Building Creative Projects in the Cloud with House of Parliament and Gunpowder

interview and text written for Sohonet

article here

House of Parliament, an independent VFX and creative studio, was founded in early 2020 with a vision of reimagining the concept of the traditional studio. Five years on and the company is a serial award winner working on the highest profile projects. That notoriety includes delivering nine commercials for Super Bowl 2024 in just one month. In the fast-paced world of visual effects (VFX) and creative production, their innovation and adaptability are crucial to Parliament’s success.

Underpinned by over twenty years of experience in high end visual effects, Parliament are experts in consulting, creating and executing visual content to the highest level.

Parliament’s animated work has appeared in prominent productions such as Taylor Swift’s self-directed 2024 VMA Video of the Year for 'Fortnight' featuring Post Malone, and 'Smoke and Mirrors,' awarded the 2024 Prix Ars Electronica’s 'Golden Nica' to conceptual artist Beatie Wolfe. The studio is also a finalist for VFX Company of the Year at the Ad Age Creativity Awards for campaigns including Apple’s 'Flock' directed by Ivan Zacharias for Smuggler, and LAY'S 'The Little Farmer' directed by Taika Waititi for Highdive and Hungryman.

The Power of Collaboration for Speed and Scalability

The Parliament pipeline was built, managed and resourced by their technology partners at Gunpowder; designed to exploit the latest developments for scale, speed and collaboration.

“We are effectively their CTO,” says Founder of Gunpowder Tom Taylor, a leading systems integrator specializing in cloud virtualization solutions. Their role in visualizing and implementing Parliament’s workflow is extensive. “We build the pipelines, we operate the render farm, we help them scale and we help with all the upgrades. We manage billing to ensure projects remain on budget and that the infrastructure is on tap as required and costs don’t spiral.

The key to the success of House of Parliament’s VFX workflow is the virtualized version of Sohonet's real-time review tool ClearView Flex (aka VFlex). Taylor says: “It is exceptionally easy to set up and use which producers love. Since ClearView Flex gives peace of mind to their clients it makes Parliament happy, and it reduces a lot of engineering time for us.”

Solving Critical Connections

A key issue was solving the critical connections for interactions between clients and artists working from home. “We’d jury-rigged open-source tools to get streams at a high enough quality to clients remotely,” reports Taylor. “To be honest we were not consistently successful. Sometimes it would work well, sometimes it would falter. And it always required an engineer to set up and do some tweaking during the session.. We found ourselves constantly trying to make it work. We did not want the clients  to notice, and it was getting to that point.”

In 2022 Gunpowder reached out to Sohonet. Taylor explains, “I knew at the time, the virtualized version of ClearView Flex (VFlex) was operating in AWS, but Parliament was on Google Cloud. Sohonet arranged for us to beta test a version of VFlex in Google and we set it up. From day number one it was like night and day.

“The producer suddenly had control. It was easy enough and clear enough that they could then manage the sessions. The clients were happy because it looked great, and they were also using a tool that they were familiar with. You can’t overestimate the importance of this. Lots of clients had used ClearView Flex all over the world and they were excited to use it when we presented it to them.

“The clients wanted it. We wanted it. Sohonet delivered it for us - in Google, specifically - so that we could move forward. We've got very smart engineers who tried to build this but in the end for peace of mind of the clients and for ourselves we ended up using VFlex and we haven't looked back.”

The result: smoother collaboration, less downtime, and happier clients.

Benefits of VFlex

VFlex has become an essential part of Parliament’s daily workflow, allowing artists to work with Autodesk Flame, Houdini, and Maya in a virtualized environment. Its reliability in maintaining color accuracy and quality across devices has significantly enhanced client satisfaction and streamlined the creative process. 

