How Film Production Company Screencraft Wrangle Data on Set with the G-RAID™ Shuttle 4
Every filmmaker’s nightmare is losing data after spending hours preparing for a shoot and investing thousands into filming, paying actors, hiring equipment and leasing locations. Film production company Screencraft explains why they have implemented the G-RAID™ Shuttle 4, to ensure reliable, speedy data wrangling on set.
From filming TV shows and advertisements, to corporate films and government content, Screencraft goes through terabytes upon terabytes of data per year.
It is this data that acts as their currency, and without it, founder Michael Fardell says they have nothing.
“Sometimes we’ve got tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars invested into one day of filming,” says Michael. “Losing data would be highly embarrassing and incredibly costly for the business.”
For this reason, Michael and his team put a lot of effort into their on-set data wrangling practices, which flows into their post-production workflow.
“As filmmakers, we are both artists and technologists. Everyone looks at buying the latest computers and shiny toys, but people often overlook their storage requirements.”
Screencraft invests heavily in their own storage equipment and strongly believes that if you have the money available to purchase your own quality gear, it will save you in the long run.
Screencraft gave the G-RAID™ Shuttle 4 a road test on their latest shoot, and explain why this “beast” is now the heart of their backup process.
BUILT LIKE A TRUCK
As a film company with a wide resume, Screencraft is often tasked with filming in unique locations and events around the world, sometimes with thousands of people in attendance.
Whether it’s livestreaming the City2Surf, capturing Red Bull events or filming from a helicopter for the NUSHIP Sydney Sea trials, Screencraft requires a backup solution that is sturdy and transportable.
“Being on shoot, we often find ourselves in rough and tumble environments,” says Michael. “Things get broken and it’s not always avoidable.”
“The G-RAID™ Shuttle 4 is excellent as it is made for the road. It’s very transportable which is great when travelling home from shoot locations or even via plane.”
“The physical build quality is second to none, it’s built like a truck!” he says. “If it accidentally gets dropped, I have peace of mind knowing it’s not going to break open and be catastrophic.”
transfer and edit without lag
After hours upon hours spent on a shoot, Screencraft were after a speedy solution that would ease the time burden of data wrangling at the end of a long day.
“When we are packing up the lights and everyone wants to go home, you don’t want to be waiting around for data wrangle,” says Michael.
“The transfer speeds of the G-RAID™ Shuttle 4 are incredible, with rates up to 1000MB/s we can suck data off the cards whilst everyone’s packing up.”
This also flows through to Screencraft’s post-production workflow, when the Shuttle 4 is taken back to the studio and passed to the editor who creates the first video edit.
“We need to be able to edit without a lag, we don’t want to have to press play and waste time while the footage loads.”
“With the Shuttle 4, we can edit straight off the drive as it’s quick enough to do those transfers. We’re talking full 8K footage, no proxies with a full data stream,” he says.
CARRY THE ARCHIVES
Working with large 4K and 8K video files, Screencraft needs capacity that can handle not only footage from that day’s shoot, but also act as a central storage location to pull files from for live edits.
“We completed a job recently where we had to edit on location off a laptop. The client had graphics and animations -these are huge files we had to bring to set.”
“With a massive 72TB1 of data, the Shuttle 4 ate it for breakfast! We could bring all of our media libraries from the office too in case the editor needed to pull from the archives.”
With so many crew members in one space, working several cameras and shoot equipment, Michaels says a streamlined workflow is essential.
“It’s the worst setup when there are cables everywhere and devices aren’t compatible. With the Shuttle 4, we can have all our data on one central unit, fed through a single connection.“
We can connect it to our MacBook® through the USB-C™ port and the Shuttle 4 will even charge it as we work.”
RAID FOR PEACE OF MIND
With so much data held in one location, the ability to utilize RAID is a must for Screencraft’s peace of mind in the event of unexpected data loss.
“The Shuttle 4 comes in RAID 5 out of box but it also supports RAID 0, 1 and 10 so it’s really flexible,” says Michael.
“If one drive in there fails, due to our RAID setup we still have access to all data as the failed drive can be rebuilt. It’s really clever technology that gives us the redundancy we need.”
The best part? The G-DRIVE™ Shuttle 4 is backed with a 5-year limited warranty so Screencraft are confident for years to come.
Simon Moro
Sound Engineer
Starting his professional career in 2000 and gaining further training from industry heavyweights, Simon has developed a unique, emotion-driven style. He delivers mixes that speak true to the artist's vision by pouring his energy into connecting with the artist and his dedication to the art of mix engineering.
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