10 YEARS? That's practically a DECADE!!
Today is September 15th, 2014. That means I’ve been at Nutmeg Post for EXACTLY 10 YEARS! Wow that went fast!!
When I started here, Nutmeg occupied the 6th Floor with two additional rooms on the 8th Floor. We were only doing audio (we were still called Nutmeg Audio Post). Ten years later and we’re on 3 full floors. The word ‘audio’ is out and we’re Nutmeg Post. We now have 11 Pro Tools rooms, 11 Avid rooms, Color Correction, Graphics, producers and creatives. The staff size has more than doubled since I started. It’s been amazing to watch the changes- both in offerings, equipment and decor!
But beyond the physical expansion and the new talent on-board... the WAY we do things has changed dramatically! Think about it. A decade ago, there was no iPhone. Sure there was already ISDN, but Source Connect didn’t exist. “Ichat” had only just added audio and video, and only a few people I knew were on it. Now it’s assumed we can do Facetime/ Skype, etc. Tape decks were still a big deal! Sessions still ended in ‘laybacks’ and we still had to wait for dubs and labels to be made after a session. Posting quicktimes to FTP was gaining momentum over some dubs… but slowly. Lots of people were still asking for CD dubs for radio work or VO work. Cassettes were long dead.
Sound effects searches had pretty much moved over to the digital world, but music searches were only just starting to be done without physical discs. Now we handle all of that through Soundminer and a massive array of drives for both sound effects and music.
The majority of mix to picture work now involves downloading quick times and AAF files and posting quicktimes for approval followed by mixes and splits. Even hard drives are a less frequent part of that process. And mixing stuff that’s been produced in-house speeds that process up even more! How quickly we went from locking to physical decks… to locking to virtual decks… to loading video into the timeline from tape… to just dragging in Pro Res video files and skipping tape altogether.
Beyond the changes in the mechanics of a session from start to delivery- the technology behind what we can do and the speed at which is can be done is mind-blowing. Noise removal from location audio had entered into the plugin world pretty well by the time I started here- but the improvements in the technology have been astounding. Things that used to be on my wish-list are now a part of what I can do every day.
A college professor once said “In this industry- the day you know everything is the day you should quit!”. I’m proud to say that 25 years into my career, I learn something new every day! Whether it’s a trick from a colleague or a new tool to use- it’s endless.
And the best part of it all is the people! If you’re reading this, you’re part of a really long list of the smartest, funniest, most creative and coolest people I know. Or you’re looking for the Frank Verderosa that wrote Final Fantasy Fan Fiction. That’s not me. Sorry to have bored you.
Oh- and the sushi!
So thank you… and thank Nutmeg for given a guy a pretty darn cool environment to keep growing in! And not just because of the elaborate lunches and snacks.
Yup. I've always been a big fan of progress. As far back as I can remember...
Frank V.
