Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1006097
REMOTE COLLABORATION www.postmagazine.com 29 POST JULY 2018 cades in LA or London but now want the quieter life. We've got an artist in South Africa who is one of the best at what he does. In return, they get a work/life balance that isn't going to burn them out two years down the line. These people aren't "just freelancers," whatever that means. They're solid, dependable, expe- rienced people. In this context, "remote" often means better, faster and more reliable work. YOU CAN'T HANDLE LARGER WORKLOADS We can and we do. Furthermore, the remote model is in many ways better structured for bigger work. Unless you're a major industry powerhouse, the size of projects will shift from one to the next. It's not all going to be blockbusters. That's why "scalability" is so much more than a throwaway term in the world of post. It's integral to success, especially today. We're living in 'The Netflix Age'. It's an open playing field and there's a lot of work to be had. But you need to flex. You need to grow when those big projects come in and scale back when they don't. Brick-and-mortar shops can only do this to a fixed level. Remote is built for it. We can scale from zero to 20 vetted and capable artists in a day if we need to. We can build teams tailored to a project's needs. We can pull from all around the world on a 24-hour cycle. When the big work comes, remote is always ready. IT'S NOT SECURE What studios today are "secure" when viewed in the context of archaic workflows? There isn't a single studio working today that isn't sending work back and forth on a global scale. Whether it's file transfer solutions or zero client models, these solutions are in use at all studios. It's the nature of VFX today; the work rarely happens in a single location. Of course, sending sensitive work back and forth may have been a concern a decade ago. But today's technol- ogy is constantly growing, evolving and redefining itself. It means even the world's largest studios can set up global pipelines while mitigating security concerns. And what they're doing is no different than the pipeline that's in place at any remote setup worth its salt. Secure transfers, zero or thin clients. Encryption-at-rest. IT'S TOO SLOW File transfers take time. You can't avoid that in a virtual workforce; it's an extra step that you must factor into the equation. But the end client doesn't care about the granular timelines. They care about deadlines. Remote studios can meet them as capa- bly as any physical vendor. For starters, a computer with high-end hard drives will always work faster than pulling from a network. Once our artists have the work, they're working at incredible speed. (Not to mention we save costs on million dollar servers and 10Gb ports.) What's more, we work non-stop. Artists don't need to deal with traffic on their non-commute. And as the sun sets on one loca- tion it's rising in another. Build a remote workforce intelligently and the sun never sets. Clever work- flow balances out the time cost of transfers. Much of Legion's support work is done overnight on the other side of the planet, and as our western artist wake up and log on, they have everything they need to get the work done during their day. IT'S TOO DISORGANIZED Remote facilities do not succeed without organization. Look at a failed remote post production house and I'll show you a disorganized one. Those that exist do so as everything produced is rooted in system and structure. I've worked at brick-and-mortars where project management was an afterthought. Why update Shotgun with a note when I've shouted it over the desk? Remote facilities do not have this luxury. You must record everything. You must communicate everything. "Working from a remote office" doesn't mean working secluded on an island of independence. It means being a self-starter with an innate under- standing of workflow and an ability to connect over vast distances. If project management isn't the spine of your remote VFX operation, you're not going to make it. "Remote" and "disorganized" are antonyms. DOES IT REALLY WORK? The answer is a resounding 'yes'. We've pioneered a remote model for five years at VFX Legion and we've experienced continued growth alongside that journey. Remote isn't a daydream. It's a tried and trusted approach. And I truly believe this is not exclusive to the post production industry. It's a new way of working across all industries. We're experiencing a gradual sea change in the way people view the nine-to-five. Employers are realizing that not all talent wants to or can work in the central hubs of the world — whether for family, financial, real estate or any other number of reasons — and that they're only impeding their own prog- ress by restricting employment to physical proxim- ity. Remote models empower businesses to access better talent and empower people to remain in their communities, thus helping to rebuild economies devastated by the departure of industries in less technologically capable times. Remote work is em- powering, not disruptive. It's a new way of working. We're looking towards a new horizon. IPV CURATOR CREATES MORE EFFICIENT POST VIA A REMOTE WORKFLOW By James Varndell Product Manager IPV United Kingdom www.ipv.com Giving users the ability to work remotely can bring multiple benefits both to a content production facility and its editors. These include easier project collaboration and more effective time management — even the ability to access a broader talent base. This is all achieved by deploying an asset manage- ment workflow in the cloud. IPV's Curator system is a media and workflow management tool that lets content creators take more control of their content. Built on a suite of microservices, it lets users scale up and down the resources it needs to manage projects and can be rolled out in any configuration — on-premise, in the cloud or as a hybrid of the two. Systems like Curator are no longer just beneficial to the big broadcasters who need to manage lots of content. Instead, they help anyone working with media assets. Now creative agencies, enterprises, sports organizations and houses of worship all need to create the most effective workflows in order to maximize their return on the investments made into content production. And more than ever, these orga- nizations can use tools like Curator to work remotely and between locations to search, discover and edit media and its associated work-in-progress files. One of the key benefits is easier access to con- tent without needing to wait for high-resolution files to be transferred from source to edit. With a cloud-deployed Curator system, content producers can quickly access and edit rushes no matter where they are by streaming proxy media. This brings ob- vious cost and resource savings. In fact, using IPV's proxy workflow can reduce online storage costs by up to 78 percent. It also allows users to join up disparate content when it's stored in different locations. Adding me- dia- or project-specific information to assets creates a track record of exactly how something has been used in the past. With this in place, users can make better asset management choices — whether to wait to reuse a piece of content, archive it or even delete it when it's no longer needed. Sometimes the right talent isn't local and content producers can struggle to find the right people for the job. By rolling out a system in the cloud, project managers can remove geographic boundaries and make content globally accessi- ble. With that, a broader talent pool is now also available — content creators can choose editors based on whatever criteria they like without being limited by location. One Curator user has been able to use a cloud-deployed proxy workflow to reduce freelance costs by 40 percent while also delivering a 50 percent increase in output. At the same time, enlisting editors anywhere in the world effectively gives content producers longer working days. The ability to edit with cloud content means an editor on the west coast can start a proj- ect and pass it on to UK-based personnel at the end of the day for a deadline the following morning. Only being able to edit in specific locations means output can bottleneck due to the number of edit bays or suites available. With remotely-located