ABERDEEN MAXIMUM THROUGHPUT S G-TECHNOLOGY...art form as intricate as stop-motion animation, time is money. Aardman animators shoot their multitudi-nous frames with Canon SLRs. From

A supplement to the March 2009 issue of

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STORAGE SOLUTIONS • S-1

Storage Solutions

Honestly, who doesn’t need more stor-age these days?

“That’s the whole meaning of life,isn’t it?” George Carlin has said, “Tryingto find a place for your stuff!”

Fact is, especially with the explosionin low-cost digital acquisition, theinnumerable layers and elements thatcompositing and VFX afford (orrequire) and the almost endless varia-tions and versions that today’s NLEsallow, everybody’s got more stuff, andeverybody needs to find the bestplace to put their stuff.

What’s more, you need to be ableto find your stuff, immediately, whenthe occasion arises that you needmore stuff to go with the stuff youalready have.

It’s amazing how much more stuffthere is to store today — even for stop-motion animators. In this report, Postspoke with animators, indie producers,VFX specialists, music video producers,Webisode directors, commercial col-orists, even feature film audio postpros. And they all have innovativeways to store their stuff.

AARDMAN’S LOAF AND DEATH

Ian Fleming, head of productiontechnology at Bristol, England’sAardman Animations, the multi-Oscar-winning stop-frame animation studio,was instrumental last summer in thepurchase of a new storage system fromMaximum-Throughput. Since January

The importance of

storage

Aardman has been using Max-T’sSledgehammer HD!O while

producing work like the special A Matter of Loaf and Death.

We all need a place to put our stuff.By KEN McGORRY

S-2 • STORAGE SOLUTIONS

Storage Solutions

2008, this would be Aardman’s thirdinstallation of a Sledgehammer HD!Ofile server and realtime, multi-format-video system. While Aardman (www.aardman.com) creates feature films andTV programs, this 2TB unit was headedfor the company’s facility devoted tocommercial production. It fulfilled anarray of roles: as a DDR play-out system;a fast NAS file server for edit bays; and asa format-conversion, media-processingand assembly solution.

The idea was to exploitSledgehammer’s versatility to stream-line workflow. Even, or especially, in anart form as intricate as stop-motionanimation, time is money.

Aardman animatorsshoot their multitudi-nous frames withCanon SLRs. Fromthere, Fleming says,“The whole pipeline isIT — Linux scripts. Theimage sequences arescripted into the Sledgestorage. This means you’ve gotinstant playback and review of what iscoming off the studio floor at full qual-ity, because the Sledgehammer does-n’t need to render.” In past productions,Fleming says, turning sequenceswhich could be 200 to 300 frames into“huge QuickTimes was about as slowas you could get.”

Aardman pioneered the new work-flow on last year’s half-hour TV special,Wallace & Gromit in “A Matter of Loafand Death” (our heroes in a bakery),directed by Nick Park. There is howev-er, something old school at work herethat resembles the classic offline/online workflow. “We’ve gone for theoffline model, where we useSledgehammer’s external software toproduce standard def proxies to goback to Final Cut as just an offline edit,”Fleming says.

Aardman subsequently conforms thesequences through Sledgehammer’sMaxmedia by using the Final Cut EDLs.“Eventually, the movie builds up on theSledgehammer,” he says.

On Loaf and Death, the full half-hour,including lots of extraneous shots, didfit onto the 2TB system, althoughtoward the end, the animation teambegan to archive off some material.

Thanks to Sledgehammer’s videocard, “you can play all these image

sequences in realtime.” Flemingadds, “It’s basically a big NAS — net-work-attached storage — with highdef play-out. We can access[sequences] over the network and pullstuff off.”

(Max-T also champions its ownmulti-user collaborative editing solu-tion, Maxedit, which users can access

over the Internet without the need fordedicated workstations.)

Finally, Aardman gave Big Bang, apost house based here, DPX files ofLoaf and Death for Baselight colorgrading and an HDCAM SR deliverablefor broadcast.

A Matter of Loaf and Death attracted14.3 million viewers in the UK aloneduring its broadcast on Christmas Dayand was the highest rated show on anychannel in 2008. Even in standard def,Fleming says, the show looked “beauti-ful,” adding that it was Nick Park’s “firstdigital project, and he loves it.”The nextAardman feature film will also forsakefilm for an all-digital pipeline.

