I opened the downtown Lost Planet office some thirty-two years ago. The neighborhood was not called Soho back then, it was the Italian South Village, and the rent was far less expensive than the midtown rents where most of the editorial shops were located. There were little restaurants and underground newspapers and people making great art everywhere. I was cutting film then; ten minutes of film would be on a thousand-foot reel. If sound was recorded you’d need another thousand-foot reel. Five hours of dailies would require sixty reels. We had multiple jobs and needed hundreds and hundreds of reels. Rooms full of reels of film and track.

Now we can fit all the media in those rooms full of film on a drive that can be held in the palm of your hand. The bookstores and little cafes and the artists are long gone, driven out and replaced by greed and the boring conformity of shoe and handbag “ateliers.”

And then the present happened. With all the social and political implications.

The world has changed. “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” We’ve been forced to work differently, and much to my surprise, we’re loving it. Honestly, I can’t see us going back to the dead husk of an office the way it used to be. We’re thriving, and working in a new way. If anything, we’re focusing more on our core values.

Lost Planet has always been about doing wonderful work with our friends and our clients. And working as artists. That has never changed. We won’t be going back to our office on Spring Street. When things shake out a little more and we know what the world looks like, we’ll open a new kind of office in New York. A place that looks forward, not backward.

Best,

Hank Corwin