Behind the Scenes of The Brutalist: An Oscar-Buzzed Workflow with Signiant Media Shuttle

Behind the Scenes of The Brutalist: An Oscar-Buzzed Workflow with Signiant Media Shuttle

Brie Clayton February 19, 2025

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The Setting Post Office Films is a Budapest-based post-production and dailies company specializing in supporting international film and television productions. Over time, Post Office Films has grown to form Hungary's largest dailies, grading, and editorial company, serving as the go-to partner for major projects, including the recent award-winning historical drama The Brutalist.

The Challenge As projects increase in complexity, Post Office Films face mounting challenges when managing large file transfer volumes and collaborating with partners globally. For The Brutalist, the challenge included transferring 15+ terabytes of daily footage, managing over 700 terabytes of total footage, and supporting remote editing spanning Budapest, New York, London, and Sydney, all while navigating tight deadlines.

The Solution Post Office Films turned to Signiant Media Shuttle, a trusted tool they had used for over ten years, to tackle the demanding requirements of The Brutalist. Using branded portals for submissions, sharing, and sending, they enabled seamless collaboration across continents for editors, sound, music, and VFX vendors. Media Shuttle's ability to securely transfer sizable files quickly and reliably - regardless of location or bandwidth - ensured the team could stay on track despite tight deadlines and global complexities.

The Value Signiant Media Shuttle has become an indispensable tool for Post Office Films, providing seamless efficiency, full control, and security for their workflows. Its flexibility supports creative freedom, while its scalability ensures the team can confidently handle even the most complex global projects. For The Brutalist, Media Shuttle proved essential in meeting the demands of a large-scale international production, enabling the team to deliver on time and without compromise.

Setting the Stage Based in Budapest, Hungary, Post Office Films is a vital post-production hub for global productions. Known for handling high volumes of data and complex workflows, the company collaborates with teams and partners across continents, providing services from editorial to dailies to final delivery. Their ability to manage such intricate processes has made them a go-to partner for ambitious and complex productions.

David Jansco, Founder of Post Office Films

I founded the company just trying to make a post-production company that suits editors' needs, David Jancso, editor and owner of Post Office Films, reflected. It started as a band of five editors. Today, [we're] a hub for productions - American, Japanese, Australian - wherever. This international expertise has earned Post Office Films a place on several highly acclaimed projects, including Pieces of a Woman and The Monkey Man. However, Post Office Films and David Jancso are much more than just service providers. Jancso, who also served as the editor for these films, brings a creative vision to their work. Their latest endeavor, The Brutalist,

earned widespread critical acclaim and received prestigious accolades, including Golden Globe wins and Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Film Editing.

And Jancso is adamant: they could not have reached the finish line without the help of the Signiant Platform.

Voluminous Production, Global Team: The Challenges Behind The Brutalist The Brutalist is one of those rare films that comes along once in a blue moon. Everything about it is oversized - from its ambitious runtime to the sheer production scale. Shot on 35mm VistaVision, the film spans over three and a half hours and generated more than 10 million files to create it.

35mm & 70mm printing for The Brutalist

It was shot on VistaVision, so it's eight perf 35mm - the equivalent of 70 millimeter - and scanned as 6K DPX files. We're talking about 15 terabytes a day! Jancso said. The scans of the original footage were over 700 terabytes.

As the project progressed, production began moving across the globe, requiring the editing media to be moved efficiently, securely, and reliably. This is where Signiant proved indispensable, ensuring smooth transfers and helping the production stay on track despite its global complexity.

We started editing in Budapest, we moved to New York, then we moved to London. Then back to Budapest. We had to upload the DPX files to the VFX vendors in London, but the material was in Budapest; our sound team was all around the world - in Adelaide, in Sydney, in London, Jancso recalled.

The sheer global scale of The Brutalist posed logistical challenges that would have been insurmountable without a robust file transfer solution. With terabytes of data generated daily and team members spread across multiple continents, seamless collaboration was crucial. The production demanded not just speed but precision, security, and reliability at every step - demands the Signiant Platform was uniquely positioned to meet.

Simplifying Global Workflows with Media Shuttle When Post Office Films first began in 2009, they relied on Aspera as their primary file transfer solution. However, this posed significant challenges for the team.

It was pretty difficult with Aspera. My team had to do a lot of juggling [with it]. We had editors around the world needing to download files into their own systems, and Aspera was not easy to use, Jancso explained. In 2013, they switched to Signiant Media Shuttle and have relied on it ever since, scaling as their projects and global production footprint expanded.

Adrien Brody as L szi T th, a visionary architect and Holocaust survivor

Signiant Media Shuttle is widely used across the media and entertainment industry, particularly in production, post production, and VFX. Its patented file acceleration technol

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