and open their own facilities. We focused on providing the best technology, with an attention to personal service, and it's been a very successful formula.

We're on our fourth season of Lifetime's Project Runway and work on a spin-off, All Stars of the Runway. We had recently started working on mun2's I Love Jenni, a reality TV show that followed the late Hispanic singer Jenni Rivera, and My Shopping Addiction for the Oxygen Network. We've done editorial, audio, graphics and finishing work for indie features, commercials, TV shows and more from 20th Century Fox, BET, Cartoon Network, Comedy Central, Discovery Channel, DreamWorks, Paramount, PBS, Showtime, Warner Bros., and many other networks, channels and studios.

Because we're attuned to technology trends, we've prided ourselves on staying ahead of the curve, from our early adoption of HD to, more recently, file-based workflows. When Apple's Final Cut Pro just began to gain in popularity in the media & entertainment business, we were one of only three facilities in Los Angeles -- Plaster City Post and DigitalFilm Tree were the other two -- that offered a workflow for it.

For a long time, I was a big Mac fan, and I relied on the Apple platform. I had to buy a PC and get comfortable with it. A couple of years later, when Avid offered a Mac version of Symphony, it became possible to have Symphony and FCP on the same computer, which was compelling. To make a room versatile so as to hold both systems held a certain charm, but I stuck with keeping Symphony on a PC.

I began to see a pattern with Apple products, and I didn't have a warm and fuzzy feeling about it. I saw that everyone would wait and wait for the new Mac Pro, and when it came, there was really nothing new about it. read more...