Hollywood, Calif. - Four production, postproduction, and creative studios have joined forces to launch Illuminate, a digital services company conceived to serve today’s new generation of media and entertainment producers.
The new entity unites under one roof the know-how and heritage of four leading facilities -- HTV, Metropolitan Entertainment, HD Vision Studios, and HD Vision Broadcast Center -- and channels their combined capabilities into three businesses groups: Arts, Media and Entertainment, plus a broadcast center and a fully equipped stage.
“The focus of our business is to provide an integrated group of services for digital media producers,” says Steve Wiener, chairman of Illuminate. “Whatever the platform, whatever the content or the genre, we are able to offer our customer complete solutions and services.”
Illuminate Arts is the company’s creative services group, which provides design services for all screens, including theatrical, television, broadband, and PDA. The unit’s award-winning staff also produces visual effects for film and TV, provides editorial and DVD authoring services, and creates storyboards, animatics, and promotions.
The company’s Illuminate Media unit is equipped with state-of-the-art media tools to help produce films, TV shows, or other media projects. It includes a staff for full technical assistance, facilities, and equipment to help with the completion of demanding projects.
Illuminate Media also provides film restoration, including restoration of large formats such as 65/70mm. Illuminate Entertainment specializes in HD production, bringing to 15 years of HD experience and more than 1000 hours of HD production garnered by HD Vision Studios and its founder Randall Dark. In addition to production and shooting services, the Entertainment Group offers technical consulting, on-site assistance, and HD camera rental packages.
Supplementing its Arts, Media and Entertainment Groups, Illuminate incorporates The Broadcast Center, a complex that includes a stage and rental services for a full range of entertainment and corporate production.
Illuminate clients include independent producers, entertainment studios, advertising agencies, corporations, and broadcast networks.
“We offer crew, equipment, pre-production services, location management, and post-production,” explains Jim Hardy, CEO and president, Illuminate. “We can work as a complete turnkey operation or provide specific services for any type of project.”
Illuminate is located in the Hollywood/Studio City area, minutes away from some of the world’s most dynamic media companies, including NBC/Universal, Disney, Warner Bros., and CBS.
In the production arena, Illuminate offers its high-profile clients spacious stage facilities, camera-friendly master control, engineering knowledge, production offices, green rooms, kitchens, and full hair and make-up facilities. Illuminate’s full-service postproduction amenities feature suites with the latest equipment and software.
Post services include telecine and color correction, digital intermediates, online and offline editing, standards conversion, visual effects, broadcast design, 2D and 3D animation, sound design, and audio mixing and sweetening.
Illuminate expects to announce high-profile staff appointments over the next few weeks. “Our goal is to assemble the best minds in the creative community,” says Wiener, “so we can cater to the new world of media producers. That’s where we see the future.”