But, of course, as a production category it encompasses everything from horror shorts to Star Wars epics, documentaries and narratives of all types and sizes, and pieces that are designed to be simple records or highly dynamic alternative realities. In our definition this group also includes Arts pieces of, say, dance recitals to music videos.

For CLAi this is a wonderful creative playground, allowing us to use one or two of our skill sets to their fullest, and be part of a much larger team than we would normally assemble at CLAi.  Of course, for 95% of productions it is also a world where every piece is a project driven by the passion of one or two people, and often fully funded by those same people – so films often become a constant struggle to balance between budget and time versus quality and creativity.  We understand this difficult balance, even though our goal in life isn’t to tell our own stories – just help others tell theirs as well as humanly possible.

So Chris often works solo on these projects as a specialist editor, colorist, DP and/or cinematographer rather than bringing the associates, and is able to work to a brutally reduced hourly or project rate. It’s even better when this can happen at the CLAi studio facility, so he has all of the toys and tools available – in an actual studio environment which doesn’t involve the words “bedroom closet”! This is what some of our film clients have to say about it all…