NEW YORK — Cloud-based dailies review and approval workflows are increasingly being deployed in film and video production. This is particularly true with location shoots, where production companies need to make it easy to review and approve content so the rest of the work can get done efficiently. Checking color, determining if the feel of a shot is just right, or any other myriad elements of creative control are best handled immediately after a shoot, when potentially big fixes can be turned into small, manageable ones.
Sixteen19, a boutique production and post services company, which provides a digital dailies service to filmmakers, used Aframe’s cloud video production platform to expedite digital dailies delivery on two feature films from Scott Rudin Productions: Rosewater, comedian Jon Stewart’s directorial debut, which opened November 2014, and
While We’re Young, scheduled for theatrical release in March 2015 by distribution company A24.
Rosewater is based on the memoir “Then They Came for Me” and recounts Maziar Bahari’s 2009 imprisonment by Iran, following an interview he did on
The Daily Show.
Credit: Laith Majali Distributor OpenRoadFilms
By using a cloud-based approach, Sixteen19 clients were getting dailies at 5 or 6am, instead of noon, and enjoying a fast, easy review on their choice of mobile devices while getting full resolution content to both London and Los Angeles superfast, and from there, right into post production. A team of about 20 executives reviewing the content could make frame-accurate comments on the H.264 proxy that Aframe generates and the metadata would stay intact all the way through to the edit suite.
Because the full resolution content resided in the secure private cloud, specialty post services in Seattle and LA could also access files simultaneously. The cloud also enabled fast and easy review for all different kinds of personalities — some who like drilling into the technology and others who just want to hit a button and comment.
“Having a clear and simple interface can do wonders for making your client happy,” notes Ben Baker, workflow supervisor on the two projects for Sixteen19. A long time workflow consultant, Baker established the firm’s mobile services departments in its New York office, in addition to supervising direct client workflows on the two films.
“Aframe was just so fast, secure and easy to use in getting content to a team of executives that it suited absolutely everyone,” adds Baker, who also put Aframe’s platform to use on two independent features, Crossroads Films’ A Birder’s Guide to Everything, and
Rob the Mob, which was produced by William Teitler.