Award-Winning Productions from Offroad Films rely on Wiredrive from EditShare
When producer Khalil Bachooali founded Offroad Films in 2011, he aimed to build an independent, creative-led production company that merged artistic sensibilities with marketing acumen. And with more than a decade of work in commercials and business films, he’s done just that.
Today, Offroad Films is regarded as a leader in the industry, recognized by multiple awards. That includes four Lions from the Cannes International Festival of Creativity, the most prestigious in the advertising world. And throughout their journey, they’ve relied on Wiredrive every step of the way.
The key to Offroad’s success
The philosophy has always been to start with the client’s brand and the story they need to tell. From that the creative spark appears, developing the way that the story should best be told. Only then will a director be selected who can best translate that story into visual reality. The result is that the company’s passion comes out in films which are effective, purposeful and engaging.
For Offroad Films’ clients, gaining insight into the agency’s past successes and creative expertise becomes an invaluable tool, helping to showcase the agency’s ability to bring their unique stories to life with precision and flair. That needs evidence in terms of previous, similar projects and showreels from the right directors who will realize that treatment.
For this reason, since the foundation of Offroad Films, Wiredrive has been used to present showreels to clients. Over the years it has developed the way it uses the software, and now it has become a central collaborative tool as well as a means of sharing content.
Wiredrive simplifies winning showreels
Wiredrive was developed as the best way to create showreels that have impact. The simple software provides a common store for all business assets, with a powerful organization layer to search, tag and filter the archive. The user defines the parameters in the asset management layer so the tags are appropriate and searches rapidly locate the best content.
In turn, that makes it easy to build and share customized, branded presentations. Each pitch and presentation is tailored for the specific target but can be created in moments. Naturally, the agency’s corporate branding is maintained in every showreel.
Secure distribution is managed through Wiredrive to ensure that it arrives at the right people’s desks. Advanced analytics ensure the user can track the audience to get the right impact.
Developing from the showreel tools, Wiredrive has become a valuable collaboration tool. Workspaces are defined for each project, and all of its assets are managed in one space. Comments and approvals are logged and time-stamped to speed finishing and provide a sign-off trail.
The delivery capabilities mean that remote collaborators are part of the same workflow, sharing work instantly and securely among the project team.
Wiredrive’s indispensable functionality
When Offroad Films was formed in 2011, it urgently needed a way to create directors’ showreels. Wiredrive was tried and proved to be the best tool for the job. Since then, it has relied on it to develop pitch reels and manage the showreel content from the freelance directors it uses on its many projects.
“Showreels were the main reason to bring in Wiredrive,” said Rebecca Maria, Administrative Head at Offroad Films. “Nothing else delivers the same functionality.
“But as time has gone on, use cases have accumulated,” she added.
Today, each new production is allocated a workspace in Wiredrive to act as the hub for all content. As the team grows, with freelance and house staff, they are given access to the project workspace, where they can see progress and track assets.
“Typically, our associate producer is responsible for managing the content,” Rebecca Maria explained. “They will build up material from the first location research all the way to finished contents and share them easily.
“Wiredrive also allows us to quickly share specific content,” she said. “It is also useful to brief freelancers: we can create a ‘showreel’ showing the feel of what we are aiming to achieve in a film, so they know how their particular craft needs to fit in.”
The flexibility of the software means that all stages of the project use Wiredrive to be more efficient. It starts in pre-production, through shooting and post, and on to marketing and distribution. Each project that Offroad undertakes is different, and each team will use Wiredrive in its own way to best keep the team up to speed and deliver the project on time.
When a project is successfully completed, the finished films are added to the Wiredrive archive. There, they are ready to be used in future showreels, winning more creative commissions for striking and effective commercials.
“Showreels were the main reason to bring in Wiredrive, nothing else delivers the same functionality”.
Rebecca Maria, Administrative Head at Offroad Films
Azimuth, a full service editing, post-production, finishing and delivery facility, has a new home, purpose built from the ground up, on Eagle Street in Holborn in the heart of Central London. With the changing demands of modern broadcast – particularly the need to deliver in 4K HDR and with Dolby Atmos Home Entertainment audio – Azimuth have designed and built a modern, flexible, and adaptable post house to fulfill these requirements incorporating the latest in post technology and workflow methodologies. Systems integration was carried out by technology experts, Altered Images.