WE’RE GONNA NEEDMORE STORAGE

LA-based writer/director/producerPatrick Read Johnson’s 1970’s coming-of-age movie tells of a film-obsessedteenager suspiciously similar toJohnson himself 30 years ago. His

movie, 77, premiered at the HamptonsFestival last year and took theHeineken Red Star Award. But beforeany of that could happen, Johnsonneeded storage. Lots of storage.

As it turned out, as Johnson laboredto get his project fully funded, unseenhands at CalDigit were working toimprove workflow. But does a speedier

Ian Fleming: Aardman’s next filmwill have an all-digital pipeline.

77’s production made use of CalDigit’s HDPro and HDOne.

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Storage Solutions

workflow truly speed things up? “To the degree it allows more time

to actually try things, and see thesethings actualized with faster rendertimes, and fewer system failures, asmooth-running editorial pipeline is agodsend,”says Johnson. “What I hate tosee, however, is the misperception bysome that just because the system isfaster, you should automatically allowfor less editing time. A director andeditor still need time to feel and thinkand analyze the consequences of theirpost production choices.”

Johnson does not relish giving awayadvances in workflow speed purely forthe sake of budget. He’d like to tell filmfinanciers that “it’s worth investing in afaster, more capable system notbecause I can shave six weeks off myediting schedule, but because I cangive an extra six weeks of reliable up-time to my creative team so they canreally put the film through a propercreative shake-down cruise.”To evoke 77’s small-town teen with big

dreams of filmmaking, Johnson andcrew shot a lot of Super-16mm 1:1.85and reduced the frame and centered itin a 2.35 anamorphic frame: “That wasthe format that felt like Wadsworth,Illinois, in 1977.”When our hero (who isobsessed with the recently releasedStar Wars) finally makes it toHollywood the film format switches toSuper-35 anamorphic. Home-moviesequences used Johnson’s own origi-nal Super-8 camera. VFX were shot onanything from DV to HVX to CineAlta.

Johnson and crew were happy withtheir XServe RAID but, when theyneeded more HD storage, they wentfor something more portable — a low-cost CalDigit HDPro. Johnson’s con-cern over the unit’s portability wereassuaged when he saw the FedExdelivery man show up with the box onhis shoulder. When his team installedthe new system they were shockedthat it was up and operating in fiveminutes. It had already been pre-for-matted to Johnson’s RAID level by the

CalDigit salesman. (CalDigit’s HDPro is an eight-drive

hardware RAID with 20GB ultra-highbandwidth connectivity. You can con-nect together “as many HDPros as youwant” and it’s also a SAN-ready storagesubsystem.)

“We were so happy with the HDProthat we soon bought two HDOneunits as well,” Johnson says. “And allthree have worked flawlessly since wefirst turned them on.”

Johnson also values the investmenthe made in converting all his footage,in all its many formats, to 1080 24pvideo on D-5 tapes. “Because of the‘aspect ratios within aspect ratios’ for-mat and ‘70s graininess we were goingfor, we knew we’d never really needbetter than that for our final material.When we finally got around to shoot-ing ‘The Hollywood Section’ of the film,we did end up scanning all of theSuper-35 anamorphic at 2K. But therest of the picture — the Super-16material — is now all QuickTime clipsat Apple ProRes 4:2:2 resolution and it’sabsolutely beautiful.”

FILMWORKSFX SPRUCES UP MANURE

Every once in a while you get awhole movie’s worth of VFX dumped inyour lap — like when a productionabruptly decides to change vendors.Ken Locsmandi and FilmworksFX expe-rienced something like this recentlywith a film that needed to make it toSundance. This year’s Sundance.

“We had to finish 123 bluescreencomposites in four days,” saysLocsmandi, “from delivery of the materi-al — with no VFX editorial.”The comedyfilm, Manure, starring Billy Bob Thorntonand Tea Leone, was shot on Red by pro-ducing brothers Michael and MarkPolish (Michael directed). Locsmandiand the Polish brothers grew up in thesame hometown, and Locsmandi felt anobligation to give the film and all its VFXand environment shots his best shotdespite the demands of the deadline.The film ultimately had 300 VFX shots —including 200 bluescreen shots for

Patrick Read Johnson:dependable storage

“can give an extra six weeks of reliable

up-time to my creative team.”



