Speeding up production and approvals with Dropbox Replay
As an award winning design agency, 59 Productions uses Dropbox and Dropbox Replay to cut the complexity out of the production process for its global team of creative collaborators. The impact? 59 Productions sped up design, streamlined collaboration, and significantly reduced approval times on its latest show —Stranger Things: The First Shadow.
“It takes a large group of creatives coming together to make something extraordinary, and Dropbox acts as our central hub for hosting, sharing, and refining all of the fantastic ideas and creative assets we’ve built.”
Products used
Dropbox, Dropbox Replay
Industry
Media & Entertainment
Size
2-249
Location
London, United Kingdom
Background
59 Productions is a studio of global designers, architects, animators and artists specialising in story-driven design. The team uses creative design to find new and inventive ways of telling original stories and brings them to life across theatre, stage, and live events.
The production company has a team of 40 in London and New York, and works with a global network of collaborators to deliver on client briefs and projects.
Enabling collaboration and creativity with Dropbox
The team uses creative design and works with a global network of collaborators to deliver projects that find new and inventive ways of telling original stories - bringing them to life across theatre, stage, and live events. Most recently, the team has worked on the production of Stranger Things: The First Shadow, an original story and prequel set in the universe of the award-winning television series.
The 59 Productions team has grown with Dropbox, to include a huge network of remote designers, freelancers and creatives. But to avoid version control issues and keep delivery times fast, a solution was needed to help the team store, collaborate on and secure complex design assets - like RAW, AF and DWG files - in a central location.
With Dropbox, all files changes sync automatically, so internal teams, freelancers and collaborators have instant access to the latest version of project files.
“It’s like having our network of creative minds side by side in one room. Our team and clients can give precise feedback by commenting on the exact time, spot, or frame to prevent any miscommunications. This makes it easy to consolidate comments, respond to feedback, and finalise our video and audio projects together.”
One easy tool to manage the pre and post-production process
Dropbox allows the 59 Productions creative team to work on, upload, and access the most recent project files in the cloud - whenever and wherever they’re working from. At the start of Stranger Things: The First Shadow, 59 Productions created a shared Dropbox folder for its internal team and external collaborators - to securely store production research, script analysis, and planning information.
In the design stage, VectorWorks creatives like 3D designs, sketches, and models are automatically saved, synced, and updated in the folder through a Dropbox integration. To meet tight deadlines, the internal team are invited to project files to collaborate on creatives, align priorities, and ensure everyone is working on the latest version.
Draft creatives can then be automatically synced to Dropbox Replay so clients can leave frame-accurate feedback in real time, to capture all edits. And once the project is wrapped, the team can easily store all pre and post-production materials in an archive folder, so everything is available through a single, secure link.
Speeding up client feedback with Dropbox Replay
Dropbox integrates with video editing tools like Adobe Premier, After Effects, and BlackMagic Design. This means video files are automatically updated and synced to Replay.
For 59 Productions, Replay acts as a virtual viewing room — making it easy for clients and collaborators to document and track video feedback and iterations in one place, through one link.
Throughout the production process of Stranger Things: The First Shadow, collaborators would ‘gather’ in real-time to watch and make frame accurate comments on the same video simultaneously, speeding up edits and expediting approvals.
“I can’t imagine doing the work we do without Dropbox, it’s fundamental to how we work as a production company. It’s our secret weapon for speeding up collaboration and creativity — and lets us focus on bringing our fantastic designs to life.”
Tom WexlerHead of Design, 59 Productions