Re-Imagining Azimuth
Operations Director, Yives Reed describes the challenge that led to the new, re-imagined Azimuth being built: “post pandemic, OR Media (parent production company) had lots of projects coming through with multiple specialist factual and documentary series. As they were getting closer to post production, it was obvious that the Azimuth as was, was not set up to accommodate either the volume or the 4K HDR deliverables required so the time was right for a reset.
High-End Television Post Workflows
At the heart of Azimuth’s technology vision was the need to fully support a range of high-end television post workflows. To achieve this, they knew they needed a robust server and media management system that could securely handle multiple streams of high-bandwidth data, including 4K and even 8K RAW files, and effortlessly distribute these with real time playback wherever and whenever required within the facility.
Head of Technical Operations, Steve Oak describes the new picture finishing set up at Azimuth. “The bulk of the work going through the facility is 4K HDR and Dolby Atmos for IMF delivery. If that high bandwidth work sets your benchmark, it helps to make some pioneering decisions with our hardware. Between two Resolve Grades and three Online, three Colour Assist stations and two QC rooms we are reading and writing huge amounts of data at the same time. Alongside native workflows in Resolve, we’ve got Baselight and Flame Open EXR and uncompressed workflows with its own demanding requirements. In Resolve we’re working with multi-layered sequences, including uncompressed RAW, all supported by the 40 Gb/s network input from each of the Editshare SSD arrays.”
Oak continues, “we are bricks and mortar within a Central London location and despite our cloud presence, the bulk of our services are hosted here. When you go back to the shell of a building, you have the chance to shape it in the way that you think it should be going forward. We wanted flexibility with what we put into place now and how it might be different in six or twelve months’ time which is not how most post houses work.”
The Need For Flexibility
“With Editshare, we have a petabyte of spinning disk and 200 terabytes of SSD between which we can move workspaces seamlessly while carrying on working. Importantly, Editshare is NLE agnostic allowing our customers to work the way they want to work with media plug-ins and workspaces for Media Composer, Resolve and Premiere Pro respectively.
“At Azimuth, we bring the native material into a Resolve conform to effectively create a re-link environment. We get a lot of XAVC at 300 and 450 Mb/s, RED, Canon XF, Sony X-OCN and ProRes RAW. In Final Post it means that we can have quite large workspaces and we can be pulling a huge amount of bandwidth per client.
Better Workflows
“An Editshare media asset management system sits on top for media encoding and cloud integration where you can work within an intuitive web GUI, all of which is tied into a server giving us better performance for our dollar than any other we reviewed. Investing in Editshare was a no-brainer.”
Reed concurs, “ Editshare gives us performance storage with a lot of useful tools to support a fully modern workflow and an agnostic approach to applications. It’s flexible and has a strong track record.”
Oak is consistently looking towards what’s next and was additionally impressed by Editshare’s M&E-centric approach, increasing use of automation and roadmap, “Editshare’s acquisition and integration of MediaSilo reflects the vendor’s approach. You can set up watch folders through your FLOW environment so you can export a cut and it will transcode and upload it to MediaSilo, and anyone within that group will get a notification that it’s been uploaded. It can scan our MediaSilo cloud storage through a Storage DNA MAM, that sits on top of our whole environment, and bring those assets back down again and deep archive on LTO on completion of a project. Editshare offers us better workflows with less human time and more automation.”
“Editshare gives us performance storage with a lot of useful tools to support a fully modern workflow and an agnostic approach to applications.”
Montréal-based production company moves to latest hardware for increased flexibility
Boston, MA, September 27, 2023 – EditShare®, the technology leader that enables storytellers to create and manage collaborative media workflows, and Canadian Channel Partner, DXM, have installed a large network of EFS storage devices at Pixcom, a leading Canadian production company. Pixcom, based in Montréal, has a permanent team of over 50, employs over 5,000 freelance artists, technicians and production teams and has relied on EditShare storage for more than a decade.
The new installation at Pixcom will provide a centralized workflow hub. With all media in one spot, engineers can ensure that producers and editors always have the right material at the right time. The company’s in-house post facilities use Avid and DaVinci Resolve editing, which is tightly integrated into the storage network meaning editors always have the right material on their workstations when they need it.