Storage Solutions

which FilmworksFX had to create back-grounds.

Santa Monica’s FilmworksFX (www.filmworksfx.com) has a long list of VFXcredits on many feature films includingApocalypto, which was shot on

Genesis and film. On Manure, Locsmandi and compa-

ny employed two JMR BlueStor units.One was for editorial, sinceFilmworksFX was also acting as VFXeditorial, and the other handled con-

versions and viewing and AssimilateScratch work. This way, when workingon shots in DI in Scratch with materialconverted to DPX files, Locsmandi didnot need to halt editorial.

“Every time we finished a VFX shot,we’d look at it in the DI but then we’dhave to make sure there was continu-ity so we’d have to load it back into

Advanced recording technology

Patent Pending

POST_SUP_HALF_H_nobleed:POST_SUP_HALF_H 2/16/09 10:41 AM Page 1

Manure: FilmworksFX provided VFX, including airplanes, on a super-tightdeadline to make Sundance. They used JMR storage solutions.




Storage Solutions

editorial [Final Cut HD], convert it toProRes and watch it in the edit. It wasfast and furious and just crazy; therewas so much conversion going on,both ways!”

Locsmandi says he “ended up doingsome VFX shots in Scratch right off thesystem. One thing that was really nicewas that we maintained all the originalRed file names when we did our ren-der and I could easily go back and find[material] really fast on the machine,like if I had to make a shot longer.”

Locsmandi says that some filmmak-ers wrongly believe that Red is like anyvideotape with immediate digitizingand editing. “It’s not that straightfor-ward. You’re doing a lot of conversionand trying to figure everything out —it’s a big step.” FilmworksFX ultimatelydelivered Manure to Warner Bros. as10-bit log DPX files. The Sundancescreening was on HDCAM SR.

As to the one-two punch of com-bining Scratch and BlueStor,

Locsmandi says, “This movie would nothave been finished if I did not havetheir hardware. I was able to view the4K fast enough and convert it quicklyenough to keep up with the produc-tion schedule.” While the case ofManure was extreme, it was notunique. Locsmandi cautions that digi-tal acquisition is causing “more andmore chaos” in post compared to therelative strictness of a film production.“With digital acquisition, you just shootand say, ‘Well we’ll figure it out later.’The burden is on post now, and it’s notnecessarily saving [producers] money.”

PUREDV ROCKS Ten-year-old PureDV (www.puredv.

com) in Chicago was founded by LesterCohn, a producer who loves music andmade his name shooting unsigned localbands. Today PureDV shoots, edits (onAvid and Final Cut), provides effects(such as After Effects), graphics, audiopost and DVD authoring among other

services. Recent rock acts that have got-ten the PureDV treatment includeFallout Boy and Taking Back Sunday.Another is country-pop singer Charissa’sHD music video, Come on Now.

Cohn, originally a fine art student,was an early adopter on the Chicagorock-club scene, shooting on CanonOpturas and cutting on Canopus.Compared to fine art, video produc-tion was “instant gratification.”

Cohn went on to shoot for majorlabels like Warner Bros. who wantedwell produced concert footage of cer-tain rock acts for Internet promotionand other uses. Today PureDV will shootmulti-cam with Sony F-900s, Sony EX oron Panasonic P2s and uses EnhanceTechnology storage products.

On a concert DVD for Paul Stanley (ofKiss) Cohn used a compactEnhanceRAID T5 U320 SCSI desktopRAID storage array and got the jobdone with 1.5 TB. He used an Apple G5dual 2.7 with 8GB of RAM and an AJA

PureDV’s Lester Cohn uses an Enhance RAID T5 U320 when working on editorial and visual effects for music videos.


Kona card. Cohn shot the show with 12cameras, but they were a “mish-mash”of formats, determined by a tight budg-et, without matching timecode.

Before acquiring the EnhanceRAID

T5, Cohn set about editing his PaulStanley footage uncompressed onFinal Cut HD. But trying to edit materi-al from the concert’s 12 cameras onFCP with its (then new) multi-cam fea-

ture “was like pushing elephantsthrough a straw. When you’re workingwith uncompressed footage you needmore bandwidth for editing,” he says,“especially if you’re doing multiplestreams at one time. This is where theEnhance product comes in.”

