5 Tips to Streamline Your Next Production: 2) Starting up the production office

Tips to streamline production: Step 2 - Receiving the production team

As our series on streamlining production workflows continues, we now turn our focus to the pivotal stage of welcoming the wider production team. Budgeting, planning, and scoping become paramount at this stage. 

In this instalment, Sohonet delves into the essential steps of scoping your technology needs - how much bandwidth will each department need, what size files will you be sending, what dailies tool will you use.  From budget allocation to meticulous planning and scoping out the project's requirements, we provide practical insights to ensure a smooth transition into the production phase.

The Challenge

Whether your budget is big or small, you need to ensure the filming stays within it. Under budgeting and underscoping on your technology needs (Wi-Fi, automated file transfer tools, security, storage, video hardware – the list goes on) could leave you open for a nasty surprise down the line.

‍Budgeting for Technology Needs

If your director can’t access Wi-Fi, you didn’t plan enough bandwidth to share dailies back to headquarters, or your off-lot creatives can’t participate in the creative production, the whole production process grinds to a halt. 

Challenges in Secure File Transfer

During film and television production, hefty file transfers are commonplace, often involving Terabytes of raw camera data. Production teams require robust file transfer tools capable of handling large data volumes while meeting security standards mandated by the parent studio's content security team.

‍Expanding Workload

As your production office starts to grow and various departments show up on-site, the work doesn’t stop. You’ll likely be thinking about any number of the following: Locations and dates you will be shooting (stages, outside, on location), set designs (and how they’ll affect Wi-Fi placement), the buildings/ spaces each department will be in, the number of crew onsite and in each department and studios security guidelines (firewalls, network segregation, video surveillance).‍

The Fix

Sohonet’s expert teams are available to craft tailored solutions, providing continuous support 24/7/365 to assist you every step of the way.

We’ll help you scope out exactly what is needed at each stage of your production, so you don’t need to worry about underscoping or budgeting. We work with you to create a solution that gives you exactly what you need, whilst also ensuring every tool we suggest is compliant with your parent studio’s security protocols.

We provide bandwidth estimates for each department to help you budget effectively. For instance, the VFX department may require high-capacity bandwidth for global file sharing, while the make-up department might only need basic Wi-Fi for internet browsing. 

Explore the service offerings from Sohonet such as ClearView Rush, our dailies editing software or our managed firewall services among others. Contact us for more information!

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