Chello chooses storage solutions from Digistor and EditShare
Chello is an agency that believes the role of brand has never been more important. They also bridge the gap between brand and content and promote the ethos that when you know who you are as a brand and what you represent, what you say and what you create all becomes a lot more meaningful. Chello also adopt a similar forward-thinking approach to their technology and post-production storage solutions, which recently they upgraded with Digistor and EditShare.
Chello co-founder and creative director, Tristan Velasco
Chello co-founder and creative director, Tristan Velasco, explained, “We had just moved to new offices and figured it was the right time to upgrade our storage solutions. Previously, we were using Synology NAS’ but we knew we needed something that was more reliable at much higher speeds – particularly to be able to edit 4K+ footage. We had been speaking to a number of agencies that we knew in video production and EditShare had been mentioned a few times. When we got in touch with Digistor, it was the one they recommended as well, so we felt confident enough that it would be the right system for us.”
They also required automated backup and archive solutions, via archiware, in order to be able to easily back up and archive projects. Then the storage solution had to be easily scalable and everyone in the agency needed to have remote access to the server through the company’s network.
Velasco added, “Put simply, the EditShare solution easily met all of our requirements and we are yet to even maximise how we use EditShare FLOW.”
In total Chello purchased EditShare’s EFS software defined ecosystem and EditShare FLOW media management for their data storage solution and daily workflow.
Typically, they use EFS to store all recent and live projects across video, animation and design and manage all project files via a templated folder structure. This contains all raw footage and source files including photography, 3D assets, illustrations, all project files and their various versions, delivery files across video, animation and design and production related files.
Velasco continued, “When we were researching the benefits of EditShare I remember other solutions being in the mix but, based on the recommendations from Digistor and our own subsequent research, we felt EditShare was by far the best solution that met our needs at the time and into the future. The main thing for us was how smart EditShare products are and how the entire EditShare solution was put together for us by Digistor. We had a really clear idea on what it needed to do based on our requirements above and it met all of those requirements.”
According to Velasco their EditShare solution and relationship with Digistor give Chello a clear edge as he concluded, “From a technology and workflow perspective, the edge EditShare gives us is primarily around the speed at which we are able to work on projects requiring really large file sizes, the security of our backup systems and archive systems. It’s second to none. We’ve been working with Digistor for many years now and without having an IT department, the team that we work with there really feel like they’re an extension of our team. They are incredibly responsive to any request – especially emergencies, are patient with managing our requests and are just really nice people. Especially for me, who had managed all IT issues prior to the engagement, it has saved me a lot of time being able to rely on Digistor to support myself and the team. In other words, Digistor are an absolute 10 out of 10 for me.”
EditShare is a technology leader that enables collaborative media workflows on-premise, in the cloud, or in a hybrid configuration. With customer and partner success at the heart of EditShare’s core values, our open software solutions and robust APIs improve workflow collaboration and third-party integrations across the entire production chain, ensuring a world-class experience that is second to none. The high-performance software lineup includes media optimized shared storage management, archiving and backup, and media management, all supported with open APIs for extensible integration.
EditShare’s cloud-enabled remote editing and project management technology was recently recognized by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) with a prestigious 2021 Emmy® Award for Technology and Engineering.
About Digistor
Managing Director Andrew Mooney founded Digistor in 1990. His experience designing, installing, and maintaining services for broadcasters and post-production houses had made it clear to him that the industry needed a group of experts who could look at things objectively. The result is a company that for over 30 years has been providing elegant solutions to leading organisations in the most technically demanding application areas. Digistor provides solutions for the creation, management, storage, and distribution of digital assets. From post-facilities to broadcast operations, from single studios to collaborative, networked environments operating across a room or across the world, Digistor empowers its customers through smarter technology and service solutions.
For more information on Digistor, please visit the website at www.digistor.com.au
Shared storage environments are critical to the successful operation of all modern-day education institutions. At the top of that tree are some of Australia’s oldest and most prestigious universities, including the University of Sydney and the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), both of whom use EditShare storage solutions supplied by Digistor.
EditShare shared storage solutions in use at the University of Sydney
The University of Sydney’s Manager, Media Production, Deputy Vice-Chancellor Indigenous Strategy and Services, Tom Cavdarovski, explained, “Our media team has grown over the last few years and our postproduction workflow has changed to meet the growing demands. We use EditShare systems and find them particularly suitable for a growing production slate.”
The University of Sydney’s Manager, Media Production, Deputy Vice-Chancellor Indigenous Strategy and Services, Tom Cavdarovski
UTS’ Client Computing Manager Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Simon Prowse, agreed saying, “The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) runs courses in communications including journalism and production. These courses include sound production, film and animation. In the past FASS used a different shared storage solution but decided to move to a more open environment for production workflows. UTS has now been using an EditShare solution for around 9 years has recently acquired new EFS storage and FLOW licences for student off site usage for editing.”
EditShare shared storage solutions in use at the University of Technology Sydney
For the University of Sydney, the requirements were centred around a secured, robust, 4K editing storage solution with Cavdarovski adding, “We have huge amounts of 4K data that needs to be accessed across multiple editors. Our content is captured on country with drones, C300 and DSLR cameras. We also produce multicamera live stream events, so having a post-production system workflow that integrates with creating pre-packaged content, is an important part of our workflow.”
In UTS’ case the university required a sizeable amount of storage capacity and bandwidth to handle up to 60 concurrent connections for editing from personal and group project spaces on the server.
Prowse said, “This time around we chose 10GB Ethernet with 20GB link aggregation to a 10GB switch. Since COVID there is more need for flexibility and a need for more students to work remotely. We also have students studying remotely overseas so the need for working from the server remotely was important. As most of the editing is done with Adobe, the Premier plugin was desirable.”
UTS’ Client Computing Manager Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Simon Prowse
It’s clear for both universities that the EditShare solutions for education shared storage environments are a vital part of their courses and day-to-day operations as Cavdarovski explained, “The EditShare system Digistor installed has RAID redundancy, integrates with existing university infrastructure and allows our editors to work in various 4K resolutions seamlessly.”
Prowse echoed this sentiment saying, “It’s a flexible arrangement for constantly changing circumstances. Openness and flexibility of the solution is important and EditShare meets this perfectly. Courses and requirements change and we can easily add capacity, bandwidth or capabilities with plugins.”
The University of Sydney uses a 98TB EFS 300 system with 8 clients PC connections. These are both Mac and Windows computers, all connected via 10Gb network ethernet connections and all editors are able to open Adobe Creative Cloud projects at any time.
EditShare’s cloud platform EditShare FLEX has evolved to a suite of turnkey, ready-to-go solutions for remote collaborative workflows and video editing in the cloud. Users of EditShare FLEX choose the modules they need – including edit in the cloud and multi-premises synchronisation – and implement them in their own cloud account. This gives users an easy opportunity to implement cloud solutions which education institutions often consider the best way to utilise a combination of on-premise and cloud storage and editing.
There are many on premises and cloud solutions at UTS. They run an animation render farm for the faculty that is on server blades in the data centre and processing of jobs is distributed to around 300 lab computers. UTS also has an HPC environment as well an Isilon which is widely used across the university. The faculty EditShare EFS can backup to Isilon which represents a cost saving to leverage other products in the EditShare solution.
Workflows are obviously at the core of these solutions as Cavdarovski explained, “We have a mix of projects throughout the year, some are quick turnaround with a single producer and editor, while others are 12 months in post and up 50 individual videos with shared resources across multiple editors.”
