By Randi Altman

After two decades of editing award-winning film and television projects for media companies throughout Kenya and around the world, Franki Ashiruka opened Africa Post Office, a standalone, post house in Nairobi, Kenya. The studio provides color grading, animation, visual effects, motion graphics, compositing and more. In addition, they maintain a database of the Kenyan post production community that allows them to ramp up with the right artists when the need arises.

Here she talks about the company, its workflow and being a pioneer in Nairobi’s production industry.

When did you open Africa Post Office, and what was your background prior to starting this studio?
Africa Post Office (APO) opened its doors in February 2017. Prior to starting APO, I was a freelance editor with plenty of experience working with well-established media houses such as Channel 4 (UK), Fox International Channels (UK), 3D Global Leadership (Nigeria), PBS (USA), Touchdown (New Zealand), Greenstone Pictures (New Zealand) and Shadow Films (South Africa).

In terms of Kenya-based projects, I’ve worked with a number of production houses including Quite Bright Films, Fat Rain Films, Film Crew in Africa, Mojo Productions, Multichoice, Zuku, Content House and Ginger Ink Films.

I imagine female-run, independent studios in Africa are rare?
On the contrary, Kenya has reached a point where more and more women are emerging as leaders of their own companies. I actually think there are more women-led film production companies than male-led. The real challenge was that before APO, there was nothing quite like it in Nairobi. Historically, video production here was very vertical — if you shot something, you’d need to also manage post within whatever production house you were working in. There were no standalone post houses until us. That said, with my experience, even though hugely daunting, I never thought twice about starting APO. It is what I have always wanted to do, and if being the first company of our kind didn’t intimidate me, being female was never going to be a hindrance.

L-R: Franki Ashiruka, Kevin Kyalo, Carole Kinyua and Evans Wenani

What is the production and post industry like in Nairobi? 
When APO first opened, the workload was commercial-heavy, but in the last two years that has steadily declined. We’re seeing this gap filled by documentary films, corporate work and television series. Feature films are also slowly gaining traction and becoming the focus of many up-and-coming filmmakers.

What services do you provide, and what types of projects do you work on?
APO has a proven track record of successful delivery on hundreds of film and video projects for a diverse range of clients and collaborators, including major corporate entities, NGOs, advertising and PR agencies, and television stations. We also have plenty of experience mastering according to international delivery standards. We’re proud to house a complete end-to-end post ecosystem of offline and online editing suites.

Most importantly, we maintain a very thorough database of the post production community in Kenya.
This is of great benefit to our clients who come to us for a range of services including color grading, animation, visual effects, motion graphics and compositing. We are always excited to collaborate with the right people and get additional perspectives on the job at hand. One of our most notable collaborators is Ikweta Arts (Avatar, Black Panther, Game of Thrones, Hacksaw Ridge), owned and run by Yvonne Muinde. They specialize in providing VFX services with a focus in quality matte painting/digital environments, art direction, concept and post visual development art. We also collaborate with Keyframe (L’Oréal, BMW and Mitsubishi Malaysia) for motion graphics and animations.

Can you name some recent projects and the work you provided?
We are incredibly fortunate to be able to select projects that align with our beliefs and passions.

Our work on the short film Poacher (directed by Tom Whitworth) won us three global Best Editing Awards from the Short to the Point Online Film Festival (Romania, 2018), Feel the Reel International Film Festival (Glasgow, 2018) and Five Continents International Film Festival (Venezuela, 2019).

Other notable work includes three feature documentaries for the Big Story segment on China Global Television Network, directed by Juan Reina (director of the Netflix Original film Diving Into the Unknown), Lion’s Den (Quite Bright Films) an adaptation of ABC’s Shark Tank and The Great Kenyan Bake Off (Showstopper Media) adopted from the BBC series The Great British Bake Off. We also worked on Disconnect, a feature film produced by Kenya’s Tosh Gitonga (Nairobi Half Life), a director who is passionate about taking Africa’s budding film industry to the next level. We have also worked on a host of television commercials for clients extending across East Africa, including Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan and Uganda.

What APO is most proud of though, is our clients’ ambitions and determination to contribute toward the growth of the African film industry. This truly resonates with APO’s mantra.

You recently added a MAM and some other gear. Can you talk about the need to upgrade?
Bringing on the EditShare EFS 200 nodes has significantly improved the collaborative possibilities of APO. We reached a point where we were quickly growing, and the old approach just wasn’t going to cut it.

Prior to centralizing our content, projects lived on individual hard disks. This meant that if I was editing and needed my assistant to find me a scene or a clip, or I needed VFX on something, I would have to export individual clips to different workstations. This created workflow redundancies and increased potential for versioning issues, which is something we couldn’t afford to be weighed down with.

The remote capabilities of the EditShare system were very appealing as well. Our color grading collaborator, Nic Apostoli of Comfort and Fame, is based in Cape Town, South Africa. From there, he can access the footage on the server and grade it while the client reviews with us in Nairobi. Flow media asset management also helps in this regard. We’re able to effectively organize and index clips, graphics, versions, etc. into clearly marked folders so there is no confusion about what media should be used. Collaboration among the team members is now seamless regardless of their physical location or tools used, which include the Adobe Creative Suite, Foundry Nuke, Autodesk Maya and Maxon Cinema 4D.

Any advice for others looking to break out on their own and start a post house?
Know what you want to do, and just do it! Thanks Nike …

Randi Altman is the founder and editor-in-chief of postPerspective. She has been covering production and post production for more than 20 years.