 “Now, we didn’t need engineers to set up sessions,” says Taylor. “We are no longer relying on open-source tools that risk disrupting our workflow. Think of it this way: we had a whole chain of plug-ins that were our version of VFlex. To get that chain working took a lot of effort. And, if any one of those pieces got updated it would quite often break something else in the chain. We were operating in a  very unstable structure for sending daily reviews out on for clients, crossing our fingers to see if it would work.

“With VFlex, it’s 180-degrees different. It's a known product and clients are very comfortable with it. They know that if they’re watching a ClearView stream that it’s going to be excellent quality, and we know it's not going to lag. Plus, it’s going to be color accurate.”

Ensuring artists and clients are seeing the thing is a perennial issue with distributed workflows but not when VFlex is part of the solution.

“Colorimetry is notoriously tricky when you have some people on an iPad, others on an iPhone or laptop and sitting on the other side of the world. Getting that consistency of viewing experience is exceedingly difficult,” Taylor says. “VFlex gives us peace of mind. We know that the source signal is consistent across any device that the client wants to connect from.”

‍The Cloud-First Mentality

House of Parliament launched in March of 2020 with a roster of high-profile projects signed and ready to go. Notably, this included production on multiple 2024 Super Bowl commercials. With everything set, the global pandemic enforced lockdown just one week later. 

“They weren't able to get a lease on office space or obtain infrastructure or equipment,” says Taylor. “We had to scramble, fast, and figure out how we were going to do this.”

Cloud postproduction studios were not a new concept at that time, but none had left on-premises workstations entirely. Out of necessity, Parliament had to pioneer a cloud-first mentality.

Gunpowder tackled the problem head-on, talking with cloud providers and using available infrastructure. In a matter of weeks, they had built an alpha cloud studio that enabled Parliament to scale out to 100 artists across different regions and get the commercials done and dusted for Super Bowl LV.

Post Super Bowl, still in the pandemic, Gunpowder reviewed the infrastructure and began to evolve it. “The first few months were definitely a scramble,” Taylor recalls. “We needed this to work irrespective of the issues we encountered. It was trial by fire.”

Scale for Super Bowl

While no two projects are the same, Gunpowder built a core pipeline for Parliament that can scale. VFlex is integral to each one.

Taylor says: “Each department has a volume control in it, if you will, and depending on a job’s ebbs and flows we turn it up or down. That can be multi-region. It can be different countries. If they want to hire a specific designer who's in Australia to produce a certain look, we can get that person in front of the project within minutes. We are literally able to grab a slider bar and drag it up and get 100 extra machines online in three minutes.”

This flexibility enabled Parliament to more than triple in size to accommodate the increase in work, involving over 300 artists, 2 PB of data, and thousands of hours of rendering to complete nine spots ahead of Super Bowl LVIII 2024—all over the course of just six weeks.

“One of the nicest compliments we received from Parliament was that they didn't even have to think about doing this. The key to VFlex is that it is easy to set up. It just works. Producers love to use it, and it makes our clients happy.”

‍Template for Success

Parliament recently opened a design department and is working with Gunpowder to explore the integration of real-time workflows. “Design and post workflows are traditionally kept separate but we’re bringing the two together so that our 3D artists can benefit from being able to model quickly in tools like Unreal and then bring those tools back into Maya.”

Separately, Gunpowder has taken the cloud template and applied it for clients outside media and entertainment in sports verticals for architecture firms, toy manufacturers and more.

“We not only help legacy creative VFX studios accelerate their transition to dynamic cloud-based operations and workflows, but our goal is also to free production teams to concentrate on delivering their best creative work, by taking care of the cloud infrastructure and management.”

House of Parliament’s partnership with Gunpowder exemplifies how cloud-based solutions can redefine creative production. By focusing on robust infrastructure and reliable client interactions, the studio has set a benchmark for the VFX industry, showcasing how innovation and collaboration lead to success.

Enginelab and the new breed of cloud postproducer

Enginelab and the new breed of cloud postproducer

article here

It takes a brave soul to launch a new VFX facility given the meltdown at one of the industry’s largest, but creative entrepreneurs conversant with cloud economics are confident that there are good opportunities to be grasped.