Prowse added, “We keep our workflows reasonably basic. EditShare is the file server for students’ media work. The workflows involve group spaces for group projects and these have a set folder structure. Students also have personal scratch space with quotas. Class materials are in spaces accessible to students from either the lab and suite facilities or on their BYO devices accessible from home via the client and VPN or on campus.”
A UTS shared storage workflow may also involve students borrowing faculty sound, lighting and video equipment and doing a shoot. They will then upload content to EditShare via a lab or studio computer.
It’s clear that both Cavdarovski and Prowse are big fans of the EditShare solutions for education shared storage environments they purchase from Digistor as Cavdarovski highlighted, “We have used smaller storage solutions in the past, but found they are very limited and lacked performance beyond one or two concurrent users compared to the EditShare solution we now have. We really like the FLOW application that we purchased as part of the EditShare package. It allows the team of editors to log content easily, accurately and create proxies for working offline and working flexibly. FLOW helps to ensure that we can always store, retrieve and broadcast the appropriate content.”
Whilst Prowse said, “We feel that EditShare has a flexible and futureproofed product that is not proprietary or rigid. It’s modular so we are not paying for capabilities that we do not need now but have the option to add capability, licences or services going forward. Lots of storage capacity in the EditShare solution is important and being on premise, we can leverage the fast network for connections, transfers and backup.”
When asked to explain what edge using the EditShare solutions Digistor provided gives their university Tom Cavdarovski concluded, “The EditShare system enables our team to work more efficiently, reducing menial tasks and streamlining complex workflows. This frees the team up to work in more creative and innovative space, which in this industry, is a what customers and partners want from content producers. Our experience with Digistor has always been very professional, I have been purchasing postproduction systems for over 20 years and they understand how to work with clients who work in large complex organisations, like a university.”
Whilst Simon Prowse concluded, “We have had excellent experiences with both EditShare and Digistor. This is our third renewal of hardware over 9 years and the sales and project process has been smooth each time. Any support issues are dealt with promptly and professionally too. My IT team has to be across a huge amount of knowledge to effectively manage all of the moving parts in this complex university environment. Hence, we need to rely on good support for specialised solutions, applications and facilities. Thus, the great confidence we have in Digistor and EditShare is a very important factor for us.”
EditShare is a technology leader that enables collaborative media workflows on-premise, in the cloud, or in a hybrid configuration. With customer and partner success at the heart of EditShare’s core values, our open software solutions and robust APIs improve workflow collaboration and third-party integrations across the entire production chain, ensuring a world-class experience that is second to none. The high-performance software lineup includes media optimized shared storage management, archiving and backup, and media management, all supported with open APIs for extensible integration.
EditShare’s cloud-enabled remote editing and project management technology was recently recognized by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) with a prestigious 2021 Emmy® Award for Technology and Engineering.
About Digistor
Managing Director Andrew Mooney founded Digistor in 1990. His experience designing, installing, and maintaining services for broadcasters and post-production houses had made it clear to him that the industry needed a group of experts who could look at things objectively. The result is a company that for over 30 years has been providing elegant solutions to leading organisations in the most technically demanding application areas. Digistor provides solutions for the creation, management, storage, and distribution of digital assets. From post-facilities to broadcast operations, from single studios to collaborative, networked environments operating across a room or across the world, Digistor empowers its customers through smarter technology and service solutions.
For more information on Digistor, please visit the website at www.digistor.com.au
As you sit and stress about all the different people who have to give an episode of your show their blessing, it can seem like there are way too many cooks in the kitchen or that the approval process is byzantine and endless. But all time and layers of the approval process are there for a reason, and you can use them to create a better show. It’s all about understanding why each stage is there and what it’s supposed to accomplish. Think of those layers as chances to make the show better rather than hurdles to clear. Your team was assembled because of its experience, creativity and skill. The approval pipeline can be the key to unlocking all of those assets.
The Order of Operations Exists For a Reason
While the showrunner’s approval is often the primary goal, and the most important consideration, the approval process in episodic television also involves a number of other stakeholders, and there is a traditional order to the creation process for a reason.
Initial assembly
Once filming for a given day has been completed, the footage is sent to the editor. In most cases, editing work is anywhere from one to three days behind the actual filming, up until the episode’s shoot schedule is complete. The editor may be working remotely or may actually be on set, which can help close the gaps between what is shot and what is needed in the episode. In that time, the editor will usually make a first assembly, trying to get all the basics of the story and structure into a working cut. The editor will typically have between one and six days after receiving all the dailies to create an initial assembly to send to the director. That stage is very important structurally and adds a lot of value to the final episode, because editors tend to work on multiple episodes and are usually more familiar with previous episodes and the show’s ongoing tropes and style.
As the footage is given to the editor, the director will usually provide some direction about how the episode should be put together. At the same time, the script supervisor has usually provided notes and insights based on what happened on set. These notes also add value and often can help the editor discover aspects of the footage that might not otherwise have been apparent.
The director’s cut
Once the episode’s filming is complete, the director and editor will work for up to four days to make the director’s cut of the episode, which is normally the first official milestone in the post-production pipeline. Before the pandemic, it was common for directors to physically sit with the editor while working on the director’s cut if the director wasn’t committed to working on other projects immediately. That opportunity for close collaboration was a valuable part of the process, and trying to maintain that same level of interaction with today’s workflows is an important consideration. With modern production tools and workflows, live remote editing can accomplish many of the same things, and the rest is achieved through digital collaboration platforms such as MediaSilo, email and any other means available.
While creating the Director’s Cut, the director and editor can drill down on specific shots to ensure delivery of the showrunner’s vision.
Episodic television is an unusually collaborative medium, and great shows benefit from the creative imprints and inputs of every team member. Even though there will be other levels of approval after the director’s cut, it’s important to treat each one as a separate stage, because each one adds a different value to the process. Skipping ahead before creating the best director’s cut can leave great creative ideas on the editing room floor. Many of the industry’s top showrunners like to let the director experiment a little at this stage rather than insisting on having them present the script as shot. Making sure the director at least gets to the point where the cut lines up with the vision of what they were trying to shoot is a critical part of creating the best final product. This is even more true in serialized shows, which are often less dependent on a strict formula.
Because directors tend to only work on just one episode per season (or a small handful), a talented helmer often can provide new ideas and insights that might have eluded the ongoing team members. Focusing on the ideas of the director at this point helps introduce fresh and exciting ideas that haven’t been part of other episodes. There will be plenty of time to get things back in line with existing stylistic aspects of the show afterward, but the director’s cut provides a unique opportunity to get original input into the episode from a new viewpoint. And this kind of input can help keep a show interesting to viewers, eliminating predictability and repetition.
The showrunner steps in
Once the director’s cut is complete, it’s time for the showrunner and producers to come into the process and make the episode part of the greater whole. As the central creative visionary behind the show, the showrunner needs to make sure that the cut fits with the previous episodes and that it leads properly into planned upcoming episodes that haven’t yet been filmed. While the director may have treated the individual episode as a standalone creative opportunity in some respects, it is the showrunner who makes sure that the episode fits with the entire show’s arc. Just as the director’s cut provides new ideas, the showrunner makes sure those ideas fit with the overall direction of the series.
This stage is also when the showrunner may get input from the writers and other producers to ensure that the episode is coming together as they had envisioned. The showrunner collects notes from the team and makes sure the cut is working for them before finalizing the producers’ cut. Because the showrunner is the show’s creative shepherd, this stage of approval is the most critical creative stage for the episode’s outcome. If the showrunner is happy, then chances are most others will be as well.
