Elly Yates-Roberts |
At IBC 2022, speakers from Adobe, Autodesk, Avid, Google and Microsoft joined MovieLabs’ session to speak about the importance of collaboration and the cloud in realising the future of media and entertainment.
The session was led by Leon Silverman, advisor for strategy and industry relations at Movielabs, and addressed the organisation’s whitepaper The Evolution of Media Creation. The 2019 report – now often referred to as the ‘2030 Vision’ – outlined MovieLabs’ 10-year vision for the adoption of new technologies to aid in content production, post-production and visual effects.
The paper outlines a road map of 10 principles for a more efficient media pipeline using cloud infrastructure, zero-trust security and software-defined workflows. It is focused on helping creative teams to be more efficient, flexible and fast.
“It’s like a product management bible for organisations working in media and entertainment,” said Jeff Rosica, CEO of Avid Technology. “It gives us a foundation to work from and puts MovieLabs’ 2030 vision into a common language and viewpoint that everyone can understand. I believe that we are well on the way to achieve that vision.”
Simon Crownshaw, worldwide strategy director for media and entertainment at Microsoft, echoed these sentiments: “The paper is integral to helping us consider what to build and how we want to help our partners and customers. It provides a blueprint of how to move workflows, assets and data to the cloud. Microsoft wants to be the backbone and foundation of those workflows, and the 2030 vision sets us in the right direction.”
Silverman, Rosica and Crownshaw were joined on stage by Bill Roberts, industry strategist at Adobe; Diana Colella, senior vice president of media and entertainment at Autodesk; and Buzz Hays, global lead of entertainment at Google Cloud. They each spoke about how they are aligned with and implementing MovieLabs’ 2030 vision.
The speakers highlighted that – despite widespread innovation across the industry in adopting the cloud – there are several challenges around cost, security and interoperability, though cloud vendors Microsoft and Google are working to address these.
The discussion of interoperability also sparked a conversation about the importance of collaboration in the industry to achieve the 2030 vision. “I’m excited about the industry right now,” said Crownshaw. “I’m seeing a lot more transparency between the studios, vendors and cloud providers. We’re collaborating, learning and sharing, and this is essential to reach that vision.”
When asked for their final thoughts, Crownshaw spoke about the cloud-readiness of the industry. “Three years ago the conference didn’t feel very cloud-ready,” he said. “It’s very different today. I think the cloud can support the MovieLabs vision in the way that we hoped, but there’s a lot to do. Microsoft and Google have a shared vision to make this work because we believe in the vision.”
Roberts ended the session by highlighting the fact that there has been a sense of fear associated with the cloud among media organisations, but industry partnerships can transform this for better. “There has been a lot of fear – fear of change, cost, everything,” he said. “We have to transfer this to curiosity. Customers, application vendors and cloud vendors all need to partner together to focus on the benefits that cloud could bring and how it could help us achieve that 2030 vision.”