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Using the Cloud FX's Sons of Anarchy uses the DAX cloud solution to distribute dailies. Associate producer Grace Whitehouse is inset. screen. That was pretty fast." He describes The Darkest Matter as "'Lord of the Flies' in space. A group of kids get evacuated off a spaceship and their escape pod gets damaged, so they dock to the closest life-sustaining vessel, which is a derelict space station," he explains. Outside of the actors and props they hold in their hands, everything is CG. "Even the chairs are CG," says Fox. "It was shot entirely in the studio and has all CG backgrounds." The project marked a bit of an experiment for Dawnrunner, one in which they could see the feasibility of using entirely-CG Adobe delivers Creative Cloud SAN JOSE — Adobe's (www.adobe.com) new flagship offering, Creative Cloud, is now available. The desktop applications allow creative files to be stored and shared, via Creative Cloud, on Mac OS, Windows, iOS and Android. In addition, Behance, an online creative community, is now integrated with Creative Cloud, so users can showcase their work, get feedback, and gain global exposure. With the new Creative Cloud desktop app, a user's media is synced and organized across their desktop, Website and mobile devices. Individual members receive 20GBs of storage. Behance allows members to publish their portfolios, follow other creatives, and publish work-in-progress. Over 1.4 million creatives globally are part of the Behance network. This update to Creative Cloud includes the next generation of 15 Adobe desktop apps, including Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and Premiere Pro. Premiere Pro CC users will find new editing features, along with customizations and improvements to help them work more efficiently. Premiere Pro CC integrates color workflows, with the addition of the Lumetri Deep Color Engine to easily apply rich color grading looks. A new version of After Effects CC allows motion graphics and VFX artists to work more easily in 3D with the new Live 3D Pipeline with Maxon Cinema 4D integration. There are also all-new versions of Adobe SpeedGrade CC, Audition CC, Prelude CC and Story CC Plus. 26 Post • July 2013 sets. "It saved a lot of money on set building," he notes. "[But] we had a very intense post process. It's kind of apples and oranges. You are saving money in one place and spending it in the next." Dawnrunner recently started work on its next project, a sci-fi space epic that will be shot in and around the coastal hills of the Bay Area. Terminus will also make use of greenscreen techniques, if to a slightly lesser extent than The Darkest Matter. It will also take advantage of Nvidia's Grid VCA, "We've been doing some of the cloud editing and VFX using Grid. It's been really amazing," says Fox. The studio has been working with Nvidia over the past year, and Fox even participated in a Grid introduction at the Nvidia-led GTC show in San Jose earlier this year. "We had tried some remote computing stuff before and it never really worked," he recalls. "You always had that screen lag that made it impractical to use for something as precision-oriented as post production work. But I really don't see much of a difference from dialing into the Grid and using their workstation as opposed to using a $6,000 workstation. A lot of that depends on network settings. I can't go to Starbucks and work from Starbucks well, but at home I don't see any difference. You eliminate the transferring of files and you get this homogenization of software and plug-ins because it's all built on the Grid already. My laptop is just an interface." Trying to scale up a crew for The Darkest Matter revealed how difficult it was to bring in freelancers, each with their own unique software set up. "When we'd bring people in, they would have newer versions of the software or plug-ins, and when we tried to get them files, they wouldn't run," he recalls. "It because an IT nightmare and our big, powerhouse VFX supervisor had to take a step back from the creative process and just manage the IT." It was here that he realized the value of the Grid, which would provide each user with the same software and performance. "I am running 3DS Max on my MacBook Air! That's what I am talking about with the homogenization of workflow. I can't tell you how much time and pain it saved us." Fox also notes the value of the Grid, which he estimates to be a $39,000 hardware purchase, along with a $4,500 per-year license. "If you only have one person in the office, that person can utilize all 16 or 32 GPUs and ram that power into whatever they are working on. I hate sacrificing an www.postmagazine.com entire workstation that is built to render incredible simulations for someone to use Photoshop. So if I can take one GPU out of the Grid and have 10 people using Photoshop, that's even better. Then I have 15 other cards that I can use for After Effects and 3DS Max. It's that flexibility that the Grid offers that workstations just don't have." He says he is constantly asked for his opinion on using the Grid versus a local workstation and says, ultimately, he feels the best configuration is a combination of both. "I tell people to limit the workstations they get. Do the math: if you have 16 users on one Grid for $40,000, as opposed to [16] $6,000 workstations? Sixteen times $6,000 is a lot more." Grid is a good match for Dawnrunner's decentralized approach to post. The studio rented a soundstage for its work on The Darkest Matter, but has big plans for the future. Fox says he just bought 50 acres of land in Fresno County that he'll use to build his soundstage of the future. "We'll call it Dawnrunner Ranch," he says, with a nod to another famous VFX studio. SONS OF ANARCHY Sample Digital, which rebranded to the name Dax (www.daxcloud.com) recently, has a cloud-based review and approval system that's being used by the likes of Warner Bros., Fox and CBS. Scripted television is the company's bread and butter, says account representative Morgan Swift, though Dax has also expanded to support unscripted television as well as film work. Mad Men, The Walking Dead, The Good Wife, Person of Interest, NCIS and Sons of Anarchy all use Dax's solution as does Lionsgate on the feature film side of the business. Swift says the company's motto is "Your Media Universe," where productions can safely store and share dailies, cuts and documents too. Pricing can run from $1,000 to $2,000 per show, which includes up to 50 seats, each with a very specific level of access. Dax is Flash based, so anyone with a Mac or PC running an up-to-date version of Flash can review and approve footage from their computer. The company also offers an iPad application, that Swift says has become very popular since it was introduced two years ago thanks to its ease of use. Shows that employ Dax upload H.264 video to the company's LA-based servers. "We don't do any compression of the video when you upload it," explains Swift. "When you export from your Avid or Final Cut Pro system, that's what it's going to look like online." Dax sends the production an Excel file to