It is also a party where you would see a cat dressed as a fruit basket and hear John Fulton, the host of the upcoming Animal Planet series “Must Love Cats,” singing a song he wrote about Matilda with such lyrics as “You’re 15 years young and your time’s just begun.” (Mr. Fulton has written about 34 songs about cats, including “Klepto Kitty,” about a cat that steals things, and the even more self-explanatory “Working Kitties of New York.”)

- WSJ article written by Marshall Heyman, online.wsj.com

Read the full article here.

Matilda the "Algonquin Cat", photo from algonquinhotel.com

(L - R) Executive producer Paula S. Aspell, Dr. Donald Sadoway, David Pogue, Chris Schmidt of the television show 'Making Stuff Stronger, Smaller, Smarter, Cleaner' speaks during the PBS portion of the 2010 Summer TCA Press Tour at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on August 5, 2010 in Beverly Hills, California. Photo: Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images

USA Today:

When is gold red? When it’s microscopic.

This and other scientific oddities are featured in Making Stuff, a four-part miniseries on PBS’s Nova about materials science due in January that focuses on how science makes stuff stronger, smaller, smarter or cleaner, often by replicating in a lab what’s been tested for millions of years in the natural environment.

Read full article here.

The Denver Post:

“Be great to see one percent less attention paid to Lindsay Lohan and that much more to science.”

-PBS NOVA boss Paula Apsell

Read full article here.

The LA Times:

… David Pogue serves as our scientific tour guide as he explores the most remarkable advances in material science: from bacteria that can produce gasoline out of thin air and seat cushions made out of soy bean oil to germ-repelling “shark skin” that could be coming to a hospital near you.

Read full article here.

Check out photos from the event at the NOVA: “Making Stuff Stronger, Smaller, Smarter, Cleaner” Flickr.

There has never been a better time to shine a light on stories of women affecting change around the world. The evidence is clear — when women and girls are provided with opportunities for education and jobs, access to health care services, and are a vital voice in governance, we can make great strides in addressing serious social issues such as poverty, violence, and political corruption.

- ITVS.org

Want to learn more about ITVS and check the dates and times for the free screening of “A Girl’s Life”? Check out their website here!

Want to watch a clip from “A Girl’s Life”? Check this out!

Anyway, I was doing a “standup” (talking to the camera) at the Fedex facility’s front door, when I received the ultimate disapproval rating–from a crow standing directly overhead at the edge of the roof. Let’s just say there’s a reason I didn’t turn my back to the camera for the rest of that sequence.

She somehow miscalculated the amount of fluid. For the second time, a Pogue shirt was sacrificed for science.

At the moment biopsies are the standard tool for cancer diagnoses. While they are indeed accurate, the problem with them is that they only provide a glimpse of a tumor at one point in time. Dr. Cima’s implant would remain behind in place of the tissue that had been sampled by the biopsy and would make it possible to monitor a tumors growth and how it responds to treatment.

Dr. Michael Cima shows host David Pogue his implant.

“This summer may represent some kind of tipping point in this unrelenting march to the end of human dominance. On Saturday night, Animal Planet will broadcast a special, “Dogs vs. Cats,” that will no doubt draw millions of viewers because it seems likely to have dogs and cats in it.”

Click here to read the full article.

Here is what every business leader should know: The credits have been like Miracle-Gro for our industry. Over the past five years, there has been a national race — a fierce competition to attract the high-spending film and TV industries, with states across the country vying to create incentives to lure movies and TV companies and their lucrative spending to their states. The surprise winner: Massachusetts. We’re fighting way above our weight class. We are in third place behind California and New York in revenue generated by film production. In spite of what the naysayers would have us believe, we can grow a strong film and TV industry here that can pump millions more into the Massachusetts economy.

The secret to Massachusetts success to date, and to truly solidifying the industry here is three-fold.

First: Our workforce. Everybody intuitively understands the many scenic attractions of Massachusetts for movie producers — beaches, mountains, historic areas and cosmopolitan cities. What not everyone realizes is that we have a world-class workforce as well. We have the third largest media student body in the country. We graduate incredible talent not only in acting but in production, design, lighting, graphics, sound, and online media production Our state is a leader in media industry education, and clearly it is paying off. Unlike elsewhere, job demand is high, and so is the supply.

Second: a reliable, well-planned and executed tax credit package. The Legislature did it right when they implemented the tax credit in 2005 and expanded it in 2007. It is set at the right percentage and is designed to give the producers maximum flexibility (the credit attracted a record number of productions to Massachusetts in 2009). As soon as it looked less reliable in 2010, due to discussions of capping the credits, the number of movies in negotiation to be shot here plummeted. We need a firm and reliable commitment to the tax credit as it is today because that reliability will draw others.

Third: If we really want this industry to thrive, we need to encourage the creation of privately funded infrastructure, specifically sound stages. Massachusetts is already a leader in the production of nonfiction television programs and documentaries, through the output of companies like ours, as well as the PBS producer WGBH. Once a modest suite of soundstages is built, studio-based film and TV projects can take up long-term residence here, leading to potential long-term employment for thousands.

So far, we’re doing well, attracting increasing dollars of film and TV production. But if this success is to continue, we will need to continue to demonstrate to the larger industry that Massachusetts is a committed partner with a stable program of credits in place.

-Joel Olicker and Tug Yourgrau are co-founders of Somerville-based Powderhouse, New England’s largest producer of primetime factual programming for cable networks.

Powderhouse Productions, a national leader in the creation of factual entertainment, will host a screening of its new special for Animal Planet, “Dogs vs. Cat” on Sunday, July 25, 2010 at the Fine Arts Theatre in Maynard, Massachusetts. The screening will take place at 10:30 AM and is open to the community free of charge.

The Maynard Community School played a large role in the series as many of its preschoolers participated in the televised special. “We are so happy to give back to the Maynard Community and the Community School in particular – the families and kids were amazing to work with on this project and I think they had a lot of fun doing it,” said Seanbaker Carter, SVP of Development and Sales for Powderhouse and Executive Producer of Dogs vs. Cats.

The special will answer the age-old question of what is the better species, dogs or cats? Whatever your opinion, Dogs vs. Cats gives viewers fun facts about each species, tells their histories and provides unscripted, raw interviews with everyday Americans, while showing the hilarious and often destructive antics of kittens and puppies. Different groups, from bar patrons to preschoolers, weigh in on the subject and no questions are too off-the-wall, and no contests are off limits in this no-holds barred match to determine a winner in the ultimate battle of the species.

“Whether you consider yourself on Team Dog or Team Cat, we guarantee this special will provide everyone with something to cheer for and maybe even some closure and bragging rights,” said Marjorie Kaplan, President and General Manager of Animal Planet Media.

Bill Borson’s primary responsibilities will be to develop new ways to grow the company’s assets in entertainment, including expanding Powderhouse’s current production base and introducing new production, programming, and licensed partnerships. Borson is a twenty-five year media veteran in sports and entertainment.

Rob Kirwan, Senior VP Production and Post is also the Executive Producer of the hit series, Dogs 101 on Animal Planet. Kirwan, who started his career as an editor, has worked in television for over 20 years, where he has successfully crafted well over 50 hours of Broadcast TV. His selected credits include: Discover Magazine, Engineering the Impossible, Extreme Engineering, Build it Bigger and Raising Cain.

As Head of Sales and Development, Seanbaker Carter and his creative team are responsible for creating and pitching potential television series to all of the major cable networks, including Discovery, History Channel, Animal Planet, and TLC, among others. Carter formerly held the position of Senior VP of Development at Scout Productions where he was an integral member of the Emmy and Academy Award winning team that developed such hits as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Knock First and ABC’s How to Get the Guy.

Congratulations everyone!

Helping Powderhouse Productions make the most of their media, Avid has provided the openness and collaborative capability the company now employs to get the most done in the shortest time span possible.  Their recent purchase of Avid Interplay has enabled the Powderhouse production team to accelerate its development and production of TV series programming and continue its trajectory as one of the most explosive forces in the non-fiction entertainment industry today.

Named after a Revolutionary War storehouse for gunpowder, Powderhouse Productions is currently the largest independent producer of cable programming in New England, having developed some of the world’s most innovative, factual programming for clients such as Animal Planet, National Geographic, PBS and Discovery.  And business is literally booming. One of their most popular undertakings is a hit series for Animal Planet called Dogs 101, known to enthusiasts as the television encyclopedia of dog breeds, now in its 3^rd hit season.

The “Brains” of the Operation

Expanding upon their post-production business, Powderhouse is in the midst of creating another small revolution of their own with the development of original content.  In order to manage and keep track of its burgeoning flow of digital assets, this past year has been highlighted by the incorporation of the Avid Interplay Production asset management and Avid Unity ISIS networked storage platforms.  These technologies serve as the “brains” of the operation, providing everyone with access to the data they need, in terms of both digital assets and associated metadata, for an entire project or series, from one central location.

“On any given day,” comments Joel Olicker, Powderhouse CEO, “an editor, assistant editor, or producer will say, ‘remember that shot we made three years ago, when we were in New Delhi and we filmed those guys walking down the street?’  It no longer takes an army of people digging through boxes and ripping open tapes to see if maybe it’s on this or that tape, then finding out that even if it is, we don’t have a machine to play that format any more.  With Interplay, we are simply able to perform a search and retrieve that clip with all the pertinent metadata attached to it.”

This ability is having a major impact on the Powderhouse workflow.  Just two or three years ago, it was necessary to manage the production of ten season series episodes by separate sub-teams, with each team digitizing, cataloguing and storing the data in its own way.  “What this does,” says Joel, “is to give us a uniform, coherent, cohesive, rational system, whereby all the data is in a single place, in a single database, and instantly accessible by all who need it.”

Doing What Editors Get Paid For

The key business advantage has been to facilitate a dramatic increase in throughput, which has been tantamount for Powderhouse to raising profitability.  In an internal survey taken the previous year, the company found that as much as one-third of its editor’s typical work day was being consumed by mundane housekeeping tasks such as inputting, outputting, transcoding, format management, logging, and transcribing.

With Interplay and Avid Unity ISIS, that work is now taken out of the editors’ hands so that they can not only do what they really are good at, but what they get paid for.

“Engineering a new genre”

Founded in 1994, Powderhouse purchased its first Avid editor that year.  Six years later, a sea change occurred with the decision to engage larger clients and move into series work, predicated in no small measure on the company’s breakout hit Discovery special, “Engineering the Impossible.”  Featuring in-depth profiles of such futuristic construction projects as a mile-high skyscraper and a bridge from Europe to Africa, this program virtually created a new genre of programming for cable nets. For Powderhouse, it signaled the end of one-off productions and a shift into multi-episode series development and production.

More Avid editing gear was eventually added to accommodate Powderhouse’s growing technological requirements, including the company’s first storage system.  Initially, the company opted to go with a solution from Facilis rather than Avid Unity.  Sharing media, though, eventually became such a challenge that the system was unable to keep pace with workflows.

“We were running a fiber-based solution for several years here,” comments Rob Kirwan, Senior Vice President, Production and Post, “and it worked pretty well.  We had up to eight editors, but then it started to stretch us a little too much.  We started seeing some glitches in the system, corrupt media, while larger difficulties emerged, like keeping track of the media itself.”

Powderhouse needed a solution that would help change the focus of what everyone was doing from singular to collaborative effort.  “Given our fast-paced, deadline-driven environment, we wanted a process that would work without hassle,” comments Tug Yourgrau, Powerhouse President and co-founder. Local reseller, HB Communications, was invaluable in helping us move to that next level.”