Once Cohn started running the T5,“it was like night and day. It made mylife so much easier. I left that thing run-ning for weeks on end and it never hada problem.”

Today, he says, “a lot of things I’mworking with are multiple streamsfrom 720 P2 card cameras.” RecentlyCohn was bidding a concert shootwhere he planned on using threePanasonic HPX-2000s with additionalcoverage from handheld Panasoniccamcorders. His finished work mayappear on MTV2, on value-addedDVDs or, increasingly, on the Internet.“You’re giving the client so much morebang for the buck by shooting 720 —

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PureDV’s Cohn shot country-pop singer Charissa’s music video, Come onNow, in high definition.


Storage Solutions

it’s still high def and on an HD networkit will still look fantastic.” Cohn was apioneer of the value-added DVDfootage that often accompanies amusic release. “Now you have to be ascreative as possible about finding newways to present media to fans.”

Cohn now has his eye on Enhance’snewer external SATA product line. “I’mconstantly trying to find out what isthe newest, fastest drive I can have.That’s because you want your creativi-ty to fully come out. You buy theseproducts because they allow you thereliability to have the fastest through-put speed, which allows you to domore and be more creative.”

STORAGE IN WONDERLANDThe multiple-Emmy-winning team

at NYC’s Wonderland Productions(www.wonderlandnyc.com) has lots ofsports-oriented productions to theircredit, many shown on HBO, ESPN andSNY. Director/editor Bill McCullough ispartnered with producer Dan Klein inthe company and John Wiggins,

owner/partner in audio sister compa-ny Wonderland Sound, also collabo-rates with McCullough on scoring theirproductions.

McCullough cuts on both Avid andFinal Cut and recently completed edit-ing an HBO documentary, Breaking the

Huddle (concerning the integration ofcollege football). But Wonderland isinto something new — and demand-ing — for HBO. Ring Life is a series ofshorts documenting the lives of up-and-coming boxers (who may or maynot eventually hit the big time withmajor bouts televised on HBO).McCullough shoots and edits thesemini-docs on the road all around thecountry. Each fighter’s story is present-ed in three segments covering thefighter and his family life (if any); thefinal installment covers fight night.Each segment is five to seven minutes.

“HBO is the gold standard for box-ing,” McCullough says, “and this is alook at some of the guys who are onthe undercards.”

McCullough shoots the fightersand their fights on a Canon XL-H1using handy HDV cassettes. He caneasily shoot six hours of tape on thefly to dramatize each boxer’s story.“When we’re on these road trips, I’llbring my drive with me, I’ll digitizeright there and I’ll cut.” On some fightnights, McCullough needs to turnaround the segment quickly. “I’ll goshoot the fight, then go back to myhotel room with my laptop, cameraand my G-RAID drive, and digitize itand cut right there.”

Fight night can still add up to threehours of tape and McCullough digi-tizes the footage in realtime. “The coolthing is, as I’m shooting, I kind ofknow my selects and where I’m goingto put them.”

McCullough’s G-Tech G-RAIDs eachstore 1TB and he was able to hold sixboxers’ stories on the one he dedicatesto Ring Life. (He also archives copies incase there is any loss.) “It’s a goodworkhorse and it’s portable and reli-able. I use all G-RAIDs.”

For work on a longform,McCullough allows that you want mul-tiple editors sharing footage.Wonderland has its 7TB FacilisTerraBlock networked to four FCP editrooms but often today the TerraBlockserves as an aid to mixing and scoringprojects at the facility. “It’s a great kind

of intranet for us to get back and forthand store things and get things mixed.”

When not on the road and not phys-ically working at Wonderland,McCullough uses a G-RAID to workfrom his home. “I can take my MacBookand my G-RAID drive and go home andcut HD. That’s a wonderful thing.”

McCullough worked with HBO pro-ducer Thomas Huffine, who createdthe Ring Life series. Huffine says,“There’s no doubt that the proliferationand mobility of digital storage hasallowed the business to change. Andthe business has reacted by saying,‘This is great — how much faster andhow much better can you do it again?’So the ability to take the material thatyou need digitally on the road andwork is a light-speed step up from justa few years ago when you were stuckto whatever desktop situation youwere editing in.”

