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At a time when media and entertainment faces changes from
everywhere all at once, MovieLabs offers a clearer vision and path for the
future. For two decades it has built practical solutions to real world problems
by working closely together with industry stakeholders. It’s an approach
that has produced tangible results. Whether lifting media out of proprietary
silos, mapping a path toward collaboration in the cloud or guiding the secure,
interoperable use of artificial intelligence, the primary focus is never about
technology for technology’s sake. It is to empower creative teams to be able to
achieve more. If workflows can adapt to new situations and technologies, then
creativity can be more flexible. If production processes are automated and sped
up without losing creative control, there’s simply more of the most precious
resource – time.
Despite its foundation by Hollywood Studios with the name
‘Movie’ in the title, these ideas have resonated far beyond film and TV. In
January 2025, the independent research lab launched the MovieLabs Industry
Forum to embrace new members with companies spanning technology to talent, from
global industry leader to start-up. The collective aim is to enable creativity
with greater efficiency and flexibility, in the knowledge that no one company
can do so alone. “The MovieLabs 2030 Vision is now the industry’s vision for
the future of media creation,” says Richard Berger, MovieLabs’ CEO.
The MovieLabs origin story
At the time of founding in 2006, the film and TV industry
was beginning a generational transition away from physical media to digital
delivery. This required the entire infrastructure for distribution and
protection to be standardized and upgraded with more efficient, more secure
workflows using the latest technologies and software systems. For 15 years the
organization’s efforts were central to a number of standards, common
specifications and best practices that streamlined and automated distribution chains
and secured creative assets. The goal was always to deliver new experiences to
viewing audiences worldwide. Its achievements include a suite of specifications
for online distribution (MovieLabs Digital Distribution Framework / MDDF) and
the Entertainment ID Registry (EIDR), a universal unique identifier for content
that automated digital distribution of film and TV titles just as UPC codes had
revolutionized traditional retail. Both technologies won technical Emmy’s for
their contribution to the industry. Further work devising the Enhanced Content
Protection (ECP) scheme helped secure digital content for consumer distribution
of new formats including UltraHD and HDR. Widely implemented since 2013, the
latest updates to ECP were published in August 2024 in response to evolving
threats.
Launching the 2030 Vision
In 2019, while continuing to innovate in distribution,
MovieLabs opened a parallel track in media creation. Building on its heritage
as a forum for cross company cooperation, MovieLabs engaged its studio members
and, crucially, the wider production, postproduction and technology community.
It quickly found alignment around a bold vision that extended production, post
and VFX into the cloud, commonly referred to as the MovieLabs 2030 Vision. It
helped that MovieLabs is an independent non-profit. Since it doesn’t make
products or services it is not in competition with any of the companies it
works with, clearing the way to focus on a common agenda. “We could bring in
market competitors to sit side by side in our meetings and on our panels,” says
Berger. “We have competing cloud companies and creative application companies
talking together. This is essential to achieve interoperability. Our formula is
to be very transparent about where we’re going and what we’re doing.” The
outcome was a blueprint for the evolution of media creation. This 10-year plan
for a more efficient media pipeline established principals for moving all
assets to the cloud, for a security and access methodology based on Zero Trust
and for standardized deployment of software-defined workflows.
Additionally, MovieLabs has released the Ontology for Media
Creation (OMC) and continues to extend its functionality. The OMC is a set of
defined terms and a common data model enabling interoperability between people,
organizations, and software. “Creative enablement is at the heart of what we’re
doing,” explains Berger. “We want to facilitate more secure, efficient, and
interoperable media creation workflows where creators can choose
whichever tools and services they want and just know they’ll work seamlessly
together. We’re enabling friction-free collaboration from wherever you are and
whatever tools you’re on.” Fortunately, MovieLabs developed the concept before
COVID hit when the entire world had to pivot to remote distributed connections
overnight. In a post-pandemic world everyone understands there are many good
reasons to keep doing it this way. Eddie Drake, SVP/CTO of Disney Studio
Technology says, “The economic landscape has changed, but the Vision is still
extremely relevant. While we have to be more efficient, we also have to enable
the best experiences we can for the creative community.”
Practical action, tangible benefits
The 2030 Vision was never a prediction or a proscription;
instead, it is the ‘North Star’ and blueprint to guide the industry. “The
reason why the 2030 mission is still relevant is because it is a set of
principles for making the future what we want it to be,” says Drake. Since
every cog in the machine is moving at a different pace it was always likely
that the transition in some parts of the industry will happen into the next
decade. At the same time, dozens of companies have already implemented parts of
the Vision. MovieLabs has been collecting some of these case studies as public
reference points under the 2030 Showcase Program. This series of case studies
recognizes an array of organizations including Lionsgate, Riot Games, Marvel
Studios, the Royal Opera House and Accenture that are applying emerging cloud
and production technologies in accordance with 2030 Vision principles.
MovieLabs is now working on the next phase of
implementation. The 2030 Greenlight program matches technology companies with
service providers and creatives to build and deploy solutions to everyday
challenges and inefficiencies using the 2030 Vision as a template. According to
Berger, “This process highlights gaps in the 2030 Vision, providing an honest
assessment of what went well, where the industry needs to improve, and how the
vendor community can help in solving issues.” “While we’ve made meaningful progress,
there’s still important work ahead for the industry,” says Drake. “I’m excited
to see the solutions we’ll build together.”
