Documentatary producer Box to Box Films uses MediaSilo to distribute clips and completed content to collaborators, directly and securely, for viewing on any platform.
Box to Box worked with French producers Quad Productions on Netflix's Tour de France documentary, Tour de France: Unchained, and eight-episode series revealing up-close scenes from the 2022 cycle race.
Box to Box Films, recognised specialist producer of documentaries and factual entertainment, is known for its work on the documentary Diego Maradona, recounting the career of celebrated football player Diego Maradona, and the Formula 1: Drive to Survive documentaries giving an inside look into motorsports that reached series six on Netflix in February 2024. The company generates dynamic, dramatic narratives for international audiences.
For these and many other films and series, MediaSilo is used to deliver work-in-progress content to collaborators. The software allows clips and completed content to be distributed, directly and securely, for viewing on any platform.
Because each project is managed independently, with different management staff, clients, post facilities and producers, Box to Box needs a way to distribute dailies and cuts exclusively to the team involved in that particular production. MediaSilo makes it possible to do this, giving them a completely flexible storage space that allows the team to individually serve the requirements of different projects, while allowing multiple users to access it.
Clip Distribution
“On a typical project we would send a cut to, for instance, two bosses, three or four executive producers, the showrunner and producer, post supervisors and others,” said Box to Box technical editor Rafael Bettega. “We send the picture lock cut to the composer, and to the creative marketing people so they can plan and start the campaign as early as possible,” he said.
After working with MediaSilo for some time, Box to Box has now extended its agreement with EditShare to continue working with the system. “Working with MediaSilo means we don’t need to be directly concerned with the technical side of it,” said Rafael. “The users receive a review link to a video that they can access with a password, and play just by pressing the spacebar. They don’t need to download extra software or take up licences in an asset management system.
“Also, the two-factor security makes it acceptable to the networks we’re partnering with, who need to prioritise secure methods for content transfer.” Other security features include various types of watermarking and the ability to assign project-based permissions.
Rafael first used MediaSilo in 2013 while working on Amy, a film documenting the life of Amy Winehouse, at the suggestion of the post house he was working with. The company now uses the system for all its productions. File uploads are fast, via web, desktop, mobile or FTP, and organisation can be approached in different ways – based on projects and folders, as well as metadata-driven methods.
Decentralised Management
To decentralise the management of large project teams and help scale the workflows, individual managers can control content and project membership. Users can connect to MediaSilo from within the common Adobe software like Photoshop, After Effects or Premier Pro.
To support commenting and annotating on video assets, still images and documents, MediaSilo has dedicated applications on Windows or Mac OS, Android and iOS mobile, or Apple TV operating systems to facilitate review from outside location. Managers also have a tagging system to quickly share content with specific user groups. Templates are avialable to help present content coherently for review.
For monitoring and analysis, MediaSilo can be used to track several aspects of a project from individual users’ activity across review links and presentations to check on review links to see comments and approvals, to the activity on the files or assets themselves to determine the most and least viewed.
“This is an ideal application for MediaSilo,” said Eric Wynalek, EVP marketing & strategy at EditShare. “As fans of Box to Box’s productions, we’re pleased to be an integral part of their workflow. Box to Box has a set of diverse users who need to collaborate on content securely, including protection with custom permissions and receipt of usage analytics. The interface allows groups to be set up for each project, with permissions set by users, so each clip and cut is sent to just the right people and feedback is received quickly.” www.editshare.com
