CHALLENGE: As a fully remote studio, Rabbit Foot struggled with file management, project handoffs, and real-time collaboration across multiple dispersed editors. Without any traditional post-house infrastructure, Rabbit Foot needed a cost-effective and scalable solution to keep up with a workflow supporting long-form digital episodic projects, branded content, and feature film development. Before Suite, Rabbit Foot relied on Dropbox, Google Drive, and hard drive shipments, which caused delays, version control issues, and inefficiencies.

WHY SUITE?  Suite transformed Rabbit Foot’s workflow by establishing a central source of truth for all working assets, eliminating confusion between remote collaborators. Suite’s cache system allows for real-time file streaming with zero latency, enabling seamless collaboration between numerous remote players, reducing time spent on admin tasks, and letting Rabbit Foot operate at-scale without the overhead of physical infrastructure.

KEY INSIGHTS:

• Fully remote team with creatives in Texas, California, Virginia, New York & Colorado
• Direct-to-Suite uploads eliminate file transfer wait times & delays
• Pre-caching enables instant file playback for editors on-the-go
• Ability to scale helps Rabbit Foot easily manage budgets & workforce

“Suite allows smaller companies to punch above their weight-class. It’s so easy to scale our post production resources.”

— Sam Chortek, Partner/Executive, Rabbit Foot

With roots in Austin, Texas, Rabbit Foot is a fully remote multi-disciplinary production company spanning branded advertising, unscripted television, and long-form scripted content. Making its mark with bespoke campaigns for Garmin, YETI, Orvis, and a slew of other brands, and reality shows for Discovery, HGTV, Roku, and more, every project is an opportunity to drive viewership by blending commercial, documentary, and entertainment storytelling.

Leaning on the collective expertise of its three founders, Rabbit Foot’s focus has grown naturally over time, explains Sam Chortek, partner & advertising executive producer. “We started off focused on advertising and traditional commercials, which led us into branded content, shooting short-form documentaries and content for a number of really fun brands,” he says. “That finally led us into producing more traditional TV content.”

Despite expanding its focus, Rabbit Foot maintains a limited in-house crew, so the team relies heavily upon a large network of freelancers to make each production come to life. Rabbit Foot’s creatives are spread across the country, including key players in Texas, California, Virginia, New York, Colorado, and elsewhere. Operating with a fully remote cross-country post production workflow, however, Rabbit Foot struggled to connect the dots efficiently.

“We concept and develop all of our own projects, and a key component is partnering with talented freelancers. One of the hardest parts is getting working files to the appropriate people,” notes Chortek. “If you're passing assets back and forth and uploading to Dropbox, it was tough to always ensure you're working from the most recent project file.”

As Rabbit Foot stepped further into remote post production, Chortek and his team were keen to find a better way to manage files and handoffs. Offering a centralized storage solution that eliminated the endless cycle of uploading & re-uploading files, or having to ship drives during handoffs, Suite provided Rabbit Foot that streamlined solution.

“The learning curve adopting Suite was non-existent,” Chortek says. “If we are tapping into freelance editor support, we're routing that through Suite. In doing so, we’re saving time on project handoffs, not having to deal with Dropbox or Google Drive. Having the project files continually updated in Suite makes everything so much cleaner.”

For the team’s creative end-users, editors, VFX artists, and others, editing directly from Suite in Adobe Premiere Pro, files stay organized and versions are updated instantly. For remote editors who often “have their own editing system”, it’s a win-win for Chortek to offer a storage solution that doesn’t require any heavy-lifting for those remote players.

“Even when we're working with editors in Austin, we’ve found it more helpful to utilize Suite,” he notes. “It can be a one-hour drive from one side of the city to the other, so it's been super helpful not having to pass a hard drive. There are a lot of companies set in their ways, and there can be a laundry list of items about how to prep or wrap a job. Using Suite, it’s really nice to offer flexibility while not burying ourselves with more work.”

One of Suite’s biggest performance advantages for Rabbit Foot is local caching, which allows fast, seamless editing even with large media files. The result is wicked-fast file streaming, and newfound efficiencies at every step of the dispersed post production process. During a recent shoot for Lowe’s that involved creating an eight-episode YouTube series filmed in Austin, Rabbit Foot was able to provide three remote editors access to different files within the Suite filesystem simultaneously, and everyone on the project felt the impact immediately.

“The cache system is beautiful,” Chortek says. “You can use a super-fast SSD to pre-cache media overnight—the next day, you're ready to go and there's no lag. It’s as if you’re plugging into a remote machine and editing locally, but you don’t have all the hullaballoo. It opens up so many more opportunities to have multiple editors going at once.”

Looking at the bigger picture, Rabbit Foot’s business leaders are also experiencing a slew of benefits. Most importantly, the team is able to scale resources and stay nimble depending on the current workload. “Being a smaller production company that doesn’t have all the resources to invest in traditional post infrastructure, the alternatives have been Dropbox, Google Drive—or you need to ship out hard drives to each person. Suite allows smaller companies to punch above their weight-class. It’s so easy to scale our post production resources.”

Overall, working in film & video affords Chortek and the team at Rabbit Foot the opportunity to collaborate with a variety of brands and individuals to tell stories designed to resonate with a wide audience. Driven by a personal passion for film, Chortek can now stay focused on crafting that creative while setting his studio up for success.

“If you want to stay relevant, you have to stay on top of the ever-evolving technological advancements,” says Chortek. “Especially with the movement toward remote work—people love it, the quality of life increases, people get to spend more time doing what they love outside of work. If we can make work-life balance better, that’s something we’re all about. It only benefits our studio in the long-run. You gotta stay ahead of the trends.”

Finally, for any size creative agency or post production studio, the ability to work as a team remains paramount. For Chortek, the sentiment rings true. Being able to collaborate in real-time across any distance, centralizing media on Suite, Chortek’s team at Rabbit Foot is now making the most out of their remote post production process.

“Video is the ultimate team sport,” he says. “You develop such amazing relationships in this industry. If you could make communication between key players any magnitude easier, why wouldn't you?”

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