Posted: 08/04/2016
My name is Max McGonigal. Sadly, I am not related to the fictitious “Professor McGonagall” (aka Dame Maggie Smith) or indeed the similarly sounding Scottish poet. I am however a media professional with 20 years experience in a number of positions in the UK broadcast and post-production sector.
I started working in media production in the 90’s, shooting stop frame animation commercials known as ‘animatics’, for the likes of Saatchi & Saatchi, JWT and TBWA. After moving into editing with the evolution of non-linear systems like Avid Media Composer, I became an offline editor and then assistant producer at Discovery Channel.
Being in the Discovery EMEA programming team for over 12 years, I had the privilege to work on some of the most memorable factual content to come out of the UK and US. Shows like Raising the Mammoth, Deadliest Catch, American Chopper and internal UK productions like the studio based Discovery Today, which ran weekly for 2 years.
Over the last 4 years I managed two of the UK’s largest post-production facilities: Crow TV and Clear Cut Pictures and I first came across Forscene around 4 years ago. At that time, Crow TV was one of the first post companies to offer remote logging through its own bespoke system called SVEN. The system was a simple client viewing tool allowing users to log onto a local server and see proxy files of their ingested (camera) media prior to edit. It was obvious that a tool like this could be popular and offer great potential given further development.
Forbidden had already been working on a far more advanced product, namely Forscene. After a demonstration I saw immediately how Forscene could really make a huge impact to the producer’s experience as well as create a far more efficient workflow for production as a whole. I’ve long admired Stephen Streater’s technical innovation and the Forbidden portfolio of products. The senior management drive and commercial focus will ensure the company grows in strength over the coming months.
Forscene has matured into an incredibly powerful and yet intuitive editing tool and the company is making real progress in the US and other global markets. So, you can see I am hugely excited to be working with a very talented technical and commercially creative like-minded team of people. 2016 will be a turning point in cloud based editing.
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