‍CHALLENGE – With a massive deal with the television channel, FX, on the line, Flighthouse needed high-performance media management and file sharing solutions for the large-scale partnership.

CHALLENGE – FX shared over 10TB of footage for Flighthouse to store, organize, and edit, so file storage and easy media sharing was shaping up to be a daunting task.

CHALLENGE – Social media trends move at lightning pace. To ensure Flighthouse could capitalize on this opportunity for big business, it needed an ongoing cloud-based workflow solution that could be implemented immediately.

WHY SUITE?  Suite provided the all-in-one solution to Flighthouse’s media storage and sharing problems. Implementing Suite’s scalable cloud storage made it easy and amazingly cost-effective for Flighthouse to hire editors, manage its media between remote collaborators and efficiently produce content from anywhere.

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When this Los Angeles-based agency needed to scale for its biggest project to date, it had to look to cloud storage. The results were pivotal.

It’s hard to imagine Hollywood without personalities that seem larger than life. Now, the trend rings true on social media. Influencers with bodacious personalities attract widespread audiences and attract culture-shifting impressions across the many digital platforms that populate our social lives and social feeds. Red Carpet performers in the movies will always entertain; but social media stars and digital-first production companies are turning our attention away from other stages and onto our mobile devices and television sets, where entertainment, media and everything else collide in a flurry of eye-popping content. 

Recognizing that influencers can become rock stars, it’s no surprise that Flighthouse Media, a Los Angeles-based agency with a focus on digital content, is finding its stride on TikTok and other platforms, producing and distributing short-form videos featuring today’s most popular social media personalities. Across its hugely trafficked platforms the studio has racked up over 7 billion impressions and counting.

Ash Stahl is the CEO of Flighthouse and runs the agency with a roll-up-your-sleeves attitude. She knows that success doesn’t come without sacrifice and that, sometimes, the most pivotal ideas can be the simplest. “What works best is just a colored paper backdrop,” Stahl remarks. Flighthouse noticed that big-budget tactics weren’t necessary to gain the attention of large audiences; rather, what worked and made Flighthouse’s content sticky was its modesty and its focus on the actual people in the frame. Simple, colorful backdrops put the spotlight on the human factor and that can be the most powerful video effect of all. 

In 2019, when it came time for Flighthouse to release its first video on TikTok, the company saw the benefits of its discovery phase—the studio’s first curated video, a gamified segment featuring multiple influencers answering music-related questions, attracted nearly 20 million views and prompted representatives at TikTok to reach out to Flighthouse unprompted. “TikTok emailed us and they said: Hey, we don't know what you [at Flighthouse] are doing, but keep f*cking doing it,” Stahl remembers with a laugh. 

When the people behind the product reach out to tell you what you’re doing is working—keep doing it. Stahl and her team were off to the races and with this newfound confidence learned how to become a consistent performer both as a content hub for the digital community and a creative agency that prides itself on its maneuverability, the wise use of its resources and a collective go-getter attitude that has audiences all over the damn place watching its content. 

Flighthouse and the “rite of passage” of TikTok

In the world of TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and other video-driven content platforms it's often the case that the creators and their channels shine the brightest. People tend to follow other people more than they do their favorite brands or other entities. But Flighthouse has established itself as an entity that blurs the line between a company with which you can partner and a collaborator with which you can create. 

On one hand, Flighthouse is the former—a creative studio with a physical location where content creators can go to film a segment with professional-quality lighting, audio and video hardware at their disposal. This imprints Flighthouse into the creative scene as a meeting place for like-minded individuals to come and create. But it also opens the door for Flighthouse to interact with these personalities in an intimate, disarming setting. Over time, Flighthouse has earned a reputation for being open-minded and easy to work with, maintaining a laid-back, “come by anytime” approach to sourcing talent for its acclaimed video content.  

“For a number of these TikTok creators, Flighthouse is their first-ever content appearance [beyond lip-syncing and dancing],” Stahl explains. “We provide a space for their personalities to shine in different ways… and it’s worked for Flighthouse to be viewed as just another collaborator. Being easy to work with has been a big piece of our success.” 

Not every brand or agency can claim that it has close ties with the biggest players in their respective industries. Sure, Nike has close ties to Lebron James and Corona Extra has a long-term deal with Snoop Dogg; but there are thousands of influencers that are often lesser known to the general public driving massive views on TikTok, Instagram and other digital channels with unique (and ever-growing) audiences. Flighthouse knows these players and knows them well. So it leans on its close-knit relationships with these content creators to act like one of them. And it works. 

