-- Starving in Surburbia, airing on Lifetime TV and produced by MarVista Entertainment.
Dailies for both film and video production are moving rapidly into the cloud for many good reasons.
Collaborators in different locations need ready access to files that may reside elsewhere. To meet that need, a secure cloud resource becomes a central project space that enables a degree of workflow efficiency that is not possible when content resides only on premise.
Isn't dailies a silly term that for years was a misnomer? Dailies rarely if ever arrived in a day-certainly not when distribution relied on DVDs and hard drives being couriered around to the different reviewers. The norm was at least 30 hours after processing, and often as much as two or three days later. Often, dailies arrive too late for feedback to be meaningful in checking color, determining if the feel of a shot is just right, or any other myriad elements of creative control that set a stellar production apart from one that's just OK.
However, with a cloud-based dailies workflow, teams have:
Easy point of access-for team members with varying degrees of technology savvy. Particularly with location shoots, production companies need to make it easy to get review and approve content so the rest of the work can get done efficiently. Secure cloud approaches are a perfect complement to the dailies review and approval workflow
Faster turnaround-enabling faster decision-making so projects get to edit faster, in a more organized way, saving time and money.
Greater security-while cloud-based solutions usually inspire an immediate question about content security schemes, continual headlines about screeners and bootleg DVD copies being ripped off suggests that sending multiple physical copies around represents a perhaps worse security consideration than controlled digital access.
Better production-with a clearer view of the whole production and the ability to make sure the content presents a consistent style, look, and quality. It provides added time to spend on perfecting your creative instead of waiting for hard drives to arrive.
As a result, major production companies and broadcasters are using the cloud as an adjunct to existing on-premise resources, enabling the best of all worlds-the physical asset being located on site, but the accessibility and workflow efficiency powered by the cloud.
MarVista Entertainment Both TV and feature films are rapidly adopting cloud-based dailies. MarVista Entertainment is a global producer and distributor of film and television programming that provides programming to U.S. cable networks, including Disney Channel, Lifetime, Hallmark Channel, NBC Universal, and MTV Networks, as well as key international broadcasters.
Rich Carroll, post-production supervisor, began using a cloud-based approach to dailies review and approval from Aframe in summer 2012. Previously, MarVista performed transcoding after receipt of raw daily footage, adding a few hours to processing time. Then it either used couriers to drive raw footage across town, or used a costly, dedicated digital dailies solution. Dailies took up to two days to deliver.
With a cloud approach, MarVista is getting dailies up and ready to watch an average of 24 hours earlier than before. The speed and ease of use also allows fast identification and fixes of issues the next day, and makes it easier to keep an entire team of professionals in many locations on the same page creatively.
Aframe is the only digital dailies solution MarVista has used ever since implementing it on such programs as Gone Missing in 2013. Recent cloud-assisted dailies efforts include Starving in Suburbia (pictured), which aired on Lifetime TV, and more than 20 additional movies, including holiday 2014 specials Naughty and Nice and Christmas in Fashion; the teen-oriented drama The Assault; and Mothers of the Bride.
MarVista's new workflow involves sending footage direct from multiple camera types into Aframe's cloud-based video production solution. Once there, the original rushes are stored and web-friendly proxy files are generated automatically, saving an extra step (and several hours) in the production workflow every day. The new, cloud-enabled workflow avoids the need for transcoding, burning, and distributing 10 sets of DVDs each day. They simply can upload raw footage and send one email with a link to an h.264 proxy, to be viewed anywhere and anytime from any device by busy producers and network executives on the go.
Aframe rivals major digital dailies solutions, feature for feature, and its use costs us a fraction of dedicated solutions, Carroll says. The user interface is so intuitive that a non-computer user can navigate it without asking for assistance.
Sixteen19 Sixteen19, a boutique production and post-services company that provides a digital dailies service to filmmakers, used Aframe's cloud video production platform to expedite digital dailies delivery on two feature films from Scott Rudin Productions: Rosewater, comedian Jon Stewart's directorial debut which opened in November 2014, (pictured) and While We're Young, scheduled for theatrical release in March 2015 by distribution company A24.
By using a cloud-based approach, Sixteen19 clients can get dailies at 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning instead of noon and enjoy a fast, easy review on their choice of mobile device while getting full resolution content to both London and LA and from there, right into post-production. A team of about 20 executives reviewing the content could make frame-accurate comments on the h.264 proxy that Aframe generates, and the metadata would stay intact all the way through to the edit suite.
Gael Garcia Bernal as Maziar Bahari in Rosewater. Sixteen19 used Aframe's cloud video platform to expedite review and approval of dailies. Photo Credit: Laith
