We are living in a world where remote collaboration is more important than ever. Client demands are increasing and delivery turnaround times are getting shorter. Interestingly enough, I’ve come to learn that re-thinking creative collaboration doesn’t have to be as technical as one might think. The truth is that there are an infinite number of solutions, and the secret — in my opinion — is understanding the finite ways we can collaborate.
Some Background
I currently work at a production company, and while our core team is relatively small, we often find ourselves working with many freelancers outside the office. Before 2020, collaborating usually meant working in one building with different computers accessing a local drive or some type of shared storage.
Early on, the company that I was working at was using popular file-sharing services, such as Google Drive and Dropbox, to send and receive assets. Everyone would have their local project files and footage. And screeners for review would be uploaded to Vimeo, to then later be returned with notes in an email that would get buried in long threads.
Things worked this way for some time, but being forced to go fully remote because of COVID-19 encouraged both my company and me to rethink the way we had been working. The problem I encountered was that while this might work locally, it can’t easily be scaled for remote work. In essence, what you lose is the ability to walk over to another person’s desk and simply hand them a file or chat through feedback.
Assets & Projects + Review & Communication
The first key element to understanding effective remote collaboration is that it can be broken up into two main parts. While this is not an industry-standard in any way, I think it will help you understand how I broke down and re-thought our collaboration. Below I will outline the important aspects that I have learned and some examples of real-world software and hardware. No matter how complex or simple your project is, you’ll always require some type of assets to sync and a method to review them.
Video formats
Assets and Project Files
To begin post-production on any project, you need assets and project files. And if everyone on your team is remote, such assets and projects need to be shared. From doing my own research and just experimenting with different software, I’ve come to realize there are five main methods to work with and share files remotely:
On The Cloud
Peer To Peer
Virtual and VPN
Physical Hard Drives
FTP Servers
It’s important to note that each of these options offers a different collaboration experience with added benefits and drawbacks. I should mention that the last two are more for transferring files than working or collaborating remotely.
Working on the cloud means anything from transferring files through a cloud server to working fully on the internet. Software like Google Drive and Dropbox offers you a hybrid cloud workflow, where assets and project files can be uploaded or downloaded, but your work is done offline only to later be uploaded again. Newer software, like the Blackbird Video Editor, can even allow you to work fully on the cloud. The main drawback of cloud storage is that it can sometimes get expensive as you require more storage, so might only make sense for smaller projects.
Peer to Peer is the second way of working. It syncs files directly between computers and clones assets between collaborators, instead of uploading and then waiting to download them from the cloud. Unlike the first method, Peer to Peer syncs to your local storage so the limit of this is the limit of your hard drive.
Virtual and VPN workflows sound complex, but they are not. In a virtual or VPN collaboration, each team member uses a “secure private internet tunnel” or remote desktop software to log in remotely into their work laptop at the office. The idea here is that a virtualized workflow brings your office to the home, as if you’ve never left. Assets are just shared between computers as if no one has left the office. The difference between both is that, in working virtually, you can’t access files from the office, but with a VPN setup you can.
As mentioned before, the last two options are not ideal workflows, but rather ways of sharing files. FTP involves setting up a server similar to the cloud, but they are usually complex. Finally, the last method is simply shipping a good old hard drive.
Most workflows will use a combination of methods to build up your collaborative workflow, and the key is that you want everyone to be on the same page and work from the same assets. Keep in mind that you’ll want to designate one person to be in charge of keeping the master set of assets at all times as an added backup.
At my company, we tried the majority of methods and ended up using a combination of Peer To Peer software, Cloud Software, Virtual Software, and hard drives. Since my company shoots 4K with remote teams internationally, no one method fits all. We chose to use Resilio Sync as our P2P software and currently used it to sync any new assets and current project files. We use Filemail — a cloud software — to have remote teams upload footage. Teamviewer, our virtual remote desktop software, is only used by me (as the assistant editor) so that I can log in remotely into our main computer at the office if need be. Lastly, we ship out hard drives on every project so that every collaborator — excluding our client — has a storage device to work on, sync files to and later ship back to use when the project has wrapped.
Notes, Feedback, and Review Tools
In most collaborative projects, there are two types of review. The asynchronous review involves collaborators reviewing screeners and cuts at their own pace and on their own time. The benefit is this process is that clients can review on their own time and schedule. The asynchronous process has also become largely popular these days, now that everyone is working remotely.
There are two main types of software competitors: Frame.io and Wipster. My company recently switched from using Vimeo and email to Frame.io. This allowed each team member and our client to review the project at their own pace and leave time-stamped notes, a feature that Frame.io offers. The nice thing about using something like Frame.io is that it helps you get fewer emails in your inbox.
Frame.io
It’s important to note that review tools like Frame.io or Wipster don’t have a chat feature, and while leaving comments on client feedback is good, the inability to chat in realtime can sometimes create limitations when having many collaborators on board. A workaround for this is to create different copies on a review tool and consolidate notes by downloading them afterward into a spreadsheet. In conjunction with Frame.io, we also use Slack as our secondary communication tool, as it allows us to chat about notes left on Frame.io. A good old conference call is also a good alternative for the missing chat feature.
The synchronous review process involves sharing your screen as a collaborator and actively going through a project at the same time. Software like Zoom, Teamviewer, or AnyDesk allows you to share your screen. The added benefit process is that it brings people together, effectively recreating some of that in-office experience, and it can sometimes speed up and clarify client feedback. The downside to this process is that it is dependent on bandwidth and streaming quality.
Bringing It All Together
Hopefully, this breakdown is a good introduction to different workflows and helps you rethink how you collaborate. As software and hardware will continue to change, focusing on collaboration and workflow will help you to adapt and evolve.
Here are some key takeaways:
Designate one person to be in charge of keeping a master set of files
There are different ways of working that you can combine
Choose the type of review that best suits your client and project
Remember, sometimes working backward from your client requirements helps
Review tools are not enough, set up a secondary communication tool that is not email
Staying organized is key—make a PDF workflow guide to send to your team
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Note From Tongal: "How to Master Remote Collaboration and Post-Production" is part of a series of Tongal Community-written blog posts that were originally sourced in the Tongal Blog Open Call Project. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Tongal. Read more Tongal Community-written posts here and then Pitch us a topic you'd like to write about for the Tongal Blog!
