copywritten for Sohonet
Stitch Editing and Bacon VFX on their hunt for high-quality
remote review tool that didn’t compromise the clients viewing experience
— and how they landed on ClearView Flex.
Boutique post-production shops pride themselves on offering
a unique creative environment in which clients can engage with craft artists.
That is at risk if social distancing forces a halt to normal service and places
a potentially damaging strain on relationships.
Stitch Editing faced such a dilemma last March and it took a
little while to overcome. The Santa Monica-based boutique, which shares a
sister facility in Soho, London, works on a range of projects from
commercials, music videos, online content to full length features
often in concert with in-house finishing arm Bacon Visual Effects.
“When Covid-19 hit town and we told everyone to work
remotely, our initial feeling was that we could power through this since it
would only be a few weeks or a couple months,” says Mila Davis,
executive producer, Stitch Editing. “After about three weeks, it became clear
we needed a longer-term solution.”
Stitch had started out by using video conference apps to communicate
and then streaming platforms to view materials as well as experimenting
with dedicated remote video systems.
“None of them were sufficient even in a best-case scenario
to meet our needs,” Davis says. “Some clients and projects require that we work
with outside vendors, like MPC, The Mill or Company 3, and when we began
interacting with them using their remote video solutions. We were able to
experience from the client’s perspective what worked best.”.
Mitch Gardiner, VFX supervisor and senior flame artist at Bacon
Visual Effects admits to being highly sceptical of finding a solution that
would provide the same collaborative experience his clients were accustomed
to.
“When lockdown happened, I was genuinely concerned about not
having face-to-face interaction with clients. The only thing worse than not
having that would be attempting to provide supervised sessions in an incomplete
or compromised way that could result in frustration for our
clients.”
He elaborates, “By offering a finishing division within an
editorial boutique we’ve always insisted that the client’s experience be
the kind of dedicated personal and creative process they expect from a boutique
while providing the same efficiency and technical capacity as the largest
facilities.
“If we were going to be supervised remotely, we had to find a solution that would be as seamless and professional as what the largest studios were using. The experience had to be no different from the client’s perspective. Therefore, the idea of any sort of ‘consumer grade’ solution where content was potentially visible by other people or had quality or latency issues was not acceptable.
“I wanted something designed for broadcast-quality
review with a guaranteed security infrastructure. Even then, one of
the professional solutions we tried dropped the connection in the
middle of the session when one of their servers went down.
That was also a non-starter.”
So concerned was Gardiner to insulate clients from
a compromised experience that he was at first resistant to
live-streaming sessions.
“I really wanted to protect the client’s experience when I
was at the wheel. I didn’t want any latency or quality issues or connectivity
frustrations to reflect poorly on their experience in the session.
“At the beginning of the lockdown, I’d work
unsupervised and post for the client, they
would then review and send to their client. I’d get feedback and make
any changes and we’d repeat the process again and again. It got to
the point where one of my clients, who I’ve worked with in a normal
supervised workflow for 10 years said they needed a more efficient system,
and they didn’t have time for a lengthy posting review process. That’s when our
search for a better way forward really began in earnest.”
Gardiner was looking for two principal things in a remote
review service: high picture quality and ultra-low latency.
“We’re frequently getting down to the level
of individual pixels in the review process,” he explains. “The
client needs to know if what they are evaluating is in the
footage or is a result of compression on their end. To have a system where
you can guarantee a certain level of quality and increase that for a
more granular level of review is very important.
“The second requirement is low latency. Other
systems we tried had anywhere from a 2-8 second delay in picture between the
Flame and the client’s monitor. We are constantly moving
between frames and the client is giving feedback about what
they see on their end – for there to be a delay quickly becomes
maddening. It’s like trying to play soccer with key players reacting
several seconds behind the ball. It’s just not workable.
“ClearView Flex was the only service able to achieve the
same result with our supervised remote sessions as we
had in our studio. The fact that there is no delay in the signal
is critical to me. It’s been working fantastically well.”
Since introducing Sohonet’s solution, Stitch and
Bacon have worked on projects for Honda, Wells Fargo, Electronic
Arts, LG and others. They have also produced the seven-minute
film ‘No Strings Attached’ for Moschino’s spring/summer 2021 collection
produced by Alex Winter and featuring puppets from Jim Henson’s Creature
Shop.
ClearView Flex will remain a permanent fixture not just to
work around Covid-19 health protocols but for simple convenience and
efficiency.
“There are certainly times where there is no substitute for
the one-on-one client relationship with an artist in the room, but
there will always be some sessions that can’t be
or don’t need to be supervised in person,” Gardiner reflects. “I
think our clients have found remote workflows and supervision to be
surprisingly sustainable. Going forward, I would expect a permanent split
between the traditional in-person sessions and
a supervised remote workflow for most projects.”
It has also been beneficial for the Flame artist, not least
in terms of giving him back hours in the day to be more productive.
“After spending 18-years more or less daily in our suites, I
haven’t set foot in Santa Monica in the last 10 months and it’s been
eye-opening to me. After collaborating with the creative teams in this new
workflow, while they take time to present to their client, the
break can allow me to regroup on another project or even
spend a few minutes with my family. For a job that can mean 16- or
18-hour days, that has been incredibly transformative for the way it feels to
be busy.
“Prior to this I’d have two to three hours a day commuting
to the office. When there, if you had downtime with clients in the
room you couldn’t easily switch gears to another project. Even on a busy day
there could be downtime that I couldn’t make use of as much as I’d
like – perhaps to work on a passion project or take care of facility matters.
ClearView has taken that downtime out of the equation.”
Like many Flame artists, Gardiner has worked hard his entire
career to build a reputation and a trust with clients that risked being
undermined by sessions frustrated by inadequate technology.
“Supervised finishing has always been very integral to what
I do and how I do it,” he says. “A good Flame artist develops a strong
relationship with clients so producers, creatives and
directors choose to work with you based on earned trust and respect.
You are not a commodity that can be simply be replaced by another individual.
So, for me, to embrace any sort of modification to how that
relationship develops is significant.
“It took finding ClearView Flex for me to be comfortable
that we had a broadcast level solution for supervised effects, finishing
and color that we could present to clients as a bullet
proof way of working.”
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