Huffine adds, “Ring Life is right outon the edge of the industry as far asbeing a completely digital production.People in the industry are expectingmore for less these days. HBO isembracing digital with open arms inevery aspect from shooting digitally togoing all the way to the end digitally.Shooting physical film is going to beleft up to the major studios.”

COLOR FOR SPOTSPost production veterans Bob Festa,

Clark Muller and Darby Walker openedSanta Monica’s NewHat here last yearwith an all-British array of color grad-ing systems, including PandoraPlatinum systems and, recently, aFilmlight Baselight Four. Richard Alcalacame on board at NewHat as seniorengineer last August.

The shop (www.newhat.tv) special-izes in color correction for TV commer-cials. Big-budget spots for big nationaladvertisers. The automakers alone thatNewHat has done color work for say alot: Alfa Romeo, Dodge Ram, Jeep,Land Rover, Lexus, Lincoln and Mazda.

It’s all digits, of course, and thatmeans they need storage. Besidespushing digits around the shop, Alcala

Wonderland’s Bill McCullough usesG-RAIDs and TerraBlocks.

Storage Solutions

says, it’s about “doing it in realtime, fullresolution and in multiple streams, and

that’s what the DataDirect SAN allowsus to do.” For film-acquired commer-

cials, and NewHat clients tend to befilm people, NewHat scans on twoSpirit 4K DataCines. But they work in2K — for now. The 2K workflow on the DataDirect Networks 300TBxSTREAMScaler SAN “allows us to havethree rooms running simultaneously,playing back off the storage withoutany dropped frames. They can essen-tially be coloring, be playing back andpreviewing the shot; changing thecolor and previewing the shot, comingoff the same centralized storage with-out affecting each other.” Their workbeing TV spots, NewHat colorists workon their own separate projects in anonlinear fashion.

“We scan full-ap 35mm negative atfull 2K resolution and now we have thefull image that, when you bring it intothe color corrector, we can pan, pushin, we can tilt up and down and frameit the way we want.”

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NewHat, which houses two Thomson Grass Valley Spirit 4K Datacines, usesa DataDirect SAN for its DI work.

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When color grading is finishedNewHat colorists typically play out tohigh def tape — about 90 percent ofthe time. “There are some clients whowant to walk away with a FireWiredrive,” Alcala says. These clients want tokeep their media as uncompressed, fullbit-depth data files for additional VFXwork or other processing. “In whichcase we can apply the color to files, putthem back onto the SAN, then pullthem off the SAN on a workstation anddeliver them on a FireWire drive.”

Another thing the xSTREAMScalerSAN allows NewHat to do is, “when wescan the film in, we can then take an

EDL, load it into the color correction sys-tem, and it basically pulls in those spe-cific shots with handles. We could actu-ally do the conform within the colorcorrection system.

“Formatted, we have about 220 TB ofreal storage area,” Alcala says. “That’sbroken down into multiple volumesand that’s how we’re able to sustain thebandwidth and the streams we have.”

Alcala comes to NewHat fromTechnicolor’s Burbank DI facility

where they were color grading fea-ture films in 2K resolution using datafiles transferred to DVS Clipster localattached storage. Using the SAN atNewHat is a new paradigm. Whenseeking a file on a SAN, Alcala says,“You just point to it. It’s really veryconvenient. There’s a lot more flexibil-ity having all of the elements residingon one large pool of storage.”

LOTS OF DIGITAL ASSETSIf you saw Post’s February cover story

on the hit stop-motion feature filmCoraline, you’ve seen just some of whatanimation house Laika does.

The reality of painstaking stop-motion production is such that it doesnot actually generate a whole lot of dig-its in a day’s work. Or even a week’s. Butif you look at the whole of Portland, OR’sLaika (www.laika.com) — including itsCG entertainment department and itscel, Flash and motion graphics work —you understand the company’s claimthat it makes “every kind of animationfor every medium.”

That includes lots of commercials —

as many as 40 in the past year for suchmajor advertisers as Apple, Levi’s,Ubisoft and M&M’s. And that meanslots of digits.

Alvaro Cubillas is VP and head oftechnology at Laika. It’s his responsibil-ity to support activities at both LaikaEntertainment (feature films, etc.) andLaika House, a bustling division busywith commercials, branded entertain-ment and more. Laika House was cre-ated in 2005 with the purchase of WillVinton Studios, the Portland pioneersof stop-motion and CG.

