M+E Daily

Bluescape: How M&E Teams Can Manage Development of Ideas

Time is money, and can’t be wasted on poorly managed, non-productive meetings. Every minute must count, which involves more than just time management, but the management of creative ideas and project workflows.

Content development relies on intensely collaborative activities; but bringing entire teams together to develop and review work is prohibitive for cost, time, and space. Video conferencing and screen sharing fall short of recreating the benefits of working together in a room. As a result, the quality of work suffers, and budgets and timelines are threatened.

In the current work environment impeded by the impacts of a pandemic, it is imperative for organizations to adopt technology that will make collaboration more effective. For meetings to be successful, having all relevant content in place prior to a meeting allows participants to focus on the content and discuss important issues immediately. Meeting delays, due to connection issues, are in the past.

There’s no need to fumble through PowerPoint decks, Excel spreadsheets, and Word documents. All meeting participants should see all the information at the same time.

Bluescape is a secure, scalable, infinite collaborative workspace designed to accelerate decision-making by enabling anyone to create, communicate, visualize, organize, and strategize virtually anything, anywhere, anytime. The Bluescape workspace is a common area where everyone can share content, view other content, and make edits that all can see.

Participants can quickly access content shared throughout the course of a given project and have an immediate view of all work without the need to search old documents or postings. Because the visual collaboration software is accessible from large and small screens simultaneously, users can see down to the most granular level of detail, and the details are never lost—all work is captured and accessible at any time, from any device.

With the release of Popsync, Bluescape is completely changing the way creative teams work, play, and tackle projects of all sorts. Popsync is a visual collaboration tool that empowers users to create with free and premium images from across the web within their Bluescape workspace. In one search, anyone can quickly view multiple libraries at once, including Getty Images, iStock, Unsplash, Google Images, and more.

Bluescape is applicable across the enterprise in all aspects of work, collaboration, and success. When you need teams — across the globe or across the hall — to act based on the latest information, Bluescape’s persistent workspaces mean you will always have what you need.

Operated on cloud-based software, Bluescape offers a virtual work platform that is a secure, scalable, collaborative workspace to enable work in real-time across any applications, files, or devices anywhere in the world. Bluescape can be accessed on multiple devices, including large-scale, high-definition, multi-touch screens, as well as iPads, laptops and mobile devices.

There is no limit to the total amount of information an organization can have in Bluescape. The format of the information is visually organized so content is clear, and ideas easily understood. No other platform combines this second visual self-organization with other features like video conferencing, an API for easy integrations, and the broad array of content types supported by Bluescape.

Whiteboarding, integrated video conferencing, and compatibility with existing applications mean teams find value in Bluescape on day one. Bluescape allows teams to use their favorite tools within a single visual interface. Increase productivity and reduce the cognitive load and information loss that comes from constantly switching between applications. Organizations can extend existing enterprise roles and permissions throughout Bluescape and keep systems safe from breaches using industry-leading security.

Bluescape’s biggest differentiators are content handling (including the ability to upload high-resolution images and zoom in to see minute-level of detail), video playback (the ability to play videos within the platform without lag), advance forward and backward, and annotating specific frames.

Bluescape has an almost limitless whiteboard to collect, display, and present ideas and activities all in one setting. A record can be kept of everything that has happened on a project — meetings, comments, decisions made, iterations, and more — all in one place for easy reference.

By seeing projects laid out visually, brainstorming sessions grow more productive. Participants are more involved. Presentations are more impactful. Decision-making is more informed. Participants capture every idea, comment, and change. It is easy to track who’s doing what, all in one place.

Sharing content in a Bluescape workspace is far more engaging, interactive, and bandwidth-efficient than screen sharing. Instead of sharing one person’s screen at a time, the entire team can present and interact with multiple documents and files simultaneously.


Use Bluescape to create workspaces for every project. Teams can host interactive multi-dimensional meetings to increase meeting flow and efficiency. Add notes, share materials, refer to previous meeting content, and seamlessly move between different canvasses. Save time and gain work efficiency.

How customers use Bluescape

Creative Reviews

Before Bluescape: Production coordinators, marketing teams, creative directors, (anyone needing a creative review) hosted review sessions in person, over Google Meet, Zoom, Slack, etc. on a video call and shared their screens into the call to present work from folders on their device.