UK startup Enginelab is the latest of a new breed of postproduction company designed around facilities in the cloud and powered by AI.

Two of its three founders come from Untold Studios which broke ground in 2018 establishing the world's first cloud-native creative studio with a template of cloud render nodes and virtual workstations.

Sam Reid was CTO of the initial Untold team helping grow the company from a handful of employees to several hundred bringing international business to its creative services from commercial brands, pop artists, studios and streamers.

“I've learned a thing or two about how to how to work in the cloud and how to how to make the cloud work for media and entertainment,” says Reid. “We're cautiously optimistic that increased volumes of work are coming back into the market and that new studios are going to pop up that will need next generation technology, solutions and workflows to support them.”

Describing Enginelab as a full-service independent technology business he adds, “We don't need edit suites. We not going to be hiring artists. We're going to be providing the infrastructure for studio businesses and we’re going to be the technology experts they can call upon for guidance and leadership.”

Joining Reid in the venture is colleague and senior developer from Untold Daniel Goller; and Matt Herman who founded roto and paint shop Trace VFX before selling it to Technicolor in 2016.  Subsequently, Herman took animation and visual effects outfit Psyop from multiple on-prem studios to a fully cloud and remote operation, expanding the business by opening lightweight facilities in Mexico City, Berlin and Hamburg.

“Because we have [set up facilities] once before we should be able to do it again but a lot quicker,” Reid says. “We’re also going to use AI to help us do that.”

Specifically, Enginelab will use AI to automate processes. “AI helps with technical manipulation, the really boring, mundane jobs that an artist would have to do so they can focus more on their craft,” Reid explains. “I’ve have spent a lot of time at Untold evangelising and implementing AI workflows. Now I’m keen to unlock efficiencies in workflows for other businesses. For example, AI can write code a lot more efficiently and a lot better too.”

It’s not too much of a stretch to suggest that the recent collapse of Technicolor is end of the line for post models with volumes of real estate, thousands of employed staff and huge overheads. It is being replaced by leaner organisations where infrastructure is for hire to be tailored per project and scaled up or down as required.

“It's all very well shutting everything down and minimising spend, but you need to be able to quickly kick it back into motion when you get a big project that needs lots of render nodes, for example,” Reid says. “You also have to be comfortable doing it, because it’s one thing knowing you can do it, but you need to have the team around you who know how to do that properly so you don't end up with huge bills and in situations you find it very difficult to get out of.”

In his obituary to Technicolor, Michael Elson, COO at MPC from 1998 to 2008, said The Mill was “founded by visionaries and powered by super talent, ravished by neglect”. MPC, he said, was “killed by a management so adrift it’s criminal”. Of Technicolor itself Elson concluded, “A corporate behemoth was never equipped to deal [with] a world that requires you to be light on your feet and adaptable.”

Reid and Herman are alumni of The Mill, both starting out their careers there in the engineering departments. They are wary of not making the same mistakes as its parent.

“It’s about staying lean and not falling into a trap of huge overheads by being able to adapt to dips in work,” Reid says. “Cloud technology helps with that because you can be very in control of the costs.”

He adds, “I really enjoyed working at The Mill and it’s sad to see what's happened to it. It's where I fell in love with technology. One thing I’ve learned is that when our backs are against the wall everyone bands together. You can see it happening right now. We're having some really interesting conversations with people about setting up new studios and hopefully we'll be able to help them.

“The future is definitely much less about having a physical presence and owning kit. The facilities are disposable to be honest.

“People are the assets and always have been in this industry. We need to protect them because they are the ones that drive value.”

Enginelab are optimistic that the industry as a whole has turned a corner on the last few years of Covid, strikes and economic downturn.  It has its eye too on the 29.25% tax credit for UK VFX that comes into effect on 1 April 2025 (and is backdated for activity after Jan 1 2025). It probably won't receive Royal Assent until late March.