Building an Arsenal of Technology

Avid Unity ISIS has since become a strategic weapon in the arsenal of Powderhouse technology, expanding on former user capacity of 15 to the level of 25-50 currently required.  Now, instead of having to write to the Facilis drive one contributor at a time, Unity ISIS provides partitions to which all contributors have access, simplifying the process of organizing and accessing data.

Enabling producers and associate producers to access media without having to make a DVD, working with Avid Unity ISIS is like the difference between working with an MS-Word and .pdf file; material can not only be viewed, but massaged.  “The fact is, producers don’t just watch, they precut and make timelines,” remarks Olicker “and that’s the Holy Grail for us, to give every member of the creative team that fingertip access to media.”

A.I.—the Advent of Interplay

Most recently, Powderhouse added Interplay to its current array of Avid gear.  Currently, that encompasses 25 offline workstations running Media Composer Software, 2 Media Composer Nitris DX ingest/output stations and 3 online finishing stations (2 Symphony Nitris and one Symphony Nitris DX), all connected to 48 TB of storage in three Avid Unity ISIS Engines.

“Interplay is another huge step up for us,” says Rob, “in terms of organization, collaboration, the ability to hang on to assets, archive them and retrieve them as needed.”

How deeply this impacts the production process is illustrated by Rob’s workflow travelogue.  “With Interplay,” he says, “as soon as a clip is digitized, it can be checked into the library where a producer can view it, start making notes, watching time codes, and even put locators on the media itself.

“This media can then go to editors who rough-cut the material, create a shot list, identify their favorite bits and b-roll, do a story cut, record their own narration through a USB microphone onto their laptop, and send it off to the assistant.  Now, they can lay out a sequence, check it into the Interplay, and when the editor walks in, there is a story cut ready and waiting.”

The Human Side

“What Interplay brings to the table,” comments Powderhouse Editor, Brian Cassin, “is a lot of Google-esque search functionality.  I mean, I can find pretty much anything I need just by typing in a word.  Now, if I want a whoosh sound, all I do is type in the word whoosh.  It brings up all my whooshes and I just pick the one I want.”

“That’s where it gets personal,” explains Joel.  “When technology fails to support and even thwarts people from doing what they do best, the result is frustration and burnout.  But having Interplay and Avid Unity ISIS completely changes the vibe.  The creative spark stays alive; people can do what they really want to be doing.  Doing stuff that excites them enhances the quality of the work itself, the quality of the work day and the experience of all the other people involved.”

“With Avid now quietly working in the background,” affirms Tug, “creative people are freed up to be creative.  That’s why, when we look at making any technology investment, we try to see beyond features and functionality.  It has to have a human side.”

On behalf of Al Hamra Company and the entire workforce of Al Hamra Project, we would like to extend to you and the team of Powderhouse Production our utmost appreciation for the amazing job you and your team have done with presenting Al Hamra Project in Build It Bigger program.

You have done a remarkable job in taking a project with this complexity and simplified it, where an ordinary viewer can comprehend and appreciate such design in 48 minutes.

We feel honored as a Kuwaiti Company and Project to be part of such a prestigious program, and we truly appreciate all the efforts taking in making this a successful event.

We wish you and your team the best of luck always.

Shokran,
Khalid O. Al Othman

link to the following:
http://www.realscreen.com/articles/news/20100414/global100newsletter.html?word=global&word=100

By Hartley Pleshaw
Mention the Massachusetts Film and Television Tax Credit, at least, mention it to some people, and chances are that you’ll get a predictable reply: that it’s a state program designed to bring “Hollywood films” to Massachusetts.

Or, that it creates “temporary” work for “certain people,” who come in, do their Hollywood thing, and leave.

Joel Olicker is CEO of Powderhouse, a television production company and major supplier of programming for several cable TV networks and for PBS. He says, “The Tax Credit has been a fairly powerful shot in the arm, for the industry in-state, and for Powderhouse specifically.” Photo by Hartley Pleshaw.

Joel Olicker doesn’t work in or for Hollywood; he works in Davis Square, Somerville, MA.

So, why does the CEO of Powderhouse, a television production company approve of the Massachusetts Tax Credit? “The Tax Credit has been a fairly powerful shot in the arm, for the industry in-state, and for Powderhouse specifically.

“Since January 1st, we have added over thirty people to our staff. We are growing at a phenomenal rate. We are looking to have the busiest year we’ve ever had, in our sixteen-year history.

“Last year, during the depths of a recession, we had the busiest year we’ve ever had since then.”

But what has the state’s Tax Credit got to do with it?

According to Joel Olicker, a lot.

“The Tax Credit has enabled us to develop new ideas for new series that we can bring to the marketplace, and have been able to sell into the cable television arena.

“The Tax Credit has enabled us to invest in new equipment, to enable us to do our work more efficiently, and at a higher quality.

“And, because of the fact that the word is getting out that Massachusetts is a thriving production state, we are now able to attract talent, producing talent, directing talent, writing talent, to work on our shows, coming back from New York and LA. (These are) people who left the state because they wanted a career in this industry, but really wanted to come back.

“We’ve got award-winning people here now, who have come back from LA and New York, and couldn’t be happier to be working in Boston.”

But, what about the charge that the Tax Credit is a giveaway to Hollywood? Joel Olicker puts it into perspective.

“Very highly paid stars come into the state, and they get their very high salaries. I think that what you have to remember is that every quarter that we give back to production, we’re getting a full dollar. So, the only way that the money flows to those productions is based on the money that they are spending in the state. And, there has been a tremendous amount of money spent in-state.

“We get calls from hotel operators saying, ‘Let us know what we can do to help preserve the Credit, because we have rented thousands of hotel rooms to people coming in to make these movies.’

“Caterers. Truck drivers. Cab drivers. Restaurants. Florists. The ‘ripple effect,’ what they call the ‘multiplier effect,’ of the money that is coming into the state, and being spread around, not just in Boston, but to rural towns (and cities like) Lawrence, Rockport, Gloucester, the Cape, the Vineyard and Western Massachusetts. There are hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into this economy that wouldn’t be here (without the Tax Credit).

“Yeah, we’re spending money, but we’re getting 75% more returned. Those arguments (against the Tax Credit) fail to acknowledge that.”

Again, all well and good…for the people and places Joel Olicker mentions above. But what about his own company, Powderhouse? How
does it benefit from the Tax Credit?

“This Tax Credit is not just a film tax credit, it’s a film and television tax credit. Powderhouse is in the television business. We benefit the same
as any other qualifying entity.

“The important point of that is that, unlike film, which is a single-project oriented business, films are made one at a time, and they are focused very intensely on production: the shooting phase, the post-production phase, etc., television is an ongoing process. There are hundreds of television networks that we all now get on our cable boxes, and they’re all running 24 hours a day. There is a tremendous demand for television programming. Television production is a 365-day-a-year, 24-hour-a-day business. At Powderhouse, we’ve been able to capture a relatively tiny segment of that. But, it’s still enough to grow a substantial company, generating millions and millions of dollars in revenue every year.”

“The thing that some people are starting to understand is that, as this state becomes friendlier to television production, in other
words, with developing a talent pool, developing a talent base, developing facilities, we can begin attracting more television production. We can begin attracting game shows, we could easily produce talk shows, we could even start to consider producing sitcoms. Those shows run fifty weeks a year.

“So, imagine a studio complex. It wouldn’t have to be a huge one; these are relatively small studios, very manageable facilities. In fact, we already have, in Boston, a number of underutilized, state of the art, television production studios at places like WGBH, and the local stations (as well as) the private studios that already exist.

“A television production industry could easily grow here. Because, remember, this state has already created a global leader in high-quality television production at WGBH. WGBH has for decades been one of the premier creators of high-quality television on the planet…It’s not rocket science to think about establishing it and expanding it. And companies like ours are very much trying to do that.”

So may well go the future. But Seanbaker Carter, Powderhouse’s Vice President of Television Development, has to deal with the here and now. How has the

From Seanbaker Carter, Powderhouse’s Vice President of Television Development, point of view, Massachusetts Film Tax Credit has created jobs, more than 70 new jobs at Powderhouse and increased his Development Team to 6. Photo by Hartley Pleshaw.

Tax Credit affected his work?

“I’ve been here in Boston making films and television for ten to twelve years. “For me personally, it has created opportunities in a not inherently television-friendly region in terms of infrastructure (as opposed to New York and LA). I’ve seen the jobs created. My team is six people. Over the past three years, when our profits weren’t increasing, we could maximize the Tax Credit, and create room for another job. In turn, it allows us to sell a little more TV
by having more development people. So, from my perspective, it’s really been a nice symbiotic relationship. I get more guys, we sell more shows, we hire more people…that’s where it is for me.”

According to Seanbaker, at least two Powderhouse productions owe their existence to the Tax Credit: Dogs 101 (for Animal Planet) and Sliced (for the History Channel). “(They) were developed with a team of people who would not and did not exist in the company a year prior. Again, we were able to expand the department slightly. Both of those programs were a direct result (of the Tax Credit).

At the other end of Powderhouse’s creative/ productive process is Robert Kirwan, Powderhouse’s Vice President of Post Production. He, too, has felt the positive impact of the Tax Credit.

“First and foremost, (the Tax Credit) allows us to invest in the infrastructure. (That) really gets us to a solid point where we’re current with the technology; we can scale it to the size that we need, and we can then fill those seats, and do the volume of the work that we’re required to do to keep in business.”

For example? “Budgets continue to go down; that is one thing we’ve found every single year. The budgets that we get from our clients are down because advertising dollars are down. People are advertising in different ways. They need to squeeze us, and we understand why they have to do it. Then, we have to figure out how to be more efficient in the way we do things.

“An edit cycle used to be twelve weeks. Then, it was eleven. Then, it was ten. Then it was nine, then it was eight. Then, it was seven. Then, we said, stop! You’re killing us! Then, it was six! So, how do you do that? You have to stack more people on the same project.

“So, having that technology allows us to have a number of people working on the exact same media, and the same show at the same time, which is something that we never really could do before. Now, everyone taps into the same media at the same time, instantly. So, it’s allowed us to make our time much more efficient, by stacking multiple people on the same project, accessing the same media at the same time.” And so, the Tax Credit helps bring Powderhouse’s work to its literal end.

In hard economic times, anything perceived as a “favor” to a business or industry is suspect; add the word “Hollywood” to the equation, and the negativity multiplies. Joel Olicker is not unsympathetic to state officials struggling to deal with bad times, but thinks that they should consider the positive effect the Tax Credit has had on his own company, and on other people in Massachusetts.

“It’s clear to us that jobs have been created. People are buying houses. People are moving here, (and) paying taxes. The Credit is having the effect that it was intended to have. If the Credit was gone, those jobs would go away. People would be moving (out of Massachusetts).

“The Tax Credit did not create the problems in this state….

“The state has choices to make. They’re tough choices. All I can say is that this Credit is having the effect it’s having. It’s doing it beautifully. Left in place, the benefits will increase exponentially.”

-Hartley Pleshaw has worked in Boston-area television, theater, radio, video, film and journalism for the past thirty years. He has written for Imagine since September, 2006. His email address is hartleypleshaw@gmail.com.

Read more of this months Imagine Magazine at: http://67.19.80.66/imagine/index.aspx

If you’re a Facebook user, you’ve no doubt been invited to take part in Vampires or Mafia Wars, two free online games that invite you to start a clan of vampires (or a mafia family) with your friends, complete challenges to earn points, and establish dominance over other groups. Both are examples of “social gaming” — games that spread through social networking sites, are relatively inexpensive to build, and generate revenue by selling virtual goods or currency to players, for real money.

