On the Cutting Edge

On the Cutting Edge

With its progressive products and innovative services, Jessie Lasaten’s production house sets its sights on the regional market

By Trina D. Dela Rama

Star Wars opened Jessie Lasaten’s eyes to the craft of musical scoring and composition. In fact, it blew the highschooler away. It did not matter that he was half-deaf; the field proposed a viable yet exciting career in music, his passion.

Eyes on the target

Jessie outlined his plan for funding his studies: He would teach piano lessons for one year, secure a place at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, and apply for a scholarship once there.

Thanks to the vision and drive of owner Jessie Lasaten, Cutting Edge Productions has thrived in a highly competitive industry

Upon saving US$10,000, Jessie flew to Boston and enrolled for a degree in film scoring and commercial arranging. Excellent marks qualified him for tuition cuts. He self-studied and passed tests for acceleration, thereby reducing the length of his studies.

Jessie followed a strict routine: He attended school in the morning, after which he went to work until 9 p.m. to midnight. Study time lasted until four in the morning, which meant around four hours only were left for sleeping.

“I remember going to Berklee with the mindset that I would graduate top of my class—nothing else. And I did,” shares Jessie. “It was a risk that paid off. If I had to sacrifice a couple of years just to succeed in the future, I though I might as well do it then.”

Earning Credits

As a novice film scorer and musical arranger, Jessie headed straight into the fire, distributing his reel to ad agencies. TV commercials offered good budgets. He then broke into the field of film scoring in 1994 with Loretta, which he scored in just three days (it takes two to six months to score a film in the U.S.). His potential caught the attention of a film production house, and earned for him a five-picture contract.

The next eight years found Jessie at RoadRunner, a local production house, where Jessie established himself as one of the industry’s best. His film credits include Anak, Patayin sa Sindak si Barbara, Ang Tanging Ina, Got to Believe, and Bata, Bata, Paano Ka Ginawa?

A new challenge

Eventually, the higher demand for audiovisual productions planted the seeds for personal investment. “Audio was already limiting for me—I had done everything I wanted with the medium,” he says. “Since it was the same machine, the same technology coming together, I thought, ‘Why not learn the visual craft?’ It was about maximizing something I already had the capabilities for.”

Jessie learned photography, editing, and video production from scratch. He envisioned a one-stop company that would maximize ideas and technology, functioning as a total support group for the creative vision of clients and ad agencies.

With his wife Emily, Jessie set up Cutting Edge Productions in 2003. With the two of them at the helm of the company, from just one employed editor, Cutting Edge has grown its employee base to 23 “creatives.”

Progressive and Innovative

The company brandishes its commitment to pushing progressive products and ways of thinking in all its services, which include music and audio production, jingle composition, concept or preproduction, shoot or production, to editing or postproduction. For small- to large-scale productions, personal to corporate projects, Cutting Edge utilizes six multifunctional studios. “We’re the only facility that can do music, audio, editing, and graphics in a single Macintosh-based studio,” Jessie beams. “All studios are connected, ensuring speedy file transfer. We have a backroom and around 15 work stations, and growing.”

While advertising agencies usually supply production houses with the concepts for commercial productions, Cutting Edge is fully capable of conceptualization. “Thus, our competitive advantage—being a one-stop shop, we offer a quick turnaround of projects because the work is done faster and the entire process becomes more efficient. We can package it cheaper as well. As you can imagine, we end up with a lot of rush projects on our hands,” Jessie says with a laugh.

The reputation of Cutting Edge relies heavily on its people and on tapping technology to express their artistic ideas and serve clients. Here, innovation is key. Jessie discloses: “We expose ourselves consistently to new technology, new software. Aside from that, the sharing mentality is so open here. Senior managers teach new employees valuable skills, encourage research, and allow them to play and experiment. Creativity and passion set our artists apart. The artist who puts more heart into something—not time—produces the better concept or work.”

Collaborative process

Cutting Edge is a one-stop shop that functions as a total support group for the creative vision of clients and ad agencies

Cutting Edge operates in a highly competitive industry, with postproduction houses having to vie for jobs. Clients are very discriminating as well, either as a result of increased interest in and knowledge of audiovisual technology, or because the clients are themselves members of creative teams from advertising agencies. These, along with unforgiving deadlines, make up the intricacies of this client-servicing business. “Client servicing is always a collaborative process, even if the client holds the final approval. We strive to work together and add to the initial ideas, improving them until we achieve the desired product.”

The artistic nature of the endeavor often calls for an atypical management style. “Cutting Edge is project-driven and results-oriented. I hire people better than me, then I let them do their thing. Managing creatives is different and sometimes difficult because you’re dealing with artists who have different temperaments and styles of working. Sometimes they work too close to the deadline, but that’s also when the best comes out, when the work isn’t thought about too much and instinct takes over.”

Apparently, the style works. Over the past three years, Cutting Edge has serviced some of the country’s foremost ad agencies and brands: McCann-Erickson, JimenezBasic, Lowe, and BBDO, to name a few.

Eyeing new frontiers

With all his achievements, Jessie Lasaten is not yet ready to slow down and is, in fact, ready to lead his team towards a new innovation: competing in the regional scale through the creation of content.

“Our new objective is to create our own content—to evolve from an outsource production company to a content producer,” reveals Jessie. “Once we do that, we shift our business from the supplier’s side—waiting for our clients to come in—to a position wherein our products will be sought after. That’s our long-term plan, but we’ve started in that direction with an animation project.”

Jessie sees animation as a ticket to servicing regional clients. Demand for this type of content is high, and Internet broadband technology ensures the fast delivery of material. The most compelling consideration for this path is the established skill of the Filipino animator. “Filipino animators are already respected in the world. A lot of the animation work you see on television were made by Filipino animators. We’ve seen work done in Australia, Singapore, Thailand, even the U.S., and you’ll see that we can do as well or better than these guys and at lower cost,” boasts Jessie. “We really just have to believe in Filipino talent.”