“There zero chance it will fail at this point,” Neil Hatton, CEO, UK Screen Alliance tells IBC365. “HMRC, however, won't issue guidance until it's written in law and there are signs that this is causing some clients to hang back on commitment until they are 100% certain of what is claimable.”

Reid highlights the increasing global and transient nature of the workforce and shifts in locating productions to soak up different tax benefits.

“We hope to see a lot more studios come to the UK especially for films and HETV work. The key to success in 2025 is being able to work with pockets of people around the world. Our challenge is how to make it a seamless and frictionless process.”

They aspire to emulate the business model of Untold which spans longform as much as shortform work.

“With a longform project you are looking at many months to potentially years of work, so things like managing the data  become a lot more of a challenge and more of a focus point. Advertising can be started and finished within a few weeks. The challenge here is to be very efficient and render shots quickly.

“We should be able to set up a very secure environment for creatives to focus on what they do best while we make the technology work really hard for them. Those artists could be in Boston or Cape Town as equally as they might be north of London.”

Having established a relationship with AWS at Untold, Reid says it starts as Enginelab’s preferred cloud provider. “If a customer wants to use a different cloud provider then we'll be agnostic. I'm not a cloud salesman, I'm a technologist. We want to work with businesses to craft them the best technology solution that could be in the cloud or it could be on prem or it could be both.”

“If it was a full cloud environment with render, storage and workstations there for maximum efficiency we can also help businesses work together. If more people use the same platform we can create some smart automations and ways of sharing data.

“For example, a big feature film might want to engage us to host their data and we would securely serve data and functionalities out to different vendors on that show. Certainly, there will be a power in numbers if everyone is using the same infrastructure.”

 

Relo Metrics Gets up to Speed with F1 Sponsorship

Streaming Media

article here

As sports move online and sponsorship investment follows tracking on-screen brand exposure need to keep pace, not easy when logos are travelling at 200 Mph. Relo Metrics is using a new AI-powered tool to do just this for millions of sponsorship placements in real-time with expansion into other motorsports and then European football leagues to follow.

“F1 is our first truly global sport,” says CEO Jay Prasad. “Every race weekend it gets 100 million viewers around the world. We’ve plans to expand into other motorsport series like Formula E, WEC, and MotoGP. European football is probably where we're heading next.”

According to the SportsPro ‘Formula One 2024 Business Report,’ F1 is experiencing explosive commercial growth and attracting 100+ million weekly viewers, a global audience comparable to the annual Super Bowl. Sponsorship spend across F1 and its teams for the 2025 season is projected to reach more than $2.9 billion, an increase of ten percent year-over-year (YoY), according to a recent study by Ampere Analysis.

Debuting at the Australian Grand Prix, Relo’s Census platform enables brands, teams, and agencies to track sponsorship performance instantly and optimise investments mid-season.

“Motorsport in general has some inherent challenges to it because it's not two teams playing one another like on a football pitch,” says Prasad. “Each [branded car] is very different from one another.”

Formula One runs 10 teams, Moto GP has 11 and NASCAR can field up to 17 teams with multiple cars interweaving with one another at high speed. This clearly creates challenges attempting to track things accurately. In addition, the circuits and grand stands are outfitted with LEDs and signage some of which are virtual assets input into the broadcast stream.

“Because of these inherent challenges we’ve invested further in computer vision-based AI to build neural network models to train our models and basically solve this problem,” says Prasad.

Specifically, Relo has doubled memory capacity and throughput by upgrading to Nvidia’s multi-modal AI model, to train on larger datasets more efficiently.

Traditional methods struggle to accurately capture fast-moving brand placements on cars traveling at over 200+ mph, often relying on manual annotation or delayed post-race analysis.

“From a quality standpoint, just because [a logo] appeared on screen doesn't necessarily mean it had value. If it's totally blurry, then it doesn't have value. Virtual assets could also be animated.”