Disruptor Beam, the latest start-up from husband-and-wife entrepreneurs Jon Radoff and Angela Bull, plans to play in the social gaming arena. Radoff mentioned the new venture on his blog last Friday; we met earlier this week to talk in more detail. “We think there are three important elements to a role-playing game: story, character-building, and progression,” Radoff says. “A lot of the existing social games have the idea of progression, of advancing through a world, but they don’t have the other two.” Radoff likes to say he and Bull have been building social games since the early 1990s, when they launched a text-based fantasy game called “Legends of Future Past” on the CompuServe online service.

GamerDNA was the most recent company that Bull and Radoff started together; it was an online gathering place for die-hard gamers. The company raised more than $5 million in venture capital from Flybridge Capital Partners in Boston. Last year, after cutting its staff in half, GamerDNA was acquired by a New York-based gaming site for an undisclosed sum.

What was the lesson there? “GamerDNA built a lot of great stuff for a year or so before thinking about revenue,” Radoff says. “Thinking about revenue first could have made a difference.” (Bull left GamerDNA in early 2009 to start work on Disruptor Beam. That’s Radoff and Bull at the center of the photo, taken at a GamerDNA office-warming party.)

This time around, Radoff and Bull aren’t raising venture capital (at least initially). Their plan is to work with content partners who will help fund the development of social games and also share in the revenues. Disruptor Beam’s business model will mimic that of the two leaders in social gaming, Zynga and Playdom: selling virtual goods and currency that give you status, skills, or help you advance in the game.

Radoff says the company is working on three games simultaneously — two with partners, and one on its own. The nice thing about social games, he says, is that they can be inexpensive to develop (costing $100,000 and up), “which lets you experiment, building games for different audiences, with different game play mechanics.”

The first game to launch, perhaps as early as May, will be “Gods of Rock,” which Disruptor Beam is developing independently. Your role is that of an aspiring rock star who needs to write songs, obtain instruments, and generate income. “Eventually, you can become a music mogul, sign up your friends’ bands, and help produce them,” Radoff says. (No drugs or booze in “Gods of Rock,” though Radoff notes “there will be energy drinks.”) The start-up is working on a second, history-based game in collaboration with Powderhouse Productions, the biggest producer of non-fiction TV programming in New England.

Powderhouse co-founder Tug Yourgrau isn’t saying much about the game (or the related show) yet. “We’ve been working with them for about two months,” he says. “For us, it’s a containable investment in a new area.” The show hasn’t yet been sold to a network, Yourgrau says, adding that “the game will probably launch first.”

Disruptor Beam envisions working with other TV producers, movie studios, publishers and even other game developers to create social games around new or existing media properties. Radoff says that aside from himself and Bull, the “nucleus” of Disruptor Beam includes a programmer and game designer. It’s mainly a virtual team at this point, though they do spend some time in the downtown Boston offices of Hangout Industries, which offers free office space to a handful of start-ups. Radoff tells me the company is currently hiring for user experience designers, illustrators, and graphic designers. You’ll be able to see Radoff at next month’s “Business in Gaming” conference at MIT, which includes a panel on social gaming.

By Christine Bunish

In our industry, the reed for storage seems to increase almost daily. We need to bolster collaborative workflows, offer asset access to a growing pool of people, and manage those assets as content is pushed across more platforms.

Although storage requirements for editorial, color grading, VFX and audio recording differ widely from company to company, there are solutions tailored to meet the demands of everyone today.

BLUR STUDIO

In 2004, VFX company Blur Studio (www.blur.com) in Venice Beach, CA, was tasked with creating 45 minutes of animation for Disney’s Twice Upon a Christmas, and CTO Duane Powell discovered that “our current storage wouldn’t cut it.” He remembers that “back then, the technology was self-built; we had direct-attached RAID storage.”

But Disney workload prompted him to research other storage solutions and Blur acquired a DataDirect Network (DDN) S2AB000 that’s “still running today, reliably serving content.”

It’s Powell’s philosophy to embrace “white box hardware and open-source software. I abhor vendor lock in,” he says. “I don’t want to be forced into a proprietary file system. I’m an open-source zealot.”

Since he’s taken that Posture he’s “been free to leverage Lustre, an open-source clustered file system, and the DNN for all the effects work we’ve done,” Powell reports. “We expanded our storage with another 8500, and our last purchase was the S2A9900, DDN’s premier product. Originally, the DDNs we’re fibre: the 900 is InfiniBand. We have partially populated the 9900’s 300 slots with 2TB drives, leaving lots of room for growth.”

With the 900 as Blur’s core storage system, it plays a key role on every project – from slots for Avator to the Dante’s Inferno videogame spot that aired during the Super Bowl – from storyboards and animatics through VFX delivery.

“I know we made the right decision because DDN now offers a turnkey solution with Lustre or GPFS; you don’t have to configure it yourself.” Says Powell. “That validation feels good.”

From the start DDN systems were “the right price point, had more than enough performance and offered a path for growth,” he points out. “I can’t speak to customer service – I’ve never had to call them! Blur expects to continue growing and plans to use DDN to do it.”

POWDERHOUSE

Named for the colonial American powder magazine nearby, Somerville, MA’s Powderhouse Productions (www.powderhouse.net) is something of a powerhouse in non-fiction TV content. The independent production company develops factual and alternative entertainment for TV and emerging media. Its TV work including Build it Bigger for the Science Channel: Mega-Engineering for Discovery; Cats 101, Dogs 101, Superfetch and a new show for cat lovers for Animal Planet; a new series for the History Channel; and four episodes of Stuff for PBS’s Nova.

‘Supporting all these projects is a 14,000 square-foot facility featuring 20 Avid Media Composer video editing system for creative offline, an Avid Symphony and two Media Composer Nitris DX systems for online finishing, and a full-fledged graphics workstation running the Adobe suite of software plus Maxon’s Cinema 4D.

Powderhouse was using FireWire and local drives when it moved into it new space five years ago. The company invested in a Fibre Channel storage solution that VP of post Rob Kirwan says “worked pretty well to meet our needs a couple of years,” then “ started to show its limitations” as Powderhouse took on more TV series.

“We’ve been growing at the rate of 30 to 40 percent for the last three years,” he reports. “With the amount of media coming through this place, we knew we didn’t have enough storage.” Avid reseller HB Communications suggested that Kirwan look at Avid Unity ISIS, an Ethernet-based system and a shared storage solution more often found at broadcast stations and networks. The ISIS system proved to be “an eye-opener” for Kirwan. “I was shocked that Ethernet could handle the amount of work we’d put through it. We jumped in early in ’09 and have three crates (chassis), each with 16 1TB drives or sleds. Our goal is to keep growing. We needed something that would scale with us.”

The three crates have System Director and Fail Over System Director fir redundancy. “The drives are built to be mirrored and redundant so data loss is almost unheard of with ISIS,” Kirwan reports. “If you feed it really good, steady power and clean, cool air, it’s designed never to shut down.”

The idea behind Powderhouse’s shared storage is to maximize efficiencies in post by enabling assistants to digitize footage, string out edits and cut in narration so the editors can concentrate on the creative storytelling and treatment.

Kirwan found ISIS to be “very intelligent on its own” with the ability to have multiple people writing to a single work share simultaneously and the system instantly providing access to the latest updates. “You can scale the size of the partitions as you’re writing to it,” he notes, “and dial up the bandwidth required for each room.”

Adding Avid Interplay, billed as a nonlinear workflow engine, on top of ISIS has boosted efficiencies and collaboration even more. “Interplay allows producers to look at all the media on their desktops or laptops without going into the edit suite,” Kirwan explains. “ The producer opens a folder on the database, looks at the original field footage, makes notes – he can even do cuts – only string outs. Once he checks the sequence in, the editor can see it, grab it and start working on it.”

Doing a search for the latest sequence or all of its iterations is “really easy and fast,” he says. “You’re searching media by the metadata attached to every clip.” Interplay also allows staff to sift through media and archive what’s not needed so it’s offline but retrievable at a moment’s notice. “Powderhouse is looking to move more toward content ownership, so we’ll want to use interplay and ISIS solutions to manage our assets and remonetize and reuse them,” he adds.

Kirwan points out that Massachusetts’s production tax credit has played a key role in enabling the company to acquire ISIS and Interplay. “Getting a tax credit at the end of the year for what we’ve spent in Massachusetts has allowed us to make these infrastructure investments.”

And these investments have also proved to be an asset to the college interns working at Powderhouse. “We have 20 interns here on any given day,” says Kirwan. “They tend to be well-versed in Avid and some schools are looking at buying ISIS and Interplay if they haven’t already. With the collaborative workspace we have, with roles defined at each level, we can bring young people right into our system and get them to work.”

PIXEL PLANTATION

With both longform reality shows and promos for ABC Family and Disney XD on its project roster, Burbank-based Pixel Plantation (www.pixelplantation.com) required a storage solution to fit an array of offline and online needs. The post house boasts nine offline rooms with Avid Media Composer Nitris DX systems and three online suites outfit with Avid Symphony Nitris; Pixel Plantation also has a pair of Digidesign Pro Tools systems.

Owner/editor Rick Greenwald believes Pixel Plantation was one of the first post houses to acquire Facilis Technology’s TerraBlock shared file system about five years ago. “We had a basic need for shared storage and compared the price of the products available,” he recalls. “TerraBlock looked like the answer so we jumped on it with fingers crossed: There were not a lot of people to talk to at that point who had used it, but we were happy with TereaBlock right off the bat.”

Pixel Plantation started with 8TB of TerraBlock storage for use with standard definition video. “As time went on and they developed the product, the software got better, the sharing functions improved: notes Greenwald. ‘The benchmark for shared storage tends 10 be Avid Unity, which has its own limits. It was frustrating to have people call and ask if we had Unity. We had to explain that we had TerraBlock, and it would do the trick for their particular project.”

Although Greenwald was pleased with TerraBlock’s performance, his company eventually purchased a Unity at a client’s request. So today Unity is employed almost exclusively for offline shared storage while a 24T8 TerraBlock system is dedicated to the Symphony Nitris suite where a lot of HD projects and multiple episodes of series are onlined.

“In our case, we Ciln use one of our Symphony systems for digitizing and the other two rooms share footage for editorial and color correction: he explains. “TerraBlock adds functionality across multiple Symphony systems, and its flexibility is a huge bonus. I can’t imagine having to wait for access to footage. It does exactly what you expect a shared storage system to do:

For example, Pixel Plantation recently began work on VHl’s Celebrity Fit Club series. “We digitize as soon as the tapes come in, and editing and color correction can start in another Symphony room without waiting for digitizing to finish: Greenwald points out. “As soon as fixes come in for an episode, we can work on them and still proceed with other episodes on another system.”

Likewise, multiple Symphony systems can simultaneously edit and address producers’ notes for ABC Family promos “without missing a beat,” he says. “The HD streaming Capabilities are great on TerraBlock, and we do HD for the Disney XD promos as well, so it’s all pretty fluid,” he adds. “The firepower is perfect for our needs.”

Pixel Plantation can boost its TerraBlock storage relatively inexpensively “as more and more of our work goes to HD,” Greenwald says.

Most important is that the company has had “zero down days in five years” with the system, “It’s a simple, straightforward, well-made shared storage device that doesn’t require a dedicated engineer to understand the box,” observes Greenwald. “We don’t need fancy bells and whistles – we need something that’s going to work all the time, and we’ve never lost any data with TerraBlock.

SAVAGE PICTURES

When Touched By An Angel ended production in Salt Lake City, editor Steve Haugen and Michael Fox, who worked on the popular series, had an opportunity to move to Los Angeles, but instead chose to remain in Utah and open Savage Pictures (www.savagepictures.net). Today they work on feature films and digital cinema projects, as well as post feature-length documentaries such as The Edge of Never, about big mountain skiing on Chamonix, which debuted on Showtime in February, and Learning From Light, about architect I.M. Pei’s new museum of Islamic Art Dohn, Oatar.

