Remote workflows welcome new challenges in managing the process required to make great content. We take a look at how leading facilities from Statement Advertising and Goldcrest Films to The Walt Disney Studios’ StudioLAB are using remote review tools to help their dispersed teams and clients connect, collaborate and create.
We’re currently witnessing a fundamental transformation in the way that we work, regardless of industry. As a society, we are all using remote technologies to remain connected during this unprecedented “work from home” time. Whilst this shift has intensified in recent weeks, it is not a new phenomenon within media and entertainment, and we can assume that when the world returns to relative normalcy, the requirement for teams to work ‘together apart’ will remain fundamental. For creatives and post-production teams interacting on projects, remote editing and review tools have long been enabling collaboration and creativity, no matter the location of the talent.
Editors and visual effects artists are in high-demand and the top talent can strongly influence where and how they want to work. With tax-breaks pulling productions in various directions and talent scattered across the globe, it’s not uncommon for a production to be shooting in Europe, whilst sending footage to facilities in New York, as a network of VFX artists from London to Los Angeles work their magic at home or in rented suites.
Getting key individuals to review and approve content once production wraps, be that an edit, VFX, or colour grading session, can be a logistical nightmare. The DP may be onto the next project, the director and producers might still be engaged with myriad aspects of post-production at facilities around the globe, and studio execs are likely to be at their desks on the lot. Getting the right people in the same room – even if it’s a virtual one — is a juggling act.
How can Sohonet help?
Ensuring creative teams and clients are connected and have the ability to review content securely, simultaneously and in real-time from anywhere in the world is crucial. That’s the only way schedules, budgets, and vision can be maintained.
Sohonet’s real-time review and approval tools, ClearView Flex and ClearView Pivot, offer streamlined, easy-to-use solutions for busy global players. ClearView Flex enables directors, producers, DPs and key team members on the move to review live video streams on their mobile device, PC or via Apple TV with a basic Internet connection. So whether they need to review live edit or VFX sessions or content straight from the camera, Flex gives them the security and flexibility to collaborate with their teams remotely and in real-time, from home, whilst travelling or wherever they happen to be.
ClearView Pivot, the latest addition to Sohonet’s real-time collaboration toolkit, offers a high quality, hassle-free and secure solution for remote screening, colour grading, and finishing review and approvals — that is simply unavailable anywhere else in the market. Pivot meets the needs of those requiring 4K high dynamic range (HDR) with 12-bit colour depth and 4:4:4 chroma sampling for full-colour quality video streaming with ultra-low latency. To achieve the high-quality viewing experience needed for critical quality review, users will need to be at a connected facility, in a screening room, edit or colour suite. To ensure seamless collaboration amongst key stakeholders, Pivot has been designed as a point-to-multipoint solution, allowing the user to ‘pivot’ easily from one endpoint to the next to collaborate with multiple people at the click of a button or even stream to multiple destinations at the same time.
ClearView in Action
With two sites in London and a third in New York City, Goldcrest Films is a leading supplier of picture and sound post production services for film and broadcast projects. Challenged by increasingly tighter deadlines and creatives simultaneously working on multiple projects in disparate locations, Goldcrest chose ClearView Flex to facilitate sessions for production critical processes like colour grading and review and approval. The system helps Goldcrest make critical connections among collaborators at the right times offering streamlined operations, cost and time savings, and better service and product to customers worldwide.
LA-based Statement Advertising, which crafts high-profile 360 campaigns for leading creatives and studios, finds ClearView Flex a great alternative to fiber for real-time connectivity. It ticks all the boxes for security, streamlined access and cost efficiency for review and approval sessions with Warner Bros., Netflix and Universal Pictures.
London’s Coffee & TV, whose VFX artists, colourists, flame artists, animators, director, and designers work on high-end commercials, broadcast projects, and music videos, uses ClearView Flex to enable clients to review and approve content when they can’t make it into the suite in person. The system has been especially helpful for simplifying and speeding the process for Instagram content.
Hireworks, one of Europe’s leading rental companies, provides location post-production and cutting rooms in central London to such clients as “Game of Thrones,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Fantastic Beasts” and Wimbledon tennis. It offers ClearView Flex to directors and producers who want to make edits or review content without travelling to central London as well as to collaborative partners in the US. Hireworks also makes the system available for rent as a remote tool.
The Walt Disney Studios’ StudioLAB, brought the resources of its Technology Innovation Group to help drive a cross-divisional evaluation process – putting it through its paces with trials across multiple departments, testing and approving everything from the colour fidelity to the ease of use, ‘pivoting’ between locations across the US and finally to London, all in real-time. With new confidence, The Walt Disney Studios was able to rapidly support remote workflows for productions in both the US and Australia as a proving ground.
Having launched on 13th February 2020, ClearView Pivot is already deployed at more than 70 locations worldwide.
ClearView Flex and ClearView Pivot are both fully managed services offering 24/7 global support. Pricing tier options guarantee that users get exactly what they need for productions big and small.