“We don’t pay people to come here,” Stahl comments about attracting talent for Flighthouse’s main TikTok page which boasts nearly 29 million unique followers and has aggregate video view counts that make legacy media brands look like fledgling companies. “[Content creators] look at Flighthouse as a rite of passage on the platform. They say things like, When I have a big enough following, I’ll get to go to Flighthouse and film something.”

Keeping up with trends as a media company often means forgetting everything you thought you knew about media. “If someone asked us to create a business plan five years ago and we stuck to it, we wouldn’t be where we are right now,” contemplates Stahl. Recognizing that even the most well-planned and thoughtfully targeted campaigns can flop and that what worked yesterday might not today brings studios and creatives back to their roots—producing their finest content without compromise. 

“You can’t get lazy as a content creator,” says Stahl. “This is great for the consumer—they’re seeing content that’s always pushing the boundaries. But you can’t just get comfortable making the same content again and again. That’s going to be one of our bigger hurdles: How do we not fall into that trap like a lot of other traditional agencies.”

While the revolving door of content creators keeps the Flighthouse Media offices buzzing from day-to-day, the California-based studio is also coolly taking notes and finding massive opportunities for its multi-faceted business by looking to new technologies to supplement its media efforts across the internet’s most influential platforms. 

Suite Storage case study — How the cloudenabled Flighthouse to take on its biggest client yet

When Flighthouse’s biggest client first approached them, the crew wasn’t sure if their company would be able to handle the project. The television channel, FX, wanted Flighthouse to create short-form social content on a big-budget scale, which involved editing and transferring massive amounts of footage between an array of remote collaborators. Despite its previous successes as a powerhouse media studio attracting millions of views, Flighthouse still felt inadequate. 

“At first, it took us 36 hours to download one show,” admits Stahl. “Then we had to think about where the hell we were going to store all of the footage we were downloading—FX provided more than 10 years of archival media. Finally, we just weren’t sure how we would actually share [all of the media] with our team of editors. Bringing an entire staff into the office just wasn’t an option.”

Flighthouse needed to find a cloud storage solution that enabled it to quickly scale its team, but had to do so in the most cost-efficient manner. FX’s previous agency was moving too slowly for the blink-and-they’re-gone trends of social media—so Stahl and her team dug deeper to make the project come to life. Not confined by the traditional agency model, Stahl and the scrappy Flighthouse crew began to look at Suite's cloud storage as the solution. Stahl knew Flighthouse was the right fit for the job and Suite was the needle in the haystack that made it possible.

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By implementing Suite’s cloud storage and virtual production tools for the FX project, Flighthouse was able to revamp its workflow and look beyond the Los Angeles area to find the talent it needed to bring everything to fruition. Instead of having to hire full-time employees, which, Stahl notes, would have been “too risky,” she instead structured her team through Suite and had her editors log on when she needed them to work. In effect, her business functions in her favor, scaling storage up and down as it needs depending on workload. Moreover, Flighthouse scored the project but didn’t have to invest in budget-breaking hardware or full-time resources to make it possible; every asset was stored, accessed, and edited directly via Suite's cloud storage platform. 

“You guys truly saved our lives,” says Stahl. “It was an aha moment, realizing that [using Suite] could solve all of our problems. It’s important to recognize those positive results—whether that means leaning into a new platform like TikTok or Suite—the proof is there. This is working.” 

Managing a successful creative studio often means staying fluid, always capitalizing on the latest view-bumping trend, filming technique or profit-driving business upgrades. With limitless resources for media storage and computing accessed via Suite’s new cloud-based technology, Flighthouse now has the capability (from a technical standpoint) to take on bigger projects and more work than ever before. As far as reaching new talent and finding the right collaborators, Flighthouse can now look beyond its immediate vicinity and tap into the best people for the job, no matter their location. 

The future of social media and post production

Contemplating the future of social media, Stahl is ever-hopeful that influencers will continue to recognize the opportunities being presented to them and that they will graduate into big-thinking entrepreneurs and businesspeople in the media space. The trend is already taking shape. “Creators that will have longevity are going be those who adapt to that [big-picture mindset]. Mr. Beast (who started as viral YouTube personality) is a great example—he’s building a business [that goes beyond video]. He’s really smart at analyzing what works and what doesn’t, and that’s allowed him to find [business opportunities] like Beast Burger (a hamburger restaurant he’s planned) and other endeavors that reach beyond content.” 

