Jeremy Drummond founded Studio 10 Productions (now Barbershop Films) in 2005. At the time, he didn’t think his small team needed a video storage server, so editors saved their media on external hard drives.
And everyone hated it.
Everything That’s Wrong With Hard Drives
Portable drives collected on desks like a never-ending game of Jenga. Courier fees grew to incredible heights shipping drives all across the country. And there was always a risk that hard drives were poorly labeled, so finding the right media was challenging and inefficient.
“Back then, our ‘server’ was powered by our legs,” joked Drummond. “We had drawers in the studio that stored the drives, and a spreadsheet directory for where to find camera files. It was pretty archaic.”
They made it work, as professionals do. But that’s what it was: Work.
Every project became a chore. Even their favorite productions—massive $300,000 commercial campaigns that ooze creativity—were losing their luster. They were tired of running around the office looking for that one file on that one drive that was nowhere to be found.
If only there was a system that could store all of this media across multiple studio locations and simplify organization, so their team could get back to creating the content they love…
Good Thing There’s EVO
The noble quest to find a better workflow fell to Jordan Bell, Post-production Supervisor/Editor at Barbershop Films. Bell set out in search of a solution to the team’s video storage and media management problems—one that would get them out of the hard drive hell they’d been living in.
After much research and consideration, Barbershop Films got their first EVO shared storage server. And like a bag of potato chips, they couldn’t stop at just one. They now have four EVOs powering their post-production workflow across three studio locations in Western Canada.
So, what sold them on EVO?
EVO Is Made For Video Post-Production
“EVO is video first. That really impressed us,” said Bell. “I’m an editor, not an IT guy. I liked that EVO was made for editors like me.”
Sure, a run-of-the-mill IT server can house media files, but “EVO doesn’t just hold files—it does so much more,” added Bell.
Every EVO shared storage server comes with the award-winning EVO Suite, an intelligent collection of software tools purpose-built for creative media production. With EVO’s built-in media asset management, automated replications and transcoding, cloud and NLE integrations, and flexible remote workflow tools, Barbershop Films redefined how they organize, share, and store media.
EVO Includes ShareBrowser MAM
“When deciding where to put our investment, ShareBrowser was a huge part of that,” said Drummond.
His team organizes their tri-city media library with ShareBrowser, the media asset manager included with EVO. Now they search, tag, comment, preview, and access their media through ShareBrowser instead of zombie-walking around the office in search of a hard drive.
And because their EVO servers and users are all connected via SNS Cloud VPN, they can manage all of their media across multiple locations, from anywhere, securely. An editor working in the Vancouver office can search, preview, and access media on the EVO in Regina or Saskatoon without skipping a beat—or shipping a hard drive.
That translates into faster turnaround times for their customers.
“EVO and ShareBrowser sped up our deliveries,” said Drummond. “The connectivity and having everything at our fingertips has made everything faster.”
EVO Unlocks Extra Value
Better, faster media management is just the tip of the iceberg. Barbershop Films uses EVO and ShareBrowser as a client-facing media portal, adding more value to their footage beyond the final deliverable.
Drummond explained how this novel idea came about: “You spend $300,000 to shoot a 2-day commercial campaign, and that footage is great. It’s done, it’s got its 13-week run, it’s measurable. We did everything we’re supposed to.” And that used to be the end of it.
“But now with EVO, we’ve unlocked all this value in those shots that didn’t make the cut—in the additional angles that are great in a social piece, or powerpoint, or a pitch deck. We can leverage that and offer it to our enterprise clients as additional value for their investment.”
This new client offering is already paying off. Their largest customer can browse all 100TB of media that Barbershop Films has shot on their behalf in the ShareBrowser Web App. They can search by tags and custom metadata to find the footage they want. They can even download proxy files as needed for a slide deck or marketing deliverable.
EVO Works With Premiere, Resolve, And Camera To Cloud
Their upgrade didn’t stop at shared storage. Barbershop Films revamped their multi-location post-production workflow using the latest video production technologies—all anchored by EVO.
Save a few legacy projects in Adobe Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro, Barbershop Films’ post-production team works exclusively in DaVinci Resolve to cut, color, and create incredible content. “EVO is great because we can host the Resolve database on the server and use all of Resolve’s collaboration features,” Bell added.
EVO integrates with all major NLE applications, and works great for Premiere-Resolve roundtrip workflows, too.
With Frame.io Camera to Cloud, Barbershop Films can shoot on-location in Calgary while a customer watches along in Edmonton and an editor cuts live in Vancouver. Once that footage hits EVO, it’s automatically backed up to Dropbox on a daily basis (thanks to Slingshot, part of the EVO Suite). “It all works together really well,” said Bell.
EVO Is Easy To Use
Managing a vast library of media across multiple locations, creating a client-facing MAM, integrating with cloud storage, and connecting a multi-location workflow—Barbershop Films does it all with ease.
Commenting on the setup process, Bell said: “I’m just an editor and I could do it. You need a little taste of IT, but you don’t need to be an IT person to set this up.”
“Getting a server solution for our studios was a hard decision,” added Drummond. “But EVO made it easy, and the results are proving themselves daily.”
EVO Keeps Innovating
If you couldn’t tell, Barbershop Films loves to test the limits of what’s possible in post-production. And so does EVO.
With mountains of media transferring among several locations every day, SNS Cloud VPN keeps their multi-EVO environment operating at blazing-fast speeds. In fact, Barbershop Films’ data transfer speeds are five times faster with the latest SNS Cloud VPN solution compared to a traditional VPN. (And about 500 times faster than FedEx.)
Whatever their post-production team tackles, EVO is ready to take it on with them.
“We couldn’t have done what we wanted to do with any other server out there,” said Bell. “EVO has changed how we do our business on the post-production side and the media management side.”
Ready to transform your team’s post-production and media management workflow with EVO? Schedule a demo with SNS today.