Broadcast
Post production boutique Glassworks will receive new financial backing within the next three weeks, according to managing director Hector Macleod, writes Adrian Pennington.
Last week Eidos the computer games publisher withdrew its support for the facility after announcing a group operating loss of£26.8m.
Macleod said; 'We were a peripheral business for Eidos and a relatively expensive one. The news was not a surprise although the time scale they've given us could be better.'
Macleod expressed confidence in announcing a new backer which is expected to be, like Eidos, a content owner or producer. No interest has been received from US giant Four Media Company.
'We want to work with a company that has experience in negotiating rights and developing content,' he said. High end effects and compositing will remain our mainstay but we will gradually redirect parts of our business away from an over reliance on commercials toward content creation,' he said.
Glassworks had experimented with digital animation and creation by developing full motion video sequences for Eidos' games. The enterprise proved unprofitable and is unlikely to continue without strong links to a computer game company.
He added:; '?The problem faced by Glassworks is one that faces all facility owners. Investment in technology is expensive, overheads are high and talent is costly. But the real problem is that the amount clients are prepared to pay is far less than it ever was and it doesn't reflect their expectations in quality which remain high.'
One solution, he says, is to operate a facility which has a central storage resource automatically allocating work and bandwidth to a series of dumb terminals. Macleod, who is working with PC manufacturer Compaq on this idea, also champions next generation compositor Shake developed by Nothing Real.
