Imagineer Systems announced today that leading Minneapolis-based, full-service commercial film and post-production company, Drive Thru, has become the latest US customer to purchase a license of its innovative monet software. A complete start-to-finish solution for replacing elements in film and video, the monet purchase complements Drive Thru's existing mokey license, giving the facility a powerful digital compositing workflow able to meet all of its customer's needs.

monet has proved its worth for the company already, used by George in action on spots for Culver's, Breath-Rite, Polaris, and in a tricky job on a five and half minute sales video for Toro Lawnmowers.

"monet instantly gives me one of the best trackers on the market," explains Head of Editing and Effects, Bob George. "I can easily replace package labels with it and I can use it to streamline the garbage matte process too. If I'm going to track a garbage matte on something that's very difficult, I can do it in monet and simply dump my matte right into my edit program and go to town.

"Everybody's got a good tracker if there's a good tracking point," he continues. "But when you've got an object which is subject to motion blur and you can't get a lock on a corner, monet can nail that track."

Drive Thru is a commercial production company which, over 20 years of trading, has built up a successful business at both a regional and a national level in the USA. Based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, it employs just under 10 staff, complemented by a wide roster of freelance directors.

"We basically had to track some moving lawnmowers and isolate different parts to do colour adjustments," he explains, "but we had to get brutally accurate without really having a point that we could lock into. monet did it fine, but with other programs you just couldn't lock onto the mowers at all, and they couldn't shoot it again here in town because we've got frigid temperatures and no grass at the moment. They'd have had to fly everybody to Florida, but they wouldn't have been able to fly everyone down and back for the cost that we were able to redo it for."

For George and Drive Thru, monet therefore is a tool that enables them not only to be more productive, but to give their customers the service they want at the quality they expect without having to pay high-end prices.

"monet and mokey both help with our efforts where we are in the middle market," he says. "Our customers have less money every year, but they want a better product and they want to be able to do exactly what they could do at high-end places. With monet and mokey, we have the tools to do just that."