Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/541232
www.postmagazine.com 22 POST JULY 2015 and to create the deliverables. With a turnaround time of just one month per episode of Southern Uncovered with the Lee Bros., footage is sent to Trailblazer at the end of each day's shoot; on other shows footage accumu- lates for a week or more. "They're shoot- ing with the new Sony XDCAM PXW-FS7 in XAVC HD S-Log 3," says Roy. "We ran into some snags with the codec initially, but worked through them; the possibility of shooting 4K with the camera was a big draw for future-proofing our content." The series' editors are in New York and LA. They read through Trailblazer's transcripts as they review footage and the producers' show outlines. "They aren't just cutting content, they're creating the shows," says Roy. "There are no producers sitting behind them, so they have the cre- ative freedom to craft the best story. They work at home at their own hours — the flexibility is huge. It's a job I'd like to have!" Remote approvals are done via FTP or Vimeo if producers are on the road and prefer to stream content on their iPad or iPhone. Editors create final flattened timelines and organize the audio tracks then post their bins; Trailblazer pulls them down and re-links the media. The AEs create AAFs and picture lock reference files to send to the audio mix in one of the company's five Avid Pro Tools suites; producers typically come in to watch the final mix-to-picture. Sequences are sent to one of three Avid Symphony suites for color correction and finishing. Southern Uncovered with the Lee Bros. is delivered to Ovation digitally as DNxHD 145 QTs; other shows require HDCAM, HDCAM SR or LTO deliverables. The next step for Trailblazer is elim- inating the need to ship media back and forth. "We are excited about Avid Everywhere, including Avid Interplay Production, Media Central UX and Media Composer Cloud allowing remote editors to connect to our network and access media here instead of us shipping them drives," Roy explains. DIGITAL FILM TREE Hollywood's Digital Film Tree (www. digitalfilmtree.com) developed its own cloud-based remote and collaborative workflow solution for TV producers pur- suing opportunities in locations world- wide. "We wanted to accommodate our clients with a workflow they could use no matter where they were shooting — Vancouver, Atlanta, New York, Toronto, Puerto Rico," says CEO Ramy Katrib. At the core of the solution is ProStack, a user-friendly, media-oriented cus- tomization of OpenStack, which was developed in part by NASA then open sourced for others. "Over two years ago we downloaded OpenStack and started customizing it for our media workflows," says Katrib. "It was a novel thing to do — not many media companies were using OpenStack back then and even now. But we felt it was the best solution for stor- ing the deluge of data we were getting from our shows." Shows that transitioned to file-based media and used up to 20 cameras were "producing a ton of footage. We needed a way to store it and make it accessible for producers and vendors to use as well as studio departments working on the show." "Producers want the same kind of freedom and access to their professional content as they have with their personal content," notes Guillaume Aubuchon, the company's CTO and "the mastermind behind ProStack," according to Katrib. Digital Film Tree clients typically use ProStack in conjunction with Critique, the company's easy-to-use cloud collabora- tion software with enterprise-level secu- rity and in-frame annotation to facilitate review and approval. Critique is accessible with a Web browser, tablet or phone app. Workflows with ProStack are highly modular. "It starts with dailies for some shows, with remote transport and com- pute on the cloud and a quicker path to editorial," says Aubuchon. "Others also use it for remote color, reviewing VFX and finishing. ProStack can grow in a very organic way. It's all about secure access to content from preproduction through production and distribution." The ABC series Mistresses and the Lifetime series UnREAL use ProStack, and now the new TNT action adventure series Agent X, which will premiere this fall and star Sharon Stone, has come onboard. Although the show shoots in LA, the Digital Film Tree solution still delivers maximum efficiency to producer brothers Jamie and Jason Neese, who are based in West Los Angeles, across town from Digital Film Tree's Hollywood location. "We do dailies on the show's arse- nal of imaging devices: Arri Alexa, Red, Canon, GoPro and other cameras," says Katrib. "Once all the data is stored on ProStack, we literally keep every bit of data on the cloud here at Digital Film Tree. We grant [the show] access to their cloud; if another vendor or a depart- ment at the studio needs access, we can arrange that, too." For Agent X, "we transport dailies over the cloud to the show's editors on the Fox lot; we also provide their Avid system rentals," says Katrib. "Everything is ready for them to begin cutting the show the next morning. When they're Digital Film Tree's Guillaume Aubuchon and Patrick Woodard. The studio employs ProStack on ABC's Mistresses. WORKING REMOTELY/COLLABORATIVELY