As expected, Monday announcement by Steve Jobs has everyone in the industry with their head in the clouds. Cloud computing is quickly becoming a buzz-phrase as ubiquitous as “True 3D,” “Digital End-to-End” and “Microbudget." But what exactly is cloud computing and what practical bearing does it have on the running of a production?
Cloud computing is the concept of keeping your resources — information and/or programs — on a computer network, which can then be accessed at multiple locations by multiple devices. This is vastly different from the way computers worked in the Stone Age, when resources were kept on either a hard drive or an internal network. The obvious drawback with those types of computing models is that they severely limit the accessibility of resources to a single hard drive or location. For something as demanding of collaboration as the production process, you can imagine how much benefit there is to removing these limitations.
In the past few years, as broadband internet service has become more accessible, we have seen a sharp increase in cloud computing systems, and not just by companies like Apple, Amazon and Google — the latter two of which have had with many smaller companies latching onto their servers. Due to the infrastructure involved, it has only been in the last few years that even smaller start-up companies have been able to offer truly independent cloud computing systems.
But with this new saturation of the marketplace, buyers will have to be more careful than ever to make sure the system they select fits their needs.
The film industry has always been a highly insular marketplace. Specialized manufacturers push out products for every conceivable need, confident that industry professionals will gladly pay astronomical prices for any solutions that allow them to do their jobs better/faster. It’s hard to drive more than a couple blocks in the Valley without finding a store targeted to some discipline — make-up, costuming, camera, lighting — which would seem, to the uninitiated, like visiting another planet.
The production office, as well, has long necessitated these kinds of specialized products: Your leather-bound stripboards, brass brads, industrial three-hole punchers and the like. The production office, like the rest of the industry, does not cut corners when it comes to selecting which tools are needed to get the job done.
How does this need for specificity affect the way production offices implement cloud computing?
Now that more and more productions are adopting cloud computing into their workflow, they will have to decide which type of system to choose. Their choices range from free consumer-level systems to a myriad of more expensive professional options. A number of issues factor into this decision, but most important one for any production is security. A server outage or critical data leak could potentially cost a show thousands of dollars, so producers are understandably reticent about trusting an outside service.
On the other hand, production offices that choose not to implement a professional cloud service are at risk of finding their information spread out among many different consumer-level clients: Google Docs, Evernote, Drop Box and regular email. These services are the production office equivalent of hiring an unpaid film school student to dolly grip your show — you will save money in the short run, but you almost certainly will suffer for it in the end.
Of course, different sized productions require different solutions — a television production will require much more storage space and support than an indie. But all productions require a system tailored to their needs. In the coming years, the distinction between professional and non-professional cloud computing will only grow clearer.
Why Reading the Script Is Fun-damental
Imagine a situation where the metadata from the camera could link up with the script supervisors’ notes and the AD’s data to provide all the information needed for the wrap reports and accounting documents? What if, instead of needing hard drives to store video, every shot could be instantly sent to the cloud, allowing real time access for the post production team?
These scenarios would seem like science fiction just a few years ago but they are quickly becoming reality. However, even as productions charge toward this exciting future, it remains more important than ever to make secure, well-informed choices about technology. More options are only a positive if we actually know how to make the right choices. Even as our eyes peer ever higher into the clouds, we must make sure out feet stay firmly grounded.