“We are very comfortable and familiar with the EditShare eco-system,” said Charles Laflamme, Technical Supervisor at Pixcom. “It was time to refresh the hardware, and EditShare and their local partners DXM Technologie showed us the benefits in connectivity and security with the latest EFS devices. It will make our workflows even simpler and more productive, while ensuring that we have complete control over all the material for our productions.”
Charles Laflamme, Technical Supervisor at Pixcom
This installation is built around six EF450 scalable shared storage appliances, each with 392TB of disk storage, plus two MDC metadata controllers, giving Pixcom both high availability plus all the benefits of the FLOW production asset management software. The network also includes four EFS 40NL nearline storage nodes totalling 1.5PB of storage, plus two backup 672TB EFS 40NL nodes.
The nearline storage provides working storage for media which is in current production but not needing the same levels of throughput as the online storage. Workflow tools built into the EditShare suite ensure material is moved between online and nearline storage as required. The new network also includes EditShare Ark LTO tape drives for permanent archiving, again automated through FLOW.
“Charles and his colleagues are very familiar with all the benefits of high-performance shared storage from EditShare, which means we could talk about the latest techniques in boosting workflows and delivering productivity benefits, like the tight integration between storage and edit software, and the ability to prepare material in FLOW, in advance of the edit.” said Adam Giraudias of DXM Technologie.
“EditShare’s commitment to enabling collaborative media workflows aligns perfectly with Pixcom’s mission to deliver exceptional content efficiently,” commented Said Bacho, Chief Revenue Officer at EditShare. “With this significant installation of EFS storage, in collaboration with our valued Canadian Channel Partner, DXM, Pixcom’s creative teams now have a centralized workflow hub with immediate access to the right material. We are proud to support their journey of simplifying and enhancing production workflows while maintaining complete control over their valuable assets.”
The new storage network was installed over the summer 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 DXM
DXM Technology offers fast and effective services that can solve the problems and challenges faced in all fields of video content production, whether you are a broadcaster, producer, post-production house, blogger or other.
The digital age has completely altered the television and film worlds. With easier and more affordable access to technologies we can now build specific workflow infrastructures that will eliminate major headaches, which in turn allows producers to generate more effective content within established budgets and deadlines.
K-State returns to EditShare based on stability and reliability
Boston, MA, August 30, 2023 – EditShare®, the technology leader that enables storytellers to create and manage collaborative media workflows, has upgraded the existing storage network at K-State Athletics, Inc. with more facilities and cloud synchronization. The installation was completed in association with US channel partner, Alpha.
K-State Athletics, as part of Kansas State University, has become one of the forefront collegiate athletic programs in the country, coming off a 2022 Big 12 Football Championship and an Elite Eight NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament appearance. K-StateHD.TV, the official video department of K-State Athletics, provides comprehensive linear, web, and social coverage of all 16 men’s and women’s sports activities, as well as providing elements and production for third-party media companies from across the nation.
Since 2016, K-StateHD.TV’s broadcast and video board control rooms have used shared storage from EditShare. Now, as part of a major expansion of its capabilities, K-State Athletics has greatly expanded and upgraded the server network for K-StateHD.TV.
“We have been very pleased with the stability of the EditShare servers we have been using since 2013,” said Andy Liebsch, Director of Video Services at K-State Athletics. “As we looked to the future, we wanted to make sure our servers were equipped to handle our increasing storage needs. We also wanted to provide a more robust solution for legacy content and backup. Alpha and EditShare provided the solution, and a seamless integration and transition program.”
The new installation adds both online and nearline storage on site, and it now provides for storage and backup in the cloud, using EditShare FLEX Cloud Sync. Also installed as part of the upgrade were additional servers for the EditShare FLOW asset management database, which has opened up automated ingest and media acquisition.
Darren Whitten, senior account executive at Alpha, added “This is a long-standing and growing relationship. The people at K-State have benefited from the flexibility and stability of EditShare over a period of many years, and we have kept them informed about the continuing developments, including the ease of adding cloud for backup and archiving through FLEX. Downtime is also a challenge in the crowded college sports calendar, so the fact that we could get in at the right time and install the new hardware quickly was also a great selling point.”