After Bluescape: Creative personnel upload work into a Bluescape workspace. Creative review is conducted directly in Bluescape with all feedback and annotations captured directly on the files. Comments can be added asynchronously, meetings can happen in the same space as content, and everyone has equal ability to contribute feedback. Pixel-perfect resolution means there is better clarity on feedback.

Visual Development

Before Bluescape: All content was physically printed and manually pinned on physical boards and confined to what is presented in a room. Content was scattered across multiple drives/systems, and participants had totoggle back-and-forth between meeting software and content repositories.

After Bluescape: Visual development assets are uploaded and housed in workspaces, allowing access to unlimited amounts of content. Meetings happen in the same space as content with everyone having equal ability to contribute feedback.

Comments are added asynchronously allowing people to interact anytime, from anywhere.

Use of Popsync

Need a mood board for a new product design or want to level up your storytelling for a presentation? Simply search for an image and get a selection of high-quality images from multiple image sources of your choice, populated in a Bluescape workspace.

• Search images from online image libraries including Getty Images, Unsplash, iStock, Google, Pexels, VistaCreate, and more.
• Organize, share, and download images directly from your Bluescape workspace.
• Use high-resolution, un-watermarked Getty Images free within your Bluescape workspace.
• Invite others to search, view, and collaborate on your images.

Summary

Creative teams from motion picture, animation, and television studios have turned to Bluescape to solve remote work challenges, increase efficiency, and make better and faster creative decisions.

In-person and remote meetings now follow the same workflow, reducing meeting preparation and follow-ups. Uploading the content to Bluescape allows productions to host much more content while eliminating the expense and time to print and mount work. Everything is securely accessible in the workspace, allowing artists and directors to see exactly what they need at the proper time.

Bluescape provides virtual workspaces for distributed creative teams to easily gather around all work. By creating an in-room experience, teams can collaborate like they are side-by-side, resulting in fewer, better meetings. Bluescape is where teams share, meet, and make decisions around content. And with Popsync, it is easier than ever to bring images into conversations.

Bluescape benefits:
• Easily access all projects and updated materials in a shared digital workspace.
• Collaborate in real time and make decisions with stakeholders across geographies.
• Upload high-resolution images and zoom in to see minute-details.
• Play videos within the platform without lag time, advance forward and backward, and annotate specific frames
• Enhance creativity, plan more effectively, and make creative decisions faster.
• Increase meeting and work efficiencies resulting in time savings and better project outcomes.

Key features and integrations for media and entertainment
• Share and review graphics for print campaigns and collateral.
• Upload videos and synchronize playback to review animatics, trailers, and more
• Add comments, updates, and @mentions to the workspace to streamline follow-ups.
• Schedule, host, and join video meetings in a workspace.
• Add and collaborate with Google Drive, Microsoft Office 365, and OneDrive documents.
• Add workspaces to Microsoft Teams channels.
• Transfer content and comments between Bluescape and Adobe Creative Cloud applications.
• Share content and annotations between Shotgun Software and Bluescape.
• Drop in MovieLabs icons https://www.mesaonline.org/2022/08/15/bluescape-introduces-new-icon-library-including-movielabs-visual-language-set/ (MovieLabs released a visual language guide and a suite of design elements to help developers and producers create and communicate workflows in a visually consistent way industrywide).

Bluescape impact
• Reduce creative review set up time and expense by directly uploading files into Bluescape instead of preparing physical boards with printed art.
• Increase the quality and quantity of assets to be reviewed and referenced.
• Improve decision-making by providing a holistic visual overview of production assets and schedules.
• Increase accessibility and visibility to work through virtual workspaces, enabling synchronous and asynchronous collaboration outside of scheduled meetings.
• Eliminate errors and rework due to misinterpreted feedback, lowering production costs and shortening production timelines.

* By Dr. S. Ann Earon, President, Telemanagement Resources International Inc. (TRI Inc.), Bluescape consultant

Dr. S. Ann Earon is president of Telemanagement Resources International Inc. (TRI), a 40-year-old management consulting firm specializing in unified communications and collaboration, and Founding Chairperson of IMCCA, the non-profit industry association for conferencing, collaboration, and unified communications. She can be reached at 609-597-6334 or via email at [email protected].