Showing posts with label Business. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Business. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Weehawken resident opens video advertising studio
Hudson Reporter, 1-Mar-15
By Art Schwartz
When theater major Steve Day moved to New York City from Kansas, his goal was to become a Broadway director. As is so often the case, it didn’t quite work out that way. Instead he wound up founding a group of companies at the forefront of the exploding industry of online video advertising.
His companies – Motion Capture NYC and ideaMachine among them – have worked with Starbucks, DC Comics, Intel, Verizon, and many other leading corporations, creating award-winning animated ads for the Internet and other applications. His Whiteboard Animation Studio creates the familiar ads depicting a hand rapidly drawing an image and bringing it to life.
“We are part of a movement that as of five years ago didn’t exist, which is online video advertising,” said the 38-year-old Weehawken resident. “Five years ago you couldn’t stream a video very well, nor could you even stream it on your Blackberry. Now all these devices came out, so online video advertising is exploding. One out of two people on the internet right now is on YouTube. It’s on course to surpass Google. Everybody is on the internet and they’re all watching videos, and business is behind the curve in realizing that eyeballs are going in that direction. Viewership is growing 30 percent faster than advertising spending. That puts us in a great place.”
Recently his companies animated the Avengers characters for The Marvel Experience, a traveling theme park. They motion-captured Elmo for an Xbox game. They provided animation for ESPN’s Espy Awards.
None of this was what he planned.
The road to animation
With an undergraduate theater degree from Oklahoma Baptist University and an MFA from Baylor, Day and his wife moved east in the mid-2000s to help a Baylor acquaintance with some productions in New York.
“I came to New York for theater, but it was hard to make a living in the theater,” he said. “I was doing web design and graphics design to make a living.”
That lasted about three years. Then his father-in-law asked Day to help out by directing a series of interactive videos for a company called Vertical Learning Curve. That’s an online program that allows people to earn a master’s degree in business by participating in a series of courses they design themselves, much like a choose-your-own-adventure video game. The VLC project took Day about five years to complete.
Creating the videos involved extensive work with motion capture – the process of filming live action and turning it into animation. After the project ended, “I had a motion capture system, a really skilled crew, and we wanted to keep it going so we would just take jobs here and there,” he said. “One of the jobs we took was whiteboard animation.”
With all the pieces in place and the industry growing at an astonishing rate, he doubled-down on creating video ads, establishing sister companies for the various services they offered: whiteboard, motion capture, animation.
“The funny thing is that my experience creating a masters-in-business program prepared me very well to start a business,” he said.
At the same time, he had experience in directing for the theater. How did that translate to directing for video?
“The skill set of the director is still the same,” he said. “There are a lot of similarities between theater and animation: music and even dance or movement, character journeys, costumes, design, sound effects. To communicate the message and the story is the most important thing.”
That said, there were some key differences. One is that time moves much slower in creating animation. Also, “I was surprised to discover that these [video] artists had never experienced a [live] audience before,” said Day. “In the theater when we would tell a joke we would immediately know if the joke was funny or not. If we did something dramatic, people would laugh or cry. In the theater you have a direct relationship with the audience. With animation you have the most indirect relationship with the audience you can imagine.”
The golden place
Day bought a home in Weehawken about four years ago, around the same time he founded his studios. “It’s a great town,” he said. “I like to say it’s the closest thing to suburban living that’s 15 minutes from midtown.”
His intertwined companies operate out of Brooklyn, with 22 employees currently. Day said his ambition is “To dominate the online video advertising market. Historically it didn’t exist and I have no doubts it is exploding right now so we really want to take advantage.”
“Other aspirations would be directing for an animated film or TV show,” he added.
What about live theater?
“Theater doesn’t pay.”
Fair enough. Recently his companies have dabbled in live action and special effects work, in addition to animation. Is that a direction he sees them going in?
“We’re getting a bit more into that but these are highly competitive arenas,” said Day. “The other thing is that in animation, believe it or not, there are still things that nobody’s ever seen before, and that’s a huge competitive advantage. So that’s why my focus is there. I realize I’m in this golden place, this golden opportunity.”
