Refining with Autodesk^® Smoke^® Advanced

In 2011 Editorial and Post Production facility, The Butchery started a new venture: The Refinery, a boutique facility in a large Victorian house solely dedicated to the craft of finishing high end television commercials, films and creative advertising projects. The Refinery team consists of Online Artist, Eugene Richards, Senior Producer Freya Maddock and Post Production Technical Supervisor, Chris Hocking.

The Butchery has been long standing, and known purely for it’s creative editorial work. It made sense for The Refinery to start as a new brand to allow it more room to move and not to dilute the existing Butchery brand. 

"Having used Autodesk products for the last 6 years creatively, I still believe Flame/Smoke offer the best tool sets for the fast paced, high expectation of today’s client assisted sessions"Eugene Richards, The Refinery

“I had been talking with the guys from The Butchery for a while, having finished many projects with them while working at Digital Pictures and it made sense to try and introduce finishing to The Butchery, by way of The Refinery. The Butchery is one of the most respected edit house’s in Australia, they have some of the most talented editors and artists, and with a truly unique boutique culture, it was a no brainer to start The Refinery.” said Eugene Richards.

In February this year Eugene who had previously worked for The LaB & Digital Pictures joined Chris Hocking from The Butchery and Freya Maddock from MRPPP Melbourne. They worked with Digistor’s Peter Brownstein to set up an Autodesk^®Smoke^® Advanced system.

“Having used Autodesk products for the last 6 years creatively, I still believe Flame/Smoke offer the best tool sets for the fast paced, high expectations of today’s client assisted sessions where job requirements can change so dramatically from one day to the next. The release of Smoke on Mac was interesting to say the least, it offered many great aspects of Smoke for a much smaller investment. But after Pete sourced a demo machine for me it quickly made me realise that to continue the same level of work and speed, Smoke Advanced was the only way to go. Obviously Flame Premium is where we want to end up, Smoke Advanced gave us the option of upgrading later, with a smaller initial investment and as our business grows our kit can too” said Eugene.

Pete Brownstein from Digistor enabled The Refinery to get the right gear and integrate it to its optimum configuration.“Pete was instrumental in helping us make the right decision and technically advised us on hardware requirements and what additional equipment we needed to get us up and going. Having been on the operating side of the machine you can take for granted what is actually going on under the hood, lets just say Pete patiently replied to many emails. It’s a big investment but we had full confidence” 

In addition to the Autodesk^® Smoke^® system, Digistor supplied a Mac Pro, Adobe Creative Suite CS5 (a stable for any finishing house). Along with various AJA cards for Reference /outputting to a VTR. The set up was also complimented by the JVC 24” DT-V24G1E, which is used as Eugene’s reference monitor.

Since opening The Refinery has been finishing creative TVC’s for Snickers, MIFF 2011, Target, Vegemite, Australia Super and Myer. Also completing a feature film documentary for recording artist Ben Lee. “We have already collaborated with some great Directors in our first 6 months, who all really enjoy working at The Refinery, almost as much as we do!” said Eugene.

For more info on The Refinery visit www.therefinery.net.au