1 Photo
At a recent interview over iced tea at Barrister’s, Tim Wallace, in neatly pressed trousers and summer jacket, might easily have been mistaken for the successful Wall Street analyst he once was. In fact, Mr. Wallace, who has a home on South Main Street, is executive vice president and chief financial officer of Emerging Pictures, a company built on a cutting-edge concept that would have been laughed at back when he was covering entertainment and media stocks for Lehman Brothers in the ’90s.
The rather revolutionary conviction held by the company’s founders in 2003 was that high culture content like European opera and ballet could be delivered via high-quality digital technology to arts-oriented institutions and theaters in the U.S. and beyond, and that audiences with an appetite for such fare—audiences like those that have flocked to this summer’s Opera and Ballet in Cinema series at the Parrish Art Museum—would fill the seats and the company would flourish.
That kind of thinking really was considered laughable, said Mr. Wallace, who recalled a Lehman Brothers luncheon in the mid-’90s at which an industry analyst gave a presentation.
“It was all about the internet,” he said, “and how it was going to change the world. We laughed and then, sure enough, the guy was right. By the early 2000s the internet was clearly a great force.”
At first, Emerging Pictures worked with the Metropolitan Opera, which began transmitting opera performances to movie theaters almost five years ago. However, after that first season, “Emerging Pictures was brushed aside,” according to Mr. Wallace—a providential setback as it turned out, since it prompted the company to carve out its own unique niche.
“One of the partners was Italian,” explained Mr. Wallace. “He went to Italy and negotiated with La Scala.” After that, a contract with the Barcelona Opera was signed and other European opera houses and ballet companies followed—a good deal for the Europeans, according to Mr. Wallace, because of the money they make from the wider distribution. And good, too, for the home team, he added: “For cultural reasons, it’s healthy to get this content into America.”
Mr. Wallace compared the distribution system used by Emerging Pictures to that of a cable company.
“We put our server box in and deliver high quality content,” he said.
The DVD is eliminated and the content is downloaded directly onto the server, which can take “a good 18 hours” for an opera, according to Mr. Wallace, seven or eight hours for a film. The process is lengthy, but the vastly improved technology assures better resolution for theater-quality presentations, Mr. Wallace maintains, and since content can be delivered 24 hours a day, the added hours are evidently of little concern.
Although the company does not limit its offerings to opera—rock concerts like the Bruce Springsteen performances being screened at the Parrish, art films, documentaries and other cultural programming have been introduced—opera buffs are clearly the group with the most to gain from Emerging Pictures’ European connections.
“They can’t get this kind of content from anybody else,” Mr. Wallace asserted, even suggesting that the Metropolitan’s offerings are “in some ways” less sophisticated than what his company offers.
“For real opera buffs, there is a certain cachet to La Scala, he said, “and it’s expensive to fly to Italy.”
When the Parrish, which proudly bills itself as “the exclusive East End venue for Emerging Pictures’ Opera in Cinema series,” debuted the series in May with a screening of La Scala’s “La Traviata” (2007), admission was free. Thereafter, and for the rest of the summer, general admission has been set at $20 (performances are on Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2.) La Scala’s 2009 production of “Carmen” was next on the schedule, followed by the Bregenz (Austria) Festival’s spectacularly staged 2009 production of Verdi’s “Aida”; and the Marinsky (Kirov Ballet) Theatre’s 2009 production of “Swan Lake.”
The series was to include Verdi’s “Simon Bocanegra”; Verdi’s “Otello”; Mozart’s “The Abduction from the Seraglio”; Verdi’s “Rigoletto”; and Stravinsky &The Ballets Russes presenting “Firebird,” “The Wedding” and “The Rite of Spring.” On Saturday, August 7, at 8 p.m., the presentation will be “Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: Live in Barcelona.” The Parrish website (parrishart.org) has details.
Mr. Wallace, who started out as a film school graduate and a cinematographer, said he abandoned his first career because of an eye problem and fell into his second when his very first interview after Columbia Business School landed him the job at Lehman Brothers. A published analysis in which he had examined the question of how much movie stars are really worth had impressed his interviewer, whose hasty decision turned out very well for all concerned. Mr. Wallace went from success to success after that.
“I had a great run on Wall Street,” he said, “but it was grueling work and long hours.”
In his early 50s he was ready to stop—or so he thought.
“Life got boring,” he acknowledged. What his friends told him about Emerging Pictures sounded intriguing and he signed on.
“We are a very small company right now,” he said, noting that the network today includes 65 venues but will likely increase to 200-300 venues in the next three to five years.
Mr. Wallace also foresees the development of a mutually beneficial relationship with the Parrish.
“I think what will happen is that they will be using more and more of our content,” he said. “As we are getting bigger, we are getting more clout with the content. We think of places like the Parrish Art Museum as our partners. They will collect the money and pay us. We’re all in this together. We want them to do well; they want us to do well.”
Just as the company is continually expanding its network of venues, “We are always expanding content,” said Mr. Wallace. “We distribute independent films that run the gamut,” he added, referring to a programming division under the heading, Emerging Cinemas.
In the fall, the Parrish has indicated that it will begin to draw its film programs from the Emerging Cinemas repertoire while continuing with the opera and ballet productions.
“What is shocking,” said Mr. Wallace, returning to his remarks at the start of the interview, “is how fast it has happened—the efficiencies of the net.”
As a young hotshot Wall Streeter Mr. Wallace had been the proud owner of one of the first cell phones, “which was huge and cost abut $4 a minute,” he laughed.
Now we have featherweight phones and $4 will go a lot further.
“The internet is a very good thing,” he said. “It reduces the cost of everything.”
on Aug 3, 2010