Digital Service Sets Up Shop to Serve Hollywood Clients.

IT's about time Wam!Net set up shop in L.A. The company that specializes in transmitting video and other high-bandwidth material to just about anyplace in North America, Europe or Japan already serves some of the largest entertainment and media companies in the region.

Now, it has opened an office in Santa Monica.

Headquartered in Minnesota, Wam!Net last week officially opened a center here where it will undertake digital special effects and other post-production work, as well as digital distribution of content over its private global network.

Realizing that industry relationships are crucial to success in Hollywood, Wam!Net plans to dive right in.

"We want to be involved in the industry, so we'll sponsor events and organizations, such as the Digital Effects Society, to show we want to walk the walk," said Anne Wagner, company program manager for entertainment. "We've been planning the (Santa Monica) opening for the last six months because we have several customers in the Los Angeles area, and we thought it was time for a permanent office."

One local client is Universal Music Group, which uses Wam!Net to link its U.S. offices with facilities in Germany, France and Australia. Universal Music anticipates saving time and money by using the network to distribute packaging artwork and marketing materials worldwide for new music releases.

That expectation is based on the experience of other international entertainment projects. For example, when DreamWorks SKG's "Gladiator" movie was in post-production at The Mill in London, Wam!Net handled the delivery of digital dailies to director Ridley Scott. According to Wagner, the schedule was shortened by as much as 40 percent because of the elimination of courier services to circulate dailies.

David Witters is going to be leading the Santa Monica operations, as director of the firm's entertainment solutions. He is heading a newly hired crew of industry veterans: Scott McGrail, Tim Elliott, Mark Weathers, Steve Chen, Genny Yee, Doug Moldawsky and Gary Meyer. Collectively, their resumes read like an A-list of technical people from local studios, animation houses, and post-production facilities, including Sony, Fox, Warner Bros., Pacific Ocean Post, CFI, Digital Revolution, Softimage, RFX and ElektraShock.

They'll need all this expertise to provide reliable service. Even though Wam!Net has a dedicated fiber network, it can still be a big job to get a new customer linked up to it.

"We have the world's largest private network and we can also operate some services on other networks," Wagner said. "When a person wants service, we work with city people to make sure fiber goes into the building. We work with the local telecom to make sure they put together local equipment on site. So it is pretty much like a turnkey network. Then we layer on other applications and services on it."

The company has an interesting perspective on networking in L.A. because it also provides such services in London and New York. Wagner said it is fairly easy to get fiber in L.A., especially compared to getting it in a city like London, where there are old electrical systems and historical monuments to route around. Costs and turnaround times in L.A. are about average for the United States. For example, to get fiber laid to a building at Third Street and La Cienega Boulevard takes four to eight weeks. In London, it would take eight to 16 weeks, in New York six to nine weeks, and about three weeks in San Francisco.

Even though pulling fiber in Los Angeles takes place fairly quickly, it may not be quick enough for today's warp-speed business environment. However, through a strategic partnership with WinStar, Wam!Net can actually set up a company on a broadband wireless network in a matter of a few days.

WinStar, which holds licenses in 70 markets throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, and South America, is the largest holder of broadband fixed wireless spectrum in the U.S., with licenses in the top 60 markets, including Los Angeles.

Wam!Net does more than just offer high-capacity networking services. Customers can store footage on its servers, searching and retrieving material with an online Virage search engine and Canto's digital asset management system.

If an animation house has a lot of work to perform in a short time, they can use ROD (render-on-demand) to take over the processing-intensive rendering tasks after artists have defined the models that underlie the graphic. ROD was used to render some of the animations for the "X-Men" movie and the Imax film.

In the spring, Wam!Net plans to unveil additional services for manipulation and distribution of video. And after establishing a base in Los Angeles, the company will open an office. in Tokyo and expand service throughout Asia.

"Oh, and we plan to network the world, too," laughs Wagner, probably not joking entirely.

Playing the Oldies 

Milan Entertainment is a music company that specializes in the sales of soundtracks and film scores, as well as a large list of contemporary international artists. In addition, its Jade Music label markets liturgical and spiritual music.

Milan just penned a non-exclusive deal with LicenseMusic.com to allow access to Milan's catalog of music for sale and downloading for professional audio-visual production uses.

"It affords us a chance to give new life to titles which have long been cut out or deleted from commercial racks and those which, while creatively interesting, never connected with a large audience," said Milan president and chief operating officer Russell Ziecker.

LicenseMusic.com licenses and delivers music online for use in media and entertainmeat productions. The company's site provides access to catalogs from more than 175 record labels and publishers, totaling more than 1 million tracks.

Making Music

Culver City-based Tonos Entertainment Inc. just received $10 million in its series B funding round from Softbank Venture Capital and Sequoia Capital to be used to launch a music and collaboration platform early next year.

Tonos was founded in 1999 by songwriter Carol Bayer Sager to serve what the company estimates are 50 million music makers in the United States alone. The Internet site will connect those musicians and provide them with the creation tools and services they need to develop their music and further their careers.

Bob Daly, chairman of the L.A. Dodgers and former chairman of Warner Bros. and the Warner Music Group, is head of Tonos' board of directors.

Contributing columnist Joan Van Tassel has covered technology since 1990. Her book, "Digital TV Over Broadband: Harvesting Bandwidth," will be published in December by Focal Press.