Remote post-production in Brazil
Skills and tools that have been fine-tuned during Covid-19 to deal with remote post-production are transferable to other aspects of virtual audiovisual production
They say necessity is the mother of invention. This year is a case in point. Social distancing and widespread lockdowns during the coronavirus pandemic have fast-tracked a global digital transformation. Billions of people have found new ways to work remotely and connect with each other. In the audiovisual industry, productions have found new ways to continue, facilitated by live streaming, virtual production tools and video conferencing technology, not to mention super-fast connectivity thanks to 4G, 5G and fibre optics. Post-production, in some cases, has actually thrived.
For Story Productions, it’s been six months of highs and lows, or rather lows followed by highs. Demand for our Brazil fixers and production services ground to a halt in the second quarter of 2020 as international clients stopped coming to Brazil, barring the news crews. We made the most of the downtime to complete post-production on a 10-part children’s television series, an in-house project that we filmed over the past three years. Physical distances were no longer the barriers they once were. We had scriptwriters in Brazil’s Northeast working on the series while a team of editors, a sound mixer, sound designer, composer, creative director and production coordinator all worked remotely from their homes in São Paulo. Physically distanced but closely connected, the team carried on thanks to carefully planned workflows, a stack of large hard drives, cloud storage and daily catch-ups.
Initially, we thought remote post-production might be a short-lived phase. Now, we know it’s here to stay. Clients such as Hoplite Entertainment in Los Angeles have experienced the flexibility and efficiency it can bring after outsourcing the entire post-production of a post-production of a 10-part television travel series to us. During the six-month project, we worked closely with their production team without once meeting them face-to-face.
Not only have we adapted our workflows and embraced virtual collaboration and production tools for remote post-production, but we’ve also brought these benefits and efficiencies to other aspects of our work. Live streaming, for example, has enabled our Brazilian film crew to go out and shoot everything from documentaries to corporate interviews, with directors in New York or London following camera feeds in (almost) real-time and directing the shots from afar. Crews that might once have travelled to Brazil to film are outsourcing that to us, saving on time and production costs.
One thing that hasn’t changed in 2020 is the power of good story telling. This is still at the heart of what we do, whether we’re the creative drivers of a production or bringing someone else’s vision to life. “We tell universal stories and make the connection between the global and the local context. This is our DNA,” says Nick Story, founder of Story Productions. “We are a multi-lingual team with people from different countries, based in Brazil. This is why we understand exactly what our international clients expect from us, and what the final audience expects from the production. We’re 100% aligned with our clients. Remote post-production services are just a logical consequence of a whole shift change in the way we work, from pre- right through to post-production”.
This global mindset coupled with having our feet firmly rooted in Brazil is what makes us the perfect partner for companies either looking to outsource the filming of a production in Brazil, or use the pool of creative talent that Brazil has to offer for post-production work, from animation to motion graphics, editing, sound design, foley and original music composition.
Those skills work across news, documentaries, television, advertising and corporate productions. “During Covid-19, we’ve learnt that our creativity, production skills and connections have made it perfectly possible to be very productive, and not just in post-production work,” says Nick.
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