Other stakeholders make their mark
While the showrunner represents the show’s creative vision, episodic television is a business, and there are many concerns and interests involved. In some cases, the showrunner’s cut will move forward in the post-production pipeline with only minimal additional input from the studio, network, and sponsors. But those viewpoints are still very important aspects of the creation process. Once the showrunner is satisfied with the episode’s rough cut, it’s time for the producing studio’s producers to weigh in. Just as the showrunner is focused on maintaining the creative vision and protecting the story, producers will have the studio’s interests in mind. They might be thinking beyond the story or individual show to how it reflects on their larger plans. Beyond the producing studio, there are also network stakeholders and executive producers who need to weigh in on how the episode fits with the image of the network and with the needs of potential advertisers or sponsors. And in some cases, those advertisers or sponsors may even get to review the content themselves.
Though some may think of this part of the process in purely negative terms, it also can present an opportunity, creatively speaking. The best producers will use this stage as a chance to make the show even better, not just rein it in and keep things “safe.” Any creative person can sometimes get too mired in personal aspects of a story or be too close to it to see flaws. A savvy and experienced producer, while also seeking to represent the studio, network or stakeholder’s interest, might also be able to provide insight into the minds of the larger audience and what is likely to appeal to them. So this stage, when used correctly, can actually improve the final product by making it more universal and helping connect the show more deeply to the audience.
Using each of these approvals as a way to make the show better is the way to end up with the best product at picture lock. It’s important for the creative team to be open enough to outside input that opportunities aren’t missed. At the same time, it is incumbent upon the studio, network, and sponsors to operate from a place of creativity and opportunity rather than fear and defensiveness. Make things the best you can rather than the least risky. No one remembers safe, and that’s usually more dangerous than any risk you might take.
The finishing touches
While the showrunner has been the guiding figure through edit approval and picture lock, there’s still work to be done. Generally speaking, the picture-locked cut will still require a whole range of adjustments, including the creation and insertion of visual effects, sound design, additional dialogue recording, and color correction. And many of these elements will be created by outside vendors and post houses. With the showrunner less present, it usually falls to the Post-Production Supervisor or Post Producer to bring it all together and make sure all of these elements proceed in a way that enhances the final product. In a perfect world, each of these elements has a chance to make the show better and more engaging. And while the showrunner and producers will eventually sign off on the finished product, it’s the Post-Production Supervisor or Post Producer who must make sure it’s all going according to plan.
Once all of the finished elements are in place, the editor or editors will be asked to check all of the post-work and make any needed adjustments. The mix will be reviewed on a mix stage or at the post house. Then the showrunner and writers will give their signoff and sometimes be part of the team that attends the final laybacks. If all goes well, there are few surprises or changes at this point because communication has been consistent and thorough.
In the next installment of our guide, we will look at how each player on the production and post-production teams can put their mark on a show and make it better than the sum of its parts.
Part 2 Recap:
Each approval stage serves a specific purpose, as does the order in which the stages are arranged.
The editor provides much-needed continuity between episodes and can be a great resource on what stylistic choices have already been made.
The editor can be the primary conduit between the script supervisor on set and the actual content of the show. This helps keep things from slipping through the cracks that could be costly later.
The director’s cut can provide fresh ideas and useful insights from a new perspective. Even though the showrunner will have final say, focusing on the director’s cut first allows the director to demonstrate what they had in mind when shooting. It can also provide a perspective from a skilled voice that isn’t so close to the show and applies to the specific episode. This helps keep the show fresh and interesting for viewers.
The showrunner must be sure to keep the big picture and overall themes consistent. They’re the link between all the talented team members and the original vision.
There are a wide variety of interests and business motivations beyond the story itself. This can be used as an advantage, not just a hassle.
The network and producers often have special audience (and sponsor) insights.
It’s always dangerous to be “safe.”
The little details added at the end can often elevate the entire show.
Read the entire 3-part guide to Making Memorable Television now.
MediaSilo allows for easy management of your media files, seamless collaboration for critical feedback and out of the box synchronization with your timeline for efficient changes. See how MediaSilo is powering modern post production workflows with a 14-day free trial.
Brazilian broadcaster adds storage, control and cloud sync
Boston, MA, November 29, 2022 – EditShare®, the technology leader that enables storytellers to create and manage collaborative media workflows, has greatly extended its storage and content management system at Rede Evangelizar é Preciso, the religious broadcaster in Brazil. As well as boosting operational performance, the new installation also allows Rede Evangelizar to migrate its archive from LTO tapes to the cloud.
Rede Evangelizar, under the guidance of Father Reginaldo Manzotti, was launched in 2011, based in the city of Curitiba, south-west of São Paulo. As its success continued to grow, it extended its in-house production and post facilities, adding its first EditShare servers in 2017.
This major expansion, designed and implemented by EditShare’s local system integration partner CIS Group, includes a FLOW Ingest server and EFS online storage, as well as FLOW asset management, metadata controller and additional production nodes. The integral FLEX Cloud Sync software applications ensure that all media is securely backed up, with archives and restore functionality in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud.
“We had found our original EditShare installation to be a very powerful tool for us,” said Renan Borges, post production coordinator at Rede Evangelizar é Preciso. “As our productions grew in size and complexity, we needed to boost our operational performance and allow more users access to our content. EditShare and CIS Group readily understood our requirements, and proposed an excellent technical solution, support for the migration, and the ability to move our archive to the cloud which gives us lifecycle cost savings as well as easier operations.”
Said Bacho, Chief Revenue Officer at EditShare added, “CIS Group was able to put together a very attractive package, including long-term licensing and continuing support, it meant we could deliver all the functionality Rede Evangelizar needed, at the right price point, and help them achieve the operational streamlining they sought.”
“It’s important to see that the partnership between CIS and EditShare has brought a level of trust to our customers. With the upgrade of Rede Evangelizar’s system to the new EditShare FLOW tools, we will optimize the end-to-end workflow, offer greater productivity and efficiency, and also guarantee greater production quality,” said Alberto Santana, Territory Account Manager at CIS Group. The extensions to the EditShare architecture at Rede Evangelizar are being installed at the end of 2022, and will go live in the first quarter of 2023.
EditShare is a technology leader that enables collaborative media workflows on-premise, in the cloud, or in a hybrid configuration. With customer and partner success at the heart of EditShare’s core values, our open software solutions and robust APIs improve workflow collaboration and third-party integrations across the entire production chain, ensuring a world-class experience that is second to none. The high-performance software lineup includes media optimized shared storage management, archiving and backup, and media management, all supported with open APIs for extensible integration.
EditShare’s cloud-enabled remote editing and project management technology was recently recognized by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) with a prestigious 2021 Emmy® Award for Technology and Engineering.
About CIS Group
Since 1988, CIS Group has been a Media Technology solutions provider & systems integrator with core competencies across the professional services spectrum. Over the years our scope has evolved to include: Consulting & Workflow Design, Integration, Full System Commissioning & Installation, Technical & Operational Training, Maintenance & Support, DevOps, and Managed Services. Focused exclusively on the MediaTech space, CIS has delivered countless solutions aimed at a variety of use cases throughout the Content Supply Chain – including live production, post-production, archiving, and distribution. In relying on CIS’s expertise, our clients have been able to outsource a lot of their technical challenges, and focus their energy and resources on how the technology we implement ultimately delivers business value and creative value to their organizations. Enabling our customers to achieve their desired business goals and operational goals by effectively implementing our solutions is what we mean when we say that customer success is in our DNA.
The entire creative process comes to a shuddering halt when you can’t get your system to show you every frame of footage as it should. When you get dropped frames, jittery or sluggish playback or encounter a system that is lagging behind your commands, it’s nearly impossible to get anything done. Speed, fluidity and instantaneous execution of commands are all essential to fast, efficient film and video editing.
But the reason for poor playback performance can originate in a number of different places:
Is your computer just not good enough to play back the high-resolution footage you have?
