The Simple, Flexible Route to Making the Most of the Cloud
Stephen Tallamy, CTO EditShare
In the post industry, the biggest pressure today – aside from the usual need to control costs and boost productivity – is the need to support a “work anywhere” environment. Creative staff want the flexibility to work their preferred hours, from a location of their choosing. It reduces or eliminates the commute to an office, which has real environmental benefits as well as reducing stress for the editor.
EditShare led the industry in developing cloud solutions. It took existing, successful products and concepts and added the open-ness, interoperability and scalability that the cloud offers.
All of this experience is now brought together in EditShare FLEX, which offers a highly tailored environment for all the major tasks from remote editing to secure archiving. Most importantly, FLEX is designed in such a way that it is simple to implement and intuitive to manage. It does not require IT expertise to get the best of the system, nor to ensure security and reliability.
Migrating to the cloud gives businesses the obvious advantage that they do not need to physically host the hardware on which their work depends. This reduces the space they need, the power they consume, the air conditioning demands and the downtime and staff to ensure that the hardware is maintained and updated as required.
Conversely, the creative team will be accustomed to their preferred software and know how it should respond. Forcing a change of edit software, for example, would be simply unacceptable. Equally, making the system less responsive to key presses or mouse clicks would be unsettling and cause slow down workflows and become a stumbling block in adoption.
The guiding principle of EditShare FLEX is that you should carry on using your preferred tools in exactly the way you are used to. Cloud and remote working means there is an abstraction between the operator and the physical workstation, but that cannot be any sort of obstacle: it must be completely transparent.
To make this possible, EditShare has collaborated with industry leaders. FLEX uses the popular and widely recognised Teradici software to provide remote access from anywhere to virtual workstations. And if you are new to cloud connectivity and do not have an established fast file transfer process we can integrate CloudDat software from Data Expedition Inc.
Even more important, the FLEX virtual workstations in the cloud support whatever NLE software you currently use: it is completely agnostic. Indeed, if you have some editors who prefer Premiere Pro, some who are Avid fans and others who are most comfortable on DaVinci Resolve, you can support all of them, simultaneously and completely transparently.
There are two main bundles of the FLEX offering at present, with more to come in the future. FLEX Cloud Edit does what the name suggests: allows your editors to sit wherever they like and edit on virtual machines in the AWS cloud. Customers can take this bundle a step further with FLEX Cloud Edit+ which adds workstation management and file transfer acceleration, providing video production teams with an end-to-end video studio suite virtualized in the cloud.
The second bundle is FLEX Sync, which synchronizes between local EFS storage and cloud-based archives. It can be set to be completely automatic and it eliminates the need for LTO tape libraries, another continuing cost for space, maintenance, tapes and upgrades. By moving your archive or DR backup to the cloud, you also gain massive resilience. Once your archive is available in the cloud it unlock opportunities to utilize it for other cloud solutions, including FLEX Cloud Edit.
There are options in each service so you can tailor your system to precisely your requirements. If you do not have the necessary IT and engineering skills in house, then EditShare’s professional services team can provide the system design and scoping.
The great advantage of FLEX, though, is that you maintain full control over your working environment. Your talented and creative team will notice few changes, and will be able to work as productively as before, if not more so.
It delivers against the key concerns. It provides secure and efficient remote working, alongside edit-in-the-cloud, with all the CapEx savings and OpEx control that implies. And you maintain full control over your working environment and, most important, the security of the content entrusted to you.
New installations in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt and Turkey increase the presence of EditShare open solutions in the region
Boston, MA – May 18, 2022 –EditShare®, the leading supplier of creative and collaborative media workflows for storytellers, continues to deliver powerful solutions for major projects in the Middle East. The company is proud to have been involved in an installation at Expo 2020 Dubai, which won the prestigious “Innovative Project of the Year” trophy at the 2021 Broadcast Pro awards, and has also delivered solutions to customers in Saudi Arabia and Sharjah.
EditShare has provided its broadcast media storage and workflow tools to one of the largest smart cities in Saudi Arabia. And in Sharjah, the Government Media Bureau has also invested to support its production of a broad range of video content and delivery over multiple platforms.