Said Bacho, CRO at EditShare said “As well as showing how our products fit seamlessly into modern workflows, this project also shows the benefits of our comprehensive distribution channel. Darren and his colleagues at Alpha stay in close touch with the team at K-State, so they understand what the college needs to achieve. That means we can roll out the right solution at the right time.”
The upgraded and enhanced storage network went online in August 2023.
For further information on all EditShare solutions, please visit the website at www.editshare.com
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.
Major UAE post house builds foundation for continuing expansion
Boston, MA, February 6, 2023 – EditShare®, the technology leader that enables storytellers to create and manage collaborative media workflows, has implemented a comprehensive storage and media management platform for Last Cut Media, based in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The system was implemented in conjunction with Advanced Media Trading, EditShare’s distribution partner in the region.
Last Cut Media was increasingly finding workflow limitations in its ad hoc storage systems, so was determined to move to a coherent and powerful single-point solution. Having evaluated the market, the company identified the EditShare solution as the ideal match for their requirements.
The initial architecture for the system features a 160TB EFS shared storage node with the full functionality of the EditShare FLOW media management platform. This works in conjunction with a 240TB nearline store for disaster recovery as well as rapid access to content as projects require it. Long-term storage is on LTO-8 tapes, using EditShare ARK archiving software and hardware.
“We provide state-of-the-art services to users across the Gulf region from our base in Abu Dhabi,” said Saad Duaibes, Founder & Creative Director at Last Cut Media. “The new workflow and storage system from EditShare allows us to be much more flexible and productive, delivering the performance and quality that our clients expect. We also appreciate the way that EditShare is designed for remote access and multiple locations: we have bold plans for growth including a facility in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the near future.”
Among the workflow improvements opened up by the EditShare video content management system is the capability of remote editing, allowing productions to access their files from wherever they are shooting and wherever the editor is working. EditShare FLOW ensures that, as content is ingested, so proxy files are automatically generated allowing remote editing from any location.
FLOW also provides for rigorous content and metadata management, and automated secure archiving according to business rules set up for each project. Last Cut Media covers the whole range of post from commercials to movies, drama serials and documentaries, so needs to be able to set workflows and functionality by project, with complete security between clients.
Said Bacho, Chief Revenue Officer at EditShare, said “Working with Advanced Media Trading, we displayed to Last Cut Media that we could provide solutions from a secure and orderly transfer of existing content to long-term archiving strategies, to comprehensive training.”
Bacho continued, “Having a strong presence in the Middle East also gave Last Cut the confidence that our solution is well supported as well as technically the best for their needs.”
For further information on all EditShare solutions, please visit the website at www.editshare.com
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.
Tour De Force Born out of sheer determination and passion, 3P Studio has earned its place in Australia’s creative landscape as one of the industry’s hardest working boutique post-production houses. Founded and led by artisan Haley McDonald, 3P Studio’s eclectic portfolio of post-production work includes desirable commercial brands such as Subway, Allianz, Isuzu Motor Company as well as iconic and defining shows like Sesame Street.
“There are a few projects that we are particularly proud of at 3P Studio and one that stands out is the work we did with Brisbane-based advertising agency, Carbon Creative, for the Australian Department of Premier and Cabinet’s ‘Stop the Hurting: End Domestic Violence’ campaign,” comments McDonald. “It was the first large-scale national campaign that we undertook in the studio; it was an honor that they selected 3P to work on such an important campaign.” A testament to their quality and influence, 3P Studio was recognized for their outstanding work on the “Stop the Hurting” campaign, receiving a silver medal in the Brisbane Advertising and Design Awards.
Humble Beginnings Leads to a Local First With almost two decades of experience in the media and entertainment industry, McDonald has worked for some of Australia’s largest post facilities. Passionate about her craft, McDonald always knew that working as a creative storyteller was her true path. “I got my love of TV from my late father. I never had a bedtime as a child and he used to let me watch TV with him whenever I wanted. This led to a lifelong obsession of working with media and creatively telling stories. On the flip side, I got my work ethic off my mum, who worked in a hospital laundry for 30 years. I grew up in a housing commission until I moved to Brisbane when I was 18 and worked in a supermarket there until I saved enough money to go university and study film.” Drive and passion work hand in hand and proved to be incredible assets to McDonald as she forged her own path in a male-dominated industry.
