MovieLabs selects 2030 Vision Showcase Program projects

The latest set of projects chosen for the 2030 Vision Showcase Program show how momentum is building to embrace new production workflows.

MovieLabs, the technology joint venture of the major Hollywood motion picture studios, has announced the next ten participating companies in its 2030 Vision Showcase Program. The organisations selected to participate in this round include some very familiar faces, too: namely Adobe, Ateliere Creative Technologies, Avid, Gunpowder, Hammerspace, Light Iron, Pixel Logic,  Sohonet, Universal Pictures and Yamdu.

Essentially, this is all about dragging workflows into a cloud-native future and highlighting the benefits that trying to produce to a mooted 2023 spec can bring in the present day.

Richard Berger, CEO of MovieLabs, said: “Since we published the MovieLabs 2030 Vision, it has been broadly adopted by the industry as the roadmap for the future of media creation. The ten principles in the vision establish a framework for more secure and interoperable workflows, which ultimately gives time back to creatives so they can focus on what they do best – creating amazing stories and experiences. We are excited to work with the new showcase participants to publish these technical case studies and share with the industry examples of how the 10 Principles of the 2030 Vision are already delivering real and significant efficiencies, which is critical now in this time of industry change.”

So, if you haven’t come across them before, the MovieLabs 2030 Vision lays out ten fundamental principles for the evolution of media creation:

1.     All assets are created or ingested straight to the cloud and do not need to move.

2.     Applications come to the media.

3.     Propagation and distribution of assets is a ‘publish’ function.

4.     Archives are deep libraries with access policies matching speed, availability and security to the economics of the cloud.

5.     Preservation of digital assets includes the future means to access and edit them.

6.     Every individual on a project is identified, verified, and their access permissions efficiently and consistently managed.

7.     All media creation happens in a highly secure environment that adapts rapidly to changing threats.

8.     Individual media elements are referenced, tracked, interrelated and accessed using a universal linking system.

9.     Media workflows are non-destructive and dynamically created using common interfaces, underlying data formats and metadata.

10.  Workflows are designed around real-time iteration and feedback.

Which is all fair and good. A lot of the industry is working toward this sort of workflow as a target. Meanwhile, the new case studies illustrate the benefits that can be achieved today by implementing at least aspects of the MovieLabs 2030 Vision, if not quite the whole kit and caboodle. Here’s the list.

Adobe - Using camera to cloud for fast turnaround editorial content at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival

Avid Technology - Virtualizing apps and data for distributed editorial collaboration

Ateliere Creative Technologies - Moving Lionsgate’s de-centralized distribution assets to a singular cloud ‘single source of truth’ library to enable more flexible distribution strategies

Gunpowder - An end-to-end Cloud VFX “studio in a box” for House of Parliament

Hammerspace - Enabling hybrid cloud workflows with legacy applications using a unified data environment

Light Iron - A full color-in-the-cloud pipeline used on episodic television

Pixelogic - Building a modern postproduction pipeline around the 2030 Principles

Sohonet - A secure content management system for managing assets and workflow tasks

Universal Pictures - Supporting feature production and post utilizing MovieLabs Ontology for Media Creation

Yamdu - Cloud-based script and production management on German daily drama “Rote Rosen”

More details of the Showcase Program, including links to the above, can be found here: www.movielabs.com/2030showcase.