Our Company

MKPE is a Los Angeles-based consultancy, connecting business and new technology with the pro-entertainment market. We provide guidance in strategic planning, market education, and industrial relations. Clients profit from our deep understanding of the relatonships between content suppliers, service providers, and technology providers. We maintain our reputation as best-of-breed by remaining sharp on business rules, business use case, trends, standards, patents, and political will for emerging technologies.

MKPE has been leading clients to new opportunities in the pro-entertainment industry for over 20 years. Click to see an example of our public work in digital cinema.

Our Team

Michael Karagosian is the founder and president of MKPE Consulting LLC, a Los Angeles-based consultancy in the entertainment industry. He is a 30 year veteran of the cinema industry, and has been active in the digital cinema space for the past decade. Michael is known for his skills in business development, marketing, and technology. His more recent accomplishments include the negotiation of digital cinema deployment agreements for Ireland and the UK. Over the years, he has consulted for Cisco, Deluxe Laboratories, DTS, Microsoft, Sprint, Walt Disney Imagineering, among others. Michael served for eight years as the senior technology adviser to the US-based National Association of Theatre Owners, and continues to support NATO in the area of accessibility for the disabled. He conceived and led the effort to develop license-free standards for closed captions in digital cinema. He is a member of the board of directors for In-Three, and was an advisor to the UK Film Council in the UK government-financed rollout of digital cinema.

Michael is an engineering graduate of U.C. Berkeley. He began his career in Silicon Valley and now resides in the Los Angeles area. He is a proven consensus builder. He chairs the 21DC-30 Digital Cinema Exhibition Working Group, and led several critical efforts within SMPTE in the development of digital cinema. He is an active participant of the Inter-Society Digital Cinema Forum (ISDC), and is a past chair of the US-based Cinema Advertising Council (CAC) Technical Committee. As an industry leader, he championed the first public demonstration of 3-D digital cinema in 2005. In 2006, he received the ShoWest Award of Appreciation for Contribution to the Advancement of Digital Cinema.

In the late 70's and early 80's, Michael led the development of cinema and studio products at Dolby Laboratories. In the 90's he was a founder and former president of Cinema Group, Ltd., creator of the CinemAcoustics product line, and led the development of networked audio and control systems for Disney theme parks. He was an Advisory Board member for Digital Harmony, an early leader in applying IEEE 1394 to consumer products. Other technical accomplishments include the development of the CinemaMatrix™ digital surround decoder used by Skywalker Sound and Pixar, development of the first commercial 5.1 theatre sound processor for Dolby Laboratories and introduced with the movie Apocalypse Now in 1979, and the development of numerous integrated circuits. Michael is editor of mkpeReport, and is a frequent contributor to Digital Cinema Report. He is a contributing author of Understanding Digital Cinema, as well as the EC publication Digital Cinema Perspectives.

Thomas MacCalla is a results oriented leader, skilled in motivating and developing excellence, and proven in his ability to open doors to new and emerging markets. Thomas's more recent efforts include the negotiation of digital cinema deployment agreements and guidance in a new business venture for a major telecommunications company. Thomas also played a significant role in the development of the UK Film Council's Digital Screen Network.

Thomas is an MBA graduate of UCLA. He brings a pioneering spirit to entertainment technology by combining the telecommunications and computer science disciplines with an understanding of picture and sound technologies. Thomas' proven leadership with emerging technology in the entertainment market led to his appointment as Pacific Bell's first Director of Entertainment Technology in the early 90's. With studios such as Disney, Paramount, Sony, and Warner Bros, he pioneered the use of high speed networking for digital dailies, special effects and animation, and the early work in Digital Cinema. He formed the consultancy Visions-In-Motion, and became the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC), a research arm of the University of Southern California. With ETC, Thomas led innovative and key projects, including the first research work in postproduction networking, content security testing, and review of entertainment technologies to the home. He was the founder and chief architect of the former ETC Digital Cinema Lab (DCL) in Hollywood, where nearly all tests that led to the DCI Digital Cinema Technology Specification and to SMPTE standards were first conducted.

Thomas is known for his strategic planning and brokering services to leading and emerging entertainment and technology organizations. Among his many projects he was responsible for negotiating and consummating the contract between a major US studio and the Institute for Creative Technology (ICT), a research organization directed by the U.S. Army with emphasis in visual, audio, and artificial intelligence projects, for the purpose of creating a unique application utilizing commercial video game platforms. He participates in many digital cinema-related industry groups, including the Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers (SMPTE), European Digital Cinema Forum (EDCF) and International Telecommunications Union (ITU), as well as forums for broader entertainment technology.

J. Sperling Reich is an expert in both traditional and digital cinema technology as well as new media based application. He works with some of the industries leading motion picture exhibitors, distributors, equipment manufacturers and product development teams.

Most recently he was the Vice President of Marketing and Product Management at DTS Digital Cinema (now Datasat Digital Entertainment) where he helped develop such products as the DC-20 Digital Cinema Server, the XD-20 Media Server, the Alexandria Library Management Server, a theatre management system and the AP-20 Audio Processor. While President of FilmStew, a media based web portal and software development firm, he developed Digital Booking System, which was sold to DTS, Inc. after becoming the most widely deployed exhibition management system in the market.

Before founding FilmStew, Sperling began his career working in motion picture development at Disney (Saturn Films), Creative Artists Agency and the William Morris Agency. Besides being a current member of SMPTE, Sperling presently edits Celluloid Junkie, a blog he co-founded that focuses on the motion picture exhibition space. He also produces and co-hosts Showbiz Sandbox, a weekly entertainment news podcast.

Barbara Karagosian is executive vice-president. She is a prominent consultant in administration, personnel management, and legal nurse management to the health care industry, and brings her managerial skills to MKPE's operations. She served as Director of the Emergency Department at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles for many years, and also served as their Director of Medical Nursing. Barbara received her B.S. from University of Exeter, U.K, her M.S. from University of Leeds, U.K., and has a certificate in Management Development from University of Southern California.

MKPE is a former joint-venture partner of Karagosian MacCalla Partners (KMP).