It’s fair to say that many movie industry bigwigs bemoan the growth of the internet somewhat. Piracy is rampant and costs studios millions of pounds every year in lost revenue.
Yet, it’s also opened up a wealth of opportunities to this creative industry. Fast file sharing has enabled directors and studios to become more creative and more efficient. It’s levelled the playing field too – offering exciting options for smaller, independent movie makers that were previously out of their budget.
Filming in a fast, connected world
Gone are the days when all the film crew had to descend on one location to shoot a masterpiece. Fast file transfer solutions mean that actors and producers don’t necessarily need to be in one place.
Not only does this make it most cost-effective, with fewer logistical costs involved in shipping actors to specific places if their role can be performed remotely, it also makes it easier to squeeze filming between stars’ ever-cramped diaries.
For instance, when Johnny Depp filmed the part of the Mad Hatter in 2010’s Alice in Wonderland, he didn’t join the rest of the crew in Torpoint, Devon, but was shot entirely remotely on ‘green screen’ technology – with his work superimposed onto special effect backgrounds later in the process.
Thanks to fast FTP technology, terabits of information can be sent and received, fast.
Sending files for post-production
Once everything’s been shot to the satisfaction of the director, the film has to be tweaked to perfection in post-production. Obviously, the growth of the internet has allowed studios to make significant improvements here.
The growth of special effects means that many different locations, and companies, need to add their unique twist to the raw footage. The film will be embellished by visual effects, CGI, music, sound effects and much more. But thanks to large file transfer solutions, these companies will be able to do their work in a fraction of the time than in 10 years previous.
And once again, they don’t need to be on site to work their magic.
Screening the films – is large digital file transfer used for film distribution?
Not yet. But it could be soon. Although practice differs according to individual cinemas, larger multiplexes usually receive a physical copy of a film which is delivered by a courier. The film is then transferred to the cinema’s individual server and then screened from there.
It doesn’t take an expert accountant to ascertain that this distribution method isn’t the most cost effective out there – nor is it the most time efficient. There are clearly concerns from cinema bosses about the security of digital distribution. But as file transfer solutions become increasingly fast, secure and reliable, there could be a time in the not-too-distant future when movie companies are able to send their finished films to cinemas over specialised, super-secure FTP framework – saving hundreds of thousands of pounds in the process.
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