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Clif Rice.
Photo by Robert Pushkar. |
Clif Rice, Vice President of Fidelity Images, the internal multimedia production company at Fidelity Investments, has a warm, affable manner that immediately puts visitors at ease. Sitting in his World Trade Center office overlooking Boston Harbor, he seems quite relaxed just days before Fidelity’s Annual Meeting for thousands of shareholders. No easy feat, when one considers the scope of what Rice and his staff will oversee: a full schedule of carefully orchestrated production planning, starting with initial meetings last fall with corporate affairs managers to determine an event theme, followed by months of set-design, script development, flash animation work, and production of pre-recorded video – in addition to coordinating plans for live feeds of meeting roundtable
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| Top:
Clif Rice, Amy Nauss, Michael Gorenberg.
Middle: Michael Weil, Clif Rice.
Bottom: Clif Rice, James Theodore (sound), Stephanie Murphy (on-camera), Steve Eno (camera).
Photos by Robert
Pushkar. |
discussions to be broadcast simultaneously to 11 different sites all over the country, reaching an estimated audience of 18-20,000. A major undertaking to be sure, but not enough to undo Rice’s calm, steady demeanor that has become a hallmark of his management style – a style that has been instrumental to Fidelity Images ongoing success. As Rice’s colleague executive producer Amy Nauss says, “Clif Rice is incredibly accommodating and very approachable and a good listener. He wants to hear people’s ideas. And he gives us the autonomy to be creative – he’s great to work with.” Rice himself says, “We tell stories and solve problems. I get a kick out of coming up with different concepts and developing scripts and storylines and overseeing the steps and integration of it.” He adds, “It really is all about creative problem solving – how to best get complex information across in an engaging, informative manner.”
The native New Yorker knew early on that he wanted to be involved in something creative. As an art major at Brown University, Rice also took advantage of those classes offered in graphics and design at neighboring Rhode Island School of Design. And while Rice was always attracted to the visual arts, he also liked
to write and solve problems and thought a career in advertising might be a good fit for his interests and talents. He was lucky enough after graduating to land himself a job with advertising giant J. Walter Thompson. But Rice found himself unhappy in the often-cutthroat world of big budget and high-stakes advertising: “It was difficult. You had people taking credit for work they didn’t do. It was a ruthless environment,” he says.
At the same time Rice was questioning what to do with his life professionally,
the social upheaval of the 1960’s and the Vietnam War were raging. Rather than be drafted, Rice volunteered to enlist in the Army’s Infantry Officer Candidate School. After his training, Rice found himself assigned to Fort Lee, in Petersburg, Virginia, where there was little need for an infantry officer. So Rice went looking for work at a nearby post’s Information Office, where he found his first opportunity to produce a television show. “The colonel in charge of that office asked me if I had any television experience. Young wise guy that I was, I said, ‘sure, I watch it all the time...’ Two weeks later there I was, producing my first show, a community affairs program. It was all quite rudimentary, but it gave me a chance to learn how to get things on the air. I really enjoyed the experience and as a result, I
became very interested in the production process.” When later transferred to Korea, Rice produced
several documentaries through the U.N.’s Command Communications Program, which only added to his interest in broadcasting and communications.
After his stint in the military, Rice came back to New England and ended up at Boston University’s College of Communication graduate program in film and broadcasting. “I had heard about BU’s graduate programs in communications from some military officers who had taken courses there,” says Rice. “After I was accepted, BU gave me an assistantship to work at WBUR because of my broadcast experience in the Army; it was enticing, and so I decided to stay in Boston.” At the time, WBUR was trying to start up an extended news hour at 10pm, something that was highly unusual 30 plus years ago. As Rice says, “The station was interested in having a presence in longer-format news…covering fewer stories, but taking them to a degree of depth that was uncommon in those days.” He adds, “Don’t forget, this was in the early seventies, a time before NPR. It was all very experimental.” As with television, Rice really enjoyed the art and craft of putting together a radio broadcast. He enjoyed the research and the writing and combining all the creative elements to make a great show.
One important creative lesson Rice took from his experience in radio was learning how important the element of sound is to a production. “It’s amazing how one can convey a sense of mood and place just by using sound,” he says. “One of the interesting things I’ve learned is that even from visual media, most of the information people take away is from sound – sound can’t be taken lightly. The richness of a soundtrack adds immeasurably to the message you’re trying to convey.”
After graduating from BU, Rice worked for a time in public relations, but soon ended up at revered Boston publisher Houghton-Mifflin. “I discovered that the publishing community in Boston was interested in developing interactive educational projects to dovetail with their textbooks,” he says. “At the time, there was federal money available to develop these audio and visual materials, which allowed for great creativity. In those days, everything that wasn’t a bound book was considered new media,” recalls Rice. “We got to work with cutting-edge technology. It was great fun.” While at Houghton-Mifflin Rice was named head of the publisher’s New Media Division leading a department of 15 that developed educational media encompassing film, video, audio-visual, and learning kits. He later helped launch Houghton-Mifflin Software, which included developing enrichment materials for math, language arts, and science skills.
