To create a movie, studios will normally choose to setup a new company, give it a budget and ask it to deliver a feature length masterpiece in the shortest time possible. A tall task for a start-up, but given the right producers, great creative and technical talent, modern content-creation tools and the global community of production and post-production service companies, it happens time and time again with the successes apparent especially now as we enter this years awards season.
In the time from when the production company is created to theatrical release, typically a period of just two or three years, a lot happens to say the least. I wanted to focus on one element of this – security – or should I say making sure the production keeps control of all the high-value creative output, and that no one else has it.
At the outset of a production, little or no procedures are in place, typically there have been no decisions about which production, post production or VFX vendors are to be used, no workflows have been decided on, tools and infrastructure are to be specified and although studios are offering increased guidance, the production rarely has an in-house team looking after security. These are just a few of the elements that need to come together. In the time frame that a regular company might be just getting up to speed with rationalizing its infrastructure and security, a company created to make a movie is already being disbanded and its talent moving onto other projects. So how does a production achieve this rapid ambition securely?
Sohonet has been an active participant in the increasing role of file-based content creation since computers started playing a more central role in visual effects and the digital intermediate became popular in the finishing process. It’s best known for its global media network, tying the industry’s major vendors and studios together, but Sohonet also built some of the first local networks in the worlds leading film studios and has helped productions manage and store content from pre-production through final delivery. This first hand experience has led to a number of new product releases, all of which have a common theme running through them: they are all designed for productions and their unique situation. They are all capable of rapid deployment, are easy to use, interoperable, scalable and secure. A production is intent on making a movie and simply has to have access to the latest technology to get the job done on time and to keep innovating. One of the best approaches to making sure that a production deals with its content securely is to make the latest security-minded products available.
A major part of how movies are made is that a production will choose between the ever expanding and ever more global community of established companies that offer services such as digital capture, dailies and visual effects. By joining the Sohonet Media Network, a production has access to a worldwide, secure network connecting over 400 major industry players. With the exception of relying on the variability and insecurities of the public Internet, no other network exists that a production could join with a single connection and have the connection paths necessary to enough partners to make a movie. Building a dedicated private network for a project is difficult if at all even possible given the timescales and cost requirements, and doesn’t offer the required flexibility. The Sohonet Media Network is ready to go and proven to handle the latest high frame rate, high-resolution media with ease. This means that a production won’t have to resort to the insecurities and time penalties of shipping physical media. Sohonet can also build overlay networks using MPLS and Site-to-Site VPNs to secure traffic and applications where required.
A production will need to store large amounts of content generated directly or by its vendors. However, building storage infrastructure is time consuming, costly and requires a high level of technical ability. Sohonet’s answer to this is a set of products including not just on-site primary storage-as-a-service, but seamless integration to solutions that fulfill the need for offsite data backup and archiving of content. Sohonet’s FileStore is aimed at short- to medium-term offsite backup and project parking. It offers the pricing model and scalability benefits of cloud infrastructure but utilizes hardware that is completely owned, operated and secured by Sohonet, linked by the high speed private media network, and located within defined secure facilities.
Productions and studios are looking at innovating with, and increasingly capitalizing on the benefits of public cloud services for storage, render and software-as-a-service. Sohonet FastLane is a flexible, fractional direct connection product that gives productions secure, private bandwidth to leading cloud platforms such as AWS, Google and SoftLayer.
A production, including it’s editorial and VFX departments will have to have a local network and secure it. One of the challenges when considering security on production networks is that less control can be had of the types of systems put on the network as opposed to an enterprise environment. For instance content creation software often runs on older platforms with sensitive requirements, and production staff often use personal computers because they move between projects. Sohonet’s answer to these challenges is to use its acquired knowledge of effective network segmentation, and to design security products so that requirements such as malware protection and Intrusion Detection and Prevention (IDP) occur on the network level. The ever-increasing sophistication of attacks and number of recent high profile content leaks means that productions are leaning towards more intelligent security products. Sohonet offer Next-Generation Firewall products that are application-aware, capable of filtering and monitoring traffic on a host or user level, and are backed by leading dynamic databases of attack signatures. Remote Network Access can also be established so that production staff can keep connected to production resources securely by utilizing SSL VPNs with multi-factor authentication.
Another innovation productions are increasingly utilizing as network bandwidths increase is high-quality video collaboration for applications such as remote editing and color grading. DIY solutions to this are often loosely controlled and occur over the Internet or other unsecure networks without encryption. Sohonet ClearView brings together high quality, low latency JP2K streaming and high quality multiparty video conferencing as one secure managed service.
Piecing components such as the above examples together to create an effective workflow can take a long time to get right, and there are many challenges to ensuring everything is consistently handled securely when requirements frequently change, and content is stored and processed on an increasing number of systems. Having a complete understanding of this as a whole is key to ensuring a productions security.
There are clearly many products and services on the market that offer point solutions to many of the challenges outlined above. Sohonet however, believe a holistic managed service approach for our customers’ secure collaboration needs is the right way forward for them and the industry.
Martin Rushworth, Director of Technology at Sohonet
