M+E Daily

By Chuck Parker, Chairman & CEO, Sohonet

Ever since the Sony Pictures hack, I get asked in meetings and at cocktail parties why the security of pre-release production assets seems to be so difficult. It’s not a simple question to answer. The challenge is not unlike that described by experienced execs from Silicon Valley. A tech start-up needs to lease office space to get started, hire the smartest people it can find, leverage as much cloud and virtual infrastructure as possible to grow with as little cash outlay as possible, and often develop a product in a virtual cloud-based environment to allow to access talent located around the world in real-time.

Movie productions do behave like tech start-ups in many regards: they lease temporary production and post production space, they certainly hire the best people, they either rent equipment (common with Avids, etc.) or leverage media service providers where possible to reduce their cash outlay, and they have to develop workflows that allow them to collaborate with talent around the globe–though admittedly this is often not in a “cloud” environment but is often based on a “sneaker net”/messenger bike approach even when those collaboration partners are in the same city. 

However, what is distinctly different between the start-up nature of a technology company and that of a movie production is how they plan for their future.

The start-up is hoping for a buyer (financial or strategic) and thus there is a decent possibility that all of the tools and processes developed along the way will be used after the founders exit. The movie production, however, sells the result of its hard work to a studio distributor (i.e. Disney, Lionsgate) and then often “winds-up” or closes the legal entity of the production itself.

In other words, most of the process improvement and tools built along the way are discarded or thrown away at the end of the production, with little capability of reuse on the next production (often funded by other means with a different team, etc). This fundamental difference in approach puts security posture on the movie production at a disadvantage from the start. As all of us know, building in security upfront isn’t easy and often makes the steps we take as a part of the normal creation process (regardless of code or scene edits) harder and longer to perform.

Combine that with the job of movie studio executives, who are often managing many different independent productions at once, and they have a Herculean task of either learning a different “security protocol” for each production or working hard to reduce them to a common (and often much less secure) approach. Add to that dynamic the challenges that release dates create, increasing the risk level.

While the full cast and crew may have been shooting in an exotic location or on modern sound stages around the world, the skeletal crew left behind after the shoot to edit and finish the feature has a release date looming overhead like the Sword of Damocles.

So, the post production team sets out to meet the deadline of perfecting its work of art with only two levers to use if it falls behind: work more hours, or reduce the complexity of any workflows to get more done in the same amount of time.

Each of these approaches reduces the security posture of the team. Add to that the now frustrated studio executives who are buying the rights to the finished prod-uct and are already dealing with a myriad of frustrating “blocking technologies” on other features, and you can quickly see how content might be moved from point A to point B with-out the right security protocols.

To add an accelerator to this fire, throw into the mix a process in which third party collaboration partners are chosen through a bid-ding process that often results in 10 to 15 par-ties being awarded contracts for various parts of the post production process (visual effects, sound mixing, color grading, subtitling, etc.) on a Friday, with an expectation that they will keep the production on schedule by starting work on their elements the following Monday.

Exacerbating the process and workflow challenges these “production startups” face, is the “big data profile” of modern film and TV production, with requires video footage data storage ranging from 25 terabytes to a full petabyte.

In addition to the challenges outlined above, possibly the most impactful decision affecting the security posture of the production and post production workflow is the decision about where to physically locate the post production team.

While there certainly are many production companies that select specialized media park locations with access to modern post production technology services like those offered by Pinewood, Lantana and Tribeca West, others choose to work directly on the “studio lot” of their rights holder (with similar access to technology and bandwidth). Many production companies chase tax credits, however, and end up in locations that have been designed to optimize the cost of the space, rather than the cost of accessing the required post production technologies. Sounds grim.

What is today’s modern producer supposed to take into account when picking his or her next post production location?

* High-speed bandwidth availability on an uncontended network (i.e. not the Internet);

* Responsive security services to establish private collaboration between multiple partners;

* File transfer services to share large video assets with multiple partners seamlessly;

* Digital storage service options for post production workflow needs as well as the parking, landing, DR and short-term archival of projects;

* Real-time, high quality remote collaboration capabilities.

Seems like a short enough list; however, in the fast-paced production world, one or more of these key considerations has not been planned into the production and as a result, the productions spends a lot of its time loading tapes or hard drives with content, handing the highly valuable media to messengers to ferry across town to another location for review.

Then they put the burden of the short schedule on the to the movie executives and creative talent (director, cinematographer) by forcing them to travel to the same location to work together for an extended period (resulting in thousand of dollars spent on hotels and flights).

Want to have a better experience? Incorporate your networking, media transfer and security requirements into your production and post-production planning process.  Put together your video data collaboration strategy before you start choosing your post production vendors.  Reach out to industry experts who can you trust with your valuable content and seek best practice advice.

Click here to read the .pdf file

———————————————————–

Chuck Parker is an innovative digital media industry leader who has held various senior executive roles at Technicolor over a 15-year period including Division President, Chief Commercial Officer and CIO. More recently, he helped lead some of the foundational efforts in the digital video advertising and 2nd screen technology markets at start-ups Unicorn Media and 2nd Screen Society and he continues to advise start-ups in the space.