The partners made their equipment decisions based on their experience working in Los Angeles selecting four Avid Media Composers with Unity shared storage, an Avid DS for DI and mastering and Autodesk’s Lustre for color grading. “When we added Lustre we needed storage, so we added Rorke Data’s Galaxy HDX2 for a one-two punch,” says Haugen. “We knew galaxy was a product that would meet our needs now and was scalable as we grew. It’s been a workhorse for us, super solid in performance.”

The Raid storage solution is currently configured with dual 4GB fibre “so it’s able to pull enough bandwidth to handle our usual 2K DPX workflow,” he points out. “When we bought the Galaxy we got the 8TB version so we’d have enough storage for multiple projects. We just recently felt the crunch with three films on Lustre simultaneously. We thought we hit the threshold.”

Haugen spent 14 weeks cutting The Edge of Never, from Salt Lake City-based writer/director William A. Kerig. Multiple rooms processed, digested and logged footage shot in “just about every format and aspect ratio” of film and video. Now dailies were created in 1080 23.98 for Haugen’s offline in Media Composer, Then “we used Avid AFE to conform in DS; it was extremely seamless,” Haugen reports, “We created DPX files to export to Lustre for color correction by Joe Parisella, who flew in from LA; he rendered out new DPX files to take back to the DS where Mike [Fox] helped me finish the titling, mastering and layback to HDCAM SR.”

Fox followed a similar process for Learning From Light, co-directed by Bo Landin and Sterling Van Wagenen, and now on the film festival circuit. Over several years, as I.M. Pei built the Doha museum, the documentary was offlined on Media

Composer then conformed and finished in DS, with Lustre color correction by Chicago colorist Tom Rovak. Fox was challenged in his edit by large quantities of 50i PAL HDCAM footage, the primary shooting format selected by the producers with an eye for international distribution

“We’ve hooked up DS so it’s much like a traditional SAN workflow,” says Fox. “Instead of offloading to drives, we’ve configured the Galaxy storage so we can access it directly from the DS and Lustre. It saves tremendous time and space. and Galaxy has been rock solid with fast throughput.’

Colorists like Rovak, who required lots of windowing for the I.M Pei doc shot both in the desert and in the architect’s New York City office, need realtime playback on Lusue, Fox points out. But that means ‘ you need the storage and pipeline to keep up with it. Realtime performance becomes a function of Lustre and the storage, You need the proper combination or it won’t benefit the system’

THESANDBOX

Todd Sali, owner of Venice, CA’s Thesandbox (www.sandboxla.com), describes his company as a “soIar-powered production and post boutique” with a focus on eco- and socially-conscious projects that range from feature-length documentaries to museum installations to branding.

Thesandbox is currently equipped with three workstations running Apple’s Final Cut Pro, Adobe After Effects and Apple’s Color. The company enlisted SANtech to create a SAN environment with a 24TB Hitachi G-Tech G-Speed FC XL and

Apple’s Xsan software, ATTO HBAs and a Q-logic switch,

“We grew into a SAN,” says Sali. “‘For a boutique, it’s pretty amazing: relatively low cost with G-tech, but high performance. We’re now using G-Tech’s 2TB drives so we can have several feature-length films on the system at once.”

And Thesandbox is likely to be working on multiple films Simultaneously. It co-produced, provided post finishing, managed color correction and furnished motion graphics and titles for Fuel, a documentary about energy independence, which was a Sundance winner in 2008, enjoyed a successful film festival and theatrical run, and is coming out on DVD in June (look for it on Netflix). The company has begun shooting and editing it’s own doc about Cuba, called Embargoed?, and after performing the online for The Woodmans, it’s now color correcting the documentary, which has been accepted in the Tribeca Film Festival.

Other Thesandbox Projects include Bhutto, ” a collaboration with DNA about

Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan, which premiered at Sundance 2010, and Paper or

Plastic, concerning the disaster plastics pose for life on the planet. A focus for the company is ”’always taking complex issues to a popular audience by making them immensely engaging and entertaining, as audiences found when Fuel won Sundance with l1 standing ovations,” Sali reports.

One of the latest documentaries is The Woodmans, about a family of artists that suffers a tragedy. Their daughter, Francesca, has become one of the most acclaimed contemporary photographers since her suicide 28 years ago. “Everything was stored on the G-Speed XL SAN, so we could take a batch of frames and reverse telecine them on one of our machines to get them back to 23.98 while another machine was rendering and another was color grading,” Sali explains.”Everything was glitch-free and very smooth, technically speaking.”

Thesandbox uses G-Speed eS systems for local storage on its workstations.

“They’re fast, small quiet and high capacity, and we can move them from machine to machine: he says. In addition, the company deploys G-Drives to shuttle media back and forth to DNA, a frequent partner on projects, and to clients like The Woodmans’ director Scott WiIlis, a multi-Emmy winner from Frontline and Nova, The Woodmans was “offlined by Jeff Werner on G-Drives, then brought into our G-Speed for online,” says Sali.

Already a year into production, Embargoed? is largely being shot by Thesandbox with a Canon 5D Mark II camera, “We shot all data so there are lots of files. That means the reliability and redundancy of the system are very important because we have no tape to turn to if something fails. We back up the offline but we don’t want to have to turn to that,” Sali notes. “So being confident in your system is key. We want our drives humming powerfully and quietly on the without us thinking about them.”

With G-Tech’s 2TB drives just out Thesandbox was able to turn its 6TB XL into a 24TB system for “greater firepower and a huge, redundant storage pool,” he points out. “We have a strong and robust system that’s expanded our possibilities.”

PITTSBURGE PENGUINS

With surveys showing that the NHL has the most tech-savvy fans in pro sports, it’s not surprising that the league “has made new media a big target” notes Chris DeVivo, director of media technology for tile Pittsburgh Penguins

{www.penguins.nhl.com) The Penguins “probably produce more content than anyone else in the NHL,” he says, with content spanning all new media, scoreboard video, the in-arena pre-game show, digital signage, three 3O-mlnute TV shows airing weekly on Fox Sportsnet Pittsburgh, plus corporate sale and marketing videos.

This fall the team will move from the Mellon Arena, with “Eisenhower-era technology we’ve pushed to the limits,” to the new Consol Energy Center across the street, where DeVivo is building a “self-sustaining” video control room. “With all we do, the key is to make the control room and our video operation the central nervous system that will reach out to everyone,” he says.

About three years ago the Penguins’ video operation switched to Sony XDCAM HD cameras and EditShare storage for its eight Final Cut Pro workstations, two of them also running Adobe After Effects. “We had portable FireWire drives everywhere and were always searching for things,” DeVivo recalls. “Digital video technology opens many new horizons but also creates new issues. With EditShare, projects share assets from a centralized location; it brings consistency to the organization. We can create flexible user spaces and have perhaps nine editors and compositors pulling from EditShare at once,”

The Penguins “blew through” the initial 18TB system and added 12TB more last year. DeVino also “MacGyver’d” the system to help the director of the area’s pre-game show. He hooked the director’s MacBook Pro to EditShare and created Final Cut timeline that allowed him to pull roIl-ins off the server and play them out while editors were busy in the control room.

DeVivo says he’s been “100 percent Satisfied” with EditShare’s performance. He’s also happy with the system’s security features that protect media and assets from disaster.

When the Penguins moved to the Consol Energy Center he’ll keep the existing EditShare center system and add a 32TB EditShare XStream for reseller Texolve and deploy them for production and nearline storage. DeVivo will also add Dalet Digital Media Systems’ DaletPlus Media Asset Management (MAM) framework from control room integrator Diversified Systems.

“With all the investment in new technology at Consol Energy Center we needed a way to push content out everywhere.” Including LED boards and area-based IPTV, he says, “We needed a tool to proliferate content, keep track of it and enable our senior executives to browse through video clips.”

The Dalet MAM is designed to ensure a more efficient workflow for editors and compositors, and make the best use of their time. “We don’t have a lot of assistant editors and interns, so when editors have to search of footage and scrub through it, it really slows us down. Transcoding is a four-letter word,” he notes. “We want to manage our assets better to maximize the editors’ time, make us less of a silo for the rest of the organization, and deliver our assets to multiple platforms. Our goal is not to have files sitting in bins but to have organized assets at people’s fingertips.”

In development is the ability to use the Dalet MAM for video coaching. “We’re going to bring the coached into the flow,” says DeVivo. “They used to have just one clean truck feed to work with, but with the Dalet MAM they can tap into 10 cameras like we can.” He has partnered with local metadata company, Content Vision, to develop an interface for the coaches that will permit them to access footage of every second a particular player in on the ice. “They used to have to physically go through and pull every appearance. It took three hours per player to prepare a DVD. Now, with the video on central storage with metadata, you’ll be able to click the mouse and shift-by-shift watch all of that player on the ice.”

KTA PRODUCTIONS

When digital recordist Kevin  Globerman of KTA Productions in Los Angeles was called upon to record the score for Avatar on The Newman Scoring Stage at 20^th Century Fox, he tapped a Digidesign Pro Tools HD system, devised by Advanced Adio and featuring ATTO Technology’s SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) host by adapter cards. He was tasked with recording up to 48 individual mics, from more than 100 musicians, into ProTools.

“In the past, SATA has typically worked with internal drives connected fro storage,” Globerman points out. “This card is a new solution. Its advantage is that it takes the duties of data copying and file management away from the CPUs so the computer can handle the Pro Tools software more efficiently. The SAS card does all the data transfer to a set of external SATA drives.”

He also had an Atto R380 RAID card running for RAID-1 groups for data security. “With a 100-piece orchestra, you don’t want to risk data loss,” he notes. “I usually do large back-ups periodically, like during breaks, but with the ATTO card back-ups were done in the background while I was performing my recording duties.”

Globerman says rental and support company Advanced Audio “is known for pushing the envelope and making systems as efficient and bullet-proof as possible. They have systems on high-profile jobs. The ATTO SAS/SATA solution was a really great experience. It will now be the standard set-up for Advanced Audio’s rigs: mirrored eSATA drives into the computer through the card.”

Once the score was recorded he controlled three Pro Tools running in tandem: one to play back the orchestra, a second to play back a “pretty dense amount of pre-recorded, non-orchestral elements, like custom synthesized sounds and electronic drum loops,” and a third to play back the picture and record the stems. He delivered eight 5.1 stems to the dubbing stage to combine with sound effects and dialogue.

Globerman says that with drive capacity getting larger, file fragmentation becomes an issue. Advanced Audio tackled that issue by creating a three-partition scheme to limit fragmentation and increase seek time performance. Using Apple’s Disk Utility, the volume is divided into A, B and C partitions “The A portion is the outer ring, really fast and efficient,” he explains. “That”s where we achieve the most efficient and fastest read and write times. It’s the most expensive real estate on the hard drive, the hot spot. The B and C partitions are used for non-essential back-up where you don’t need really fast performance.

DP MICHAEL LOHMANN

Director of photography Michael Lohmann became the first to implement a JMR Electronics’BlueStor set-up for production when he tapped the newly-released BlueStor DigiLab Video Server with 32TB storage capacity for the Disney Channel movie Sixteen Wishes.

Lohmann established what amounted to an on-location digital lab with the compact (3×3-foot), portable system remaining largely in the camera truck as he shot with his Red Digital Cinema Red One camera. The BlueStor system came under the domain of the DIT or the media wrangler, or both.

