Sohonet 5 minutes with Rawr

interview and copy written for Sohonet

RAWR Productions is a full-service boutique post house run by husband and wife team Alicia Vogel-Hannan, CEO and Jeff Hannan, president and Emmy winning re-record mixer.

article here

The Los Angeles based facility is a relatively new kid on the block having launched out of the pandemic offering a wide range of services from re-record mix, sound design and foley to color mastering and visual effects.

Its work includes We Need To Talk About Cosby (Showtime); The Stroll (HBO), The Golden Boy (HBO); 1000% Me Growing Up (Max); How To Become A Cult Leader (Netflix); The Long Game (AppleTV+); Intervention (A&E); Freaknik (Hulu) and The Perfect Wife: The Mysterious Disappearance of Sherri Papini (Hulu).

They take time out of their busy schedule to talk about growing their business.

Please tell us about Rawr’s origins story.
Alicia Vogel-Hannan: Neither of us had aspirations to open a finishing facility - it just sort of fell into our lap. We were both working from home during the pandemic. As a post supervisor I understand the relationship with clients and Jeff is an expert re-recording mixer. Jeff had built a full Dolby Atmos mixing bay in the guest room of our house including with speakers in the ceiling. No-one knew how long that work from home period would go on for.

Jeff Hannan: I started picking up work during lockdown and we spotted a way in which we could bring on a colorist and an online editor to offer full finishing. Once people started returning to the office, we obviously couldn’t invite everyone into our living room so we decided to open a physical facility. At the time it was a gamble, a toss of the dice, but within two months we had 15 shows and we’ve just kept going.

We’ve since opened a data center from where we host offline rentals. That enables us to offer the soup to nuts of a full postproduction workflow. We ingest and archive media, transcode it and deliver proxy files to offline editors. We supply the systems and 24-hour support and oversee projects through final stages and delivery.

Rawr has had great success working on unscripted TV. Why do you think that is?

Jeff: We gravitated to documentary just because that's what we like to watch. Personally, I like approaching a subject about which I maybe know very little and then if the documentary is told well, finish watching it with a new understanding. We feel that we are creative partners in helping producers tell their story and to create a lasting impact with audiences.

Alicia: Our niche are the water cooler documentaries, the ones that everybody's talking about. The appetite for docs has been strong for some time now and I don’t think that’s going to diminish. I think that’s because you never get the whole story from news headlines or social media. There’s always another side to it and viewers appreciate a deep dive to discover more. Plus, there are so many interesting stories to tell.

Unscripted shows tend to need a lot of media. How do you manage storage?

Alicia: It’s a constant battle but we have petabytes of storage to stay on top of it. A three-part documentary will generate close to 125 terabytes of media. There is typically a high shoot ratio on these projects and a lot of archival elements that come into play. Sometimes we're taking archive footage and treating it in software to make it suitable for insertion into the show.

Each situation is unique. The one you think is gonna be amazingly difficult is the one that goes super smooth and the one that you thought was gonna be super easy, is the one that's constantly changing the road map.

What is the Rawr experience like?
Alicia: We're at the heart of Burbank on Magnolia Blvd, among this beautiful little strip full of vintage shops, and coffee houses, and restaurants. It's a really nice area. We have a Dolby Atmos Mix suite and a full Dolby Vision color suite in addition to online bays accompanied by a stylish lobby, lounge area and kitchen. 

As a post supervisor I knew where the pitfalls are from the client's perspective, down to what makes working in a dark edit bay for hours on end a more comfortable experience.  The level of talent and the attention to detail across Client Services is definitely one thing that sets us apart.

How do you manage workflow?

Jeff: It made sense to bake-in total flexibility for producers and artists to enjoy in-person or remote sessions. The way we’ve structured our workflow is so we can get up and running really quickly.  People drop off the media and we give them a 24-hour turnaround but within hours their media is transcoded and ready for edit. We send them proxy files while the Raw media lives at our finishing facility. Once they send back their sequences, we instantaneously relink to Raw for finishing. The days of long-winded weeks of online prep are over.

That’s kind of how we fell into Sohonet. We’d used a lot of other remote connectivity products throughout the pandemic and ClearView stood out as the best. We’ve been using it as a staple of our workflow for 18 months. You do pay a premium for it but you are paying for reliability. The ease of use is astonishing. I literally just click on it and boom! up pops the stream. And it’s in sync. I don't have to worry about it. That was the big selling point to me. I use it almost daily in audio to run live reviews with clients who might be in Texas or New York or wherever.

Another big selling point for us was ClearView’s ability to stream high quality video, consistently for HDR. That is increasingly vital for remote sessions as more and more projects require HDR. We also use ClearView for online and color sessions and recently began offering ClearView for our offline clients so they can collaborate remotely.

FileRunner is a natural addition to our portfolio because we need to be able to move large amounts of media. You can imagine the media required for a three-part documentary. File Runner is really fantastic as the transport for ingesting media.

Our whole philosophy is to give artists a better experience. So having the best tools available is what makes us stand out from everybody else.

How challenging is it as owner operators to make decision on hires and investments?

Alicia: It’s a constant conversation and a scary one because we might be riding high right now but what does tomorrow bring? Our accounting firm advises us on market projections and we are constantly running the numbers. Getting the timing right as to whether or not you invest in a new system or new talent is hard.

Having worked for large corporations in the past, I know how frustrating it can be to get the tools that you need. Decisions as simple as a new plugin would have to go up the chain and then it would be months later as to whether you got the go ahead. Since the chain of command is route one for us we typically support those purchases straight away. We had no hesitation getting ClearView and File Runner. If it's a larger purchase, we will talk with accounts and that outcome depends on the projections.

How did the name Rawr come about?

Alicia: We were making up names for a potential company and we just couldn’t think of the right one so we asked our four-year-old son, ‘What should we call it?’ And he came around the corner in a full dinosaur costume, stomping his feet and said, ‘RAWWWRRR!’