Rod Henson and Jon Gaster left their attorney�s office one day in May, paused in the hallway, and looked at each other.
"Was there a moment there when you felt really stupid?" Henson asked Gaster at the time.
That would have been the moment when, upon hearing that the pair were in his office to form a 50-50 business partnership, the attorney asked how long they had known each other.
Three weeks, they answered. And that was an exaggeration.
"We stretched it a little to make it sound better. It was probably more like two weeks," Gaster recalls, laughing.
Today, Gaster, 39, and Henson, 36, have an office on the Twentieth Century Fox studio lot in Century City, California. Their company, Columbus Systems, signed a deal earlier this month to track production on all Fox film and television projects with its InfoNet service, which combines software and data management.
Fox and Columbus are tight-lipped about the details of the deal. However, at the time it was announced, Twentieth Century Fox Executive Vice President Joe Hartwick said InfoNet would "revolutionize the business of production."
What had Hartwick excited -- and has other filmmakers, including Sony and MGM, lining up for demos -- was how InfoNet could provide up-to-the-minute production information for feature films and television shows.
No breakthrough technology is involved. The genius of InfoNet lies in the way it is specifically tailored for film executives, notorious technophobes with limited computer experience and absolutely no time for training. Production coordinators, assistant directors, construction crews, and other production types use Infonet for purchase orders, contracts, shooting schedules, even time cards.
Fox studio executives can access the information via standard Internet browsers that tap into a FileMaker Pro database. Cost reports are written in Acrobat PDF files and emailed through an internal server to the company's Internet site. Mac G3s power the Web server. Access is granted based on the studio's hierarchy.
That's about it.
"It's so simple that I'm amazed no one thought of it before," Henson said.
Although several companies offer "parts and bits," no competitor has emerged with a comparable, full-scale service, Gaster says.
The value for Hollywood is self-evident. As Gaster points out, when you have a construction crew on a US$30 million budget that will evaporate in three months, three days is a long time to wait for a cost report.
Gaster predicts first-year revenues "in the low seven figures." He and Henson are the sole owners of Columbus and its only employees.
Though it is already profitable, Columbus is not exactly an overnight success. Both Gaster and Henson have spent several years in the production end of the entertainment business.
They had heard about each other for some time but didn't meet until May, when -- it being Hollywood -- they "did lunch." Gaster, an extroverted Englishman, said he was immediately impressed by Henson's insider industry knowledge.
Henson, who is more reserved, said he was impressed by Gaster's energy, business sense, and marketing ability. A partnership was born.
"We did it all on gut feel," Henson said. "We didn�t know anything about each other."
They did, however, share a faith in InfoNet, a faith reinforced in Henson's case by his experience working on a modest little film called Titanic.
To date, Titanic has grossed $1 billion worldwide, but Fox executives have not forgotten the terror of the production. Fourteen full-time accountants couldn't keep track of the film's costs, which spiraled to $200 million. Henson says one consultant was hired just to find out what was being spent on rental equipment.
"It was such a fiasco," Henson said. "Equipment would be sitting around for weeks and months at a time not being used, just so [director James Cameron] would have it on hand if he needed it."
Gaster and Henson believe InfoNet could dramatically reduce the millions of dollars that studios waste. Their goal is to make it a film industry standard.
"We find ourselves in the right place at the right time with the right solution," Gaster said.
