Learn how cloud studios are benefiting the media supply chain

A blog post by Mike Vovk, managing director, Deloitte Consulting LLP and Jason Williamson, managing director, Deloitte Consulting LLP

After the pandemic, more media and entertainment studios are reinvesting in their supply chain and rethinking their approach to creative collaboration. The amount of content produced is growing year over year and shows no signs of slowing down. The world of increased consumer power and hyper-personalization requires content production and delivery in the right form, to the right device, and at the right time. This increase in consumer power requires the ability to create content faster and manage it in a well-organized structure with the option to make it available quickly as needed. Studios can turn to large cloud solutions to improve the media supply chain.

Cloud studios are a way of operating that helps creative talent ramp up quickly and easily collaborate in a secure fashion. In a post-COVID world, the ability to have continuous content production and delivery is significantly more important. Cloud studio solutions are specifically targeted toward media and entertainment companies to collaborate on cloud content creation. These solutions can be entirely cloud-based or a hybrid extension of a company’s current content production and delivery capabilities.

Cloud-based production was a concept explored even before the pandemic to address some of the manual activities along the media supply chain. During the pandemic, it became very apparent that cloud-based production was crucial. In the post-pandemic era, talent will likely be distributed more than ever. With the pandemic subsiding in the United States, content production and delivery is normalizing, but the traditional challenges along the media supply chain are more accentuated than before.

Cloud providers are taking the lead in offering cloud studios that enable global creative collaboration in content production, thus improving the adaptability of the media supply chain to meet future needs. Remote workstations for global talent can provide the ability to collaborate safely, seamlessly, and securely on the cloud. These workstations can provide a significant positive impact on the media supply chain. The ability to leverage cloud-based render farms or hybrid render farms can provide a significant level of scalability, which may encourage content producers to consider cloud content creation and production.

Traditionally, media companies used cloud solutions to manage content storage and delivery. There’s been some low-fidelity creative collaboration recently, especially around creative content review, feedback, and approval. The pandemic forced media companies to rethink how content can be created virtually. One of the largest efforts in producing content is visual effects and localization. Cloud solutions that securely perform these activities can significantly improve remote collaboration in content creation, minimize custodial risk, and standardize content storage.

While cloud studio use is applicable to full-scale content production, it provides the most benefit in small-scale content collaborations as a starting point before it can be used for large-scale content production, which heavily depends on tailored production life cycles adopted by the studio. Immediate application of cloud studios will likely be seen in post-production marketing and distribution planning and operations.

To adopt cloud-based studios, we anticipate media companies requiring highly distributed collaboration with minimal visual effects needs. As cloud infrastructure, computing speeds, and 5G networks mature, we anticipate wider adoption of cloud workstations and creative collaboration, even in large-scale, animated feature films.

To further explore the applications, benefits, and challenges around cloud studio solutions and learn how they can unlock new efficiencies in the media supply chain, read our latest article, “Evolution of the media supply chain: Adapting to post-COVID content production and distribution.”