AICP Faces the Future With New Digital Chapter

AICP Faces the Future
With New Digital Chapter

Effort is designed to address the changing
nature of just what constitutes production today.

By Anthony Vagnoni

Production companies around the world are increasingly being asked to produce web videos and so-called ‘virals’ for clients; these are commercials by another name, often with looser scripts, at times skimpy budgets, varying lengths and high hopes for YouTube success.

And if your company’s web-based piece is executed with digital tools and techniques, then you’re  a prime candidate for the AICP’s new virtual chapter, AICP Digital.  The use of digital techniques is the key driver behind the Chapter, which defines digital not by media but by execution.

Matt Miller, President and C.E.O. of AICP, and Ed Ulbrich, President, Commercials and EVP of Production for Digital Domain, who’s serving as the chapter’s prime mover pending the election of a formal board, point out that the almost casual use of the term ‘digital’ by agencies and clients is not what AICP Digital is all about.

“It’s not code for low-budget web work,” says Ulbrich.  Nor is it a synonym for work that’s distributed via digital media, he adds. “The AICP is a trade organization, and its member companies are production companies. This is about production companies working in the digital space.”  Adds Miller, “The way that a lot of the ad industry throws around the term ‘digital’ today is more about a media definition than a production definition.”

Specifically, AICP Digital is aimed at companies that Ulbrich says have a core competency in design, animation, motion graphics, visual effects, web development and interactive multi-media.  It’s digital production in the sense that they build digital elements for final presentation. Those elements can be composited with live action elements or presented on their own.  “This definition will resonate with members that say, ‘Yeah, that’s me.’ It’s about using digital tools to create visual marketing materials.”

In laying the groundwork for the chapter, which plans to announce its slate of officers and set up its action plan shortly, Miller says the AICP examined its membership and identified about 50 companies that would qualify for inclusion in the Digital chapter.  They arrived at this list by sending the entire membership a short questionnaire that explained what the chapter was all about and inquiring as to whether they’d like to be involved.  The letter followed a series of discussions that Ulbrich had with Miller and other key AICP chapter members about the proposal. 

While AICP Digital is aimed at companies that produce work in a digital environment, it’s not meant to be focused on the kinds of digital work that takes place in post production. “This is an important distinction,” Miller explains. The AICP has long had editorial and post companies that have been associate members, along with other kinds of companies that are suppliers to production companies. 

While there may be elements of digital work that are the purview of post houses, there’s also something of a gray area among production companies that have a foot in both the digital and physical production worlds.  “The creation of original content for advertising is the business of digital production as well as live action,” Miller adds.  “So it became kind of obvious that there was a piece we were missing.”

The basic structure of the AICP was set up around the needs of live action production companies, which is a result of market conditions that were in existence when the group was first founded.  Back then, the bulk of commercials work was done in a live action format (in addition to traditional cel animation), and the need to standardize things like bidding and other production practices were at the heart of the AICP’s origins.

But the world has changed, Miller admits.  “We had to look at what we could do to actually meet the needs of those [digital] members as well,” he says.

What also drove this, says Ulbrich, was the fact that existing and long-established players on the commercials scene needed a new construct in which to frame key issues facing their businesses.  While admitting that the AICP has long had a committee—named, aptly, aicp.next, which tracks new developments in advertising forms—he felt it was simultaneously overlooking the changes in ad-making that had already taken place.

“All we kept talking about was what’s next, but there were so many issues of what’s now that have not been addressed,” Ulbrich explains.  “How can we be talking about what’s next when we haven’t fully addressed what’s going on today? It’s not that the world just changed and suddenly there’s digital—it’s that AICP now has to not only acknowledge that, but also become that central advocacy group for the standards and practices around digital production.

“It seems overdue, yet at the same it seems that AICP is the obvious and logical entity that should embody this for the production community,” Ulbrich continues.  “It already has an infrastructure in place, and there are many issues that are common to our counterparts in the physical production world. It can bring the community together.  AICP Digital just seems like the obvious, logical extension of AICP.”

For one digital production company exec, the willingness of the organization to address the unique needs of digital production is a welcome development.  Talking about the pressures of working in a format that’s often not easily understood by agencies and clients—or at times by other production houses—Chip Houghton, CEO, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Imaginary Forces, says “this has been our life for the past 13 years.”

Houghton is well aware that much of what the AICP has done for commercial producers—things like the labor agreements, the bid form, policies on cancellations, etc.—has always been geared toward the need of traditional live action production companies.  “We’ve never been that kind of company,” he says.  For companies like IF, he notes, “a director can be on the set, or in front of a Maya workstation.”  It’s still production, he notes, just executed in a radically different manner.

Houghton applauds the move to set up a digital chapter.  “There’s enough critical mass in terms of [digital] production methodology now for all of us to benefit from this,” he states.  And by digital production, he’s talking about more than straight CGI or visual effects work. New digital capture systems such as the RED or Phantom cameras are creating enormous amounts of digital information that production companies now have to process and manage—and with that comes different workflows and processes.

“Clarifying and getting a better understanding of these needs is critical,” Houghton says. “On top of that, the needs are changing all the time. It’s a learning process for everyone, and we need to agree on what’s the best way to get things done. So what AICP is going to undertake will be to everyone’s advantage.”

Will the new Digital chapter be tackling issues like bidding and other processes?  Ulbrich says they’re not sure yet just what form the Digital chapter’s approach will take, nor what’s going to be first on their agenda.  “If you think of some of the traditional conventions of the AICP—things like the standardized bidding form—I don’t know if that’s on the docket.  Certainly there will be an exploration of that.  But the idea of existing to address the issue of standards and practices and to establish some best practices in the space, that’s going to be the number one mission. Some things may work out in a more traditional way, others will be quite different.”