The whole Laika operation is spreadacross three buildings in three loca-

tions. “We have datacenters in all threebuildings,” Cubillas says, and all thestorage therein is from NetApp. Onebuilding’s datacenter primarily sup-ports the corporate offices and LaikaHouse projects. Nearby is the buildingwith the largest data center — itserves Laika’s many CG efforts.

The third facility, designed for stop-motion feature production, such asCoraline, has its own datacenter withNetApp storage. The stop-motion

Laika’s Coraline and Al Cubillas (inset): The studio’s datacenters all house NetApp gear.


Storage Solutions

operation, which used 50 sets just forCoraline, is, at least for now, locatedabout 20 minutes away on the free-way. About 30 animators worked onHenry Selick’s Coraline. The film’s digi-tally captured still frames were shot instereo at 24fps and cached in the localstage’s NetApp storage.

“The digital effects on Coraline weredone by Laika Entertainment folks,”Cubillas says. And all effects — rigremoval is a big deal — were stored upat the datacenter housed in the corpo-rate offices known as the Conwaybuilding. Each night the data stores ofthe day’s stop-motion work and thedigital effects/rig-removal work aresynced there.

“We’ve had an exclusive relationshipwith NetApp for seven years,” Cubillassays, although Laika would look at dif-ferent vendors over that time. “Thathas not been due to blind loyalty butdue to the fact that their products met

— and exceeded, in a lot of cases —our data-services needs for commer-cials, corporate storage, CG work andstop-motion feature work.” Over theyears, NetApp products became “the

backbone of where all our frames arestored for all of our work.”

Laika currently maintains over200TB across all three datacenters, allon NetApp gear, including their tradi-


Laika produced this Oregon Lottery spot recently for agency BPN, Inc.


Storage Solutions

tional Data ONTAP-managed systemsand Data ONTAP GX systems used forCG and VFX work. NetApp’s DataONTAP GX allows for easy expansion ofstorage and increase of performancebehind the scenes, and without inter-rupting source service, which is key toanimation. “Their GX technologyallows us to have the kind of controlwhere we can do live ‘data shuffling.’We can tune and optimize during thefilm to make sure that the artists areworking as fast as they can,” Cubillassays. “Not interrupting production atthe height of production is a holy grailwhen you’re on the data side. You tryto get as much as you can out of the

studio’s very precious resources.”And that’s Cubillas’s biggest chal-

lenge. However, he stresses, “We’re acompany of filmmakers. We’re not acompany of technologists. We’re mak-ing cartoons and having a lot of fun!”

UNIVERSAL SPEEDHow important is quality audio to a

quality picture today? One HDTV con-sumer experiment a few years agoasked civilians which of two video clips

they were shown was in HD. Whichwas better? Almost always the con-sumers claimed the video with thesuperior audio tracks was high def —even when it was actually SD.

They understand this at Burbank’sUniversal Studios Sound (www.film-makersdestination.com) This is thevenerable 18-stage facility where clas-sic movies and TV programs have got-ten sophisticated audio post sincethey had sound. Today, Universal offersmixing, sound editorial and design,ADR, Foley (and the original Jack Foleystage), audio preservation and restora-tion, digital mastering, and soundtransfer for feature films, television,

trailers, and independent projects andit’s all digital. They do big pictures here,like 300 and Watchmen. And there areplenty of TV programs — Universal’sparent, since 2004, is NBC Universal.

Universal’s Chris Jenkins and FrankA. Montaño (along with freelance pro-duction mixer Petr Forejt) mixed theOscar-nominated sound for Universal’s

Wanted here at the Hitchcock Theater.“We’re really proud of them,”says David“Doc” Goldstein, VP of post productionengineering, Universal Studios Sound.“The movie sounds really amazing —they did a great job of carrying thesound to the visuals in that show,which are pretty striking.”

Storage and workflow for audiohave undergone important changeshere in recent years. “Our [audio] filesaren’t usually as big, but we have a lotmore of them,” says Goldstein. “Wehave three tiers of storage here. Wehave a SAN that is our working storage— we work on Pro Tools systems andthe Pro Tools thinks that the SAN is

local storage. At the end of the day, wedrag that off to our nearline storage,which is about 100TB of RAID storage.And in the middle of the night that’sbacked up to our LTO-3 tape library.”