It was after the birth of McDonald’s son in 2013 that life took an unexpected change and really challenged her commitment to being an artist. “I had left for maternity leave in 2013 to have my first child, Dash, who is now eight. When I came back to work after six months, my position had been made redundant and I no longer had a job to return to.” While most would see this as a devastating blow, McDonald turned it into the opportunity of a lifetime. “For some time I had wanted to open my own shop. But, like most people, I had a mortgage, daycare and other bills. So, venturing off on my own was just too risky, but with no job in hand, I had nothing to lose. It was my chance to follow a dream and I gave it everything I had.” Starting out as a freelance editor and designer, McDonald took every job that came her way. “I would never say ‘no’ to a job. I would never say I was booked. I would just say, ‘Yes, no problem, I can do that.’ Even if I had three jobs in one day, I would just take them and work out how I was going to deliver. Eventually, I started hiring people to help as I took on more demanding projects. Since I had been in the industry and was so well connected, I was able to get projects out the door with a very high degree of quality thanks to very talented colleagues. This, of course, translated to very happy clients and exceptional word of mouth marketing.”
Working 7 days a week, McDonald transformed the busy freelance business into one of Brisbane’s few woman-led post-production houses. “I bought my office in 2016 and took six months to fit it out. On Christmas Eve 2016, they handed me the keys to the office and they went, ‘There you go.’ And as 1st of January 2017, 3P Studio was officially in business.”
Purpose Built for Business and Creative Content McDonald built the stunning boutique facility from the ground up. And the chic design took into account installing an EditShare shared-storage solution in late 2017. “When we were wiring the office I made sure I had the cable runs and all the infrastructure shared down the track. I always knew that I wanted to install EditShare because I had used it before, and I really liked the way it supported the content flow. We just needed to save for the investment.” For the first six months, the team worked off the old hard drive system where they had RAIDs that were backing up to other RAIDs overnight and doing mirroring for redundancy. “So, we’d put a project in motion and eventually come to the point where someone would say, ‘Oh, that operator needs to use the project on that,’ meanwhile someone else also needed to use it too, then we’d copy off the data onto another drive and it just became unmanageable so we made the leap to EditShare.”
McDonald quips that she could have purchased other gear, but the EditShare scale-out shared storage nodes were the solution to power her successful business. “I could have gone out and purchased a Mac Pro and hooked it up to a couple of hard drives. Would it have done the same thing? To a certain degree, but it hasn’t been tried and tested like in EditShare. After talking with the guys at EditShare and getting the rundown of the specs and performance reports, investing in EditShare gave me the peace of mind I needed. In addition, my previous experience with using EditShare on very demanding projects assured us that this system would take a beating and keep performing.”
3P Studio installed an EFS 200 single node scale out shared storage solution connecting 10 creative Mac and PC-based workstations over 10-GB Ethernet comprising a mix of Adobe® Premiere® Pro and After Effects®, The Foundry’s NUKE, Maxon’s Cinema-4d, Autodesk Maya, 3D Studio Max, DaVinci Resolve for grading and the premium hero suite, Autodesk Flame Premium while Avid Pro tools is utilized to provide audio post production. With advanced support for project and media sharing, EditShare features helped tremendously with the boutique’s retail clients who, more often than not, required an incredibly fast turnaround. It allowed the team to work simultaneously on projects with one person recording voice-overs while another artist works on the graphics and another edits. “Because the EditShare system is designed for content sharing, it makes the workflow as fast and as collaborative as possible. This means higher quality projects completed on time and of course most importantly, happier clients.”
A Business in Overdrive The successful post-production company tripled its staff between the years of 2017 and 2021, requiring an expanded media infrastructure. Upgrading to EFS 450 and adding FLOW and AirFLOW, the team was able to facilitate traditional editorial campaigns and the growing number of fast-turn projects targeted for social, digital, and other marketing channels. McDonald adds, “More and more client requests are project-specific rather than a campaign. While the content still needs to be delivered across all channels, it has a short-shelf life and smaller budget. The pace from start to finish is accelerated. With our expanded EditShare installation, we have a content factory workflow that gives our clients a first-class post-production experience meeting both their tight timeline and budget requirements.”