“When the BlueStor DigiLab was combined with a color timing system – we used Assimilate’s Scratch – we found we could color time, store and process footage and create dailies right on the set, and be fast enough to be practical, “ Lohmann reports.

The system took Red’s raw R3D files and stored them in the 32TB array, automatically backing them up four times once they were entered. Then DNX36 files were rendered for Avid editorial; editors offsite received drives of both the DNX files and a copy of the original R3D files.

At the same time a Blu-ray disc was burned for dalies with viewing LUTs applied. “We produced much higher quality dailies than the SD viewing dailies we’d typically get from editorial,” Lohmann notes.

He likes the fact that with this workflow “dailies are not out of your hands. You can make sure the dailies look the way they intend to look. I was able to walk to the truck, say’pick up this scene, make it darker, lighter, add gamma, increase Of decrease the color saturation” – as opposed to someone I never get to speak to at a lab guessing what I wanted it to look like.”

Dailies can be ready 45 minutes to an hour after wrapping on the set, when creative intentions are still fresh in mind. “You don’t have to remind yourself the next day what you wanted to do,” he says. “We’re so much closer to production with immediate dailies,”

Editors could also be moved on location and begin editing scenes “an hour or two after” dailies, Lohmann points out. “If you want to work with an Avid or final Cut system on-site, the system can serve up to two editors at the same time.”

He believes that “huge cost savings” can be realized with the BlueStor system “because it essentially eliminates the lab from the dailies process which usually costs $12-15,000.”

Although the BlueStor DigiLab set-up had not been tested previously in production, Lohmann found it to be “rock solid in performance.’ Everything was linked to the phenomenal storage capacity and power of the BlueStor RAlD. The 32TB of total storage was more than we’d ever need, but we wanted it for the multiple file back-ups.”

“We are thrilled to renew our lease and break ground on our redesigned facilities at our
Davis Square, Somerville, headquarters. This location is smack in the middle of one of
the most artistically and technologically sophisticated communities on the planet. The
redesigned facility will not only expand our capabilities, not only let us even better serve
our current and future customers, it’ll be a really cool place to work” said Joel Olicker,
CEO of Powderhouse Productions.
The expansion will make room for a cutting edge new production and postproduction
collaboration platform called AVID INTERPLAY. “We’re one of the few independent
production companies in the country to incorporate INTERPLAY, and it’s an amazing
leap forward in workflow. AVID plans to feature Powderhouse in a new national
marketing campaign,” said Rob Kirwin, VP Post Production at Powderhouse.
Currently Powderhouse has five series in production for multiple cable networks, such as
Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, Science Channel and History Channel, with many
more in development. Last year, Powderhouse produced 36 hours of television and this
year they are on track to deliver at least 45 hours of the best in factual entertainment.
About Powderhouse Productions
Powderhouse is an award-winning cable and broadcast content development production
company based in Somerville, MA. They have produced such hit programs as: Dogs 101, Build it
Bigger, and Extreme Engineering. Powderhouse programs are seen on many of the most wellknown
cable networks in the world, such as Discovery, Animal Planet, History Channel and
Science. Internationally, their series and programs have been seen in over 200 countries.
Powderhouse’s work has been recognized with a national prime time Emmy nomination, The
Director’s Guild Award for Best Reality Program (Build It Bigger), The Beijing International
Science Film Festival Silver Medal, The Houston World Fest Gold Special Jury Award, The
CINDY Award, The National Educational Media Network’s Bronze Apple Award, The
Communicators Award – Crystal Award of Excellence and The Cine Gold Eagle.

Press Contact: Kelly Rostad
978-317-7119

March 10, 2010

PHOTO CREDIT Powderhouse Productions in Somerville, Mass.

“Hollywood East” isn’t the most imaginative nickname that Massachusetts’ burgeoning film and television industry could have been tagged with, but the Bay State media have made it stick. And goofily optimistic though the title may be, Massachusetts has worked hard for it. In 2005, under Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican, the commonwealth was part of the first wave of states to institute film and television production tax credits. Romney’s Democratic successor, Gov. Deval Patrick, expanded the credits two years later. The program now offers a 25 percent tax credit on all in-state spending—more generous than nearby New York, which offers a 30 percent credit only on below-the-line costs, but less generous than competing states such as Michigan, which offers a 40 percent credit.

The result, according to industry insiders, has been a dramatic uptick in the number of productions shot in the state. The most high-profile growth has come in feature film production. Several of Hollywood’s recent successes (”Bride Wars,” “Paul Blart: Mall Cop,” “Shutter Island”) and potential future hits (David Fincher’s “Social Network,” the Christian Bale–Mark Wahlberg feature “The Fighter”) have been shot in Hollywood East.

But the tax credits on which the Massachusetts film and TV industry is built are being reconsidered. Faced with a record budget shortfall, Gov. Patrick has proposed restrictions that would cap the program’s budget at $50 million. (In 2008, Massachusetts issued $113 million in credits.) Last week, the state Legislature’s Joint Committee on Revenue held hearings on a bill by Rep. Steve D’Amico that would create a per-production cap of $7 million—the same cap that was in place during the program’s first year, when the state issued only $16 million in credits. Count D’Amico among those who believe that the promise of Hollywood East is too good to be true.

“It makes no sense,” D’Amico said. “People are under the delusion here, and in the 44 other states that are paying taxpayer money to lure Hollywood jobs to their state, that somehow we’re going to build a sustainable new sector of our economy. Look, that’s not true.”

Numbers Game

D’Amico argues that with so many states offering incentives, true production hubs are unlikely to sprout anywhere. Instead, casts and crews are becoming “migrant workers” forced to “follow the tax subsidies around.” According to D’Amico, Massachusetts, with its $2.75 billion projected budget shortfall, can ill afford to stay in what he calls “a race to the bottom.” He pointed to a study last year by the state’s Department of Revenue that found that in 2008 Massachusetts earned only 15 cents for every dollar spent on the tax credit, creating a loss of $95 million. D’Amico admits that Patrick’s plan to apply a temporary $50 million cap is more likely to pass than his own measure, but he wishes more could be done.

“I would have pushed to eliminate them entirely,” he said of the credits, “but I figured it was more politically realistic to go back to the caps we had in place in 2006.”

Champions of the tax credit have their own research to back up the argument that Massachusetts can and should make film a permanent presence in the state. In February, a University of Massachusetts Boston study characterized the industry as one of the few bright spots in an otherwise bleak state economy, noting, “Employment in film and television production has increased in Massachusetts during a period when total state employment has been on the decline.” The study found that Massachusetts’ production industry was one of the fastest growing in the country, ahead of several states that offer more-lucrative incentives. Pacey C. Foster, one of the paper’s authors, said his work does not contradict the Department of Revenue study but rather takes a more holistic view of the industry.

“By thinking about the tax credit only as a short-term annual return on investment, we miss the larger questions, which have to do with the long term and whether we think Massachusetts has a long-term potential to have a permanent film and TV industry here or not,” Foster said. “If you think that we do, then the question is, ‘How do we make that happen?’ ”

Foster believes it would be “good for the commonwealth to establish the film and TV industry.” To do that, he said, Massachusetts will need to do more than just preserve the tax credit. Foster and others note the importance of building a permanent soundstage facility in the area. (Three such projects are in different stages of development, though none is yet a done deal.) But according to the UMass Boston professor, the industry has already taken root in some parts of the state. He cited Powderhouse Productions, a Somerville-based production company started in 1994, as one of the region’s success stories.

Tug Yourgrau, president and co-founder of Powderhouse, has advocated for keeping the existing tax credits in place. “That money was like Miracle-Gro to us,” Yourgrau said when asked what impact the tax credits have had on his business. “What this tax-credit money allowed us to do was hire development staff to create ideas for future work and to buy equipment.” Four years ago, before it had received any incentive money, Powderhouse employed 45 people. Today it employs 125. “That’s in the depth of the recession,” Yourgrau said.

Acting Up

The recession has been unkind to Americans across all walks of life. Film and television actors, whose industry is being transformed by historic changes in advertising and distribution, have not been spared any pain. Powderhouse is in the business of what Yourgrau calls “nonfiction television”—reality and documentary programming. Actors deal in fiction. But according to Paul Horn, president of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists’ Boston division, actors have benefited from Massachusetts’ film and TV growth just as the people behind the cameras have.

“More actors are choosing to stay here instead of fleeing to the West Coast or even to New York,” Horn said, adding that some of his members visit New York on a regular basis for audition opportunities. “But that’s changing as we nurture more production here.”

Horn also spoke of theater schools at Boston University, Brandeis, Emerson, and elsewhere as hotbeds of talent that can help grow a permanent production community in Boston: “As those students see more opportunities here, they may stick around.”

Both Horn and Douglas Bowen Flynn, president of the Screen Actors Guild’s Boston branch, have seen their rosters swell in recent years. Flynn pointed to his own career as an example of how Massachusetts’ acting community has benefited from the increased industry presence—and from the tax incentives he believes help fuel it. He now travels less to New York for auditions. He is working more and working closer to home.

“I am getting ready to put an offer in on a new home, and this incentive is what’s making that possible,” Flynn said. “It’s made a tremendous difference in both my life and in my career.”

http://www.wbz.com/topic/play_window.php?audioType=Episode&audioId=4440836

BOSTON — A battle over tax credits in Massachusetts could mean it’s a wrap for the state’s booming movie industry.

Big names have come here to film movies partly due to a generous tax credit that saves studios millions.

However, some argue it doesn’t add up for the cash-strapped Bay State to offer big tax giveaways.

It’s an argument about how much is too much.

Right now, filmmakers are receiving as much as a 25 percent credit for projects in the Bay State, money some lawmakers say could be better used somewhere else.

“Let me state right up front that the Massachusetts current film and tax credit has functioned as Miracle-Grow for our business,” Tug Yourgrau, President of Powerhouse Productions said on Wednesday.

Representatives from the movie industry pleaded their case at the State House on Wednesday to keep the Bay State’s tax credit for movies.

“We have a unique chance to keep growing Massachusetts into a national center for production,” Yourgrau said.

They are fighting a proposal that would limit the amount the state would pay out for movies.

“These tax credits, they’re uncapped. In a sense, they’re a blank check to Hollywood. They’re free to carry away as much money as they can handle,” said Rep. Steven D’Amico (D) Seekonk of the current tax credit.

Over the past months, the Hub has been a prime location for filmmakers.

Over the past few months, local actor/director Ben Affleck was shooting “The Town” about a series of bank robberies, and Kevin James took over part of the Franklin Park Zoo while shooting “Zookeeper.” Meanwhile, Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz made an explosive impact, blowing up a plane in Bridgewater and shutting down street in the South End.

Supporters of the bill admit the current tax credits help create jobs, but say that work is only temporary and in the end can cost the state even more to keep it.

“You will be forced to up the ante or bow out of the game. And all of the people who are going to be working now, and in the next few months and next few years, will be forced to either reach deeper into the pockets or move somewhere else,” said Tim McHugh, a film worker.

D’Amico’s proposal would cap tax credits at $7 million and exclude anyone whose salary caps $1 million. Governor Deval Patrick has a less extreme proposal to cap credits at $50 million.

To watch Video go to http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/local/BO136903/

(Copyright (c) 2010 Sunbeam Television Corp. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

Season 1

They have the courage to chase lions, the dignity to sit at the feet of royalty and some say even the smarts to read. They are the best companions of the human race—dogs and cats. This 10-episode series is the most comprehensive look at dogs and cats on television. The first eight episodes explore the most popular dog breeds, from the lovable French bulldog to the heroic Labrador retriever. Two cat episodes follow providing a complete picture of the amazing variety of cat breeds. With more than 150 dog breeds recognized by the American Kennel Club DOGS 101 will spotlight the adorable, the feisty and the unexpected.  Does the St. Bernard have a sixth sense for predicting avalanches? Can the Whippet see in the dark? Which breed is still used as a life guard? DOGS 101 uncovers surprising details about everyone’s favorite dog breeds from the Airedale Terrier to the Yorkie.  Learn which dog breeds are best for urban living and which ones are most family friendly.  Using a mix of animal experts, the personal stories of pet owners and stylized dog photography, DOGS 101 is an unprecedented look at man’s best friend.

