Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1527843
24 CGW J U LY • A U G U S T • S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 4 f aster workows don't have to mean that creative quality suf- fers. With the right approach—it's an all-round win. Production and post-production workows have evolved at a breathtaking speed over the last few years. Some of this rap- id development came about because the industry needed to pivot during the pandemic, and some was caused by the economic im- peratives of smaller budgets and increasingly mobile and ephemeral audiences. As habits evolve, so must our response to them. There's never been a time when change was more needed. But happily, there's also never been a time when such amazingly powerful and appropriate solutions were available. Speed vs. storytelling To embrace new opportunities, we ‚rst need to dispel the idea that a faster workow jeopardizes creativity. Capturing, editing, and sharing stories faster doesn't have to mean compromise. With the technolo- gy now available to deliver great quality content in less time, creators can focus on what they do best—visual storytelling. Production and post-production technology has reached new heights, driven by improvements in networking, mobile communica- tions, storage, and processing. Each of these improvements boosts every other technology, and the overall e†ect is multiplicative. Trans- lation: you don't add the changes together; you multiply them, all of which adds up to extremely rapid progress. Creativity in the cloud Not too long ago, camera-to-cloud workows were essentially seen as science ‚ction and then—at best—experimental. They certainly weren't mainstream. There wasn't enough bandwidth, and it wasn't widely available. Today, multi-gigabit broadband is widespread in cities, ultra-ef- ‚cient codecs like H.265 are freely available, and even in places where there is zero infrastructure, low-latency LEO (low Earth orbit) satellites can be seen from almost anywhere on Earth. Mobile con- nectivity is no longer rationed to high-population hotspots but now envelopes the planet like an intelligent and adaptive digital blanket. But even with the infrastructure in place, in the experimental days of camera-to-cloud (C2C), so–ware applications with consistent hardware weren't available. Every example of camera-to-cloud was a bespoke set-up, each with its own foibles and shortcomings. Some types of content creation would have been impossible without C2C workows, either because of time constraints or be- cause of the lack of collaborative working. Today's state-of-the-art solutions are very di†erent. The technology at the core of C2C is now robust and reliable, and it allows creative professionals to do their jobs better than ever before. Collaboration across the globe Collaborative working can improve almost any creative situation by removing delays so that teams can work in parallel. Real-time col- laboration enables creative teams to access and work on footage immediately a–er it's captured, enhancing e˜ciency and productiv- ity. C2C accelerates the post-production process by eliminating the need for physical media transfer, allowing for quicker feedback and decision-making. As well as providing scalable storage solutions that can easily accommodate large amounts of high-resolution footage, adapting to the needs of various projects. The cloud is geographically agnostic, so teams can be distributed across the globe with the same degree of access. But even on a local scale, C2C can deliver huge bene‚ts. At the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, where there are dozens of events each day, a production crew is tasked with making a "daily reel" that summarizes the day's activ- ities. Logistically, this is challenging—with multiple crews out in the ‚eld, bringing vast amounts of material to a central production hub for editing and distribution. Without C2C, the crews would have to physically move their footage to the hub at the end of the day, and the editors would sit up all night, si–ing through the material before cutting it together in a ‚nished reel. But with C2C, the process is much slicker. Camera crews send their material to the editors while they are shooting. Editors start work within seconds of the action, with as many working simultane- ously on the production as necessary. If there is no need to transfer ‚les manually, then the logistical headaches melt away. Meanwhile, chains of approval and review also become real-time operations. OUTLOOK CREATIVITY MEETS SPEED BY STEVE WISE, GLOBAL MARKETING DIRECTOR, ATOMOS