Each system sees EditShare FLOW media management and EFS storage solutions providing streamlined editorial workflows. With its completely open approach, the EditShare video content management system allows each user to support a mix of Adobe® Premiere® Pro, Avid Media Composer, DaVinci Resolve and other professional post production tools seamlessly within tailored workflows.
EditShare worked in conjunction with its local distributors including, among others United Broadcast & Media Solutions (UBMS) to design, install and support these two applications and their customers.
Rayan Nasser, Sales Director at UBMS said, “Our customer, the largest smart city in Saudi Arabia, has some of the most advanced media operations in the Middle East, attracting and hosting world-class content creators and distributors. “EditShare’s ability to integrate key editorial tools removes the bottlenecks of proprietary systems, enabling us to offer clients the full range of post-production services using their preferred creative tools, while giving them the reassurance of outstanding support from us as an EditShare partner.”
Said Bacho, EditShare’s Chief Revenue Officer, comments, “With a Dubai-based regional team in place, EditShare has established itself as a trusted vendor in the Middle East whose innovations have provided customers with a wide range of possibilities for integration with the editorial tools and production systems they want to use.
“Media companies demand multi-vendor workflows that can be tailored to their specific production needs,” adds Bacho. “What is so attractive to our users is that we absorb the complex technical demands, eliminating bottlenecks and ensuring that the creative teams enjoy a seamless, intuitive experience – leaving them free to concentrate on making great content.”
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.
In one of the largest contracts awarded of its kind, Digistor has won the nationwide post production upgrade for one of Australia’s major national broadcasters. The upgrade encompasses existing post-production facilities and the broadcaster’s editing platform, with Digistor providing and installing a hybrid on-premise and cloud solution with remote editing capability and automated speech to text. The new upgraded solution also includes a powerful production asset management (PAM) layer to organise and automate production workflows.
Digistor’s new solution not only replaces a legacy system, but also brings significant workflow improvements and efficiencies whilst leveraging the cloud to enable remote workers and teams to seamlessly collaborate, regardless of their location.
The new upgrade and solution includes many of the key technologies that Digistor specialises in, including EditShare storage, both EFS on-prem and EditShare FLEX cloud solutions (previously known as EFSv). There’s also comprehensive FLOW media management tools, AirFLOW media sharing, FLOW NLE integrations for remote editorial and FLOW Automation to orchestrate workflows. Alongside and integrated with these are HelmutFX to manage multi-user Adobe® Premiere® Pro projects and production workflows, and Audimus AI-based automated transcription.
All new hardware and software will be tightly and seamlessly integrated with the broadcaster’s existing networking and server environment by Digistor’s team, and the cloud components of the system will be hosted by AWS.
In addition to providing, installing and commissioning the new hardware and software components, Digistor engineers will work closely with EditShare to provide a range of services during the implementation. These include workflow discovery to understand, redesign and define workflows to improve productivity, a detailed design phase, project management, and full implementation.
Digistor will also provide the broadcaster with comprehensive staff training services including, superuser training, train-the-trainer and administrator training. When the training has been completed, the new system will then be supported by Digistor’s premium and highly-acclaimed Customer Assurance Plan.
This new and major contract comes after many years of Digistor having long and successful associations with all of Australia’s major broadcasters, where they supply and support solutions for editing, graphics, live broadcast, storage, asset management, playout and distribution – often leveraging the cloud and remote workflows.
A key, important and common aspect in all of these solutions are the technical services that Digistor provides to ensure all projects are successfully implemented and supported over the life of the solution.
In more EditShare-based news, Digistor has also recently designed, installed and rolled-out a multi-petabyte solution in Sydney for a global religious organisation, providing them with the significant benefits and expertise that come with all of Digistor’s large-scale deployments.
Ends
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
About EditShare 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 line-up 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.