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Season 2

They have the stamina to run for miles, the dignity to sit at the feet of royalty, and some even say the ability to ward off bad luck! They are the best companions of the human race—dogs and cats. This 12-episode series is the most comprehensive look at dogs and cats on television. The first five episodes explore some of the most popular dog breeds, from the adorable Dalmatian to the stoic Siberian Husky. Three cat episodes follow providing a complete picture of the astonishing variety of cat breeds.  In the remaining four dog episodes we’ll meet the rarest breeds, learn everything there is to know about puppies, determine which is the ugliest dog, and meet the newest designer breeds.

With more than 150 dog breeds recognized by the American Kennel Club, DOGS 101 will spotlight the charming, the whip-smart and the surprising. Is the Border Collie so intelligent, he can recognize over 200 objects by name? Does the Dalmatian even have spots in his mouth? And did a Pomeranian really help Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel? DOGS 101uncovers extraordinary details about everyone’s favorite dog breeds from the Pekingese to the Bernese Mountain Dog.  Learn which dog breeds are best for urban living and which ones are best suited for families.  CATS 101 will showcase the diversity of pedigreed felines recognized by the Cat Fanciers Association, from the Ocicat to the Russian Blue.  How did the Manx lose its’ tail?  Why is the Bombay considered a ‘parlor panther’? And which breed was the companion choice of Vikings? Using a mix of animal experts, the personal stories of pet owners and stylized pet photography, DOGS/CATS 101 is an unprecedented look at man’s furry friends

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BOSTON — When you think about the film industry in Massachusetts, your mind may jump to glitzy Hollywood movies that were made here, like Martin Scorsese’s new release, “Shutter Island.”

But a new report out of the University of Massachusetts at Boston focuses on economic effects and says local companies are benefiting from the state’s film tax incentives, which have been in place for nearly five years. With Gov. Deval Patrick’s new budget, however, that growth may be in jeopardy.

There certainly has been an influx of big star power since Massachusetts created the film tax credit program to jump start the film industry in 2005. But homegrown companies have also gotten in the game.

Take Powderhouse Productions in Somerville. President Tug Yourgrau said his company has become the big name in pets on the cable channel, Animal Planet. “We do Dogs 101, Cats 101, we’re doing a fabulous new series called Must Love Cats, we do America’s Ugliest Pets, America’s Cutest Pets, Presidential Dogs,” Yourgrau ticked off.

And the list goes on. Powderhouse is New England’s largest producer of prime-time, non-fiction cable TV programs. They also do shows for the Discovery Channel, the History Channel and a number of other channels.

But Yourgrau said it wasn’t always that way. “Imagine that we were a garden,” he said. “The tax credit has been Miracle Grow.”

Yourgrau started Powderhouse 15 years ago in a basement. Since the tax credit program kicked in, he said the company has blossomed by 30 percent a year. Its annual revenue has doubled since 2006 to $13.5 million in 2009 — during a recession.

Yourgrau explained the tax credit this way: For every $100 he spends on a production, he gets $25 back from the state. Then he puts the refund right back into the company. That money has helped him to expand his offices, hire a slew of new producers, editors and developers, and buy a cutting-edge digital storage system from Avid, a Tewksbury company.

But now Boston-area production companies like Powderhouse are concerned about their futures, along with everyone else involved in the film industry here. That is because Gov. Patrick’s recent budget proposal includes a $50 million cap on the film tax credit for the next two years –- a cut of $75 million.

Yourgrau said that because it is a first-come, first-serve cap, it could hurt his business. “If the first people who came eat up all the credit, the credit is gone,” he explained.

But it is not just the little, local guys who worry about a cap.

Chris Brigham is the executive producer of “Shutter Island,” which was shot in Massachusetts over a 24-week period and hits theaters next week. “I think selfishly what’s most important to filmmakers and to the financiers is that the rebate itself is secure,” Brigham explained. “I know some states have tax caps and you basically form a queue. And if you can get in under the cap it’s great.”

But if you don’t, he said, and if your project falls outside the cap, most filmmakers would head to one of the 27 other states that do offer refundable tax credits.

But Michael Widmer of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation called the film tax credit a “bad deal,” and said the proposed cap is a step in the right direction. “Our preference would be to do away with the tax credit altogether,” he said, pointing to a Department of Revenue report estimating the film credit’s cost at $125 million for 2011.

In comparison, a biotech-life sciences credit is $25 million. Biotech has a future here, according to Widmer, but what about filmmaking? “This sector will never be a significant sector under any scenario or imagination in Massachusetts,” Widmer said.

But the authors of the new UMass-Boston report out Thursday said revenue numbers don’t fully reflect the big picture, and they urge a long-term view of the film industry that includes all the players, large and small.

Professor Pacey Foster said it is premature to judge the fledgling film sector’s true success, and cautions that Massachusetts could lose out if it does not remain competitive with the other states that offer tax incentives. “There’s going to be production in a few other key centers,” Pacey said, “and my sense from this 18-month study is that Massachusetts has a good shot at being one of them.”

Regardless of what happens to the proposed cap, the film tax credit program isn’t going to be here forever. It has a sunset date of January 2023.

Check out at www.shoetube.tv

A Girl’s Life,

The story follows Luna as she applies to Bates and other colleges, striving to become the first in her family to attend college. Ultimately, Luna selects Bates because of a generous need-based financial-aid package, one that was made possible because she and Bates officials communicated effectively regarding her complex and changing residency status. Her story is the focus of Chapter 5, “Transitioning to Adulthood,” which begins 17:20 from the end.

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“Watching this video made me both happy, and sad. I was happy because someone had FINALLY made a documentary about the TRUE life of girls. However, most of it made me sad. I was sad because everything in it is so true. I can relate to it, my friends can relate to it, all teenage girls are most likely able to relate to something in this documentary. It made me wonder if things will change, or get worse. It made me feel like something needs to be done about it, but I’m not sure what.
I think Rachel Simmons made this video because she wanted to make more resources available to girls so they don’t feel alone in girl world. I also think she made it because people who don’t know about what is going on with girls can now watch this and see that we are not all butterflies and flowers. Rachel Simmons is an inspiration to me because she isn’t afraid to really devote herself and dig into todays girl world.
The part that impacted me most was the cyber bullying with Libby. I have been cyber bullied before, but it luckily wasn’t continued. I received a call from a restricted number, (you can block your number by putting *67 before your number.) I didn’t answer, but then someone had left a voice message. I listened to it. It was one of the meanest things I have ever heard, and still to this day I have no idea who it was. It said things like, “you’re a man, you’re flat chested and have a penis, you’re so ugly, ingriddddddd.” It was fairly long, and I could hear several girls laughing in the background and telling each other what to say. It said other things as well, but I have tried to forget most of it. My mom also listened to it, (I’m not afraid to tell me parents!) and called Verizon to track the number, but they can’t do that. This was during the summer of 2009.
I could also relate to the very beginning when Rachel was reciting statistics about girls and their bodies. All my friends have said something they don’t like about their bodies, called themselves fat, etc. One girl in my ballet class thinks her stomach is big and will do crunches between barre and across the floor, we are basically the same size and when she keeps saying she is fat it makes me feel like she thinks I’m fat, too, which I know I’m not. I started noticing girls being concerned about their bodies in 6th grade, and it has escalated from there. I have tried to lose weight before by eating less and exercising more, but realized I have a pretty dang good body the way it is and went back to the normal me, who LOVES food. I know I am in shape and like my body, but it is hard to constantly be surrounded by stupid ads and boys who are obsessed with Megan Fox, Hayden Panettiere, Bar Rafaeli, and Selena Gomez, instead of liking the girls in front of them. Girls calling themselves fat or thinking that they’re fat is an every day normal thing in todays society.
I hope this video gets shown in schools all across the country. People need to know what is going on. Maybe if more people know about it and are against it, things like impossible ideals in magazines and ads, and cyber bullying will come to an end. People won’t want to do things like fight, bully, and make girls feel bad about themselves anymore if everyone knows what it’s doing, hurting girls.”

December 16, 2009, Boston: Powderhouse Productions, a national leader in the creation
and production of non-fiction primetime television programming, today announced the
release of a powerful new documentary, A Girl’s Life, set to premier on PBS stations
nationwide December 30, 2009 at 8PM EST. Author and educator, Rachel Simmons

examines the challenges that face young women as they surf the waves of 21st – century adolescence:

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Girls entering adulthood in the next decade will see more opportunities than today’s

women ever imagined. The documentary examines whether or not today’s girls will
stride confidently through newly opened doors or if they will be stunted by societal
messages that tell them females should be constantly agreeable, impossibly thin and
sexy above all else.

Simmons interviews parents, psychologists, teachers and social workers, who are
helping nurture girls into capable and resilient adults. A Girl’s Life follows the lives of
four girls who tell their own deeply personal tales of dealing with issues like cyber-
bullying, body image and violence. With courage and determination, these girls reveal
their hopes and dreams for a powerful future.

Powderhouse is also pleased to announce that Tug Yourgrau, President of
Powderhouse Productions, will be joining The Corporate Advisory Group for The
Massachusetts College of Art. “This affords us the opportunity to tap into a whole new
set of talent and to network with companies like Arnold, Mullen, Harmonix, Genzyme,
Blue Cross, Bank of America, Staples and others, to further promote the Powderhouse
name. It also gives us the chance to help grow a terrific resource of the Commonwealth,”
said Yourgrau.

About Powderhouse Productions

Powderhouse is an award-winning cable and broadcast content development production

company based in Somerville, MA. They have produced such hit programs as: Dogs
101, Build it Bigger, Extreme Engineering and Raising Cain. Powderhouse programs are
seen on many of the most well known cable networks in the world, such as Discovery,
Animal Planet, History Channel as well as many PBS stations nationwide.
Internationally, their series and programs have been seen in over 200 countries.
Powderhouse’s work has been recognized with a national prime time Emmy nomination,
The Beijing International Science Film Festival Silver Medal, The Houston World Fest
Gold Special Jury Award, The CINDY Award, The National Educational Media Network’s
Bronze Apple Award, The Communicators Award – Crystal Award of Excellence and The
Cine Gold Eagle.

Press Office Contact Details:

Kelly Rostad (978) 317-7119
Kelly@whitmancg.com

Karen Read
Oregon Public Broadcasting
Tel: 503-977-7780
mailto:karen_read@opb.org

This provocative documentary follows the lives of four girls who tell their own deeply personal tales of dealing with issues like cyber-bullying, body image and violence.

“A Girl’s Life” premiers on PBS stations nationwide December 30, 2009.

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Now in its 15th year, Powderhouse Productions, located in Somerville’s Davis Square, develops and creates “dazzlingly original, award-winning factual and alternative entertainment for television and emerging media,” according to the company’s tagline, shown on cable channels such as PBS, TLC, Discovery, History, National Geographic and Animal Planet across the country and around the world.

“We blend classical documentary backgrounds with highly entertaining and factual programs, and that’s our strength,” said President Tug Yourgrau, who lives in Melrose. “We also have a lot of fun telling stories in an entertaining way, with real style.”

Yourgrau and three other Melrose residents — Johnny Healey, Mary Mullaney, and Brad Johanson — work collaboratively to create non-fiction documentary programs at Powderhouse.

