HITS

Along with many of you, I’m sure, my wife and I have been introducing our kids to the movies we watched growing up. Raiders of the Lost Ark, that 1981 phenom, was on the other night. Great movie.

I’m bringing that up because at the end of that movie, right before the Ark was tucked away in a massive warehouse, a government bureaucrat put a piece of paper into a folder. That was the filing process — a piece of paper in a folder.

The next day I came into the office and started to think about how our media and entertainment world has changed over the past 10 years, five years, 18 months. We were once the piece of paper into a folder people. Now we’re using lightning-fast technology to share, store, and organize productions from major feature films to digital shorts.

The concept of virtualized production — all the bits around a production that are moving to a platform-like workflow that does not revolve around physical objects — dates back to the Digital Start Package that HITS and MESA helped bring to life the past 10 years, five years, 18 months.

The Digital Start Package is the perfect example of the elements behind Virtualized Production. How do you track cameras and lights? What about props? Even things like make-up? As soon as we get those items into a platform-like workflow, we can start looking for efficiencies and ways to connect the dots from story-boarding to production to post-production.

Until we move beyond paper in folders, we’re like that bureaucrat with a mile of file cabinets.

Our industry’s first move into this new world came with emails and spreadsheets. Yet, as we discussed at this year’s Smart Content Summit, it’s time to move to a platform where we can connect the dots so that the folks in the home office have better insight into what the creatives are doing out in the field. Let’s understand — we might be years away from the perfect solution. But it’s been phenomenal to watch the brilliant people we have in MESA start moving the blocks towards a better way.

We know that production schedules are kicking back into high gear — now is the time to walk into the next few months with our eyes wide open and look for ways to tie our creative practices to our business practices. The arc of our industry is not that long if we think about it.

We’ve gone from the kernel of silent films to the popcorn of 4D. We’ve gone through seismic shifts that are not going to end any time soon.

The introduction of AI and machine learning will push virtualized production into thrilling uncharted waters. We can’t wait to see the next generation.

We’re in the new Roaring ‘20s.

Things are moving fast. Let’s get into it!

* By Guy Finley, President, CEO, MESA

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