Is your hard drive too slow to throw the data onto your timeline quickly enough?
Is the connection port or cable the real bottleneck in your workflow?
Is your codec too tricky to decode?
In this concise guide to troubleshooting poor playback performance, we’ll take a look at all of these issues in turn.
If you’re working on large, network-connected tiered storage systems, you’ll need to consider things like network speeds, file management, user management, load balancing, etc., which are outside the scope of this guide.
That said, the general principles we’ll discuss are still very relevant to getting things to work as they should. But the key focus of this guide is for editors working on direct attached solid-state drives (SSD), RAID arrays or big spinning hard disk drives (HDD).
Troubleshoot Your System by Understanding Your Footage
The first step to troubleshooting your poor playback is to analyze the qualities of the footage you’re trying to work with. This will provide you with some essential information to help you benchmark your system against and narrow down where the problem might be.
Footage Analysis
Find out the following pieces of information about the footage you’re trying to work with, as they all have an impact on the process:
Frame rate
Frame size/resolution
Codec
You’ll then need to look up the data rate of the footage given these parameters.
For example, let’s say you’re working with 4K ProRes 422 HQ from an Alexa 35 at 24p.
The data rate for that is 799 Mb/s (megabits/second) according to ARRI, as the clip resolution is slightly larger (4096 x 2304) than the 754 Mb/s listed in the Apple ProRes White paper from Apple for 4096 x 2160.
Most hard drive performance numbers are given in megabytes (MB/s) a second, while these figures are in megabits per second (Mb/s). As there are 8 bits to a byte, you just need to divide the data rate number by 8.
799 Mb/s divided by 8 = 99.8 MB/s for one stream of our 4K ProRes 422 HQ at 24p footage.
A four-angle multicam edit would therefore need at least 400 MB/s of throughput performance from the source drive and the cable connecting it to the system.
Understanding Hard Drive Speed
Different types of media storage can operate at different speeds. In today’s edit suite, most of us are working from a range of solid-state drives (SSD), hard disk drives (HDD) with spinning disks (5400rpm or 7200rpm) or RAID arrays which deliver speed and redundancy benefits by enabling several individual disk drives to act as one big fast drive.
Here are some ballpark read speeds for these common types of drives:
SSD
USB 3.2 SSD = 1050 MB/s
Thunderbolt 3 NVME SSD = 2800 MB/s
HDD
7200rpm Thunderbolt 3 drive = 260 MB/s
USB 3.0 5400rpm drive = 200 MB/s
Local RAID with 7200rpm drives = 567+ MB/s
So now that you know the data rate of the kind of footage that you’re trying to pull from your media storage and the typical read speed of your storage, if the data rate demands of the footage exceed your storage performance, this could be the root cause of your playback issues.
In our example of the 99.8 MB/s data rate for a single stream of 4K ProRes 422 HQ at 24p, we should be fine editing from most of these drives relatively easily.
There’s a lot more we could say about each of these media storage types, but one general principle that applies to them all is that performance tends to decline as the drive gets full. As a rough rule of thumb, you want to try to keep to about 80% of the maximum capacity before you start to see a degradation in performance.
Understanding Port and Cable Bandwidth
One other consideration that is intimately connected with hard drive speed is that of the port and cable type that is connecting the drive to your system. Sometimes the cable is labeled with its specification but not always, and unfortunately, you can’t make assumptions about the speed based on the shape of the connector alone.
If you are connecting a fast drive over a slow port and cable, then you obviously won’t reap the benefits of all that source-side performance.
Here are the typical (advertised) speeds for several common connections:
USB 3.0/3.1 (Gen 1) with USB Type-A connector = 625 MB/s
USB 3.1 (Gen 2) with USB Type-C connector = 1250 MB/s
USB 3.2 with USB Type-C connector = 2500 MB/s
Thunderbolt 2 = 2500 MB/s
Thunderbolt 3 with Type-C connector = 5000 MB/s
Note – Bandwidth speeds are often listed in Gbps (Gigabits per second) where 1 Gbps = 125 MB/s. I’ve done the conversions above to keep all of our numbers in MB/s.
So, again, if the combined data rate of every video stream you’re trying to access at the same time on your drive exceeds the throughput performance of the port and cable you’re pulling it through, then this could again cause playback issues.
It’s also worth noting that these ‘advertised’ speeds are usually the ‘theoretical’ maximum performance of the connection, while real-world numbers are likely to be south of these.
When purchasing a new USB 3.X drive, it’s also worth double-checking exactly which type and generation it is, as this will dramatically affect your potential maximum speeds.
Understanding Basic System Performance
Finally, it is also worth considering the capabilities of your system when it comes to handling the kinds of footage you’re using in your project, in conjunction with any computationally intensive effects, filters and transformations you might be applying to it.
Returning to our initial footage analysis, the frame size, frame rate and codec type all combine to determine how difficult they are for the system to display.
The first two parts of this are fairly intuitive. If you have a bigger frame size, such as 4K over HD, or more frames to display from a higher frame rate, such as 60 fps vs. 24 fps, this will require more system resources to work with.
But in many ways, the codec type plays a more influential role in determining your playback performance. The word codec stands for compression/decompression, and each codec uses different mathematical calculations to initially compress the information from the sensor into the file and then decompress it to view it.
Different codecs are designed for different things. H.264 is great for creating small files that can be displayed on the web, but it’s not great for editing from. Conversely, something like ProRes is designed specifically for modern editing workflows and is ‘easy’ for a system to handle, but consequently has much larger file sizes.
There’s a lot more that could be said about the role of codecs in video editing, but we’ll leave that for another time.
If you’re also adding a lot of effects, color grades, third-party plugins or other render-intensive adjustments such as temporal noise reduction, then these will also tax your system’s capabilities.
Depending on (and the version of) your video editing software of choice, it may or may not be optimized to work best with the hardware you’re running it on. For example, newer Macs that are running Apple Silicon chips (M1, M2, etc.) are very fast, but only if the software has been rewritten to make use of the way the chips like to do things
It’s also worth noting that internal settings in your video editing software, such as ‘enable high-quality playback’ in Adobe Premiere Pro, can have a dramatic impact on the quality of interaction you have with your footage. These are also worth investigating.
Putting it All Together – Testing Your System
So now that you understand the characteristics of the footage you’re working with and its specific data rate, the speed of your media storage and the bandwidth of your connection, you should have all of the information you need to understand if what you’re trying to do is a viable workflow.
One excellent tool for testing your system performance is the free Blackmagic Design Speed Test app, which writes and reads some test data to your drive and delivers a performance report.
It also helpfully tabulates which common video codecs, frame rates and resolutions will work on your system.
The results in the image above are from my MacBook Pro’s internal hard drive.
If All Else Fails – Create Proxies
If all else fails and you still can’t get decent playback, then it might be worth creating proxies instead.
This is the process of converting your footage into a more manageable codec and file format for your system. Proxy files are often used when the source footage is very high quality, such as 8K RAW files, which are both resource intensive and take up a lot of hard drive space.
By making smaller, lower-quality proxy files that feature smaller bit rates and easier-to-handle codecs, all of the creative decisions can still be made while working with these, and then the final edit can be relinked to the original full-quality media at the end for final color grading and delivery.
Although working with proxies does add a further layer to your workflow, most video editing software these days will automatically manage the proxy process for you by both creating and toggling between the full-quality and proxy files with just a few clicks.
Save Time With the Playback Performance Cheat Sheet
Download this cheat sheet of the speed requirements for common codecs and a bunch of standard drive speeds and port speeds to quickly identify the crucial data to troubleshoot poor playback performance on your system.