The addition of EditShare’s remote media management solution, AirFLOW, to the workflow allowed 3P to offer a “content warehouse” service to its clients. Clients can log in from anywhere, browse through content at their convenience, review work-in-progress and submit project changes. The service removes the burden of clients needing to maintain their own drives or storage servers as all content is stored on the EFS storage platform, maintained by 3P. It also enabled remote collaboration, which was key during the pandemic restrictions.
McDonald notes of the growth, “Our business has reached a point where we need to utilize advanced tools to refine our service offering and delivery. EditShare workflow solutions and creative tools like Adobe have enabled us to make those advancements across our business and deliver a superior level of service.”
Setting a Great Example As a woman-run and owned post facility, Haley is in a very rare category. “I am very proud to be a female post house owner and can definitely say there is room for more of us to take the lead! Running my own shop has given me the opportunity to work with female directors, producers and operators and I take great pleasure in collaborating with them in my studio. In addition, I also have the support of a fantastic group of young men who are sound designers, VFX artists, animators and videographers and I am very lucky to have them. I also have the support of loyal clients that have been with me since I started and most of my work comes from word of mouth which is nice.” As for EditShare, we are very proud to be a part of this success story.
University of Hertfordshire, puts EditShare Solutions at the Core of Its Nationally Ranked Curriculum
Key Highlights
Enterprise Ready – IT-friendly and ultra-secure EditShare FLOW and EFS formed the media foundation to support the university’s two media labs consisting of 80 workstations as well as up to 400 Film and TV students who needed to access content remotely.
Openness – Seamless integration with real-world tools Adobe Premiere Pro, Avid, Baselight, and Final Cut Pro ensured smooth project workflow and student collaboration.
Future Proof – EditShare remote workflows supported critical remote production and review approvals, metadata entry, enabling students and teachers to do their coursework on campus and off.
Automation – FLOW automation provided key efficiencies, including, managing the conversions of delivery formats for student project submissions. The consistency ensured access as well as managed storage volumes.
Competitive Proposal – EditShare’s competitive bid and robust offering stood out from the competition.
Background Located in the picturesque Hertfordshire countryside in England, the University of Hertfordshire has a robust film and TV program with some 400 students. In 2018, the institution achieved the TEF gold rating by the UK government, the highest standard, for its teaching excellence framework. Thanks to its high-quality vocational content, graduates are ready for real-world careers upon entering the creative market.
The popular film and TV program recalibrates its curriculum every 5 years to ensure students are taught the latest techniques using modern filmmaking and video production technology. Just ahead of the COVID-19 shutdown, the university began its anniversary validation, selecting EditShare which supported multiple production and post-production workflows taught at the school, including remote-working workflows. Little did they know what lay ahead and how that investment in the future would enable them to keep the creativity flowing during a global pandemic.
Widening the Opportunities to Learn Principal lecturer, with a body of work that includes major motion pictures, Howard Berry brings a wealth of experience to the classroom.An Avid Certified Instructor, Apple Certified Master Trainer, and Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve Certified Trainer, Howard is also a savvy technologist who led the campus wide upgrade which coincided with the university’s course re-validation. Berry explains, “When we began the validation exercise, we had three different pathways that students could take: film and TV, documentary, film and TV fiction, and film and TV entertainment. People move from genre to genre, so we revised and consolidated to a unified film and TV production with a heavy emphasis on post-production. The new path would cover the range of productions as well as picture editing, color grading, visual effects, effects and, most importantly, the workflow side of things, giving students a more well-rounded education.”With the various productions consolidated into one track, Berry selected the EditShare EFS and FLOW solution to support the multiple workflows and various post-production tools used throughout the course. The open platform supported the university’s strategy for an integrated workflow that mapped back to real-world productions and provided a central shared storage platform to safely house content and easily manage student permissions from an administration module designed for educators.