Simple to deploy bundles allow creative facilities to concentrate on storytelling
Boston, MA – April 13, 2022 –EditShare®, the technology leader that enables storytellers to create and manage collaborative media workflows, today announced it will unveil its new FLEX cloud solutions at NAB2022 (Las Vegas Convention Center, 24-27 April, booth N3008). This suite of powerful media asset management and storage software solutions provide a straightforward way for businesses, large and small, to take full advantage of cloud services and workflows.
FLEX reflects the powerful business trends in post today, including the migration to a “work anywhere” environment, with ready access to content wherever the creative staff need to be. In adopting cloud video storage and processing, it also meets the move towards an OpEx financial model, with the cloud hosting and storage fees flexing to reflect the level of business.
“EditShare began leading the industry’s shift to the cloud a few years ago by expanding many of its existing core product capabilities – openness, interoperability and scale – to the cloud,” commented Stephen Tallamy, CTO, EditShare. “EditShare FLEX is the result of these investments and we’re excited to show the industry how it can greatly simplify how their teams may choose to work.”
Leading the new initiatives is FLEX Cloud Edit. In its simplest form it provides media asset management, high performance software-defined storage, and virtual workstations in the AWS cloud. The real beauty of FLEX is that it provides a powerful but completely open hosting environment, so users are free to use whatever editing software they prefer.
FLEX Cloud Edit+ adds accelerated file transfer capabilities using the CloudDat transfer software from Data Expedition Inc. It also provides comprehensive workstation management using Teradici’s Cloud Access Manager, all tightly integrated into an intuitive, single-sign on EditShare environment.
FLEX Cloud Sync provides synchronization of content between local EFS arrays and archive storage with leading cloud providers. By automating backup to the cloud, EditShare FLEX Cloud Sync makes it easy to retire LTO tape libraries and gain the huge resilience and availability that major cloud providers offer. As necessary, a FLEX Cloud Edit system can be spun up using all of the content in a customer’s FLEX Cloud sync backup.
“We continually listen to what the industry is telling us, and this is a direct response to current demands,” said Tallamy. “With FLEX, our customers can maintain full control over their working environment and the security of their content, while gaining the huge benefits of remote working and editing-in-the-cloud.
“FLEX offers turnkey bundles that allow customers to get started quickly with a known configuration and pricing profile. Our professional services team can work with customers to tailor the system to exactly meet their needs,” Tallamy added. “The customer maintains operational oversight and budgetary control, with no over-provisioning so no over-paying.”
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.
The newest Shift updates let you shorten the time you spend on the sharing tasks you perform most often. From grabbing all the files you need at once, to flying through dialogs faster, to finding links at your fingertips – getting more of your time back is the biggest feature you’ll find in the latest release of Shift.
Newest features and improvements:
Now frequent sharers can fly through the sharing dialog quickly without digging through options they don’t need. The Share menu now offers basic and advanced views to streamline our most common user workflows, while maintaining advanced functionality for more in-depth workflows. The most common sharing settings are now presented first and set to the admin’s defaults when sharing, while advanced settings are easily available to users who want more granular control.
Customers can opt to add visible watermarks to specific, one-off instances of sharing assets in a Review Link, even if the project was not set up to require watermarking. If a file is coming from a watermarked project, the Share dialog will default to the project settings. What’s more, the original asset will remain clean and unmarked for other uses – but visibly protected in the specific link.
Mix and match file sharing
Instead of selecting only files or a folder, now you can multi-select combinations of files and folders to move all at once. Add the files and folders you select to the collection bin or playlist, share them via Review Links or Presentations, or delete them. Just hold down Command (Mac) or Control (Windows) to select whatever combinations of files and folders you need.
Sent Items Drawer
Finding previously sent items is now much quicker, making it easier for anyone who needs to review and edit the contents of Review Links. Just open up the left drawer of the Shift UI, navigate to the new Sent Links tab, and click into the Review Link you want to edit. You can reorder assets, drag in new folders and files, or remove items from the link. Open up and edit link settings from this space as well. Once you’ve edited the link, it’s automatically updated so prior recipients don’t need a new link.