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Rice left Houghton-Mifflin to work with entrepreneur John Cullinane, founder of Cullinet Software. At Cullinet, Rice and his group developed a new line of video-based education materials for information technology professionals using Cullinet’s leading software for database management and application development. Rice and his staff producers used visual analogy, animation, and other techniques to bring
life to this somewhat dry, highly technical subject matter. It was a successful venture, bringing in millions of dollars in revenue for Cullinet, but after four years, Rice was looking for a new challenge. He found it with Fidelity.
When Rice came to Fidelity Investments in 1990, the company had only 7,000 employees (compared to its current worldwide workforce of over 35,000), and its production facility consisted of one small room in an old brownstone in Boston’s Back Bay. “It was so small, that you couldn’t fit more than two or three people in at the same time for a shoot,” says Rice. “I affectionately called it my ‘hip pocket’ studio.” Under the guidance of Fidelity executive Bill Van Eaken, the company had decided it wanted to do TV and had set up a room with cameras, lights, and a rudimentary editing system. But as Rice recalls, “They had no idea how to produce a show. Fidelity Images clearly was in its embryonic stages at that point.” Rice has high praise for Van Eaken, whom he describes as a “visionary” executive who knew the importance of effective communications. “He had no idea how you make a television show, but he was a pioneer in that he was into the different ways of visualizing financial information;
he could see the future.” Knowing Fidelity was committed to expanding its use of communications to get its messages across excited Rice while presenting him with new challenges and possibilities. And while those first Fidelity productions consisted primarily of mutual funds managers explaining the performance of their funds in videos to be used at board meetings, things have changed dramatically in the last decade.
Fidelity Images now boasts a state of the art 14,000 square foot production facility housing several studios; the center also includes a 14-foot light grid and a green screen to create virtual sets as well as featuring the latest in web-casting technology. In addition there is also a small insert studio for live feeds to broadcasters heavy on business and financial news like CNBC. Rice’s staff of sixteen includes seven producers and a number of graphics and multimedia experts. He also brings on an additional group of skilled freelancers depending on the size and budget of a particular production. The group’s project load is varied, from producing a basic one-camera shoot to overseeing an elaborate multimedia presentation for a shareholders meeting. Rice says in a typical year, Fidelity Images produces over 350 video productions, 50-100 described as very complicated, with another third re-releases of previously produced shows, and the remainder relatively simple shoots of simple talking heads with added B-roll. They also stage close to 200 events a year for Fidelity.
With annual revenues now of $7 million dollars a year, Rice is clearly proud of Fidelity Images’ success: “We run it as a business, a fully-distributed profit center. We do business with each of the many different business units at Fidelity. And we work just like any other production company: we create a proposal, put a producer on the job, and estimate the costs of staff, time, studio use, postproduction, graphics, and audio.
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“And while we may be somewhat constrained here in terms of what you say to Fidelity financial customers in terms of language, my staff and I have shown that there’s actually a lot of creative license here,” says Rice. “We have a number of different business units to cover – we think of it somewhat as a big family of very enterprising people. Each one of those business units has its own audiences and specific goals they want/need to meet. We have the creative challenge of dealing with different subject matter and solving different problems.”
Executive producer Amy Nauss says that Fidelity Images is simply one of the best production facilities she’s ever been to. “It’s fully stocked with equipment to produce any kind of video, including three AVID suites, and a Final Cut Pro station.” Nauss says that one of the things that make Rice and Fidelity Images unique has been Rice’s interest in keeping up with new cutting-edge production technologies.” Clif gives
us all the corporate tools to achieve what we need to for our clients,” she says.
So while Rice’s own personality and temperament are decidedly low-key, he’s taken an aggressive pro-active stance when it comes to equipping Fidelity Images with the latest in communications technologies. Adds Nauss, “He’s completely changed the myth of the corporate AV production.”
Fidelity’s Senior Vice President for Corporate Affairs, Sheila Cavanaugh echoes Nauss’s sentiments about Rice and Fidelity Images, “I’ve worked closely with Clif and his team for years. And I am always impressed with the level of professionalism that we receive from them – no matter what. Their work, which keeps swift pace with advancing technologies, rivals that of any top flight production company…but the best part of the relationship with Clif is that he is simply a real pleasure to work with.”
Says Rice, “Running a production center is not always easy. We have to compete with others that provide a similar service. And we’re also competing in a world of constantly emerging technologies. Engaging the audience’s attention when there’s so much media-driven distraction is a challenge. But Fidelity is a company that believes in communication and thrives
on it and so do I.”
Rebecca Richards is the former executive director of Women in Film and Video/New England and co-founder of Belmont World Film. She writes frequently about film and the arts. She teaches at Boston University.