With 18 soundstages to serve,Universal’s sound department has twoseparate areas. “We have the main postproduction area which houses all but

Wanted: Universal Studios Sound mixed this Angelina Jolie film. They useICON and Harrison boards and SNS storage.

Storage Solutions

two of our mixing stages,” says chiefengineer Jeff Taylor, “and we have ourBluWave Audio Building.” The BluWaveBuilding is new and was designed byTaylor to house a sophisticated storageoperation, including a new SNS SAN,along with many other activities. Ithouses digital mastering (or “post-postproduction”) doing foreign releases,DVD audio prep, and other aftermarketwork. Restoration and preservation ofUniversal’s (and third parties’) classicfilms also take place here. Digital trans-fer represents the third group in thebuilding and, acting as a “Swiss Armyknife” of digital audio, they can transferany sound medium to any other.Among others, Taylor works in the newbuilding with Jeremy Ayers, GaryGorman and Andy Peach.

“All these various areas are attachedto the storage,” Goldstein points out,“which means it’s easy for different peo-ple in different areas to get the same

files and work on them. It’s really greatin sound editorial when you have morethan one person working on a project.”

“With the three tiers of storage,”Taylor says, “we have approximately70TB of online 4GB-attached fibre SANarchitecture within the department.” Atleast half of the department’s 200 or soPro Tools systems are fibre attached tothe SAN backbone and that number islikely to grow. “In addition, we have a

Gigabit Ethernet fabric sitting under-neath that is our own private LAN. Wehave our own servers and manage thestorage on that through an activedirectory environment.”

That’s how the sound departmentmanages the security of all the workpassing through. And that includesthird-party work — movies that arejust visiting. The idea is to serve upmedia to working creative profession-POST_SUP_HALF_H_BLEED:POST_SUP_HALF_H 2/17/09 8:38 AM Page 1

Universal’s mixing team on Wanted was nominated for an Oscar.

Storage Solutions

als while curtailing opportunities forpiracy at the same time. In fact, securi-ty may be “job one”at Universal Sound.

Outside editors working on the lot,for instance, need full and unfetteredaccess to their material, but no accessto other shows. Editors have their cre-dentials for their particular job but,within the configuration of the fabric,that’s the only material they can see orhear. “We have people, Eddie Bydalek,Rob Carr, who do the lion’s share of themanagement for us,”Taylor says.

“Some of our competitors are still car-rying FireWire drives around from roomto room,”Goldstein says. “The advantageto the way we’re doing it is it’s muchmore secure. Everything can be lockeddown by the administrators. You don’thave a zillion copies because everybodycan work off the same files off the SAN.”

Universal’s new SAN is from StudioNetwork Solutions (SNS) and it firstcame online in spring of 2008. The solu-

tion for the soundstages includes over80 seats of SNS’s SANmp with FibreChannel switches and 12 IBM DS4200enterprise-class storage arrays. The FCfabric is connected via 10GB Ethernet,allowing the mapping of any FCresource to a specific user as needed.

Universal’s new storage has reallymade it easier to protect filmmakers’work, Goldstein says. “You can central-ize your picture files and limit access tothe very few people who have to haveit.” When they’re done working, per-missions and access are removed, andfiles can be deleted at the end of theproject, obviating the need for copiesthat could fall into the wrong hands.

Universal Sound runs a combinationof Digidesign ICON boards and tradi-tional Harrison MPC and Series Twelveconsoles. But even on the projectsbeing mixed on the Harrisons “all of thetracks are being played back from ProTools systems, and the recorders are Pro

Tools systems,” Goldstein says. “That’sbecause they’re edited on Pro Tools sys-tems and we have to have a very trans-parent workflow to and from the edi-tors as they’re working on a mix stagebecause films are always changing.”

The picture changes even during theaudio post process. “Versioning is a hugedeal,”Taylor says. “It’s another reason thatour storage environment has been verybeneficial, because we can track andmanage lots and lots of versions. Wekeep only the current version on theFibre Channel storage array and wekeep all the version history in our near-line environment so that the filmmakerscan go back very quickly if they need to.”

Filmmakers working at Universalexpect speed. “The ping pong tablesdon’t get as much action as they usedto,” Goldstein says. “Filmmakers [have] alot more to deal with — DI, specialeffects and sound — and it’s all happen-ing at the same time.”

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