What does The Post Crew have to say about Simian?
You know about The Post Crew, even if their name isn’t all that familiar just yet. For the first 35 years of their existence they were known as Crew Cuts. In January of 2023, this legendary New York creative editorial and post boutique, as well known for its work as for its culture, adopted a new model and a fresh take on its legacy of creativity and innovation. In the process, it was rebranded as The Post Crew.
While always lauded for its editing, The Post Crew transformed itself into something bigger and more expansive, all the while keeping a family feeling. Today this woman-owned studio offers clients a range of services from creative editorial and color grading to design, VFX, original music, sound design, audio post and conforming.
And there at the controls for almost the entire time has been Christopher Keenan, its Director of Technology, who keeps all the studio’s moving parts running. “I like to call myself the breaker of the toys and the fixer of the toys,” he quips. He’s also someone who’s worked closely with Simian from the first day they signed on as a user. Here’s what he has to say about it.
So what made your company switch to Simian?
At first we were interested in using Simian for creating showreels. There were other platforms that could do this, but Simian was able to allow us to make a change on a reel and it would be reflected on the front end of our website, which we had designed but they had built.
They also built a custom review and approval tool for us using their proprietary CMS, but we eventually switched over to their Projects feature for this task. During this time they did some pretty impressive work for us, and that’s when I realized they were a powerhouse when it came to video sharing technology. So I knew that was where we wanted to be.
What's been your experience working with Simian in terms of responsiveness?
They’re amazing. I can email them at almost any time and I get a response instantly, either with a fix or to let me know they’re getting on it right away. I don’t know if anyone over there ever sleeps.
Even back in the day, when we were working on our site, they were able to help us out, even with obscure problems, like it wasn't playing on a really old browser. They were like, ‘Let’s see if we can figure out what’s going on here.’ Overall, they go above and beyond to make working with their platform a wonderful experience for everybody.
How would you describe their approach to launching or updating new features?
I think Simian really does a great job of listening to what their customers want, and ultimately that's what drives the product forward. And I think they're very responsive to what people need.
Software development is not easy, and customers make a lot of requests. And Simian delivers features that are needed. I love seeing the updates they make every month – often, it's from a suggestion someone like us made. And I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s a good idea, I’m glad they implemented that.’ What’s nice is that they’re open to change and to making it as good a product as it can possibly be.
How important a role does Simian play in The Post Crew’s ability to deliver work that lives up to your standards?
We see it as vital to our workflow. We use it for all our reels and all presentations out to clients. We moved to Simian a few years ago for review and approval, too, and one of the best parts about that is I knew Simian had such a great infrastructure, if a client was having trouble with a video, it wasn’t on our end.
If one of your peers at another post house told you they were thinking of switching to Simian, what would you tell them?
I’d say that Simian is a great company to partner with for presenting your media out on the internet. The responsiveness of the developers is so important, and they’re some of the best I've ever dealt with in that regard. Being the Director of Technology, I've gone through my share of companies and products, and it really comes down to the people behind the scenes who make it work. And that's the most important thing.