MediaSilo allows for easy management of your media files, seamless collaboration for critical feedback and out of the box synchronization with your timeline for efficient changes. See how MediaSilo is powering modern post production workflows with a 14-day free trial.
What Kind of Show Are You Making?
It’s 9 pm on a Friday night, and you’re sitting in the edit suite waiting for the notes to come in on your fourth version of the rough cut. As you wait for all the stakeholders to weigh in, you think about what a normal person would be doing right now, and you wonder what you could have done to make this whole process go as smoothly and perfectly as possible.
Whether you’re making a gritty documentary-style OTT streamer, a strictly structured long-running network procedural, or a slick and inventive serialized narrative for a subscription cable outlet, there are certain things you should be thinking about to help you create the best episode you can make with the least stress and heartache.
We spoke with veteran editors, post supervisors, episodic directors, and showrunners about what matters most to them and how they get so much done in so little time. While there are huge variations between show types, there were definitely some universal truths that emerged, and we believe these are the key to a successful episodic television pipeline.
Is it a cut-up feature film, or is it a series of short films?
Episodic television production is unique in that it combines some aspects of feature film production with some aspects of making shorter pieces. In a sense, an episodic television season can be looked at as a series of individual 22-minute to 60-minute short films about a single topic. But it can also be seen as one epic 8-16 hour feature film that has been cut into installments. And in recent years, some of the lines between feature production and episodic production have become even more blurred. Ultimately, the nature of the show you’re making can determine which of those is the best framing for your project.
When you’re working with a classic procedural format like the various Law & Order properties, you become very familiar with your existing formula and characters. However, each episode stands on its own as a story. So when working on that type of procedural, it’s probably useful to think of each episode as a short- or medium-length film with its own arc, even though you will be keeping track of certain throughlines and ongoing aspects. Meanwhile, if your show is a serialized drama like The Handmaid’s Tale or Better Call Saul, you’re usually going to be treating an entire 10-13 episode season more like a single, very long feature film, with a plot arc that unfolds over the course of the whole season. This aspect is what makes it binge-worthy. So the approval process may involve some different considerations as the structures and goals are different.
Comedies are similar, with many sitcoms essentially following procedural episodic guidelines, without requiring that your viewers watch them in order. In a thematic sense, and in terms of the practical aspects of putting together your episodes, each installment stands alone and you can approach them on a more individual basis.
Meanwhile, if you’re working on a comedy with ongoing plot lines that require having viewed previous episodes to varying extents, you’ll be using aspects of the “season as a film” approach as you put your show together. Arrested Development is a good example of the latter type of show and surely had different structural and approval considerations from traditional sitcoms. There are also shows that fall somewhere in between, where things that have happened in earlier episodes are acknowledged or referenced in some way, but may not be as critical to constructing later episodes.
Documentary series, while totally different in content, can also follow either of those formats depending on the structure of the show. So if you’re working on a competition show like The Bachelor or Survivor you’re likely to be following an approval and review pattern similar to serialized dramas and need to keep in mind the whole season’s arc as you build the episodes. Meanwhile, many game shows and travel shows don’t require having viewed previous episodes, so your approval process will have more in common with documentary shorts and films. Regardless of format, we have tips and procedures that can help you guide your program smoothly from shoot through final post-production.
Maintaining the show’s creative vision
The most important aspect of guiding an episode of television through to final approval is making sure the episode maintains the show’s overall creative vision. Is the episode you’ve made consistent with the others? And does it fit in well with the overall arc of the show? If it’s a serial format, does it feel like a continuation of the story as it was left in the prior episode? It should move the story forward, but also connect seamlessly with what has come before. If you think of the latest episode as the latest part of an ongoing feature film, it should work in that context, not just on its own.
If it’s non-serialized, then does the episode feel similar enough to other episodes that it clearly shares the same DNA? Each episode should add something new and fresh but still provide the same types of satisfaction and enjoyment, as well as the same structural elements as previous episodes.
Whether narrative or documentary, the final word creatively usually comes from the person designated as the showrunner. It is the showrunner who will guide the overall direction of the series. While feature films are most often led creatively by the director, episodic television usually requires multiple directors to meet a show’s production schedule, and the showrunner fills the creative leadership role that would typically fall on the director in a feature film. There may be many other stakeholders on a large-scale production, and each episode has different directorial leadership, but the showrunner is the most significant in terms of getting the final work approved and in maintaining a unified creative vision despite having different team members on each episode.
Whether you’re editing, leading post-production, creating visual effects, or mixing the audio on an episode of television, the most important aspect of your work will be making the episode fit in with the overall thematic vision that the showrunner has for the series. And if the showrunner is happy with the product, chances are it will eventually get approved for air.
Know your showrunner, know your show
Like every creative person, you have great ideas. That’s probably why you got into the creative world in the first place. But great ideas aren’t always the right idea. Anyone who has ever experienced the pain of “approval by committee” knows the importance of having a focused creative vision and a limited number of people in charge of it. It’s the only way to tell a cohesive and compelling story. That’s why episodic television assigns a showrunner in the first place. And while everyone’s great ideas have the potential to be part of making a show great, it’s also important to know the showrunner and the show itself very well.
The best thing you can do to make your creative contributions valuable is to make them consistent with the vision and existing intellectual property of the series. That’s not to say there isn’t room for creativity, but a patchwork quilt of styles and processes doesn’t help when trying to create a unified piece of entertainment. So the better you know the creative vision of the show overall, and the better you know the established elements, the more likely your contribution is to be helpful.
The importance of overlaps
The television production process can seem hopelessly compartmentalized when not executed correctly. Communication between production and post production can feel very minimal at times, and creative stakeholders aren’t always present at critical stages of post production. Every separation creates the risk of a communication breakdown or misunderstanding.
The way to make sure that a unified creative vision is maintained throughout the process is to create overlaps in understanding. If the editor is walking into the first assembly essentially blind and is learning the story elements for the first time, the chances of having a great first cut go down fast. Before the show even starts, the first thing everyone involved on the team can use to get on the same page is the show bible. The show bible will help bridge the gap between all departments and ensure everyone is aligned on the same vision. So it’s important for everyone to be familiar with it.
But there are also tools that can help different departments and stages of the creation chain connect more seamlessly on an ongoing basis. For example, if the editor attends the tone meetings that happen before each production block, where the showrunner and director talk about the story beats, the editor can gain priceless insights. Similarly, if the colorist is working in a vacuum to make the show look as good as possible, the episode may or may not reach its potential. But if the Director of Photography gets to sit with the colorist and they get to work on the grade together, great things can happen. Finding connections that turn the potential telephone game into a smooth transfer of information will make the difference between making a cohesive show and flailing blindly. Don’t give up any opportunity to connect team members from various departments.
In the next installment of our guide, we will look at the approval pipeline and what each stage is trying to achieve so that you can optimize each part of the process.
Part 1 Recap:
Figure out whether your season makes more sense as a series of separate short films or as one long feature that has been broken up into installments. Each has its benefits, but one will always be a better fit for your show.
Regardless of whether it’s documentary or scripted, comedic or dramatic, a show’s structure will determine which approach you take.
Figure out whether you need to prioritize the season’s overall throughlines or each episode’s individual structure first.
Always try to match existing canonical elements of style and tone. When in doubt, step back and think about how the current episode fits in with all those that came before (and those still to come).
Try to give the audience what they loved about past episodes, but with new twists to keep it from feeling expected.
There are many stakeholders with sometimes conflicting goals. But the showrunner’s vision is the glue of the show. When in doubt, try to make the show that the showrunner envisioned and let the showrunner defend it to other stakeholders.