Yourgrau is a familiar face in Melrose and not only for the tall, bald, striking figure he cuts, but also for his participation in the local a cappella men’s group Blue of a Kind. Yourgrau is the group’s stage manager, and his deep voice cannot be missed when the group performs at local events.

At Powderhouse, the shows produced range from building a prison to hold dangerous criminals (“Engineering Supermax Prisons” on TLC), and protecting the emotional lives of boys (“Raising Cain” on PBS), to ingenious inventions such as the airscooter (“Invent This” on Tech TV), and profiling a life of clogged toilets and leaky faucets (“American Plumber” on Discovery).

A “cockamamie dog-training” show called “Super Fetch” premiered in October. Vice President of TV Development Seanbaker Carter described it as a ‘bromance’ between a dog and its owner in a bit irreverent but very unusual training show.

The next documentary from Powderhouse is “A Girl’s Life,” which I scheduled to premier on PBS on Dec. 30, and features author, educator and coach Rachel Simmons and four girls who tell their personal stories as young women growing up today.

How it started

It all began when two friends, Yourgrau and Powderhouse CEO Joel Olicker, got together and decided to make an independent film about South Africa in 1994, in the aftermath of Nelson Mandela’s election. They traveled there, shot footage, returned home, put together a creative road trip journal and pitched it to WGBH. The one-hour documentary became a successful show and was subsequently aired on several PBS stations.

“We never looked back,” CEO Joel Olicker said.

Before they knew it, they were making shows such as “The Science of Crime Solving” and “The Science of Historical Investigation” on the Discovery Channel. As projects came in, they began hiring people to help from a small space on Elm Street, starting with an accountant and associate producers.

“We had no idea we wanted to grow this big,” said Yourgrau, who recalled being careful enough to sign their first deal before putting down the lease payment for a space in an Elm Street basement room in Davis Square.

Olicker had a science background and had worked at WGBH’s “NOVA,” and Yourgrau had written a Broadway play. Boasting diverse backgrounds and experiences, both friends were freelance TV producers working together at WGBH before becoming business partners.

Olicker lived near the historic Powder House in Somerville and was fascinated by it, so he named the company after it and continues to stress the importance of working, spending and hiring locally. “We have a lot of people working here who live in Davis Square, Union Square, Porter Square and Cambridge. We also have folks who have moved from New York and LA to work here,” Olicker said.

Yourgrau loves calling Melrose home, but also loves working in the Davis Square area and is proud of running a successful local business that brings talented students from Tufts, Harvard, Emerson, Boston University and other greater Boston schools to the company in a rigorous internship program.

The company recently remodeled its subleased office spaces in the 212 Elm St. location with about 116 employees and a half-dozen shows being produced at this time.

“It’s wonderful in a lot of ways,” said Seanbaker Carter, vice president of television development, to lead “a rockstar development team with a lot of creative freedom.”

Carter worked for Scout Productions before he joined the Powderhouse team three years ago and says he loves the energy of the office. “We are a full-blown TV business and the hours can be crazy, but [Yourgrau and Olicker] are family guys who understand that it’s important for people to have a good time,” he said. “I like that the quality of our programming is very, very good. We are also in a place where we don’t have to take up stuff unless we want to do it.”

It wasn’t easy to get where they are, and Yourgrau was scared of the risks of running a business initially. Filmmaking has its phases, being slow at the beginning and intense during the end of a project, he explained. Tired of the constant ups and downs, he and Olicker decided to take on more shows than one at a time along with a staff.

“So we started hiring people and became a real business with a budget, consultants and corporate offices — right here,” Yourgrau said.

What once seemed like a risk has certainly paid off. Despite the down economy, business is booming at Powderhouse, which can be found online at Powderhouse.net, and it has reportedly grown three times in the past three years. Thanks to a state tax credit for qualified businesses, the production company has continued to expand, hire and make new shows.

“Basic cable TV is the least affected by recession,” Yourgrau said. When people are out of jobs, they tend to be home watching TV more. Even when they cut back, most people try to at least keep basic cable. “The long-term prognosis for cable TV is continued growth,” he said. “It’s a great example of how it pays off for the state and for us.”

Where are they headed? Yourgrau believes they will continue to grow and that there will a significant TV and cable industry in Massachusetts in another 15 years that they could contribute to.

“Companies like this usually move to New York or LA; we’ve made a conscious effort to stay local. We like the quality of life here,” he said. “We’d like to work for more networks and go international in Asia, UK, Europe, right from Davis Square.”

Carol Brooks Ball, senior editor of the Melrose Free Press, contributed to this report.

CAMBRIDGE – In the second-floor offices of Future Media Concepts, where framed movie posters line the hallway, students hunch over rows of computers and learn the latest in digital and video editing.

Officials are hoping two proposed film studios will boost the local film industry even more. Plymouth Rock Studios, scheduled to break ground later this year, is billed as a $282 million project with 14 soundstages and plans for as many as 28. Production buildings and back lots are also included in the plans. Another studio is planned for 30 acres at the former South Weymouth Naval Air Station and is estimated to cost $147 million. That facility would be used for movies, television shows, and video game production.

A crew for Animal Planet’s new show — tentatively called “Fetch Me a Beer” — recently fil med Max while he was learning his new moves. The 20-episode series, scheduled to premiere in October, will show George teaching other dogs such skills as riding a bike and helping a helpless human land a date.

“The dogs are easy. It’s the people who are more challenging,” George says. “There’s nothing we can’t attempt to teach a dog.”

So far, eight episodes have been shot in Miami and the Boston area. Later this month, the crew will tape Brumby the Australian Shepherd completing his training with George on learning to bowl with his owner. Yes, bowl.

Seanbaker Carter, executive producer of Powderhouse Productions, says viewers will see all sorts of skills from dogs they didn’t think were possible, such as seeing a dog “literally fetching a beer out of a fridge” and bringing it to its owner.

“It’s the one trick we probably all need to happen,” says Carter, whose company is producing the show for Animal Planet.

Another episode, he promises, will have a cat using a toilet.

The show’s producers discovered Max after Grace and Michael Ham, of Brookline, Mass., responded to a casting call earlier this year. Before the call, the couple had followed George’s YouTube training videos.

Max was quickly picked and a crew began recording the dog’s progress. Michael Ham says it took more than a month for Max to learn how to leap off his back and jump for a Frisbee. “He can do all sorts of tricks but this was pretty difficult,” he says.

George says Max had come a long way from their initial meeting. “When you see the progress this dog has made, people are going to be blown away,” George says.

During the Wednesday taping, Max was joined by other dogs who have competed in a number of advance competitions, including two dancing dogs and a few advanced Frisbee catchers.

Grace Ham says that after participating in the show, she thinks Max will one day pick up some of those advance skills. “We didn’t know we had a world-class, competing dog,” she says. “We learned that through this show.”

George says “the sky’s the limit” on what other dogs can learn. Then he pauses — finding an idea. “The sky? Maybe we should teach a dog to fly a plane.”

“And that’s a real Boston thing, beating people with baseball bats. I grew up in Boston and I had a baseball bat in my car and I wish I could say that was the first time I had used it the way I use it in the film.”

–Newton native Eli Roth, promoting his role in Quentin Tarantino’s new WWII film “Inglourious Basterds,” says his bat-wielding character engaged in a violent revenge plot in Nazi-occupied France feels oddly comfortable.

“Today is the best day of my life.”
–North Shore teen Sophia Goetz, who strategically set up a lemonade stand on the corner of Harbor Avenue and Harvard Street in Marblehead next to the set of “Grown Ups,” says her close encounter with Adam Sandler on Tuesday, Aug. 18 made her day.

“That experience was just pinch yourself crazy. I was acting this far away from Leo DiCaprio, and Marty Scorsese was coming up and directing, between takes. It totally was a pinch me moment. I can’t wait to see it.”

–Former child star Jackie Earle Haley spills on his role as Ashecliffe inmate George Noyce in the made-in-Massachusetts flick “Shutter Island,” slotted to hit theaters on Friday, Feb. 19, 2010.

“Think of all the colleges and universities who pump out all these kids in television and [they] go to Hollywood and New York to start out. We have given them a reason to stay in state.’’

–Tug Yourgrau, co-founder of the Somerville-based TV production company Powderhouse Productions, says Massachusetts is becoming viable as a place to launch a film career.

“You only see him when it’s time for his scenes. Other than that, no one has any idea where he is. He just goes missing.”

–A source tells E! Online that Christian Bale, currently playing former crack addict Dickie Eklund in the made-in-Lowell flick “The Fighter,” has a penchant of going AWOL between takes.

Now in its 15th year, Powderhouse Productions develops and creates “dazzlingly original, award-winning factual and alternative entertainment for television and emerging media,” according to the company’s tagline, shown on cable channels such as PBS, TLC, Discovery, History, National Geographic and Animal Planet across the country and around the world.

“We blend classical documentary backgrounds with highly entertaining and factual programs, and that’s our strength,” said President Tug Yourgrau. “We also have a lot of fun telling stories in an entertaining way, with real style.”

Their shows span from building a prison to hold dangerous criminals (“Engineering Supermax Prisons” on TLC) and protecting the emotional lives of boys (“Raising Cain” on PBS) to ingenious inventions such as the airscooter (“Invent This” on Tech TV) and profiling a life of clogged toilets and leaky faucets (“American Plumber” on Discovery).

President Tug Yourgrau and CEO Joel Olicker started Powderhouse Productions 15 years ago. The non-fiction production company in Davis Square makes shows for many major cable channels from their Elm Street office.

Look out for a “cockamamie dog-training” show called “Super Fetch” set to premier Oct. 3. Vice President of TV Development Seanbaker Carter describes it as a bromance between a dog and its owner in a bit irreverent but very unusual training show.

It all began when two friends got together and decided to make an independent film about South Africa in 1994, in the aftermath of Nelson Mandela’s election. They traveled there, shot footage, returned home, put together a creative road trip journal and pitched it to WGBH. The one-hour documentary became a successful show and was subsequently aired on several PBS stations.

“We never looked back,” CEO Joel Olicker said.

Before they knew it, they were making shows such as “The Science of Crime Solving” and “The Science of Historical Investigation” on the Discovery Channel. As projects came in, they began hiring people to help from a small space on Elm Street, starting with an accountant and associate producers.

“We had no idea we wanted to grow this big,” said Yourgrau, who recalled being careful enough to sign their first deal before putting down the lease payment for a space in an Elm Street basement room.

Olicker had a science background and had worked at “NOVA,” and Yourgrau had written a Broadway play. Boasting diverse backgrounds and experiences, both friends were freelance TV producers working together at WGBH before becoming business partners.

Olicker lived near the historic Powder House and was fascinated by it, so he named the company after it and continues to stress the importance of working, spending and hiring locally. “We have a lot of people working here who live in Davis Square, Union Square, Porter Square and Cambridge. We also have folks who have moved from New York and LA to work here,” Olicker said.

Melrose resident Yourgrau loves the area and is proud of being a successful local business that brings talented students from Tufts, Harvard, Emerson, Boston University and other greater Boston universities to Davis Square in a rigorous internship program.

Powderhouse is also looking to work with Somerville High students and the city in the near future.

The company is currently remodeling its subleased office spaces in the 212 Elm St. location with about 116 employees and a half-dozen shows being produced at this time.

“It’s wonderful in a lot of ways,” said Carter, to lead “a rockstar development team with a lot of creative freedom.”

Justin G Veida does some editing at Powderhouse Productions, a non-fiction television production company in Davis Sqare.