Efficiency Through Automation FLOW automation is key to streamlining the film and TV Program’s submission process. Berry explains the efficiency it has brought to the process, “FLOW hosts folders for all the student assignments. When they submit their QuickTime and finished version files to the EditShare system, FLOW automation scans the file and moves them into a folder only the lecturers can see. If the file is not in the right format, it will be scanned and transcoded. It also timestamps the submissions, so we know that the coursework was submitted on time.” Berry adds, “Some of the coursework is actual paperwork which is supposed to be submitted via the web portal, but students often hedge their bets and send it everything through FLOW, and FLOW automatically filters their PDFs into another folder. It’s a fantastic system where we can see all the relevant submitted files all the time. And it runs in a web browser, making it even easier for me to manage and share with my colleagues.”
Flip to Remote Production Overnight The EditShare installation had been done just ahead of the pandemic, which enabled the film and TV department to continue its coursework after the world shut down. Key to the success of the remote production was EditShare’s FLOW, AirFLOW and FLOWStory. FLOW media management provided the media management foundation with AirFLOW and FLOWStory providing cloud-based editing, review and approval. Berry explains just how important these features became during the pandemic. “Without FLOWStory, the only option was to have students come into the university lab to work on their edits. During a pandemic the thought of having to go this route was not an option and our labs were closed for half of the year. FLOWStory was a light install that ran on Windows and Mac and would allow the students to edit from anywhere. It was perfect.” Berry adds, “As the students dived deeper into the application, they discovered that it could do 4k multi-camera editing and export the EDL directly into an NLE. And of course, AirFLOW gave us the important remote review and approval capabilities. Just incredible that we could slip into remote working so quickly. Weekly edit reviews, where staff and students would usually have to gather together, became easy with AirFLOW remote viewing and review markers added to the timeline with notes that the students could instantly see and act upon.”
It’s All About Flexibility For Berry, production has typically been rigid with required specifications and hardware. With EditShare, the restrictions of connecting with other systems and geographic boundaries have been lifted. It allowed them to be adaptable to extremes. One degree project this year, “My Hundred Brothers and Sisters”, has involved students at a partner film school in Poland filming on behalf of Hertfordshire students who couldn’t travel abroad. The footage was sent from Poland over the internet, and the editor of the project was able to save it directly onto their dedicated 2TB EditShare space – instantly making it available to the director to review, the assistant editor to log and add metadata, and for transcripts to be prepared before the cut. The whole team could see the footage remotely any time they wanted to access it. Berry concludes, “We have many students who cannot return to campus because of the pandemic for one reason or another and they are still doing the coursework, they are still doing the training, and they are still able to learn because we are using EditShare. It’s an amazing gift of being able to do what we want and in any kind of way that we want to deliver it now. And I am very grateful.”
EditShare Solutions
FLOW media management provides a control layer for managing millions of assets as well as tools for ingest/log, browse, automate, and distribute AirFLOW facilitates remote production including review and approval workflows FLOW Storyeditor supports remote storyboarding and remote editing EFSprovides media engineered shared storage
Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston saw shared storage and collaborative working as the future of post-production ten years ago. Today, they’re convinced that their future is in the cloud.
Massachusetts College of Art and Design – usually known simply as MassArt – is a forward-looking visual and applied arts college in Boston. Founded in 1873, it’s the nation’s oldest art school, and the only publicly funded arts college in the United States. The college first installed EditShare over ten years ago. More recently the disruption caused by COVID-19 has accelerated the school’s journey into the cloud.
MassArt combined their film and video departments in 2000 and with continued growth, the department has seventy to eighty students plus a number of graduate students in any given year.
Joe Briganti, is the Associate Director of Video in the Film/Video department at MassArt. He describes himself as an artist, video editor, and video producer: “essentially, I’m a video person”. A familiar face at the school since the early eighties, when he was a student himself, he joined the staff in 1989. Joe is tasked with developing a strategy that mimics real world production and post-production for his students. “It’s pretty intense, because we always want to be on the cutting edge.”
Joe Briganti, Associate Director of Video in the Film/Video department at MassArt
And, they have always been on the cutting edge. Their first digital editing system arrived in 1995 which was right at the start of the steep ascent of NLE editing.
Boston-based EditShare has a proud history of being involved in local arts and the editing community. Briganti was an advocate for shared storage and oversaw the arrival of the school’s first collaborative system in 2010, donated by EditShare. Until then, “sneaker net” was the default mode for data transfer. Students brought their own hard drives and often they didn’t work or wouldn’t mount.