But there are bigger thoughts on Stahl’s mind. Right now, campaigns on social media are often used as an afterthought to a bigger media push. You’ve seen it before: A movie or television show launches then the production company shares cutdowns on social media. Stahl hopes to reverse the model. “These big companies pay us to promote their entertainment properties after the fact but what would be really interesting is getting Flighthouse more involved in the day-to-day production of these traditional, linear television shows.” 

Instead of using social media as a post-launch tactic to draw attention and more eyeballs, Stahl believes that popular platforms like TikTok, Instagram and others will become a place where brands can test new concepts before committing to them for bigger screens and movie theaters. The thinking: If it lands on social media, it’ll likely resonate with a bigger, even national-level, audience down the line. “We’ll see more of that,” she says. “Brands will lean on social media platforms and short-form content as a proof of concept to go do something bigger.”

As for post production and the future of creative collaboration, the door is wide open for anyone with a phone and an internet connection to become the next big star. Stahl looks to the music industry to help her understand what’s happening in the digital media space. “20 years ago, in order to be a successful musician or artist, you needed to be signed to a label. The labels owned the shelf space [in record stores] and that was how you got exposure. They controlled everything.” Nowadays, however, there are new avenues to break onto the scene and the barriers-to-entry into media production and music-making are nearly non-existent.

“You don’t need a traditional TV show or movie deal to have success as a content creator,” Stahl explains. “People are coming up through [all kinds of] creative avenues because of how easy it is to have a platform and access the resources that you need to create. You don’t need to spend a million dollars anymore to produce quality content.” 

The reduced barrier-to-entry instills a more competitive field putting the emphasis on content creation, not someone’s previous allegiance to a brand. Moreover, influencers and social media stars often know their audiences better than those further-removed brands, which is a tough pill for traditional marketing teams to swallow. Yet, even acknowledging these hesitations, the truth rings loudly: quality content, no matter its creator, will be noticed and supported accordingly. “It’s good for everyone,” Stahl says. “Until recently, you needed to be Hollywood producer, editor, whatever it might be—with a $10,000 computer just to get started in the business.” 

Looking at what Flighthouse and Suite were able to do with the FX project, Stahl expects more collaborative efforts like it in the future. On the whole, production studios and creative agencies will continue to be ever-smarter with their resources and the creatives themselves will continue to break the mold with the content they produce. Leaning into new technologies, like the cloud-based workflows offered by Suite, jumpstarts Flighthouse’s potential, as well as the promise of its collaborators and employees, as the digital media landscape continues to shift.

Flighthouse and Suite — A match made in the cloud

Flighthouse is a studio wise beyond its years and it’s paying in views and dollars. Youthful-minded and ready to grasp at opportunity, the brand’s leaders recognize the importance of forward thinking. So deeply ingrained in the creative scene on TikTok, Flighthouse also recognizes the need to nurture its close-knit network. Suite's cloud storage gives Flighthouse the ability to scale without losing sight of these roots, allowing the studio to tap into its creative rolodex and provide new opportunities for up-and-comers trying to break onto the scene.  

“Whether it’s empowering creators or creatives, what’s really exciting is being able to give an opportunity to someone,” Stahl says excitedly. “There’s so much talent out there. Some people—let’s face it—don’t have the financial resources to move to California and pay $3,000 every month in rent just to try to make it as an editor. Now, we’re able to provide [creative] opportunities to anyone that deserves the chance.”

It’s eye-opening to realize the growth potential that comes with cloud-based workflows, and Stahl feels like Flighthouse has tapped into this powerful technology at the right time—early. “Refusing to adapt [as a business] ensures you’ll get left behind,” she notes. “Then you’re stuck chasing [everyone else] down and it’s only three years later when you realize you should have moved more quickly. If we’re not [leaning into these new technologies] we’re going to get left behind and beat out by companies who are taking advantage of it.”

Suite’s cloud storage and remote workflow solutions are designed to streamline the post production process for creative teams. For Flighthouse, partnering with Suite meant facing its biggest challenge yet with newfound confidence. Trends on TikTok might come and go, but Flighthouse recognizes that cloud-based workflows and post production processes will only continue to grow closer together. The integration of new technology into the creative process is only beginning, and it’s here to unlock new potential for post production professionals everywhere.