Player Updates
Play video content in whatever way makes it easier for you to view – in a loop, auto-advance, with varied playback speed, a 5-second skip forward & back, and adjustable volume – with the new and improved player controls added to Shift. Your video setting preferences are saved and carried throughout the app, no more having to re-select showing duration every time you watch a video!
History Tab
Check out the newest addition to the sharing dialog – the History tab. See at a glance who has been sent a link, when it was sent to them, and who has had access to it in its lifespan – even on public and password-protected links. From there you can immediately re-send the link to them, or copy the link URL, with the click of a button.
For more information on how this release might benefit your team, or to discuss how to add watermarking to your account, reach out to your CSM or customersuccess@shift.
Big brands today deal with a significantly greater quantity of digital and video assets than ever before. As a result, these companies have had to find better and more efficient ways to manage their assets. To meet this demand, a number of different digital media management softwares have begun to crop up, offering companies of varying sizes the tools they need to effectively organize their video content. These digital asset management systems help companies consolidate their assets on one platform that is easily accessible and allows for better team collaboration, more streamlined workflow, and simple usability for employees and clients alike. Wiredrive is one such system, built specifically for companies in creative production who handle a great deal of video assets on a daily basis.
Digital asset management systems such as Wiredrive offer big brands a platform capable of handling every digital asset that comes their way, regardless of size or format. With the growing popularity of 360 video and VR, many of these systems, Wiredrive included, have adapted to support these video formats as well. Having one universally accessible platform for all assets is crucial for big brands, allowing them to consolidate all of their content so that it is easy for all project members to upload, access, and organize their files.
It is essential too that large companies utilize a media management system that can be customized to their specific needs. Wiredrive allows users to create custom metadata categories, tags, and keywords to match the company’s specialized naming conventions, and gives users the ability to build custom folder structures to match specific workflows. Knowing that they can organize their video assets with customized metadata is a primary concern for big brands who want to be sure that content can be easy to locate and difficult to lose track of.
Implementing a video asset management system that is easy to use and has an intuitive interface is also key, especially for large companies dealing with many stakeholders all around the world. Wiredrive not only offers speedy and globally accessible service, but it also boasts a simple interface that all users will be able to navigate without any hindrances or need of additional IT support. Having a web-based video asset management system with no learning curve significantly cuts down time and cost, two factors that are very important to any big brand.
Large companies deal with a vast quantity of video assets with varying life cycles. To manage all of this content properly and efficiently, big brands also need to be sure that everything is properly archived in a manner that makes it quick and easy for an individual to locate specific files. Video asset management programs like Wiredrive make it easy to build corporate memory, giving users the tools necessary to create highly organized and detailed libraries so that members of the organization can find what they need and distribute it within minutes.
The on-air promotions team at FX Networks, the flagship general entertainment network from Fox, uses Wiredrive to streamline creative workflow for on-air communications that effectively promote the network’s programs and reflect the FX Networks brand. FX Networks is carried in more than 98 million homes, and are known for its growing roster of critically acclaimed series, including Sons of Anarchy, American Horror Story: Coven, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The League, and Louie.
Making time for work that matters
Creative services for on-air campaigns at FX Networks previously required a protocol that involved a sludge of meetings, which ultimately resulted in an increase in workload for teams. Wiredrive simplified their highly iterative process by allowing the team to cut back on meetings and focus more on meaningful projects.
“Before Wiredrive, we would have to set up recurring meetings to present concepts and progress in order to receive feedback. At times there would be a delay in receiving feedback so in order to fill time, we’d take on additional projects,” remembers Andre Carbonari, Creative Director of Broadcast Design. “The feedback process is quick and easy on Wiredrive. We speed through approvals and are more productive now that we can focus on one project at a time, rather than juggling multiple.”
“The feedback process is quick and easy with Wiredrive. We speed through approvals and are more productive now that we can focus on one project at a time, instead of juggling multiple.”