Carter used to work for Scout Productions before he joined the Powderhouse team three years ago and loves the energy of the office. “We are a full-blown TV business and the hours can be crazy, but [Yourgrau and Olicker] are family guys who understand that it’s important for people to have a good time,” he said. “I like that the quality of our programming is very, very good. We are also in a place where we don’t have to take up stuff unless we want to do it.”

It wasn’t easy to get where they are, and Yourgrau was scared of the risks of running a business initially. Filmmaking has its phases, being slow at the beginning and intense during the end of a project. Tired of the constant ups and downs, the duo decided to take on more shows than one at a time along with a staff. “So we started hiring people and became a real business with a budget, consultants and corporate offices — right here,” Yourgrau said.

What seemed like a risk once has certainly paid off. Despite the down economy, business is booming at Powderhouse Productions, and it has reportedly grown three times in the past three years. Thanks to a state tax credit for qualified businesses, the production company has continued to expand, hire and make new shows.

“Basic cable TV is the least affected by recession,” Yourgrau said. When people are out of jobs, they tend to be home watching TV more. Even when they cut back, most people try to at least keep basic cable. “The long-term prognosis for cable TV is continued growth,” he said. “It’s a great example of how it pays off for the state and for us.”

Where are they headed? Yourgrau believes they will continue to grow and that there will a significant TV and cable industry in Massachusetts in another 15 years that they could contribute to.

“Companies like this usually move to New York or LA; we’ve made a conscious effort to stay local. We like the quality of life here,” he said. “We’d like to work for more networks and go international in Asia, UK, Europe, right from Davis Square.”

By Aaron Crear

country was started, has grown and still remains in the city of Somerville. Powderhouse Productions, whose headquarters islocated on Elm Street, is behind some of the most popular shows on TV. Just of few of the programs on their roster include Mega Engineering aired on Discovery Channel, DOGS 101 aired on Animal Planet, The Works on History Channel and Kids by the Dozen aired on TLC. The company derives its name from a Revolutionary War gunpowder storehouse that is located less than a mile from the corporate offices. These highly successful series recently earned the company 8 Telly awards, which are annually given out to honor outstanding local, regional, and national cable TV commercials and programs, the finest video and film productions, and online film and video. Powderhouse picked up hardware for three projects, DOGS101, The Works and its online video channel, SHOETUBE.TV.

The company was co-founded in 1994 by award winning filmmaker Tug Yourgrau and veteran producer Joel Olicker. Olicker, a Somerville resident at the time decided that he wanted to live and work in the same place. “At that time we were just beginning to see the transformation in Davis Square,” said Olicker. A decade and a half later, the company still remains in the heart of the city. “We love Somerville”, Olicker added. Over the last 15 years the company has grown from a small production company producing one show at a time, to now producing multiple series continuously. Their reputation for quality productions has helped with expansion and acquiring deals with major networks. It is common practice within the television industry to watch programming across all networks to search for the next hit show. Powderhouse got its first big break with the show Engineering the Impossible. The single episode production portraying large scale futuristic technological developments eventually lead to the series Mega Engineering on Discovery Channel.

Director Tom Draudt (center, in black) helms a location shoot near Davis Square. Massachusetts film/TV tax credits have led to a surge in Powderhouse Productions work slate.

Olicker was quick to credit the Massachusetts Film Tax Credit with their growth and success. The credit entitles companies who shoot at least half of their movie or spend at least half of their production budget in the Commonwealth-are eligible for a tax credit equal to 25 cents for every new dollar of spending they bring to Massachusetts. Since its inception in 2006 “We have tripled our revenue and productions and doubled the size of our staff”, said Olicker. The company currently has over 110 employees all located in Somerville. With the tremendous success and growth that Powderhouse is having it may eventually require having satellite offices in New York and Los Angeles. Olicker, however remains steadfast in his plans to keep the company local. Being based in Boston also provides benefits to the specific type of programming that Powderhouse specializes in. With some of the leading scientific institutions in the world based in the Boston it is a hotbed for experts in the scientific areas explored in the award winning productions. Members of area hospitals, universities and companies are routine contributors to the shows.

Powderhouse’s new series Superfetch will debut in October on Animal Planet. The Saturday night series stars Youtube sensation Zak George, an unconventional dog trainer, who coaches dog owners to bond with their pets by attempting hilariously ambitious tricks. Much of the reality shows’ filming took place in and around Somerville.

What you might not know is they are produced right here in New England, by a small, but quickly growing company called Powderhouse Productions.

President and co-founder Tug Yourgrau joins NECN.

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Did you know that Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel with a Pomeranian by his side or that an Old English sheepdog inspired at least three Beatles songs? Or that the American Curl is one of the only cats known to have curly hair and that the record-setting age for a cat is 27? Viewers will meet and explore a new season of breeds from the Afghan dog to the Singapura cat in a fresh season of DOGS 101 and CATS 101 as part of Animal Planet’s all new slate of pet programming on Saturdays this fall. Dog and cat lovers alike will learn the quirky traits and amazingly unique facts, in addition to all the information every pet parent should know, for the well-known and more exotic breeds.

Capitalizing on the success of season one, the second seasons of DOGS 101 and CATS 101 delve deeper showcasing 37 dog breeds and 18 different cat species. Beginning Saturday, October 3 at 9 PM (ET/PT), the new season of DOGS 101 premieres as part of Animal Planet’s all-new pet programming night.  The second season of CATS 101 debuts Saturday, November 7 at 9 PM (ET/PT).

“This series is a wink and a nod to what every pet owner knows — that their dog or their cat is definitely the best, or the handsomest, or the funniest, or simply the most unusual,” says Marjorie Kaplan, president and general manager, Animal Planet Media.  “DOGS and CATS 101 celebrates all that quirky uniqueness in its stories and facts and even its distinctive look.  If you thought you knew everything about these creatures after season one, just wait until you learn about the Xoloitzcuintli.”

Dogs have the courage to chase lions, the dignity to sit at the feet of royalty and some claim even the smarts to read-they are also considered to be man’s best friend.  With more than 150 dog breeds recognized by the American Kennel Club, DOGS 101 sheds new light on common breeds and showcases lesser known, but equally loveable, breeds. Everything from the Portuguese Water dog making waves in the political waters of Washington, D.C. as the pet of the first family, to how Dalmatians became so closely associated with fire houses, DOGS 101 uncovers surprising details about everyone’s favorite dog breeds including rare breeds such as Xoloitzcuintli and the Puli. Learn which dog breeds are best for urban living and which ones are great companions for kids.  Using a mix of animal experts and enthusiasts including Dr. Karen Halligan, pet trainer Andrea Arden and veterinary behaviorist Dr. Nicolas Dodman, as well as the personal stories of pet owners and stylized dog photography, DOGS 101 is an unprecedented look at man’s best friend.  In a special DOGS 101: UGLY DOGS, viewers will even learn that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that missing teeth and a lack of fur can be a positive thing as the winner of the year’s World’s Ugliest Dog contest is revealed.

CATS 101 takes you inside the most popular feline breeds.  From the rollicking Russian Blue, to the family-friendly Norwegian Forest cat, CATS 101 is a catalogue of the fascinating reasons we love cats.  In this season of CATS 101, viewers will learn about one of the world’s oldest recognized breeds; a breed named for its resemblance to an ocelot; and a feline with a distinct mutation that affects the length of its tail even making it possibly tailless!

DOGS 101/CATS 101 is produced for Animal Planet by Powderhouse Productions.  John Tomlin is co-executive producer and Robert Kirwin and Sean Baker Carter are the executive producers for Powderhouse Productions. Melinda Toporoff is the executive producer for Animal Planet. Marc Etkind, vice president of development for Animal Planet, developed DOGS 101/CATS 101 for the network.

Powderhouse Productions Inc. operated under the radar for more than a decade, quietly creating well-received non-fiction cable television shows that feature everything from engineering achievements to roller coasters to felines.

But the Somerville-based production company’s star has risen in recent years with a boost from the state’s film tax credit. Extra cash generated from the incentive has helped the business grow and has given the company the flexibility to be more daring with the types of series it is producing.

Revenue for Powderhouse, which has created TV series for cable channels including the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet and TLC, is expected to nearly triple to $12 million this year, from $3.7 million in 2006. Its ranks have swelled to its current 60 people, up from 35 three years ago. And Powderhouse recently tripled its office space to 14,000 square feet.

Meanwhile, the company is hoping for a hit with its latest Animal Planet show, “SuperFetch,” set to debut Oct. 3. Described as a dog-training show infused with slacker humour, the program features trainer Zak George teaching pooches unusual tricks. One canine learns to ride a tandem bicycle; another helps his owner change a diaper.

“SuperFetch” is a departure for Powderhouse from classic documentaries into “factual entertainment,” said Tug Yourgrau, Powderhouse president and co-founder.

“For the last two or three years we’ve climbed to a point where we are on people’s radar nationally,” Yourgrau said. “We’ve become a name player.”

Powderhouse is one of several local production houses that has reaped the benefits of the state’s film tax credit, which works by giving a 25 percent tax credit for every dollar spent on film production in the state. For Powderhouse, half of its revenue qualified for tax credits last year.

Powderhouse “is having enormous success,” said Nicholas Paleologos, executive director of the Massachusetts Film Office in Boston. “They’ve been a very successful local company that has become an extremely successful local company with a national profile. The tax credit has given home-grown companies the ability to compete for national business that they might not otherwise have been considered for.”

Yourgrau and his business partner, and Powderhouse CEO Joel Olicker, founded their shop in 1994 with the idea of making documentaries for TV. The men met while working as producers at WGBH in Boston.

After handling several projects, including one for the Discovery Channel, Yourgrau and Olicker realized one-off programming was not going to be a successful long-term strategy. Instead, they planned to seek out steady series work, which would enable the company to grow.

“We realized if we kept that up, we couldn’t make a living. It’s more cost-effective to get series work,” said Yourgrau.

After a two-hour “Extreme Engineering” special for the Discovery Channel in the late 1990s, Powderhouse was asked to produce an “Extreme Engineering” (in which the Big Dig was featured) series.

Over the years, the company has produced programs for the History Channel (“The Works”), Animal Planet (“Dogs 101,” “Cats 101,” and “SuperFetch”) and TLC (“Kids by the Dozen”). Powderhouse has worked on a total of 10 series.

The tax credit has also allowed the company to hire a four-person development team. It was that team that developed “SuperFetch,” after Animal Planet asked for a show involving George.

“They are enormously visually creative and they have a great sense of casting,” said Charlie Foley, vice president of development at Animal Planet. “They make shows that have a rich sense of story and a rich look, but also give you facts and insights … We expect to be doing a lot of business with Powderhouse in the future.”

Powderhouse films mostly in Massachusetts and for that reason locals often pop up in their programs.

Indeed Beth Tucker, a South End resident and digital PR manager at Boston-based guerilla marketing firm Street Attack, was approached on the streets of Boston to appear in SuperFetch with her terrier-mix Dobby. Over a three-day shoot at Tucker’s South End brownstone, a crew filmed Dobby as she learned how to take out the trash for Tucker and her husband.

“She is actually taking the trash out for us on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” Tucker said. “It’s pretty ridiculous.

Ultimately, the Powderhouse team hopes to continue its growth and create more factual entertainment programs that could ultimately compete with the most successful companies in that genre, including Original Productions, which makes “Ice Road Truckers,” Pilgrim Films, known for “American Choppers” and Figure 8 Films, famous for “Jon & Kate Plus 8.”

Powderhouse aspires to work with a greater range of cable networks, including Spike, Comedy Central and Bravo. The firm even signed on with an agent in Hollywood about a year ago.

“That has given us a profile we haven’t had before,” Yourgrau said. “We can probably get a meeting anywhere now.”