Try to create overlaps between departments and stages to keep everyone on the same page. Invite team members who will work on later stages of the episode to attend meetings and sessions earlier in the process so your visions are aligned. (e.g. The editor can learn a lot by being present for story meetings. And the colorist gains valuable insights from the DP.)
The more information you give each team member and department, the more useful their contributions will be. Facilitate connections between departments that might not otherwise get to communicate.
When in doubt, use the show bible as a reference to keep everyone on the same page throughout the process.
Read the entire 3-part guide to Making Memorable Television now.
MediaSilo allows for easy management of your media files, seamless collaboration for critical feedback and out of the box synchronization with your timeline for efficient changes. See how MediaSilo is powering modern post production workflows with a 14-day free trial.
In an earlier blog, EditShare CTO Stephen Tallamy looked at five top tips for remote editing using Adobe Premiere Pro. Avid Media Composer remains an industry standard and is still hugely popular, so here are five cool takeaways for improving your workflow by using it with EditShare.
1 – Automate Transcodes
EditShare FLOW does a lot more than metadata management. It allows you to offload routine tasks to avoid using up edit workstations for things that can be better done elsewhere.
Use FLOW for ingest, whether from a delivered file or direct from the camera cards. You can store the raw footage, and at the same time prepare the content in the MXF Op-Atom wrapper that is a native format for Media Composer managed media.
FLOW supports all the latest versions of raw formats, and as well as rewrapping, you can transcode to the house codec, which might be DNxHD, or XDCam, or whatever you choose.
Easily track automated processes
2 – Prepare Bins Online
You can set up the bin structure before you get to the Avid workstation too. A core part of the Universal Projects software in FLOW is that it allows you to work from a central view of a project inside of FLOW and then synchronize that project to a range of editing systems, including Media Composer.
Working in a web browser, you can go through all the input material and organize it into logical structures such as folders for rushes, subclips and shot lists. This can be supported by automation when you need it, for example creating rules to create bins per day, to organize by metadata such as tape/scene information or even write a rule to ignore any clip that is less than three seconds long (or whatever duration you think is likely to be unusable).
Assistant editors, directors and producers can work collaboratively to review the dailies and only offer the editor the preferred takes. Once ready, all the work can be automatically synchronized into Media Composer bin files.
By doing all this in FLOW, it means you are transferring less material to the editing workstation, with all the bins set up and populated for the editor to start the creative work immediately.
Sync between FLOW and Media Composer respecting bin locking
3 – Work From Anywhere
The ingest processing, as well as storing the raw footage and transcoding to the house edit format, can also generate proxies, at a maximum bitrate determined by you. Proxies make it practical to view the content, in real-time, from anywhere with a web browser and a reasonable internet connection, on any device.
The producer and director might be on location but can still review dailies in exactly the same way that they used to, as soon as the content is ingested, rather than waiting for large files (or rush prints) to be delivered. The post facility could carry out automated sorting, the director could choose the best takes (on an iPad), and the edit assistant could set up and load the bin structure, all at the same time, from different locations.
Again, the key point here is that editors and edit suites are expensive entities and overheads for production teams. You want as much of their time as possible to be devoted to telling the story, and not wrangling data and waiting for timely transfers. This is a real boost to productivity.
4 – Bin Locking Support
Media Composer users will be familiar with the collaborative features available when using shared storage systems.
Bin locking is central to the Media Composer way of working, which allows users to share bins and projects, but provides a secure locking mechanism to ensure only one person is working on a file at a time. EditShare EFS supports this locking through AvidStyle spaces, allowing users to work with a familiar workflow whilst taking advantage of the other features of EFS and FLOW.
When using FLOW Universal Projects, bin locking is respected by FLOW itself when it updates bins, ensuring users don’t lose their work. Working in combination with the Avid Attic location, history of bin changes is retained as well, so if you ever need to go back to a previous version of a bin, it’s there for you.
5 – Review, Grade and Deliver Anywhere
Once you have completed the edit and rendered the output to the house master format, the next stage involves sending the file back to EditShare FLOW, where it is ingested and given its new identity and metadata.
At that point, a fresh proxy is generated. Everyone who is entitled to review the finished cut can then log in to view it and make comments, from anywhere and on anything that supports a web browser.
The project file is then ready to be transferred across to the colorist. If you grade on DaVinci Resolve, it will appear with all the project information, thanks to EditShare’s Universal Projects. If you are a Baselight post house, then you can mount the EditShare storage network as a source and directly access the file.
Once the project has been graded and signed off, you can leave the creation of all the deliverables to the automated processes in FLOW to handle. Again, it saves using an expensive and in-demand edit suite to do vital but uncreative and repetitive transcoding and rendering tasks.
At EditShare, the goal is to help you create amazing everywhere. I hope these tips help you get the best out of your post production resources by using the powerful intelligence in the combination of EFS and FLOW.
For more information on how you can optimize your Media Composer workflows, click here to get started.
When it comes to making a standout product video, finding the right team and the right workflow is key. At MediaSilo, we worked with a number of production teams before we found our fit with Vidico, a full-service production company based out of Melbourne, Australia, specializing in brand and product videos for technology companies. Over the course of several successful video projects together, we developed a plan that worked seamlessly at each stage of the creative process.
The pre-production phase can be the most crucial stage of the entire video creation process to ensure a quality final product that matches your vision and brand.
This year, the MediaSilo and Vidico teams came together to produce the launch video for our latest feature Spotlight, a fully customizable site-builder within MediaSilo, to present and showcase your work with branded microsites and presentations. Project leads Tim, Producer at Vidico, and myself, Product Marketing Manager at MediaSilo, put our heads together to share these four best practices for producing successful product videos.
1. Prioritize the pre-production phase
The pre-production phase can be the most crucial stage of the entire video creation process to ensure a quality final product that matches your vision and brand. This is the stage where you gather the team for brainstorming, and hash out any creative differences. From a cost standpoint, it’s much easier to change a sketch or PNG file than it is to change an entire animation.
Our pre-production phase looked like this:
The script and storyboard phases are where the marketing team will want to really hone the details. We used Dropbox Paper to collaborate on the script, where we documented important project information and made use of commenting features to communicate asynchronously. Then, the Vidico team translated the written script into a visual storyboard using Boords, where the MediaSilo team was able to comment directly on individual slides.
With Boords, the MediaSilo team was able to make notes on individual storyboard slides.
When MediaSilo brought their product expertise and brand vision to the table in a clear and concise way, Vidico was easily able to propose creative to fit the bill. Once the storyboard is finalized and off to production, it’s mostly up to the animation team to bring the story to life.
2. Identify your stakeholders for each stage of the project
For a big launch like this, teams across the company will need to be aligned to balance the number of cooks in the kitchen. Not everyone needs to have a say on the color of the text or minor design details, but all key stakeholders should be looped in to provide input on the overall direction and messaging of the script and visuals.
Your stakeholders should include leaders from Product, Sales and Success teams who can help identify key “marketing features” that will hook prospects in.
Your stakeholders should include leaders from Product, who can help outline the overall direction of product messaging, and leaders from Sales and Success teams who can help identify key “marketing features” that will hook prospects in. Early on, the MediaSilo team identified its product stakeholders as our VP of Product and CEO, and its go-to-market stakeholders as the VP of Sales and Director of Enterprise Success.
We checked in with our internal stakeholders at each stage — briefing, scripting, and storyboarding — and made sure to over-communicate to avoid delays.
3. Establish project leads on each team
We created a shared Slack channel for the MediaSilo and Vidico teams to stay in touch on a daily basis.
Tim and I divvied up responsibilities at the beginning of their project to make sure both teams were on the same page.