Maintaining a sense of teamwork
The FX Networks environment requires flexible communication systems for its increasingly mobile employees. With Wiredrive, teams feel more connected as a result of the solution that allows them to work the way they work best: anytime, anywhere, and on a wide-range of devices. “Our decision makers are constantly traveling, and want to promptly access projects and see progress on everything, such as how a graphic is appearing in a TV spot,” says Andre. “Wiredrive makes it easy to get things in front of people and signed off on. We simply send a link and distribute it to multiple people who can review it on their tablet or phone as soon as the project becomes available.”
Keeping things under wraps
With a dedicated following for many of its popular shows, it’s natural for FX to make sure footage doesn’t make it online in order to maintain that element of surprise for viewers. Wiredrive plays a role in ensuring they succeed in protecting sensitive media. “It’s nice to have peace of mind knowing that people won’t have a problem looking at a private link I send – it will play on any browser and device, and also get there reliably and securely.”
To learn more about the latest FX show’s, visit their site: www.fxnetworks.com
Leslie Osborne is the Assistant Manager, Worldwide Creative Content at Paramount Pictures. With a long title and an even longer list of responsibilities, Osborne is at the charge to create and oversee marketing content across some of Paramount’s largest feature films, including Interstellar, Transformers, The Big Short, and more recently, Arrival, Fences, and Silence.
Paramount is one of Hollywood’s most well established studios, founded in 1912 by early film pioneer Adolph Zukor. Over its evolution as a mainstay in Hollywood, it has produced films like Titanic, Forrest Gump, Iron Man, Indiana Jones, and Ghost, to name a few. With numerous blockbuster releases under their belt, Paramount’s marketing division works with many outside creative vendors, coordinating screenings, junkets, and events, and collaborating with key advertisers to make sure their film releases are as impactful as the movies themselves. Wiredrive helps keep all of their operations as efficient and user-friendly as possible.
Saving countless hours
Six years ago, Paramount moved their marketing division onto Wiredrive technology to help best manage workflow and ensure everyone was on the same page. With so many moving pieces on countless projects, the marketing team was quick to adapt to the new interface.
Before the advent of Wiredrive and sharing files digitally, managers like Leslie were forced to work around time-consuming analog solutions. “Back when we used tape delivery, we had to do everything from duplicating or sending tapes to making viewing CDs or DVDs. I was personally grateful for our company’s decision to use Wiredrive and embraced it right off the bat, because I was the person having to ship out tapes at 10 o’clock at night.”
The use of Wiredrive has not only allowed a more fluid workflow, it has freed up countless hours for Osborne and her team to focus on creative marketing activations, like the massive campaign around Office Christmas Party, the upcoming holiday release starring Jason Bateman, Jennifer Aniston, T.J. Miller, and Kate McKinnon.
Developing as the industry grows
Collaboration is key to what Osborne and her team accomplish, and the more creative minds involved makes their product all the better. The nature of her business has changed drastically in the last decade or so, providing for much easier communication among a wider group of collaborators all excited to lend their hand in the game. While telecommunications and wireless have made notable advances, the importance of having a quick and secure assets sharing service was essential to the team and makes something as simple as an internal meeting that much more productive. “In meetings, like today, [a client] messaged one of the gals in my office and said, ‘I need all these promos ASAP.’ They hadn’t mentioned that beforehand but it came up in conversation, and it was like ‘well it would be beneficial if we can just look at it right now.’ So she was able to send him the link to the folder that had everything. Instead of having to set another meeting, they were able to cover it when it was being discussed in literally five minutes.”
There’s no going back
“Wiredrive is a genius tool that not only revolutionized delivery within the film industry, but also continues to evolve in ways that are very advantageous for team collaboration and efficient workflow.”
Just as Osborne’s team continues to manage an ever-growing slate of blockbuster releases, including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Meryl Streep-led Florence Foster Jenkins, the nature of their collaboration with Wiredrive has also evolved. What started as implementing a new system has drastically improved their operations across the board, with quick uploads and a cloud-based server to ensure that deliverables can be seen instantly anywhere in the world you need them. Wiredrive acts as the behind-the-scenes player to ensure that Paramount’s marketing teams can spend as little time delivering assets and still feel rest assured that everything is where it needs to be. “It’s a great tool for organizing things so that even if you aren’t aware of something you can go into the project and see what’s in there, because sometimes there’s so much going on that we may not all get the ability to sit down together and watch.” So besides the joys of not rushing out to overnight something before the store closes or hoping a postal worker arrives in time, Wiredrive’s digital asset management allows a certain security from very natural human errors by making everything you need available at just the click of a link.
