DC Collective was started in May 2010 by partners Adam Corey and Thuy Dinh, both veterans of post who wanted to run their own show, so they opened a nice creative boutique. DC Collective specializes in short form, mostly for broadcast clients like Discovery, ESPN, National Geographic, TLC and the Travel Channel. Some advertisement work rounds out their portfolio, like a recent series of commercials for Rosetta Stone.

When the time came to select a finishing suite, Adam and Thuy decided they wanted the least amount of IT problems as possible and opted for the Mac platform to build their business. They had seen Smoke on the Mac and decided to investigate. Now, DC Collective has four edit suites, two for offline with Final Cut Pro 7, and two finishing suites with Smoke, as well as FCP and the Adobe Creative Suite.

“Having Smoke allows us to be open”, says Corey. “It reads XML, ProRes, Avid files… We didn’t pigeon-hole ourselves. We’re also less reliant on other motion graphics apps; we can take a client’s graphics package and enhance it with Smoke’s toolset. It’s fun to work with.”

Longtime former Avid DS artist, Adam compares Smoke favourably to it, saying that both applications have similar toolsets, with Smoke having a better 3D compositing engine.

After initial implementation hurdles, as often happens when you migrate from one extensive set of tools to another one, DC Collective was up and running. “Autodesk really stepped up to the plate and offered an unmatched level of support to get my facility up and running.”

Recently, DC Collective was involved in a major ESPN project, the broadcast of the Little League World Series in 3D Stereo. To learn about how Smoke was instrumental in delivering live on-air promos, read the rest of this Smoke&Dagger article on The Area.