His companies – Motion Capture NYC and ideaMachine among them – have worked with Starbucks, DC Comics, Intel, Verizon, and many other leading corporations, creating award-winning animated ads for the Internet and other applications. His Whiteboard Animation Studio creates the familiar ads depicting a hand rapidly drawing an image and bringing it to life.
“We are part of a movement that as of five years ago didn’t exist, which is online video advertising,” said the 38-year-old Weehawken resident. “Five years ago you couldn’t stream a video very well, nor could you even stream it on your Blackberry. Now all these devices came out, so online video advertising is exploding. One out of two people on the internet right now is on YouTube. It’s on course to surpass Google. Everybody is on the internet and they’re all watching videos, and business is behind the curve in realizing that eyeballs are going in that direction. Viewership is growing 30 percent faster than advertising spending. That puts us in a great place.”
Recently his companies animated the Avengers characters for The Marvel Experience, a traveling theme park. They motion-captured Elmo for an Xbox game. They provided animation for ESPN’s Espy Awards.
None of this was what he planned.
The road to animation
With an undergraduate theater degree from Oklahoma Baptist University and an MFA from Baylor, Day and his wife moved east in the mid-2000s to help a Baylor acquaintance with some productions in New York.
“I came to New York for theater, but it was hard to make a living in the theater,” he said. “I was doing web design and graphics design to make a living.”
That lasted about three years. Then his father-in-law asked Day to help out by directing a series of interactive videos for a company called Vertical Learning Curve. That’s an online program that allows people to earn a master’s degree in business by participating in a series of courses they design themselves, much like a choose-your-own-adventure video game. The VLC project took Day about five years to complete.
Creating the videos involved extensive work with motion capture – the process of filming live action and turning it into animation. After the project ended, “I had a motion capture system, a really skilled crew, and we wanted to keep it going so we would just take jobs here and there,” he said. “One of the jobs we took was whiteboard animation.”
With all the pieces in place and the industry growing at an astonishing rate, he doubled-down on creating video ads, establishing sister companies for the various services they offered: whiteboard, motion capture, animation.
“The funny thing is that my experience creating a masters-in-business program prepared me very well to start a business,” he said.
At the same time, he had experience in directing for the theater. How did that translate to directing for video?
“The skill set of the director is still the same,” he said. “There are a lot of similarities between theater and animation: music and even dance or movement, character journeys, costumes, design, sound effects. To communicate the message and the story is the most important thing.”
That said, there were some key differences. One is that time moves much slower in creating animation. Also, “I was surprised to discover that these [video] artists had never experienced a [live] audience before,” said Day. “In the theater when we would tell a joke we would immediately know if the joke was funny or not. If we did something dramatic, people would laugh or cry. In the theater you have a direct relationship with the audience. With animation you have the most indirect relationship with the audience you can imagine.”
The golden place
Day bought a home in Weehawken about four years ago, around the same time he founded his studios. “It’s a great town,” he said. “I like to say it’s the closest thing to suburban living that’s 15 minutes from midtown.”
His intertwined companies operate out of Brooklyn, with 22 employees currently. Day said his ambition is “To dominate the online video advertising market. Historically it didn’t exist and I have no doubts it is exploding right now so we really want to take advantage.”
“Other aspirations would be directing for an animated film or TV show,” he added.
What about live theater?
“Theater doesn’t pay.”
Fair enough. Recently his companies have dabbled in live action and special effects work, in addition to animation. Is that a direction he sees them going in?
“We’re getting a bit more into that but these are highly competitive arenas,” said Day. “The other thing is that in animation, believe it or not, there are still things that nobody’s ever seen before, and that’s a huge competitive advantage. So that’s why my focus is there. I realize I’m in this golden place, this golden opportunity.”