Our guest Doug Sherin has been working as a director’s rep for advertisers for over 16 years. In that time, he’s seen the industry grow and change, and learned that the only way to move forward is to always be flexible.
Grace: Let’s start by introducing yourself — tell us about your career to this point.
Doug: I actually started off at the age of nine in front of the camera for commercials. I went from being a child actor to a talent agent assistant to a talent agent representing actors. I found myself one day applying for a scheduling position at a post-production company called Encore, and that’s where I started to be exposed to the other side of the business. I was a people person, and instead of scheduling the time I was representing these post-production artists and transferred to working at Riot Santa Monica. Working at Riot, I met Kimberly Griswold who is my business partner and life partner, and she was representing directors. She had the idea to quit our jobs and start our own company where we would represent directors, visual effects companies, and editorial. And we did it! We didn’t really think about it, but it turned out to be the best thing that we could have ever done, and that was in 2004.
Grace: Tell me more about the company you created 16 years ago — Options.
Doug: Over the years, the personality and the face of the company changes based on who you represent and how you’ve represented yourself in the marketplace. We don’t “sell”, I think it’s a misnomer that sales reps or director’s reps “sell”. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who you meet with, who you wine, who you dine, who you’re submitting — you still have to have an appropriate talent that’s right for the job. We’ve always booked jobs based on being an absolute resource, meaning seeing a brief and knowing who’s right for it, then putting that submission in such a valuable presentation that you hope the producer and creatives you’re submitting to can see the same vision. That’s the fulfillment that we’re in this business for, to fill those creative voids.
I think it’s a misnomer that sales reps or director’s reps “sell”. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who you meet with . . . you still have to have an appropriate talent that’s right for the job.
Grace: How do you describe your role in the greater ecosystem of the advertising industry?
Doug: It does begin and end with trust. You have to have the respect of your peers so that they look to you to be that resource. The role of the rep has really evolved in many different ways over the last two years. And with COVID especially, because it’s expedited a lot of ways of doing business differently. This business is a hands-on business, it’s a personal business. Personal meetings, personal dinners, personal one-on-ones. And so that aspect has been removed, it was already on its way to being removed, but with COVID and the advent of Zoom, now everything is on Zoom.
There has always been a weird and strange reputation that goes with being a rep. We’re actually an integral part of the process as a team member, not as a standalone. We’ve always operated as part of the process as a team member that has a set of eyes, and taste, and a business protocol that is proactive on behalf of our roster of companies. And that’s still in play. You need collaborative entities to attack this business. There’s a lot of hand-holding and collaborative effort with the rep, not only to come up with a strategy but also to identify who on the roster is compatible for their marketplace. We help identify targets and help our roster of companies have that blanket of respect and respectability that hopefully we, as Options, have instilled into the marketplace. Hopefully we can help open some doors and eyes based on that. There’s no guarantees, no matter what the process is.
Grace: How do you measure your success in the advertising industry?
Doug: You can’t just base it on monetary reward. It just can’t be that. We’re very grateful, being in this particular business and working for ourselves is a success. We’ve created our own environment, our own business platform, our own protocol of how we want to be a part of this business. And not everyone’s going to fit into that protocol as a potential client, and vice versa. But I deem us to be a tremendous success, each and every day that we’re working for ourselves. I don’t think a lot of people can say that. Especially during COVID it’s really hard to gauge success, because we’re all pretty much at a level playing field. So that’s the new level of gauging success, how do you adapt? How do you evolve your business? You have to evolve in order to survive, and there has been a tremendous evolution. It’s been going on for years, and COVID’s just pushed it fast-forward.
