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Deep in the heart
of Glendale, California, Renegade Animation is home to some of the
world’s most talented artists. The studio’s strengths lie in personality-based
character animation combined with a strong use of design, achieving a
traditional look with non-traditional tools. These skills have been profiled on
six seasons of Tom and Jerry produced for Warner Bros that were
respectful to the classic Hanna Barbera cartoons of the late 1940s and early
‘50s. The team also parlayed this into two Tom & Jerry features
for HBO Max, animated shorts for Sesame Workshop, and feature production for
Sony Pictures Animation.
Balancing growth
with hybrid workflows
“We’re fortunate to be living through an
amazing time for animation right now driven by streaming services,” says Michael
D’Ambrosio, editorial department manager and lead editor at Renegade Animation.
“We were much more fortunate than the live-action end of the industry. Live
action was shut down during the early stages of the pandemic while all aspects
of animation production were able to continue but with that, came challenges.
Basically, it was trial by fire. We had to figure out a way to work remotely
more efficiently, and that’s where tools like ClearView Flex became
critical.”
Emerging from
lockdowns earlier this year, Renegade is now a hybrid studio with just a
handful of artists in the office at any time. To make this move permanent they
switched their existing streaming review and approval to Sohonet ClearView
Flex.
“We were using
another product which did the job – up to a point,” D’Ambrosio explains. “It
was sub par for us with connectivity and latency issues. There was a high level
of frustration level, particularly with issues of sync.”
This came to a head
at the end of last year when Renegade was working on a Tom and Jerry feature
for HBO Max.
Switching remote streaming solutions for
rock-solid performance
“The film involved
musical numbers. I cut one of them and was quite happy with it. I invited the
director, Darrell VanCitters, into the office for review. To my horror, when we
played it back, the sequence was out of sync by 2, 3 or 4 frames. It was missing
downbeats and some impacts. This is slapstick. This is Tom and Jerry – so you
notice this immediately. Tom is getting walloped, and Jerry is scooting around
and we’re missing all these beats timed with the music.
“I was scratching
my head – did I really cut it this way? I had to send the director away and
knew it would take me some time to trim the scene the way it should be.
“Then it dawned on
me that maybe this had happened because I’d cut it remotely. That was confirmed
when I checked another scene, also cut remotely, which again had frames out of
sync.
“The whole
experience led us to think enough is enough. We needed to change our remote
streaming service.”
Renegade researched
the market, talked with peers, and selected ClearView. “We immediately saw a
difference,” reports D’Ambrosio. “It performed at a much better level for our
needs and essentially gave us the confidence to finish at home.”
When it comes to
performance, ClearView solved one of the bugbears that the team experienced
when working remotely with previous software. “In order to work without latency
or freezes the other product needed to be hard wired. But that wasn’t possible
for our director working at home. ClearView connects over WiFi to a laptop
without any dropout. That right there is a huge advantage.”
Capturing the magic
of in-person creativity
D’Ambrosio also
appreciates that ClearView Flex separates video conference calling from the AV
stream. “It gives you the flexibility to use Zoom or Teams or another video
communications tool while giving you a higher quality representation of what
your work is looking like. It means the director feels more confident, as an
editor I feel more confident, and all round the work is better.”
Another bonus was
its ease of set up. “There is hardware involved but this is a positive since
hardware is usually more stable than a pure software product. And it literally
was plug-and-play. I was up and running in ten minutes, tops. It couldn’t have
been easier.”
He adds, “Those are
the advantages that convinced us to switch to ClearView and why we’re going to
stick with it.”
Renegade has one
ClearView Flex module but says it will buy another as projects scale up for
additional editors and assists.
“Of course, nothing
beats having social interaction with others in the same room. That is still
missing in any form of video calling. But since we have now become a hybrid
home/office studio, in order to maintain this workflow without experiencing
connectivity or latency issues, then ClearView does a much, much better job.”
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