Matchbox Pictures is a prolific film and television production company with offices in Sydney and Melbourne. They are a creative-led company who make world-class content for a global audience and have worked with every network in Australia plus a multitude of international buyers and commissioners. When the innovative production company had a requirement for a full remote-working production platform underpinned by a comprehensive Avid solution, they turned to their technology partner and provider, Digistor.
Matchbox Pictures’ production executive, unscripted, Catherine Durr explained, “We were looking for efficient remote working solutions which didn’t need VPN tunnels or physical computers in our offices. Matchbox produces in every state of the country under the philosophy that we employ the best people wherever they are. The Avid Edit On Demand system which Digistor proposed enabled us to ‘best practice’ this in post, even though our Real Housewives editors and post producers were in multiple and different state, regional and city locations.”
Matchbox Pictures’ requirements were comprehensive. They needed a remote editing solution that would work for, and with, an incoming large production that had already begun shooting. Their existing workflow involving Amulet hotkey boxes had various challenges around infrastructure and their remote connectivity, which also had to be overcome.
With five editors and three producers spread throughout Australia, all of whom needed remote access quickly, more than 350TB of secure online storage was required. They had decided that the traditional shipping of hard drives was problematic and a thing of the past.
Together with the local Avid team, led by ANZ partner account manager for video, Kwasi Kwakwa, Digistor sales specialist Andrew Hogan proposed a solution that included an Avid Edit On Demand subscription with eight advanced Media Composer seats for both editors and producers with the ability to work from the cloud-provisioned NEXIS cloud storage.
Supervising technical producer for Matchbox Pictures on The Real Housewives of Sydney Series 2 David Oliverius said, “The Digistor supplied Avid Edit On Demand solution allowed us to overcome cumbersome VPN tunnels and unnecessary physical computer set-ups in our office and deploy purely in the cloud. It kept all our physical hardware free to supply to team members as they came in and out of contracts and made the entire system far easier to administrate. We particularly liked the flexible nature of Avid on Demand services, how we could purchase entitlements based on the expected duration of the production, spin it up into the cloud, then turn it off. This meant lower up-front costs and no ongoing assets costs.”
Digistor were the first Avid partner to sell their Edit On Demand solution into the Australian market. By using their significant in-depth knowledge of post-production they were able to further adapt and customise the Edit on Demand SaaS solution to their customers. Digistor have also been particularly successful in leading the post market through the Covid pandemic with their expertise in and around remote workflows.
Oliverius continued, “We used the new Avid solutions to do all our offline editing work for The Real Housewives of Sydney Series 2. All post producers and editors worked from home and could easily connect to the system with everyone working on the same Avid NEXIS. Edit assistants could also log in to support the team with group work, sync and exports.”
Avid On Demand enabled Matchbox to easily scale their flexible requirements, performance attributes and storage required by editorial staff. Typical jobs using the Digistor Avid solution included offline editing by editors and sifting through a considerable amount of footage on the Avid system by post producers.
Oliverius said, “Our entire Avid workflow was taken into the cloud with this solution. Essentially all editorial facets of high-end multi-cam non-scripted ‘reality’ production – in this case The Real Housewives of Sydney – which previously would have required significant investment in on-prem storage to assure performance for concurrent editors. Now it was all remote and at our fingertips.”
In a seamless workflow, Matchbox Pictures processed the rushes and sync on a local Avid setup in their office. Once the Avid proxies were generated, they were automatically uploaded to the cloud while the edit assistants synced and organised the footage. Once the footage was organised, the local Avid projects were mirrored to the cloud to provide collaborative access to the remote editors throughout Australia.
Oliverius said, “This solution made the daily workflow extremely clean compared to setting up some kind of VPN to allow team members to connect directly to physical computers in the office or use software like Jump Desktop. Avid Edit On Demand is even more efficient as it runs on Azure servers, so we don’t have to worry about our office network at all. The system is completely independent and extremely reliable. From an administration point of view, it’s also easy to fix any problems users have and restarting a system is as easy as clicking a button. In short, no solution in the market is as efficient and scalable for Avid NEXIS and Media Composer editors. Edit On Demand also provides a consistent experience between editing in an on-prem environment versus cloud.”
It’s clear that Matchbox Pictures values Avid, their Edit On Demand solution and the role Digistor plays in helping them produce their high-quality content. As David Oliverius concluded, “Digistor is always the first place we go if we have any issues, Andrew Hogan is amazing at prioritising our needs to make sure everyone can work smoothly. Things rarely go wrong using Edit On Demand but if we have any issues, I always know Digistor has our back and will resolve them quickly. Digistor and Avid allow the team at Matchbox Pictures to work without distraction, spend more time being creative and make the best possible entertainment.”
