With EditShare, Motion Picture & Television Fund Stays Creative

For the artists making a living in Hollywood, being around other directors, producers, actors, editors and the like might just be the key to eternal youth.

This is the idea behind the Motion Picture & Television Fund (MPTF), a community designed to help entertainment industry workers thrive with a safety net of beneficial programs and services. The MPTF offers a hand in healthcare, wellness, senior services, residential retirement and other aids necessary to keep the creative juices flowing.

The organization began in 1921 as the Motion Picture Relief Fund to help members of the entertainment industry offset their rampant financial struggles. A group of industry members – including Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith Douglas Fairbanks – came together to help those struggling due to infrequent job bookings or to being injured on the job. In 1941, producer/actor Jean Hersholt decided to expand the organization and modeled it after his home country of the Netherlands. Those who needed it would be taken care of. The retirement component of the organization began to thrive just as television started to take hold. Its name was changed to reflect how this new definition of entertainment in Southern California was shaping the community.

The MPTF as it is known includes residences on their Woodland Hills, CA campus, a dog park, Channel 22; a twenty four hour closed circuit TV station where residences help program with their own productions, The Jodie Foster Aquatic Center, The Gary and Susan Martin Screening Room in the Louis B. Mayer theatre showing first run films, gardens and so much more. It encompasses 47 acres, 25 of which are developed, housing about 200 residents. Former entertainment industry members are welcome, from the grip to writers to camera operators. It’s all about keeping that creative spark going among like minded individuals.

“If it’s a passion of yours, it’s inside of you forever, and that’s a flame t, you have to keep feeding,” says Jennifer Clymer, MPTF’s media and production director for the past nine years. “Part of the feeding is to give yourself a platform and an audience. This is why we revamped Channel 22.”

The Channel 22 station was started twelve years ago by beloved entertainment professional and Writers Guild of America president Mel Shavelson to give MPTF residents a chance to shoot and produce their own footage. Mel was frustrated that there were few elderly entertainment professionals active in the industry and wanted to provide an outlet for MPTF residents to continue their creativity.

When Jennifer came to the organization, Channel 22‘s production had largely fallen out of use, and the same four interviews were streamed on a continuous cycle. Jennifer saw that Channel 22 had potential for more, and she shut the station down for four months, enough time to put a slew of new shows in production. The organization obtained a license to broadcast material from other studios and gave residents the chance to shoot original content including short films, web-based documentary series and comedy series. Channel 22 has run almost 1,500 shows featuring a mix of resident and Hollywood created programming.

Because upholding the vitality of this community is essential, industry members often come in to celebrate. Recently, Robert Downey Jr. stopped in for an event and got the full tour. Upon visiting the Channel 22 station area, he noticed that one of the computers was being cooled with a USB fan. The system was so old that if the fan wasn’t blowing on it, the HDDs would overheat and it would shut down.

“Robert took one look and said: ‘No, no, this can’t happen,’” Jennifer says. “I showed him the cameras we were using that had been donated to us six years ago and he asked why we hadn’t gotten new ones. I told him that the money we receive goes straight to helping people and that otherwise, we make due with what we’ve got. Then he asked what he could do to help.“

Jennifer knew that MPTF needed new cameras, tripods and editing computers, but their highest need was for a centralized server for editors to save to rather than using floating HDDs. It was difficult to remember which shows were on which HDDs, which were all stored in a filing cabinet in case of future use. Jennifer wanted the EditShare XStream Field 2, for project management.

Jennifer had done a lot of research on the Field in the past and she knew that a lot of smaller productions had success with its storage capabilities. It was particularly useful on larger projects similar to MPTF’s. The price was also ideal for them, especially because Robert Downey Jr. had kindly offered to purchase the system for MPTF. Perhaps the Field’s most helpful feature was its size – in such a small space, it was inconspicuous, compact and quiet, perfect for providing support while hardly being noticed at all.

And of course, Jennifer was able to get rid of the USB fans.

“The Field is sturdy, and you have all the technology as a larger system in a smaller package,” she says. “The residents don’t have to worry where their footage is going. It’s just a neutral big gun storage system that is incredible simple for them to use.“

With Adobe Premiere the editor of choice, content is stored on the Field and edited from the shared storage. Final packages are also stored and queued for playout straight from the Field system. There is no complicated workflow. A straight forward ingest from camera to Field via Adobe Premiere and playout direct to Channel 22 via Tools on Air. Because EditShare Field and Adobe Premiere are format agnostic, residents can use anyone of the cameras donated to MPTF production arm and with all content located centrally, it’s much easier locate material, especially when there are multiple projects and shows happening simultaneously.

With the EditShare XStream Field 2, MPTF has been able to provide its residents with even more ease of mind. Not only do residents have a community of friends to share their interests with, but they have a way of immortalizing their art in a safe, secure way for generations to come.

“We needed a community where people could have a common language, and MPTF provides just that,” Jennifer says. “Just because you’ve turned 65 doesn’t mean that you have to stop feeding the creative flame inside of you. The EditShare Field helps keep that flame going in so many of our residents.“