The EditShare system also solved the significant problem that students often simply didn’t have enough storage. The new workflows made possible with the shared and collaborative storage confirmed Briganti’s own conclusion that storage itself is the key to post-production, and the fact that it was working so well over a network showed that this was not only a viable technology but a desirable one.
The new set-up, compared to the old way of doing things (essentially walking while holding a drive, which made it very hard for students to collaborate), was amazing.
Students were blown away when they saw you could start a project on one system and pick it up on another. It really changed the dynamics. It quickly became an essential part of our day to day operations.
Across the estate
The Film and Video faculty at MassArt is comparable to the scale of a large post-production house, with grading, editing, and audio suites all needing powerful computers. EditShare sits in the middle of these, connecting each of the systems.
Students can use Avid Media Composer, Premiere Pro, or their DAW (audio software) and fluidly share their project files. It’s an ideal set-up for teaching, with all the materials exactly where they’re needed so that staff can focus on teaching. And, students can concentrate on technique and craft, rather than resources.
For Briganti, the addition of shared storage with EditShare changed the whole dynamic.
“With EditShare you can put some material on the system and everybody can access it. Nobody has to wait for a presentation to load or have it hang. It’s just there. EditShare is an essential part of our operations. I couldn’t work without it now. It’s exciting for me because we’re a teaching school and a post-production house. It’s been very good with EditShare.”
EditShare FLOW arrives in 2020
The pandemic and the subsequent shutdown in March 2020 meant that many students continued their studies either in a hybrid or remote setting. At first the school turned to WeTransfer but Briganti said “it was an awful way to work with video – we needed to find a way for students to remotely access their video in our local EditShare drives.”
Students shooting in the college’s studios on campus are able to upload to EditShare locally. Utilizing the FLOW media management solution makes that same material available from the cloud so that when they’re at home, they can edit without returning to the college.
“Some of our students are shooting at very high resolutions like 4K and 6K. They definitely don’t have the storage at home for that size of file, so they upload it into our EditShare server here and as soon as they do that, it’s available to them from any location. FLOW and AirFLOW solves the two problems of storage and working remotely”, said Briganti. “And this way of working isn’t just for the pandemic: it’s going to be our standard way of working into the future”.
Moving to the cloud
Briganti liked EditShare’s approach to cloud migration. With a vast range of options, from EFSv, which is the whole system, virtualized in the cloud, to traditional local shared storage, he saw, as an educator, a huge opportunity. EditShare’s cloud technology could extend his courses to students – potentially anywhere in the world – who can’t make it into the classroom. “We’d love to connect to artists around the world: not everyone can afford to live in Boston!”.
The pandemic has altered the curriculum. Some students will not return to full-time in class learning they may do more of their work online. Some students find it easier to access the curriculum and the project-based work from home. More importantly, this applies whether you’re halfway around the world, or are a short distance away. “Thanks to FLOW, we now have the ability to bring a world class film and video education to everyone”.
An ideal workflow
Senior Ian Dumas working on his thesis project relied on EditShare’s hybrid workflow to achieve his vision. A big believer in community filmmaking, Ian collaborated with friends using a wide range of equipment to create the film. A hybrid between narrative and experiential, Ian’s film is a character study of a close friendship shot over several days and evenings. The narrative was shot in 6k and other visuals in 4k, resulting in 3 TB of content. Without access to EditShare, Ian would have had to significantly alter his project. “When you have technology at your disposal you should explore new ways to use it. So I wanted to shoot this film in 6k on a Blackmagic Cinema Pocket Camera I had access to. However, COVID threatened to significantly derail my project,” said Ian. “Without access to the shared storage, I couldn’t even open the files on my laptop. EditShare allowed me to approach the project exactly the way I wanted too. I was able to use AirFLOW to offload my high resolution media to the EFS storage at school and FLOW to create mp4 proxies for my laptop. This was huge as I was able to start storyboarding and editing at home with the high resolutions safe at school.”
Ian Dumas, Student Filmmaker, MassArt
Briganti loves this way of working, and so do the students. “Ian’s really diving into it. He’s going to see where it takes him. When he’s done with the edit, he’ll take it into a craft editor like Avid Media Composer or Premiere Pro using XML and then come into the college when it is safe to grade and conform. I think this is going to be the norm from now. It really is pretty cool!”
