Illuminate Hollywood on Managing Modern Data Loads
Illuminate Hollywood’s project portfolio is as rich as its history, with the company having provided production, post, and technology services to major Hollywood studios, TV networks, digital platforms, and indie producers and distributors for nearly three decades. In a recent sit-down with CEO Jim Hardy and President Sandy Crawford, the two explained how the company’s technology-first ethos and commitment to exceptional client service have contributed to its success. This includes adopting new technologies, like AJA Diskover Media Edition data curation and management software, to manage an ever-increasing volume of data as production and post pipelines have evolved.
Company culture, in-house tools, and keeping projects on track.
Sandy: We’re a small company, competing in the major leagues against organizations with massive technological and staffing backbones, so we try to stand out from our competitors in other ways. We’re all about innovating to become the best technological company we can be and providing top-notch service, which helps set us apart.
We’re managing petabytes of project data, especially because we do a lot of remastering television shows from uncut negatives. To do it, we use our proprietary solution iConform®. It lets us take uncut dailies negatives and scan them in 4K 16-bit DPX files across multiple projects. It’s part of the reason we’re working with so much data.
Jim: The volume of work that we go through on a weekly basis to meet the deadlines is enormously impressive. It goes through 12 different departments, from film scanning to color correction and final creation of the master file that’s going to be reused for all the platforms.
Managing such a massive load of data stored across our Aberdeen and XStor storage systems requires well-organized files and data and an easy way to access them, which is why we’ve started to lean on AJA Diskover Media Edition. The software makes our work so much easier and more efficient. We couldn’t pass it up.
How they use Diskover
Sandy: All our team uses Diskover in different ways. Data operators love using it to gauge how many files our facility has across all our volumes and servers; they can also just type a keyword into the search, and all the info is available right there. On the administrative side, Jim and I use it to get a current view into the data, so if a client calls us to ask what we have in-house for a file or title, we can pull it up versus having to check with operations first. We can also tag files if we know the client no longer needs them, which makes it easy to get rid of them.
Our schedulers use Diskover as well; if there’s a rejection on a QC report, instead of having to go down the street or into the facility to review the file, they can look at it from their desk. They can send clients more information because they’re actually seeing the issue. They’re also able to easily put in work orders if they need the operator to work from a specific file; the file path is more accessible. And, they can easily confirm the file and aspect ratios we have, as long as they’re properly identified, which saves them a lot of time. Without it, our team would have to search through volumes of data and could easily get lost.
One of my favorite features is the CineSys CineViewer Player Plug-in, which lets us review any rejected or questionable files our QC operator flags from our desk. If the operator tells us that there’s an issue and we need to see it for ourselves or explain it to the client, it’s much easier to do now.
What they like the most about Diskover
Sandy: We love that we can grant team members unique access permissions. It ensures they get access to the files they need, without jeopardizing the integrity of our files, which is very important. Being able to see the file sizes on a moment’s notice in Diskover is also so helpful, and I love that we can see how many copies of the same files we have parked on different servers; it makes it easy to determine what needs to be purged.
While these are just a few benefits, there are so many features we haven’t even begun to explore, so we’re looking forward to diving into those soon.
Working with the AJA Diskover Media Edition Team
Jim: When we work with clients, they want to know we’re giving them the best attention they can get, and when we work with the AJA Diskover Media Edition crew, that’s what we get. They listen to us and genuinely want to and are willing to help, and that goes a long way. When working with some of the large tech companies, your concerns sometimes get lost, but that’s not the case with the AJA Diskover Media Edition team. They’re very receptive to our perspective, what we’re interested in, and how they can help us achieve our goals.
