CHALLENGE: Since 2020, Portal A has operated with a fully remote creative workflow, utilizing Google Drive to support file sharing between remote collaborators. The team faced consistent headaches onboarding freelancers, syncing media between individual machines, and maintaining permission controls, resulting in inefficiencies across their global footprint. For a recent project with Lenovo spanning seven countries and four continents, Portal A required a more streamlined way to work between various on-location teams to ensure it would hit the deadline.

WHY SUITE? Suite enables Portal A to centralize media on the cloud for instant media access from anywhere in the world. Folder-specific permissions ensure Portal A’s supervisors can maintain oversight of file organization & transfers, and easy onboarding makes it possible to add new collaborators at a moment’s notice. During the Lenovo project, Portal A easily ingested files directly into Suite from numerous global locations, allowing editors elsewhere to incorporate this footage to the timeline immediately.

KEY INSIGHTS:

• 40+ team members in Austin, Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York
• Suite Connect file sharing from USA, Mexico, Norway, Belgium, India, Australia & Japan
• Hours & days saved avoiding shipping hard drives & downloading files
• Effortless onboarding & permissions compared to Google Drive

"We can work with anyone... in the world."

— Arturo Morales, Head of Post Production, Portal A

Portal A produces video for the digital age—branded & original content infused with a sense of personality, creativity, culture, and fun. Partnering with artists, influencers, brands, and media personalities to produce a variety of internet-first video, Portal A’s team thrives on big ideas. Whether producing a lively campaign for a partner, or delivering a new installment of its self-produced “Moonshots” videos that celebrate up-and-coming creatives, Portal A understands how to mix business & play for the digital audience.

“Our bread-and-butter is branded content,” says Morales. “We understand internet culture, so we strive to make something we’d enjoy watching ourselves. We're always taking risks.”

In 2020, like many creative agencies, Portal A began working remotely, and they haven’t looked back. Head of Post Production, Arturo Morales, has worked in the post production dept. at Portal A over the last nine years. His role has evolved over time and, currently, he’s the one managing every detail once production wraps. Adopting a fully remote workflow presented a slew of new, unique challenges.

Troubles with the Workflow

Supervising projects from concept to completion, managing a rotating team of creatives, and ensuring media files are organized & accessible, Morales was also tasked with maintaining an efficient, collaborative workflow between dispersed collaborators as the team opted to stay remote. “We have people in different parts of the country, and even the world,” he notes. “I was thinking to myself: How the h*ll are we going to work with five (or more) editors remotely?”

While the challenge of editing & finishing each new project can be exciting, file management shouldn’t be. For teams that rely on media, storage & access should be simple—the way files are stored and shared can make (or break) a project. Storage just needs to work. Since 2020, Morales and his team would often ship drives, work via virtual machines, and felt pigeonholed working on Google Drive.

“A few years ago, I remember all the footage for this one project was either being driven to me or FedEx-ed,” he recalls. “Using Google Drive, anytime we onboarded someone I would have to explain how to organize files correctly, how to sync locally, how to correctly download assets... it never went smoothly. I also felt weird knowing that whoever had access to our Google Drive technically had access to every project stored on it.”

The Lenovo Project - Creator Odyssey

Three years later, Morales and his team are finding breakthrough success using Suite’s cloud storage. To highlight Portal A’s work on Suite, Morales puts a recent project made in partnership with Lenovo in the spotlight. Featuring GAWX, an artist from Mexico, the roughly five-minute video pits a series of six artists to work “like dominoes” together, each artist’s work meant to inspire the next. Shot on location in seven countries, across four continents, the project presented numerous challenges, and with just a two-month timeline to get the job done, Morales turned to Suite to enable real-time workflows that spanned the globe.

“In three of the locations—Michigan, Belgium, and Norway—we gave the teams proper Suite logins, so they could upload footage directly. It was seamless,” says Morales. “In the other four locations—Mexico, Japan, Australia, and India—the teams uploaded via Suite Connect links.”

For this project, Suite Connect file transfers played a significant role, and as the deadline approached, Morales’ team was able to easily ingest late-coming B-roll from across the globe, work faster to finalize coloring, and enable the team to stay focused on the final edit while using the most up-to-date assets. “Normally, we would have to wait for a hard drive, or we’d wait to upload (then download) from Google Drive. Now, everyone can upload straight to Suite. It made it easier for the local teams in each country. The timeframe was so tight that, really, Suite made it possible. We wouldn't have made the deadline.”

Everyday wins on Suite

Onboarding Portal A’s editors, as well as various parties across the globe, Morales was quick to note the easy install process and ability to implement specific permissions with a few clicks. “For the editors that have used it, they all like it. No complaints or issues,” Morales says. “The nice part is that Suite is so flexible & easy to work with. It won’t mess up your files. It won’t mess up your project. You just just work with it however you need.”

Now using Suite to establish a centralized hub for all working assets, Morales maintains one-click oversight of file status, and encourages optimizing performance by utilizing Suite’s caching system. “When we're in the middle of a project, we just use Suite. I dedicate an 8 Terabyte SSD—that I literally taped to the back of my computer monitor—as my cache for Suite, so the footage is always there. I usually tell my Editors: set up pre-caching the day before, let it run overnight, and just wake up to all the footage.”

From a high level, Morales’ role requires balancing multiple projects at once. Even when one is running behind, Suite enables quick action to get the job done. For the Lenovo project, this was one last win, and some icing on the cake. “There was a final cut-down that needed to be edited, so when we found out that we were behind, we hit up an additional editor, provided Suite login info, and there was zero confusion about the project. It was seamless for him to jump on.”

Final Thoughts

Utilizing Suite provides Morales a positive outlook on remote collaboration in the media industry. “If you've embraced any aspect of remote post production work, working from the cloud is a no-brainer. It goes hand-in-hand. It’ll make your life easier,” he says.

For the Lenovo video featuring GAWX and a cohort of global artists, the project offered “the perfect scenario—the perfect problem,” Morales says. “We had the right answer to make it easy in post.”

Enabling creativity today often means letting creatives work wherever they please. Using Suite eliminates the need to drive into the office, ship a hard drive, or download media locally before working, but it opens the door for Morales to work with the best talent for the project, while providing his team with the flexibility to edit from anywhere.

“We can work with anyone in the United States, with anyone in the world, as long as they have an internet connection. That's the biggest thing: You’re able to open yourself up to any creative editor that's out there.”

Portal A prides itself on digital-first media that drives big viewership. Meeting deadlines while working remotely now comes with the territory. Utilizing Suite’s cloud storage for all working media enables Morales and his team to maintain a collaborative environment despite the distance. Meanwhile, Morales can tap into streamlined file sharing with Suite Connect to enable deadline-busting access to new media as it's uploaded into the cloud.

Within just two months of adopting Suite, Portal A has fully adopted it as the central source of truth for all working assets—now, it’s up to the artists to continue living in the “maker mindset” & create without limits.

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