When a feature film is released in theaters, few realize the blood, sweat, and tears that went into its creation.
A person’s favorite scene might have only taken a few months to shoot completely on set. But they don’t realize that in post, editing, color grading, adding visual effects, cleaning up shots, and creating as well mixing in multiple sound elements into the final cut can often take well over a year. All that work has to be organized and managed to pull everything together to create high-grossing content.
With rising consumer demand for more entertainment and high-level company profit expectations, there’s pressure for productions to be even more streamlined – despite the hundreds of elements that go into a finished piece of content.
The Other Side of the Wind holds the record for a film spending the longest time in production: 48 years.
Where can productions be optimized? One piece of a production’s success is managing media assets effectively. With thousands of tools and people working in pre, post, and during production, it can be hard to improve a media asset management workflow.
Hard, but not impossible.
For directors who want to streamline their future productions, and for vendors or content managers who want to better manage assets, there are three approaches to transform a media asset management workflow:
- Organize digital assets
- Store assets in one virtual hub
- Use technology that supports managing media assets
In previous articles, we’ve touched on seven tools that can take almost any media production’s workflow to the next level. Below, we’ll expand upon that idea, but instead of focusing on the tools in production, focus on the actions that can be taken.
1. Carve Out Time to Organize Media Assets
Due to the chaos of production, it might not be feasible to organize media assets in a systematic manner. However, after wrap, production crew are winding down from the project. Final master media elements have been delivered, the tight deadlines are done, and everyone is gearing up to look for their next project.
Are your future productions ready to face the oncoming avalanche of virtual production workflows and technology? Take our one-minute quiz and find out.
During this time, the much larger number of work-in-progress assets might be archived or left to collect dust. This leads to crucial assets and data becoming unorganized across many places due to the work involving many disparate departments and vendors as well as multiple source applications and storage containers.
To prevent this, take time after a production has wrapped to get all the assets into one place with their proper metadata or tags attached. As creative managers put individual media assets into their various virtual hubs, it's time to reimagine how your media asset management workflow is structured as a whole.
2. Bring Media Assets into One Central System
When digital assets are siloed and technology platforms can’t communicate with one another, it’s a recipe for delays, miscommunication, and other barriers to production.
For example, if a production team in Los Angeles uses one tool to house their digital assets, but another team from the same project in Brazil uses a completely different tool, then both teams are at a disadvantage.
Like production technology, the workflows that surround media creation need to continuously improve
That’s why using one central application lowers the risk for asset leaks, and offers an easier approach to managing security permissions. One single source of truth can create a cohesive production environment with teams located around the world or in the same building.
But how can production leaders or vendors create a central hub that isn’t just Dropbox or Google Drive?
3. Use Modern Technology
Responsible for training and driving adoption of new tools – but getting that adoption is difficult
Outdated software or platforms that are not user friendly will not have a high adoption rate, and can cause even more inefficiencies. Some tools are industry-standard, but might need a total revamp to fit your modern production needs.
Take Scenechronize as an example. The platform is well known and liked by the many who have been using them for a long time. The issue is that new users have a steep learning curve, especially when hiring inexperienced crew due to the rapid growth in production volumes.
The bigger inefficiency comes from having to copy media assets across multiple siloed applications, which is a nightmare for more senior people who have to review assets across all functional areas of a production, which requires them to learn and use multiple apps with different UIs.
But where can professionals in the media and entertainment industry turn to as a new solution that can integrate or completely overhaul its use?
The answer lies in Digital Asset Management systems (DAMs).
Try a DAM to Streamline Your Media Asset Management Workflow
A Digital Asset Management (DAM) system can replace older technology platforms that drive you crazy, consolidate multiple “one trick pony” application islands, and integrate with other applications, equipment and storage containers that house your otherwise disconnected subsets of production assets.
A DAM acts as a central storage that organizes and helps you reuse assets across multiple projects or clients. When an asset is uploaded, it automatically brings in the associated metadata and required tagging, saving you that effort after wrap. Plus, when giving or requesting media reviews during production, a DAM platform can give you access to those files with just a few clicks.
If you want to learn more, read one of our latest articles on how a DAM system can strengthen your profitable IP and revenue.
Try These Methods to Reduce Media Review & Management Stress
Productions are hectic. But if a production team keeps these best practices in mind, there can be a method to the madness when it comes to a media asset management workflow.
In short, keep your media assets organized, store them in one secure globally accessible location, and use technology that is easy to use to manage and allow review of all types of work-in-progress & final media files. That's why you need an all-encompassing tool to streamline your future media asset management.
Want to bring these methods together with one simple tool that’s trusted by major studios? Learn why the media and entertainment industry is moving towards Digital Asset Management Systems, like 5th Kind, with a demo.
