Sundance

Film Festival

Challenge

In 2023 the Sundance Film Festival returned to Park City, Utah. Presided over by the Sundance Institute, this year’s event incorporated the learnings of the last two years to present a hybrid in-person/online festival to be enjoyed by attendees both “on the mountain” and in distant locations. A key component was creating videos of each day in the form of “The Daily Recap” to be shown at next-day screenings. With less than a 24-hour turnaround, the video team was challenged by time, winter conditions, traffic, and unreliable internet access.

Solution

With a post-production workflow powered by Adobe Creative Cloud, the Sundance team turned to Camera to Cloud and Frame.io to speed up their video capture and editorial process. Using Canon C200 cameras outfitted with Atomos Ninja V with Atomos Connect modules and Sclera Digital LTE modems, the video teams were able to move nimbly around the many festival events, with stable internet connectivity, and stream what they captured directly to editors in nearly real time. The mobile journalists also leveraged the FiLMiC Pro integration to power their social media pipeline.

Results

Not only did the Camera to Cloud workflow vastly increase the speed at which the team could turn around “The Daily Recap,” it also reduced stress on the editors to get approvals from key stakeholders—who were now able to review cuts on their phones in Frame.io from wherever they were rather than having to trek back to the office. The new workflow also meant that the teams could collaborate more creatively with the creative director who could “call audibles” with the camera crews to ensure they were capturing what the editors needed for the cut. The result? Videos that were better, timelier, and more inclusive for all attendees in all locations.

The cloud helped Sundance move a mountain.

The cloud increases speed

"The Daily Recap” includes footage from the many events occurring from morning till night. The Camera to Cloud workflow, which enabled the editors to receive footage in Frame.io automatically after each take was captured, let them begin their work immediately. Because they no longer needed to wait for drives to be delivered or to receive footage from the night’s events after they were over, they were more easily able to hit their midnight deadlines so that Digital Cinema Packages could be made for the next-day's screenings.

The cloud increases collaboration

Because Frame.io is directly integrated into Adobe Premiere Pro, the editors were able to easily share Review links of the work-in-progress, and the approvers were able to leave frame-accurate notes that the editors could work with right in their timelines. This meant that the approvers could weigh in with specific suggestions without having to be in the office with the editors.

The cloud enables accessibility and inclusivity

The Sundance Institute is deeply committed to accessibility and requires open captions on all their video content. Using the Speech to Text function in Adobe Premiere Pro helped the editors quickly and accurately caption "The Daily Recap”—something that was previously a laborious process at the end of a long day. The Sundance Institute also supports using technology that is affordable and available to creators of all backgrounds and levels, which is a big part of why they chose the Adobe Creative Cloud and Frame.io to create all their video content, from capture to delivery.