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Quincy Data Sets Up Weehawken PoP
Inside Market Data | 04 Nov 2013
Oakland, Calif.-based low-latency connectivity and market data
provider Quincy Data has established a point of presence in Savvis’ NJ2
datacenter in Weehawken, New Jersey to provide firms co-located in the facility
with ultra-low-latency futures data via its wireless network from CME Group’s
datacenter in Aurora, Illinois.
The Quincy Extreme Data (QED) service, which
leverages microwave connectivity from Quincy’s sister company McKay Brothers, can deliver market data from
Aurora to Weehawken in 4.14 milliseconds rack-to-rack, according to latency
figures from the vendor.
Due to the lower bandwidths associated with
microwave delivery, Quincy will deliver only a subset of the most in-demand
market data from CME Group exchanges, including equity,
treasury, energy, currency and metals futures, says Jim Considine, director of
business development and strategy at Quincy.
“The NJ2 facility hosts the BATS Exchange, so there are definitely firms
that have trading engines or their own servers located in Weehawken, and they
will likely be interested in getting CME equity futures data to support their
trading strategies,” Considine says.
Currently, Quincy supports one-way delivery of
CME data into the Savvis facility, but the vendor plans to add
BATS data to the service by the second quarter of next year. “Then we can send
[BATS data] westbound to Aurora and the 350 East Cermak Road datacenter in
Chicago, where IntercontinentalExchange is located,” he
adds.
Considine says the vendor is seeing consistent growth for its QED service
from firms across the board, but due to issues with microwave delivery—such as
outages from bad weather—most firms use microwaves as a complement to fiber
rather than a replacement.
The addition of the new PoP in NJ2 is the latest
in a string of network enhancements made by Quincy in the past 12 months to
support the vendor’s bid to cover the “big four” trading centers in the New
Jersey area. In December last year, the vendor established its first PoP in the
Aurora facility, after which it added connectivity to Verizon’s datacenter in
Carteret that houses Nasdaq OMX’s trading engines, and now
Weehawken. “We are currently engaged in ongoing dialogue to add Mahwah and by
the end of December, we also plan to distribute CME foreign exchange and futures
data to firms located in Savvis’ NJ3 datacenter in Piscataway who trade on
Comex,” Considine says.
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Weehawken, Marriott officials break ground for 2 waterfront hotels
13-Nov-13, The Jersey Journal
Township, hotel and development company officials broke ground today on two
hotels on the Hudson River waterfront, touting the creation of dozens of new
jobs and a boost to the local economy.
The Marriott hotels -- a 226-room Renaissance and a 154-room Residence Inn --
will sit side by side in Weehawken's Port Imperial community, not far from a
ferry terminal and a light rail station.
"With its breathtaking views and easy access to several mass-transit options,
the site we
have chosen is ideal for the type of guest experience we
envision," said Leo Xarras, partner of XSS Hotels. "We look forward to the
beginning of construction and to being a part of the Weehawken business
community for years to come."
The hotels will be built on top of the Port Imperial parking garage, an
850-space parking garage with approximately 17,000 square feet of ground-level
retail space adjacent to the NY Waterway Port Imperial ferry terminal.
Roseland completed construction of the garage this summer and subsequently
entered into a contract to sell the commercial condominium air rights for the
space above the garage to the hotel developer, a partnership of Portsmouth,
N.H.-based XSS Hotels and Colwen Management.
Construction on the hotels will start in the spring, with the completion
expected by the fall of 2015, officials said.
The Renaissance include luxury guest rooms, a function space for up to 750
seated guests, a lounge and breakfast space, a 30,000-square-foot outdoor
terrace on the sixth floor with spectacular views of the Hudson River and the
Manhattan skyline.
The Residence Inn will cater to "extended stay" guests, typically those
spending an average of four or five nights. It will feature guest rooms with
400-plus square feet of space and a fully-equipped, en-suite kitchen, as well as
free hot breakfast served daily.
The hotels will be separate, but they will be connected on the sixth floor to
give guests shared access to the outdoor terrace, function space, pool, fitness
center, and a high-end restaurant.
Officials said the two hotels will bring more than 125 full-time jobs to
Weehawken.
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