Red Bull, based in 1987, has had the slogan “Red Bull Gives You Wings” because the anchor of their advertising marketing campaign since 1992. But since 2020, Frame.io has been giving the staff at Red Bull Media House (RBMH) a distinct form of wings—from their cameras to the cloud.
RBMH, whose personal motto is “Giving wings to people and ideas,” is as fearless as among the athletes they movie on the subject of taking calculated dangers with the expertise and workflows they make use of. Specifically, the Frame.io Camera to Cloud workflow has helped RBMH ship footage from occasions just like the FIM Hard Enduro World Championship races to the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series.
So it’s no shock that after they discovered we had a brand new addition to our C2C workflow—Real-Time Logging (RTL)—they took the leap to see the way it may assist them soar to new heights when it comes to ease and pace of supply for his or her eye-popping content material to information and social media shops.
Living on the sting
Based in Salzburg, Austria, RBMH employs roughly 1,100 individuals who handle the media manufacturing wants for the various occasions the World of Red Bull produces globally. Known for his or her assist of maximum sports activities, Red Bull wants extraordinarily educated tacticians to surmount the various challenges that masking these occasions current. With crews ranging wherever from 5 to 200 individuals in dimension, RBMH is answerable for ensuring that their protection conveys the joy and excessive stakes of the occasion—and retains followers engaged within the thrill of the second.
Dennis Wiehberg, senior venture supervisor innovation for RBMH’s Media Production Services unit, has moved by way of the ranks of RBMH first as an ingest technician, adopted by a stint main the manufacturing engineering staff, earlier than transferring into his present function. When the phrase “innovation” is in your job title, pushing technological boundaries is clearly a given, and through his tenure Dennis has helped RBMH develop new, extra environment friendly, and quicker workflows each within the discipline and of their editorial operations. With a workflow primarily based in Adobe Creative Cloud, Frame.io features because the centralized platform for his or her end-to-end inventive workflow.
Stocked with an arsenal of cameras from Sony, RED, and ARRI, in addition to iPhones (using Filmic Pro), and Atomos and Teradek options, the manufacturing groups specify the best gear for every distinctive objective—which must be rugged, gentle, and dependable. After all, the manufacturing staff is out in the identical situations as, for instance, the Hard Enduro motorcyclists traversing the Austrian terrain for the Erzberg Rodeo. The races go on for days at a time, typically in inclement climate, taking each rider and videographer by way of slim, muddy trails, up steep ravines, and over rocky embankments.
From digicam to completion
As the manufacturing staff does their greatest to seize all of the motion, which tends to tackle some type of insane (good, nice, or unbelievably terrifying), in addition they want to resolve the challenges of getting that footage to their 4 editors as rapidly as attainable. Based safely again in Salzburg, the editorial staff then wants to show round that content material to feed the followers who hungrily eat short- and long-form variations of it on streaming platforms and social media.
It’s this sort of problem that prompted Dennis to strive Frame.io Camera to Cloud initially. The Hard Enduro races are usually two to five-day occasions with a manufacturing staff of six to eight videographers capturing someplace between 3-4 TB per day. Understanding that this workflow may probably present a method for them to bypass the necessity to obtain digicam playing cards and add recordsdata, or to ship exhausting drives, meant that they might mainly get footage from distant places worldwide to Salzburg and out to social media inside hours somewhat than days.
After that, RBMH started utilizing C2C for the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series. “Basically, it’s how we do news from there and we’re also looking into rolling it out throughout the entire highlight production,” Dennis explains. “For multiple camera systems, we’ve reduced the time it takes to release highlights—it’s, like, two days less.” Even with Frame “just” serving as a central platform for fast importing and downloading within the discipline, it’s an enormous time saver for the groups.
Out within the discipline it’s a run-and-gun state of affairs. The clips they seize—within the neighborhood of 50-60 belongings—are destined for social media platforms together with YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. “Our social media teams are one or two people—a producer and a shooter/editor. Usually they’re on location with each other, but even on location, depending on the actual event that you’re covering, with the distances you need to cover on foot Frame.io can be super helpful,” Dennis says.
Real-time reactions
But there’s extra to the Red Bull content material than simply pace—high quality is vital. That’s the place the brand new Real-Time Logging (RTL) feature in Camera to Cloud enters their workflow. RTL is enabled by connecting Ambient NanoLockit units to a Frame.io venture, and is on the market with the present model of Frame.io right now (V4 compatibility arrives later this 12 months).
With buttons which might be pre-programmed to point sure feedback, RTL creates a warmth map of timecode-accurate, customizable feedback that go on to the editor. For instance, one button on the gadget may point out “great moment” whereas the opposite may point out “leave this out.”
Not solely does it save time by basically creating an on the spot log of “circle takes” for the editor, it lets the director or producer keep extra linked to the post-production course of by letting them give instant suggestions that helps carry their inventive intention by way of to the ultimate product.
Dennis felt that Hard Enduro may very well be an excellent check case for RTL. “We had a bunch of interviews and B-roll that was shot around the event, and we first gave it to the director to use on the interview day,” he says. “The editors could simply jump to certain markers in that cloud proxy and go through the footage without having to listen through the idle talk in between, which was actually quite cool.”
Connectivity options
Of course, for any Camera to Cloud workflow to operate at peak effectivity, web connectivity is an element. RBMH’s manufacturing gear rental service outfits the groups with quite a lot of options. “I think there’s pretty much a solution for every budget out there at the moment,” he says. “You have a hotspot on your phone, and then there are mobile multi-SIM modems that you can carry around with you. We recently switched to battery powered dual SIM Celerway modems, but have used Netgear and Pepwave equipment in the past. We found one company that’s got great ruggedized Starlink deployments for the field with 10-hour battery operation. It all depends on how much bandwidth you need and what you want to spend.”
Pushing C2C to the acute
At RBMH, the manufacturing groups are as excessive as Hard Enduro riders in pursuit of latest methods to enhance the effectivity and pace of their manufacturing and post-production ecosystem. It was in that spirit that they carried out a latest check throughout a upkeep flight of their media helicopter to see if they might use Camera to Cloud whereas flying.
Their rig: a Shotover F1 gimbal system with an ARRI Alexa 35 and an Atomos Shogun Connect. And, sure, they had been in a position to ship HQ proxies on to Frame.io whereas flying.
For us, there’s nothing extra thrilling than having the ability to accomplice with sensible, creative, and intrepid prospects as we proceed to develop our product, and nothing extra gratifying than witnessing (and sharing) their success.