Jane (Product Marketing) was responsible for developing the project vision from the MediaSilo team, organizing and facilitating project meetings, gathering timely feedback from stakeholders, and establishing feedback protocols at each stage of the project.
Tim (Producer) was responsible for keeping the project on time and budget, ensuring timely delivery at each stage of the project, as well as managing the creative and animation team at Vidico.
Since our teams were working across a 16-hour time difference (!), it was important to find a way to communicate quickly and efficiently. To solve this, MediaSilo and Vidico created a shared company Slack channel that we could all access from our own MediaSilo and Vidico workspaces. We took advantage of threads for sidebar conversations about details, and Jane and Tim made sure to broadcast channel-wide messages for record-keeping or when hopping on a call wasn’t possible.
4. Keep all your files and feedback in one place
There’s nothing quite as satisfying as using our own app to wrap a project. We created a dedicated project in MediaSilo that all project members had access to, and a subfolder for the Spotlight video.
We leveraged the time-coded review features in MediaSilo to make drawings and comments right on the video and track changes across versions.
The Vidico team would animate the project into life using Adobe After Effects (which MediaSilo now integrates with) and Tim would share the latest cuts as a secure link for the MediaSilo team to comment on in a 2-day turnaround window. We went through a few review cycles, first on the overall flow, music, animation edits, and finally some color and design tweaks.
With the right team, workflows, and tools, putting together a product video can truly level up your product launch, attracting the prospects you want and enabling your Sales and Success teams to do their jobs.
The rules have changed when it comes to how products and services are sold on television and online. Branded content has brought about a shift in commercial advertising, with creatives finding new ways to craft and tell stories no longer limited to 30-second or 60-second spots. Matt McDonald (BBDO), Trevor Guthrie (Giant Spoon), filmmaker and honto88 founder Shruti Ganguly, Ben Hughes (Squarespace), Angela Matusik (HP), and Ad Age associate creativity editor I-Hsien Sherwood gathered at IFP Week earlier this fall for a panel titled “Don’t Call It A Commercial” to discuss how the line between entertainment and advertising has blurred.
They addressed finding and knowing your audience, striking a balance between art and work, daring to buck convention, and knowing when to walk away. We pulled four insights from their discussion to illustrate the power of branded content for effective storytelling, as well as for selling products and ideas.
Going beyond 30- and 60-second spots
The status quo works until it doesn’t. Discussing commercials as vehicles for delivering messages, Ben Hughes, director of the brand creative team at Squarespace, suggested that as time passes, adaptation and innovation become necessary. “It’s really important to remember that there’s nothing sacred about a thirty or a sixty,” he said, referring to the traditional lengths of television commercials. Those blocks of time were sold by broadcasters to advertisers, who in turn had to find ways to tell stories confined by those time constraints.
Today that model isn’t the only one that holds.
While the 30-second commercial works for “snappy” ads, Hughes believes storytellers occasionally need a longer, wider, and more dynamic runway. “Anywhere where you need to get under the surface of something, explain something more complex, or want someone to have an experience with something that is closer to an experience you have with art,” he said, “longer form can make a difference.”
The medium is the message
Contemporary advertising media is more expansive than it was in the 1940s, when the first commercial aired on television. There are still magazines and billboards, but brands can now use podcasts, social media, digital platforms, and experiential activations at festivals and conventions to tell a story. Branded content creators must determine which of those channels best fits the audience they want to reach. “We’re taking our stories that aren’t really even about products or brand, but about a feeling or emotion or an idea that is part of our DNA and pushing them out on platforms where we know people are,” said Matusik.
“We’re taking our stories that aren’t really even about products or brand, but about a feeling or emotion or an idea”
“The thing that we’re doing is trying to build these worlds and then transport people into them,” Guthrie said about the immersive fan experiences that his company designed for Game of Thrones, Blade Runner 2049, Westworld, and other media properties. At the core of it all is the story; experiential marketing is just a different way to get from the beginning to the middle and the end, he continued.
The medium is in service of the goal. For McDonald, the Faces of Distracted Driving campaign he worked on for AT&T sought to get people to put down their phones; as a format, 30-second commercials weren’t good enough. Instead, BBDO created a series of videos featuring interviews with families affected by distracted driving.
“Can watching the story of this family and seeing the trauma and hearing them talk about just how they’re struggling with their lives ten years later and really exploring that over the course of seven or eight minutes — does that convince you to put down your phone?” he asked. “For me and for a lot of other people, it did.”
Sell-outs no more
There are artistic components to advertising and branded content, but the end goal is always to sell, be it an idea, brand, or product. How do creatives reconcile the idea that they’re just another cog in the corporate wheel and that their vision has been compromised? Matusik believes that, while many artists, filmmakers, and storytellers used to feel like their voices were being “muddled” or that they were sell-outs for working with brands, their attitudes are changing.
“As a roomful of filmmakers, you should be thinking about ways that you can speak true to your voice and what it is you’re trying to accomplish,” she told the audience. “Think of a brand as a partner. If you can find the right one that has a similar alignment or goals in mind, that’s how you create great work.”
Taking care of biz
Speaking for creatives, Ganguly emphasized the business side of brand partnerships, which come with added responsibilities. “You have a client that has an audience and a purpose and a reason for spending that money. That short or project that you’re working on with them has to fulfill a bigger purpose, and you have to stick to your deadlines, stay within budget, and deliver,” she said. “The guidelines have to be set forth, and they have to be followed, and there are no excuses.”
Collaborative partnerships, not compromised relationships
Having worked with Hollywood directors including Kathryn Bigelow and Taika Waititi, McDonald finds that the best ones understand that making anything is a process. Collaborating while also being able to articulate and defend one’s vision is key. “It’s not necessarily like you’re losing if your vision is compromised,” he said, adding that it helps to take notes when given feedback and to find a different path to quality content.
In the end, it’s also important to recognize when a partnership with a brand isn’t going to work and to have the courage to walk away.
Size queens, beware: When longer isn’t better
While branded content has largely broken the mold of 30- and 60-second commercials, longer doesn’t always mean better. “Whether it’s an ad, or a seven-minute piece, or a 17-episode series on Netflix,” said Hughes, “you have to approach it all with the same initial point of view: What is going to keep an audience engaged?” During the edit, brands and their collaborators should make cuts when and if it benefits the story they’re trying to tell, regardless of where it’ll be told.
Searching for a counter example, Ganguly pointed to her time at Conde Nast, where she produced the popular 73 Questions video series. The series is framed as a single shot walkthrough of a celebrity’s home, with the talent answering seventy-three rapid-fire questions. When Ganguly presented the first episode with Sarah Jessica Parker, her bosses felt that it was too long at six minutes. She tried explaining that there would be sound design and music that would change how the video would flow, but they could only see the length. “I think they were expecting it to be this massive failure, and I was getting ready to get fired,” she said.
Ganguly revealed that, before the video went live, she reached out to a contact at Buzzfeed and asked them to post it at the same time that Vogue did so that it would be seen by a much larger audience. Ultimately, the video’s length wasn’t an issue, and 73 Questions became one of the biggest digital series online. “It needs to be as long as it needs to be, and that’s it,” Ganguly said. “I don’t think editing this is going to make it interesting.”
With great length comes great responsibility
As branded videos and experiential activations become longer and more involved, brands and creators must remember that they’re asking viewers to commit to more. Guthrie believes experiences and films should be thoughtfully designed to respect the viewer’s time. Skipping unnecessary pre-roll and getting to the heart of the content will mean more engagement and greater receptivity to strapping in for the entire ride.
