Media and entertainment: Envisioning cloud-based production ecosystems

Demand for streaming content and games exploded due to the global pandemic, which spurred massive changes across the media and entertainment (M&E) industry. Studios were scrambling as film shoots stalled and teams were confined to their homes. The industry was already showing signs of moving to cloud long term, but out of necessity, years of planning turned into weeks of execution. Teams connected in the cloud, and production continued from home.

This transition to the cloud presented an excellent opportunity to do things differently and to build a more resilient future. This kind of paradigm shift was possible due to the foundation laid down by industry giants such as Disney and Sony by conceiving Vision 2030 – imagined with the aim of innovating new possibilities and solutions to enhance media production and design for an increasingly digitised world and now serves as a guiding light for productions in this time of great change.

As entertainment projects get larger and more complex, with more teams collaborating from disparate locations, it is now more important than ever for industry leaders to join hands and work in line with Vision 2030 to innovate cloud workflows which will unlock new levels of remote collaboration, creativity, efficiency, and insights.

Extensive and extensible cloud platforms provide the capabilities needed, from security to scalability, for teams to connect to their projects more efficiently than ever before.

It is pivotal for the success of remote projects that the producer has an accurate, real-time view of production, and with this, innovative systems are required to support an upcoming Generative Scheduling service which enables creators to run projects with smarter business insights and real-time data of all processes. With new collaborative review capabilities, teams can synchronously review material whether they’re in the studio or not, to streamline review and approvals.

Another emerging trend we can see that will ensure streamlined content creation and collaboration for the industry is investing in AI-assisted workflows for media and entertainment. By automating complex compositing and retouching tasks on image sequences, it allows creators to make great content in less time.

In the coming years, as the industry adapts and transforms further, we envision an amalgamation of powerful machine learning tools with massive compute power and scalability of the cloud. This will allow artists to automate repetitive tasks, work faster and focus on the artistry of their craft.

By unlocking the capabilities of powerful digital content creation and production management tools, and bringing them to the cloud, we can pave the path for a more efficient, scalable, and sustainable entertainment production future.

The media and entertainment industry has evolved significantly in the past year and as the industry looks towards the road to production in the cloud, amazing new opportunities to drive innovation and change are emerging. Creators see powerful ways in which they can help shape the industry for the better – and Autodesk is delighted to help them do so.

Diana Colella is the SVP, Media and Entertainment at Autodesk