There’s another part of this business that’s been so wild and wacky, and that is there used to be a time where the freelance director was few and far between. And the industry has changed to the extent that I think there are more freelance directors than there are roster directors. It’s had a big effect on all production companies, at least through my examination. Because not everyone has the right director, so everyone is trying to dig into their back pockets of who they know freelance wise who could fill this void. I’ve heard upwards of 75% of jobs are being booked with freelance directors. It’s a new phenomenon in the sense that it’s a greatly accepted and normal protocol, where once there was a stigma to put on the freelance director. But as I stated at the beginning of this conversation, every job begins and ends with the right chosen talent for the job. Either they have what it takes or they don’t, and that’s the bottom line.
Every job begins and ends with the right chosen talent for the job. Either they have what it takes or they don’t, and that’s the bottom line.
Grace: Why are flexibility and adaptability such an important part of your job?
Doug: If we’re going to keep doing things as we did 10 years ago, the advertising is vastly different. So not only do we have to think differently, so do the directors that we put up. There’s a lot of very talented directors out there that have been very successful for a long time, and adaptability may not be in their wheelhouse at this stage of the game. So what are you going to do? You could go with someone that you know is a superstar and was doing all the Super Bowl commercials several years ago, but now this Super Bowl commercial has 25% of the budget and three more spots to be delivered. So there are a lot of directors that have adapted. I think for the guys and gals that can adapt and have adapted, they’re going to survive. And for the up-and-comers that started off as editors and visual effects guys, they have a multi-discipline background from the start and they could bring all those tool sets to the director position. That’s a huge bonus for a lot of projects, not for every project, but for a lot of them. For these multifaceted creatives, it’s the right time and place.
Grace: What’s an example of a success story you’ve had at your time at Options?
Doug: I think there were several. And it’s not just inherent to a job, it’s in the submission process in general. That’s really the toughest obstacle, because I don’t know every producer, and every producer doesn’t know me and probably doesn’t want to know me because they have a pool of resources that they know and love. So even as recently as right now, I write producers all the time and it goes into a vacuum. And it’s usually the same producers over a period of time, and that’s okay. Like I said, they don’t know me and they don’t need to know me. But I try. And there are times when you just act as if you know what they’re looking for and you put it forward. And at some point, it is going to be in their hands. And you hope that a producer says, you know what, let me take a look at this. And then you know what happens? They write you! They liked it, they thought it was good.
And the next thing you know, we are bidding our guy or gal. And I just went from, you don’t me and don’t want to know me, to you love me! And if we get the job, that’s the success. We made the connections, we knew what we were talking about. We just needed you to hear us. It is persistence, it is luck, it is maybe that person finally deciding to be a bit more open-minded, or maybe they were at a cocktail hour and you shook hands. There are so many talented people, directors, and artists. There are so many loved and liked reps. There’s just a lot. And in a sea of “a lot”, it’s really hard for someone to see you.
Grace: Where do you imagine the advertising industry might go in the next 5-10 years? What comes next?
The one constant for the future is change, whether it’s our business or any other business. So who really knows what’s around the corner?
Doug:
I don’t know if there is an answer. It’s a constant whirlwind of change on an almost daily basis. We’ve seen a tremendous influx of brand-direct scenarios where the brands themselves are taking control of their marketing and ad dollars. That’s going to be a phenomenon that is going to continue. The traditional agency world is still going to survive, it’s going to be out there. I don’t know how it’s face is going to change. They too are becoming more adaptable, because there is going to be more of an ask from clients of deliverables against the dollars. The one constant for the future is change, whether it’s our business or any other business. So who really knows what’s around the corner? You just have to be prepared to be flexible, because otherwise you’re going to be left in the dust. There’s nothing that’s going to be left that is traditional.
Technology has advanced a million fold in the last 5-10 years, things are very different. I will tell you that I do appreciate this business, the opportunity that it’s given us, the career that it’s given us and will continue to give us for a while longer. It’s still fun, and it’s challenging, and it’s tough, and it’s hard, and it’s exciting, and it’s up, and it’s down and such is life! We’ll embrace it as long as it embraces us. This industry has that same mindset where I think everyone just loves to come up with answers. And that’s what we gotta do, just come up with answers.
