Harbor Picture Company gives New York film production a new edge

Over the past decade, New York has been slowly gaining on Los Angeles in terms of local film and television production. Mostly due to the Empire State Film Production Tax Credit launched in 2004, New York reported record numbers of local film projects in both 2013 and 2014, while Los Angeles experienced a slowdown. Yet, despite its iconic cityscape and talented artists, NYC still has a ways to go before catching up. Roughly double the number of films and television series are still shot in L.A.

However, one post production company is about to give the city a big new attraction. Harbor Picture Company is set to launch the country’s first large-scale theatrical mix stage and premier screening room outfitted with Atmos, 3-D, and 4K projection outside of Los Angeles. That means producers no longer have to see their footage sent all the way to London or L.A. for mixing.

Harbor Picture Company already occupies over 50,000 square feet of space in Soho and, as anyone who’s lived in New York knows, size definitely means something there. Harbor’s success is also evident in the TV series and films they’ve worked on (like ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘A Most Violent Year’) as well as their continued technological innovation.

We recently had a chance to speak with Harbor Pic’s co-founder, Zak Tucker, and publish a case study on the company’s use of Signiant’s hybrid SaaS large file transfer solution, Media Shuttle.

The full case study is published in our resources section. Be sure to check it out if you have a few minutes. Otherwise, here’s a little preview from Tucker:

“As the premium brand in New York, we are looking to create an ecosystem for our clients,” Tucker said. “Collaboration and file transfer are important parts of that. We needed everyone—including filmmakers, producers, studios, post production supervisors, visual effects artists, editors, and directors—to feel like they were in the same room, regardless of whether they’re in New York, London or Los Angeles.

Using Media Shuttle allows us to support this next generation of collaborative workflows, and do so at a much more reasonable cost. Plus, we can get clients set up and working easily.”

It’ll be interesting to see how the NYC production landscape evolves over the next year, especially as companies like Harbor continue to shape it.