But how should longer stories be framed to keep audiences interested? Spoilers are the answer, according to McDonald. “As storytellers, naturally we want to hoard the end of our stories. We want to keep them secret, and we don’t want to give away the big reveal,” he said. “I found that it’s much more effective to give away what’s going to happen.”
With the deluge of content currently competing for the limited attention of audiences, it matters how quickly you get to the punchline. “You have to sort of give away your best parts, give away your ending to really entice and to get people to commit and invest that time,” McDonald added.
Everyone has to get their start in this industry somewhere. Maybe it’s as a runner, shuttling hard drives and other materials around town. Maybe it’s on the front desk, or directly as an assistant editor, colorist, or a logger. Then, eventually you not only move up steps in the industry, but you yourself get the chance to hire that next wave of post workers who will keep creating the content of the future.
Odds are when you start hiring, you’re going to assume that the people you are hiring will be a lot like you were at their age. However, that’s just no longer true. While every generation in human history has gripes about how “kids these days” are different than they were at the same age, there are some very real differences about the current generation of entry level workforce that need to be reckoned with if you are going to hire and onboard people properly.
While the exact boundaries of what defines each generation is an argument best left to the sociologist or the makers of memes, we’re going to go with “Generation Z” here to talk about this new wave of employees. If you are hiring an assistant who has recently entered the workforce, odds are the generation Z/zoomer label is the closest to one they’ll identify with.
References
The first thing to understand is that it’s no longer fair to assume the same base level of references for film and TV that applies to your generation. This point is one that frequently comes up in a complaint about this generation. “I asked them about Raiders of the Lost Ark and they hadn’t even seen it!” someone will say after an interview when discussing why they didn’t hire someone. “Clearly they aren’t serious about movies if they haven’t even seen Raiders.” While that specific example is due to age (Raiders came out 15 years before most zoomers were born), the bigger issue is the end of monoculture.
Even if you grew up with cable TV, if you are 30 or older odds are there were only a few cable channels that showed anything good. You had to go to the video store to get movies, where selection was limited. A lot of your choices about what you could even watch was incredibly limited by choices others had made for you. Yes, “The Shawshank Redemption” is a good movie, but it was also shown on cable movie channels nearly 24/7 for a period of years, so everyone you knew had seen it at least once without really trying. You could reasonably assume anyone “interested in movies” had seen it.
Zoomers have grown up with infinite media choice. Netflix (on disc, then streaming) was common, and they have always had everything available to them to watch and have gone down rabbit holes of niche exploration that just weren’t possible in years past. If you got into the french new wave in high school, you had maybe 5 movies you could watch at your video store or library, then you needed to mail order tapes or do inter library loan. The zoomers had all of everything ever created at their fingertips.
How do you deal with this? First off, understanding. Don’t judge your job applicants just because they haven’t seen some movie you love that comes up in the interview. It’s not a deliberate insult or a lack of curiosity that has left them without seeing the specific movies you think are important. It’s just how big the canon has become and the extreme increase in quantity of choice.
This also affects their education. If Zoomers did go to a media studies program, they still likely only had 1-2 “history” classes, with the rest often focused on other areas like production. That would mean only 30-60 films get assigned in those classes at most. It’s likely somewhere along the way someone asked them to watch “Citizen Kane,” but it’s also likely that there are a lot of films and media you consider vital that just never got assigned. You still hear people say things like: “You haven’t seen The Conformist? But I thought you went to film school!” which usually shows a lack of understanding for how little time some film programs put on film history and exactly how much film history there is out there to cover.
Secondly, if it’s important, create a references list for a project. Working on a horror film, it’s acceptable to suggest 5-6 films that should be watched to have the language of that project. The same applies in all media. Working on a historical doc TV show? Have a list of shows with which would like entry level employees to familiarize themselves.
Even in as mainstream a format as reality TV, there is so much content out there that you can’t assume familiarity with your individual show and its needs. Most new employees are eager to learn what they need to know to do their job well, and if that involves watching a few episodes of a given show that is very influential on your style, so be it.
Research
One common task of the new employee in post is research. Whether it’s knowing the newest workflows because they are fresh out of a training program, tracking down information on how to deal with a new file format or camera media coming in from production or even just chasing down answers to an Avid bug when the engineer is busy, junior employees are often given side research projects in between more routine more.
This generation has more successfully made the transition to video for information than previous generations. This means both that they would rather be trained with a video, and also that they are more likely to find video results for answers than film workers of even a decade ago. There is not only a huge film and post community on YouTube (such as Film Riot), but even TikTok is starting to be a place where people share small tips and tricks and solutions to workflow problems.
If you ask a new employee a question and instead of getting back to you with a forum link or a .pdf they respond with a TikTok link, that doesn’t mean they didn’t take the research problem seriously. It just might be where the best answer is to be found these days.
If you are creating new training materials, consider including more video content than you would have with previous efforts. With new audio search tools, it can be just as keyword searchable as a .pdf. And will often be more engaging.
Politics
One thing you might have heard frequently about the zoomer generation is that they expect a higher level of political engagement and “purity” from the companies they work for compared to previous generations. Some of this is purely fear mongering nonsense, but some of it is true, and it’s important to understand some context for the situation as you go about the hiring process.
The fear mongering nonsense is when you read headlines that young people are refusing to work or are expecting political alignment and purity from the companies they work for. That’s not the real experience for most of us hiring in post production. Young people are eager for jobs and paths into an industry they are passionate about. They want to work on projects that excite them, but they also are just excited to do the job and tend to have a pretty broad set of projects they are eager to work on. Recently, we did have one potential hire who heard we also worked in commercials and passed on a job because commercials as an entire concept “didn’t fit with their values,” but that candidate was actually over 30.
If you are working on projects for political campaigns, you’ll find that folks won’t want to work on projects they don’t support. And certain special topics such as working on an ad campaign for a bombing system will be difficult to staff. But largely, this generation understands that they won’t get to work on the perfect project all the time.
Zoomers are also more aware than previous generations of how valuable their skills are and how those skills contribute to a company. Whereas previous generations tended to focus more on getting any foot in the door and looked for raises as they moved from job to job, this generation is much more willing to actively negotiate for a raise quite early in the process (even just a few months after getting hired). This can be surprising the first time you experience it, since most of you who are now at the mid level had a year or more of low paying work as a way to “break in” to the industry. This generation is often less willing (or with rising housing prices less able) to do that.
Gen Z is also more interested in seeing a fair and equitable workplace and calling out management for situations they see as inappropriate. Asking someone to stay late without overtime to wait for a drive to get dropped off or a render to finish will get much more pushback from a zoomer than it used to.
It’s important to remember that just because we all had to do it doesn’t actually make it right. Oftentimes they are pushing back not just because they feel they should be paid overtime, but also because that’s the labor law. The film industry has always been notoriously lax about labor law enforcement since everyone is so eager to “prove themselves” and “move up the ladder” that they do whatever it takes to get ahead. This generation is more willing to put a focus on being treated fairly right now in a way that can feel aggressive the first few times you experience it.
Conclusion
As discussed at the top, every single generation in human history has had “kids these days” observations. The concept of a new generation having different values is nothing new. The key to remember is that it’s not the individual zoomer you are interacting with who changed; it’s the world they were raised in that changed around them.
They are likely just as eager and excited to be in this industry as you were at their age, but they are going to show it in different ways and with different boundaries. They are the future of the industry, and with a little consideration it can be invigorating to bring the next generation into the workplace. Show them what you’ve learned, and also learn from them.
MediaSilo allows for easy management of your media files, seamless collaboration for critical feedback and out of the box synchronization with your timeline for efficient changes. See how MediaSilo is powering modern post production workflows with a 14-day free trial.
