Post-production is an ever more critical and expensive aspect of modern multi-media practices. The costs involved are, however, difficult to unbundle. In this article we explore whether and how emerging technologies offer a more cost-efficient approach to managing the post-production facility.
The real costs of post-production
The creative advancements in the post-production world for the past decade have been truly remarkable. The artistic tools that have evolved include 3D modeling, compelling visual effects, CGI, and the emergence of ultra-high-resolution video formats coupled with HDR imaging, as well as groundbreaking audio techniques. The use of tools have resulted in the most compelling multi-media productions ever created for different audience types.
Despite these tech developments, it is surprising how many modern-day post-production departments are still employing traditional creative methods, which result in high costs and inefficient working practices. Even with the arrival of the cloud many facilities are reluctant to adopt new approaches with the feeling that the old and tested workflows, in use over many years, are still fit for purpose. The “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” mentality still discourages many people from making changes to their workflows when they are under tightly controlled budgets.
When revisiting traditional working practices within the post-production environment, especially with an emphasis on ingest and collaboration, are there alternatives such as cloud-based workflows that may now be more beneficial for cost-saving and working efficiency?
What is the traditional approach to post-production?
Post-production is a highly collaborative process that takes raw footage and creates the finished masterpiece. It includes different skilled operations from editing to coloring, special effects, and audio enhancements. The whole post-production process typically takes longer than the actual time to shoot the raw footage necessary for the finished product, whether it be a film, TV production, advert, or other multi-media production.
It is a process that has evolved over decades but begins with the production, which in current times involves a diverse range of digital cameras catching raw footage, or rushes, captured on physical SSD storage devices in many different video file formats and codecs. Once the scene is finished, the raw footage from the cameras needs to be transferred to the post-production facilities.
Most camera memory cards are expensive. Often the digital files are copied from the cards onto removable hard drives. Then the camera cards are immediately redeployed while the hard drives are shipped.
Adding up the costs
Many productions have at least two mobile RAID storage devices as an on-set repository. The cost of these devices is typically around $10K each. Adding to the complexity, some companies, like Netflix, will recommend using different hard drive manufacturers and batch numbers for resilience between each device.
Copying to hard drives is not without risk – they can fail, copies can be corrupted and logistically all the hard drives need to be collected, labeled, and often couriered to a location. Drives are shipped not only to editors but also to directors and other stakeholders in the production process. Typically Data Wranglers are responsible for the management, collection, and shipping of raw footage. In order to get the footage to everyone in the workflow, Wranglers can often work overtime late into the night, which adds to the cost of production. Adding everything up, this process generally takes an excessive amount of time and resources.
Version control
It is typical during a production that many scenes receive multiple takes. When rushes are distributed and rough cuts are initially created, it is important that everyone is working on the same file version. This is especially challenging in a distributed environment, as stakeholders tend to be globally dispersed and in different time zones.
What are the pain points of ingest?
Looking at the ingest process and how rushes are collected, copied, and shipped to various locations, all aspects need to be carefully managed, including the timing, reliability, and level of security.
It’s typical for a post-production facility to have editors that are left waiting for the rushes to arrive. And once the rushes arrive, they need to be ingested into a storage platform for editing and review. Media files are notoriously very large files. The whole ingest process can take hours just to get the data. If you take those hours spent waiting and multiply them by the number of editors you have as part of a large team, you are paying for hours of expensive overhead. Much like the purchasing and shipping of hard drives, it is an expense that is not often accounted for and routinely overlooked.
The Blue in the graph below shows in-house storage, and the fluctuations indicate when more drives are needed. Whereas, the Green indicates cloud solution storage costs if the same amount of storage is being used over the 12 week period.