Dealing with the security challenge
Perhaps the biggest hurdle in the 2030 roadmap is production
security. Swapping out decades of ingrained thinking in terms of locking down a
physical facility to one based on a Zero Trust approach to data on a network is
a monumental piece of change management. Berger explains, “Productions are
naturally very risk-averse so changes to any aspect is very challenging. Most
security today isn’t security by design. It is security as an add-on after the
workflow has been designed. There’s a perception that better security will get
in the way of the creative process but doesn’t need to be the case.”
MovieLabs has prioritized a Zero Trust education program and
has also partnered with the Trusted Partner Network (TPN) which writes and
maintains Motion Picture Association content security best practices. One of
MovieLabs’ key messages is the principle of ‘least privilege’. This fundamental
concept in information security states that a user, process, or program should
have access to only the specific data, resources, and applications necessary to
perform its intended function. Least privilege aims to minimize the risk of
unauthorized access and misuse of sensitive information. “Security requires a
lot of planning,” says Drake. “Applying Zero Trust to legacy infrastructure is
tough. It’s easier when we can look at greenfield opportunities and design Zero
Trust from scratch without legacy facilities.”
Industry Forum for dialogue
Work on developing and implementing the 2030 Vision is
grounded in the MovieLabs Industry Forum. This provides a safe space for
vendors and their clients to come together in frank discussions about
interoperability, cloud workflows and metadata exchange. “Forum members can be
there to tell us of a solution or advise on what we need to do to make the
Vision a reality,” says Drake. “For us, the Forum is invaluable because we can
provide insights that inform vendor roadmaps. We can talk about the technology
challenges that we’re seeing with vendors who can then bring that information
back to their dev teams and react to it.” He adds, “We also hear a lot from
vendors that it’s much easier to enhance their products to reach the goals of
the Vision when studios are all aligned. At the end of the day, we need to be
working together to move the industry forward.” Yoshikazu Takashima, SVP
Advanced Technology at Sony Pictures Entertainment agrees; “MovieLabs has
access to a wide community of creatives, technologists and academics who can
collectively test ideas far quicker than we could alone. We appreciate the
honest, direct feedback we get at the Forum.”
Future media creation through 2030
As technology has converged and video as a communications
tool has become ubiquitous, a far wider community of technology companies and
creative businesses have coalesced around the 2030 Vision. The MovieLabs
Industry Forum has expanded to facilitate common ground for any company that is
actively re-inventing and re-tooling their supply chains in alignment with the
2030 Vision. Nearly 50 organizations as diverse as Final Draft, United Talent
Agency, Prime Focus Technologies, and Bria.ai have joined forces with the
Forum’s Leadership Council (Adobe, AWS, Avid, Dolby, DreamWorks Animation,
Microsoft, Paramount Global, Skywalker Sound, Slalom, Sony Pictures
Entertainment, The Walt Disney Studios, Universal Pictures, and Warner Bros.
Discovery) to shape the future. The door is open to technology and creative
service providers, application developers, production companies, and
infrastructure providers. “Only by embracing expertise across the entire
digital media value chain will the industry be able to align on, collaborate
and solve issues common to all,” affirms Leon Silverman, Chair of the MovieLabs
Industry Forum. Where some see only uncertainty and fragmentation, the
MovieLabs Industry Forum points toward the future of media production.
Artificial Intelligence and 2030 Vision
No issue is more urgent than assessing the impact of
Artificial Intelligence. There are many dimensions to the technology so it’s
worth stressing that MovieLabs’ focus is on how AI can be applied in the
context of helping achieve the 2030 Vision. “We coined the term IA (Intelligent
Automation) as a powerful combination with AI,” says Berger. “That pairing can
be very effective in taking some of the mundane tasks out of the workflow.
Using AI for more creative tasks is a choice for creative teams like any other
creative technology.” Pertinent questions for MovieLabs Industry Forum include
‘Can AI enhance interoperability?’ ‘Is there a common approach to improving
GenAI outputs?’ ‘Would a standard vocabulary for training AI models be
beneficial?’ And ‘How do you track the provenance of creations from both GenAI
and humans within a workflow’? Since AI introduces new threats and security
considerations – as well as potential solutions for defence – the risk and
merits for content protection is another key consideration.
At a crucial point in the industry’s evolution MovieLabs
stands as a beacon for collaboration for a future that honors the past while
embracing innovation. “It is essential to continue to embrace emerging
technologies in ways that empower storytellers and the entire creative
community,” Silverman says. “While much work lies ahead, we are gathering the
right companies and voices to realize the 2030 Vision future that has inspired
so many.” James Crossland, EVP, Head of Global Content Operations at Warner Bros.
Discovery, concludes, “We’ve got a huge change management challenge in front of
us, but if there is a through line, we will find it in the MovieLabs Industry
Forum. We will do our part to continue the mission to apply the 2030 Vision and
as we find more and more use cases you will see an accelerating groundswell of
adoption.”
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