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TL;DR
- Mark Turner, program director of production technology at MovieLabs, discusses the principles behind the MovieLabs 2030 Vision Initiative and how it aims to transform motion picture production.
- Turner believes that moving all aspects of production, including scripts and metadata, to the cloud is necessary to remove inefficiencies and increase scalability. He also identifies the movement of media assets as one of the biggest problems with current production workflows.
- The Common Security Architecture for Production (CSAP) is a “Zero Trust” approach to managing assets and workflows that forms a foundational part of the 2030 Vision.
- Software-defined workflows enable flexible, dynamic workflows that can be modified mid-stream to make productions more efficient.
Videos in “The Future of Production Amplified” Series:
- The Future of Production Amplified: How Real-Time Graphics Are Changing the Face of Film and Television Production
- The Future of Production Amplified: Pushing the Limits of Virtual Production
- The Future of Production Amplified: Bringing Digital Humans into the Spotlight
- The Future of Production Amplified: Bringing Finishing to the Cloud
- The Future of Production Amplified: Delivering Broadcast-Quality Graphics to Creators Everywhere
- The Future of Production Amplified: ETC@USC Takes Virtual Production into the Cloud with “Fathead”
- The Future of Production Amplified: How Open Source Is Taking Hollywood by Storm
- The Future of Production Amplified: Moving Middle Earth to the Cloud with “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”
- The Future of Production Amplified: How ETC@USC is Helping Hollywood Embrace Generative AI
As part of our series, “The Future of Production Amplified,” NAB Amplify content partner Jennifer Wolfe chats with Mark Turner, Program Director of Production Technology at MovieLabs, about the MovieLabs 2030 Vision Initiative and what it means for the future of motion picture production.
Turner believes that the current production ecosystem is plagued by inefficiencies, with one of the biggest being the constant movement of media. “I don’t think that’s a revelation,” he says. “We move media way too much. We’ll often move media to applications or to people who have to do a task, and that takes time. It introduces the chance of loss of media, loss of metadata. There’s certainly a risk of security breaches.”
Understanding that cloud-based media is more than storing massive video and audio files is another key point Turner makes. “But actually it’s all parts of the production,” he explains. “It isn’t just the big video files; it’s the script, it’s the metadata that’s attached to every shot. It’s editing, it’s post-production workflows, it’s subbing and dubbing. All of those things need to happen in the cloud if we are going to remove this inefficiency that we have today,” he says.
“And if we can’t make this process more efficient, we will never be able to scale the amount of productions that we can cope with. There’s simply no way to keep doing it with the old hundred-year method that we’ve been using since we started with cinema and shipping film around the place.”
In Part 1 of this exclusive Q&A, Turner provides an overview of the MovieLabs 2030 Vision initiative and explains why he prefers the term “multi-cloud production” to describe our current ecosystem, which often employs multiple cloud platforms — public and private — for a single project. He also discusses why the movement of media assets is one of the biggest problems he’s seeing with current production workflows, and how Marvel Studios developed the script for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in the cloud using the ProductionPro SaaS platform to centralize and coordinate assets across multiple production departments.
Watch Part 1 below:
In Part 2, Turner tackles security, explaining why it’s such a massive challenge for studios and the larger production ecosystem, and how it forms a foundational part of the 2030 Vision. He also talks about the need for security to “step out of the way” so assets an be shared among vendors, and outlines the Common Security Architecture for Production, or CSAP, which uses a “Zero Trust” approach to managing assets and workflows.
Watch Part 2 below:
In Part 3, Turner dives into software-defined workflows, which enable flexible, dynamic workflows that embrace change and can be modified mid-stream to make productions dramatically more efficient. “Right now, any change in a workflow is highly disruptive,” he says. “We want workflows to be able to adapt in real time, and that does open up some new challenges, but a huge amount of opportunity.” He also discusses how Skywalker Sound’s Coda platform leverages the cloud to automate soundtrack mastering, breaking down multiple processes into “microservices” to output deliverables in minutes rather than days.
Watch Part 3 below:
Connect with Mark Turner on LinkedIn, and learn more about the MovieLabs 2030 Vision initiative at movielabs.com. You can also follow MovieLabs on LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube.
DISCOVER THE FUTURE OF PRODUCTION AMPLIFIED:
Take a peek into The Future of Production Amplified with NAB Amplify’s series featuring top creatives and other M&E professionals helping to shape the future of film and television production. Gain insights into the latest trends in virtual production, cloud-based workflows, real-time graphics, live production, digital humans and other cutting-edge technologies as we chat with industry experts from AWS, Epic Games, Digital Domain, and more!
- The Future of Production Amplified: How Real-Time Graphics Are Changing the Face of Film and Television Production
- The Future of Production Amplified: Bringing Digital Humans into the Spotlight
- The Future of Production Amplified: Pushing the Limits of Virtual Production
- The Future of Production Amplified: Bringing Finishing to the Cloud
- The Future of Production Amplified: Delivering Broadcast-Quality Graphics to Creators Everywhere
- The Future of Production Amplified: ETC@USC Takes Virtual Production into the Cloud with “Fathead”
- The Future of Production Amplified: How Open Source Is Taking Hollywood by Storm
- The Future of Production Amplified: Moving Middle Earth to the Cloud with “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”
- The Future of Production Amplified: How ETC@USC is Helping Hollywood Embrace Generative AI
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