The Cloud Plays a Huge Role In Entertainment

TV shows and movies captivate people of all ages, walks of life, and socio-economic backgrounds. They can put viewers in places in time and situations that they could only dream about. Like many things in our society, there are varying roles that technology plays in the entertainment industry. Let’s take a look at the role technology plays in the creation of the entertainment that we enjoy every day.

It All Starts with Communication

Collaborative work is fueled, in large part, by solid communication; and make no mistake about it, creating entertainment is collaborative work. If you’ve ever taken time after the movie to watch the credits you know that literally thousands of people can work on some productions. As a result of this need for communication, every production is set up like a project, inside that project there are several smaller, very specific projects that need to be accomplished in order for the production to work.

With so many teams doing so many different tasks on a movie or television production, having the collaboration and communication tools needed to run a giant production is critical, and they need to be:

• Scalable on demand
• Available from remote locations
• No long term contracts

This means that nearly every production is now utilizing cloud computing. This is mostly for cost reduction, but since these productions require very complex and large cloud platforms, they need to be hosted in places that provide the necessary computing resources that can fuel this immense amount of data that flows during the duration of a vast production. It is simpler for any production to do so, as the cloud is a source that can quite literally provide the collaborative platforms and the immediate access for multiple people to review content, sync sound, and ready the product for post-production.

How the Cloud Has Changed Film Production

Cloud computing has changed business, so it stands to reason that it would be a huge asset to film productions in the same way it is for nearly every other organization. The difference is that it was once thought that hosted computing would never offer the services and affordable storage capacities and processing needed by these projects. Consider how much data and how many applications are needed for your business to function. Condense those needs into a production that will only last between days and months and then consider the storage needs, which are massive. 

Simply put, the cloud has changed film production forever. 

For nearly a century film production was a mostly analog process. You capture images on film, you capture sound on tape, you edit all of it by splicing and syncing sound through the analog editing process. Now, everything is done digitally and the cloud gives these productions the ability to virtualize all the needed applications and store data in a secure environment. 

Productions can set up a singular cloud platform to run the proprietary project management platform with integrated storage, collaboration tools and more. They can also use the one cloud platform to store the massive amount of data they create. This allows them to keep costs down, scale their operation when needed, and have a singular IT infrastructure to manage pre-production, production, and post-production. 

Your business can use cloud computing in much of the same way. With every option you could possibly need available in today’s cloud, you can get the computing your organization needs to be more efficient, cut your technology overhead, and gain the flexibility to enhance your foothold in your market whether it be globally or locally. Give SCW a call at (509) 534-1530 to talk to one of our IT consultants about getting the cloud platform that is right for your business today.