MAKATI CITY – For an office space housed in a busy corporate building along Aguirre St. in Makati, the headquarters of Cutting Edge Productions isn’t exactly what you’d expect to find.
As soon as the elevator opens at the top floor of the Ricogen Building, you’ll be welcomed by the sight of the bright and huge lobby surrounded by wooden walls and adorned by faux saplings, not to mention the fully-stocked bar. adobo’s welcoming committee included the company’s Business Development Officer and Partner, Alan Magtoto, Head of Sound, Whannie Dellosa, and Head of Music, Tris Suguitan who all embodied the same warm and friendly aura of their turf.
“It’s the dream office,” shares Whannie during the tour. The concept of the design and structure of the office–from floor to the high ceiling–came from the team. The company boasts of world-class editing suites, eschewing numbering rooms in favor of color-coding to shrug off the notion that some rooms are superior than the others, “Whatever the big rooms can do, the smaller rooms can, too.”
Since the rooms are interconnected and have the same functions, the suites are assigned based on the task at hand–interlocks, major presentations joined by the agency and the client can be performed in bigger rooms, while minor revisions that require the presence of a smaller group may easily be accomplished in one of the cozier but equally world-class suites.
“We had similar-sized rooms before, but it was counter productive,” shares Tris.
It’s safe to say that everything in the office, down to the furniture, is planned to the last inch. The editing suites, naturally, are built to be soundproof, “the trick to make rooms soundproof is not to have parallel walls,” says Whannie so the couches in the rooms were customized to fit the wall with breaks.
Apart from the double doors and strategically structured soundproof rooms so that “what you hear is what you get,” the suites that double as studios are also equipped with customized sound diffusers and flat speakers.
The company takes pride in a lot of its top-notch facilities including a super fast internet connection that makes it possible for them to service clients from outside the country like Guam and Canada without the hassle, “[Gigabytes] upon gigs of audio and video files are easily transferred,” explains Tris.
The physical office of Cutting Edge may have grown more spacious and dainty than its former counterpart but their blue-chip services, shares Whannie, have always been there since company President Jessie Lasaten, his wife and another industry executive that served as witness made a spit handshake over beers to mark the birth of Cutting Edge, the number two sound production house in the 2014adobo Creative Rankings.
They have moved from a gritty one-bedroom condominium to a more respectable office space, and now to their dream home but as Whannie said, the core qualities that took Cutting Edge where it is now will never change.
Their office parking lot, encompassing the whole basement, is now bigger than ever but the menial task of having to drive and park a client’s ride is something that even the top management undertakes themselves. The pantry is now a whole separate room, but making coffee for visitors is still part of their customer service.
These humble qualities, according to Whannie, are what you bring with you when you start right in the production industry–as a production assistant making coffee for the directors and producers, running errands, or simply running to meet tight and sometimes ungodly deadlines.
If you are tough enough to do all these, plus the merciless working hours and sleepless nights that you have to endure, then maybe, just maybe you can enter, and more importantly, last long in this industry because indeed, this job isn’t for the arrogant and the weak.
This article was first published in the July-August 2015 issue of adobo magazine.
