EditShare’s Flow enables secure, modern editorial workflows and collaboration and support in demand for remote workflow design consultancy and finishing services. Learn more about in during a webinar.

As we move rapidly to adopt remote technologies that enable us to propel our respective businesses forward, there is an impact that this radical shift has on our day to day work environment. Zeb Chadfield, founder of The Finish Line – the largest distributed finishing house in the UK, and EditShare’s Director of Marketing, Lee Griffin, will discuss the subject in the next edition of EditShare’s interactive webinar series called “Remote Production: Balancing Work and Self”.

During the webinar, Zeb will share his approach to collaborating remotely with clients and teams over the last five years. With the mental well-being of his teams at the forefront of his company’s mission, Zeb will offer insight on how to shift teams from being on-site to using virtual set ups, while creating an atmosphere of collaboration and well-being, using proven best practices for working with remote technologies.

The webinar note was made simultaneously with the announcement that the UK based post-production company, The Finish Line, is using EditShare’s Flow media management workflow solution to scale its post-production business through remotely enabled workflows. Known for its high caliber finishing services, The Finish Line chose EditShare’s open and collaborative media management solution to create a secure cloud-based media control layer that enables advanced, remote editorial workflows including ingest of rushes, storyboarding, and review and approval.

Working from home

“Our core business has been based around installing and staffing internal finishing services for production companies. I am always looking at solutions to help us manage our team of creative talent while also ensuring that our clients have a consistent experience that is as good or better than that of a traditional facility,” states Zeb Chadfield, founder and finishing artist, The Finish Line. “Until recently, remote workflows were not commonplace and we spent a lot of time helping production companies migrate over to these services with the intention of helping their budgets to be better utilized.”

The impact of COVID-19 has changed the work dynamic for production facilities and given an urgency to deploying remote work solutions. Chadfield adds, “At The Finish Line we have been working as a distributed business for a long time and are in a position to help companies quickly pivot their operations. Luckily there are very mature tools on the market which are simple to deploy in the cloud like Flow and QScan from EditShare. We can build all of the technology our clients are used to having access to in traditional facilities but within a virtual environment. We can then automate their ingest processes and provide them with easy and secure access to view their media. They can collaborate with their editors even while they are continuing to shoot or need to stay home because of a global pandemic.”

Learning to work remotely

Flow seamlessly connects to industry storage platforms, adding a control layer that manages millions of assets and supports a myriad of codecs and resolutions ranging from Standard Definition up to 4K and 8K.  Embedded production tools let users search, browse, retrieve, assemble and distribute content with automation capabilities to orchestrate complex migrations and or redundant tasks. The advanced public API enables extensible workflows and integration with leading creative tools. AirFlow provides secure remote access with the features The Finish Line requires to facilitate finishing workflows across distributed teams and clients, even when the teams are all working from home. Chadfield concludes, “The benefits of working from home are immense, and we will come out of this knowing that we can work effectively from home, even when not forced into it. Everyone should be trying to find ways to enable their teams to work remotely as much as possible.”

The Finish Line fulfills an important post-production need for many production businesses. Its impressive roster of clients includes EditShare customers Argonon Films, Endemol Shine Group, and FremantleMedia.

“The Finish Line’s business model takes the best of all worlds and delivers on the highest standards. Physical walls, geographical and time zone boundaries have no effect on the efficiency and delivery of high quality productions,” states Rob Adams, vice president worldwide sales, EditShare. “Rapidly changing global events have forced a rethink about workflow collaboration. The traditional office, or in this case, the cutting room, is no longer the norm. Zeb is thinking – and working – light years ahead in terms of remote production. We are honored that he is driving this new approach and putting Flow right at the core of what is likely to be the industry’s next big shift.”