The camera angles offered by the host broadcast are already designed to maximise the amount of time sponsor logos are on screen.

“Measurement has to keep up with this,” says Prasad. “There are also inserts of driver cameras [point of view cameras from the car cockpit] which our model also takes into account.”

Relo applies scene detection frame by frame across a feed of the host broadcast feed as the race is played out live. It runs three detection models simultaneously. One to detect the logo, another to understand logo placement (such as is it a car or a billboard), and a third sponsor recognition model that classifies each logo that gets detected and says what brand it is by probability

“You have logo, placement, and rights holder.  We have to create a taxonomy of all the placements on the car, the track, and the driver and then track what's happening across all those variables using this advanced model.”

However, at such speeds even the computer vision can still get it wrong. “We can analyze the race data live to deliver initial sponsorship scores but we will then do additional quality processing post-race to deliver a final report. We correct errors with manual checks. We do reinforcement with humans in the loop and the more mistakes we correct, the smarter [the machine] becomes.”

Relo also calculate the media value by factoring in viewership numbers (which are not just global figures but which compare how viewers in different geographic areas).

“There's a bit of a lag in getting those numbers. We can analyze some things fairly quickly and get it up to 95% accuracy level and then for final publication we apply viewing figures.”

Relo Metrics also parses the data through social media. “There’s an important window immediately after the race when things go viral. We can capture all the activity in social and digital sports and news websites.”

The idea is for brands to gain greater understanding into the value of their investment when their logo is exposed for fractions of a second a time on screen.

“Instead of just reporting total values for posts or partners, we delve into the specifics to uncover potential hidden value. This approach allows for a deeper understanding of how each element contributes to overall sponsorship effectiveness, revealing insights that might otherwise go unnoticed.”

Relo Metrics analytics software is licenced directly brands and means brands can now compare F1 sponsorship performance analysis and comparison across multiple sports leagues and media environments.

“Expanding Relo Census into F1 is about more than just tracking sponsorship exposure; it’s about bringing motorsports into a larger ecosystem of sponsorship valuation,” Prasad says.

“We built Census so that brands could benchmark views across sports,” Prasad says. “We started with the major North American sports and built computer vision models for the NFL and NBA then WNBA and MLS. Now we’re adding NWSL and more and more professional sports. That means we've created a syndicated set of placements in those sports. Multinational brands are looking for a more advanced capability and measurement so they can track and compare their investments across multiple sports. And they want F1 to be a part of the way they're analysing their sponsorships overall.”

Allied Market Research shows sports sponsorship is projected to reach $151.4 billion by 2032.

“Say you’re a marketing lead at a bank and thinking about investing in a sport and you are thinking the Northeast U.S. is a good market for you, you might want to know which other brands are active in the Northeast and what share of voice do they have across what sport and what placement is driving all the value. We judge for clarity, for duration, for share of voice. Many different factors go into our quality score.”

Relo already works with two NASCAR teams and plan to adapt its model for any motorsport.

“We are confident that we'll be able to keep adapting what we've built so that we can offer this level of granularity and scale to all motorsports.”

F1 sponsorship

Teams account for 72% of total sponsorship revenue, with corporate F1 deals contributing the remainder.

The average number of sponsors per team is 32. McLaren leads with 51 unique partners. The Williams’ title sponsorship deal with Australian software corporation Atlassian is the largest team asset sold for the upcoming season so far. Ampere estimates this to be worth between $25-35m annually.

French luxury goods company LVMH announced a 10-year sponsorship deal with Formula 1 starting in 2025, valued at over $100 million a year.  Its brands include Louis Vuitton, Moët Hennessy and TAG Heuer.

Technology and financial service brands (cryptocurrency, software/SaaS and gambling) are the largest investors of new sponsorship deals signed for the 2025 season. They include American Express entering its first full season as a F1 Global partner and IBM with Scuderia Ferrari.