CHALLENGE – Riverview Studios needed to establish a creative workflow that could effortlessly integrate in-house and remote post production staff. The crux was granting everyone easy access to essential media assets.

CHALLENGE – Some of Riverview's editors were inclined to work on Mac OS, while others favored Windows OS. This made it difficult to buy the right hardware to ensure editors were working on their preferred machines.

CHALLENGE – Riverview's initial approach to remote work was plagued by issues like playback errors, lack of quality, and other disruptions, creating numerous roadblocks and headaches throughout the team's creative process.

WHY SUITE? – Suite offered studio-specific flexibility that allowed Riverview to find the most useful application of our cloud-based products. Suite was able to deliver a cloud-based storage and virtual production solution that matched the high-quality video playback of team’s local server workflow. This enabled Riverview to complete effortless remote work instantly. Riverview is also a studio that packages Suite Storage with Suite Studio in order to transform their local machines into high-performance workstations connected to infinitely scalable cloud storage.

"Looking at major changes in post production—from insert editing to non-linear editing—Suite opens up so many possibilities. Suite Storage is a major milestone. I don't have to worry about [my editors] working from home. The team can get work done and delivered from anywhere, and we can share files easily. Suite made it possible."

– James Parker, President, Riverview Studios

Riverview Studios is a homegrown operation built on community and consistent, quality video. The Bordentown, New Jersey-based multimedia production studio and post house occupies a converted 1800s-era factory space on the banks of the Delaware River, and has carved out a specialty creating video content for local non-profit organizations, including numerous hospitals, healthcare organizations and other businesses in the area.

Speaking with James Parker, President of Riverview, and Producer Jim Monteforte makes it apparent that the company cherishes the opportunity to create meaningful content for its local clients, and that it approaches every project with the same keen creativity. “Our niche is telling stories in impactful and compelling ways,” says Parker, a documentary and commercial filmmaker since the late-1970s. “The impact that we can have on an audience and the power that can be conveyed in a message [can be so meaningful] to an individual, a business, or whoever we’re representing... It's a ‘heady thing’ to have that kind of power to impact people.”

Monteforte brings a similar creative passion to the studio, although it took him a moment to find the call toward filmmaking. “There was a time [in my late teens] where I wasn't sure what I wanted to do,” he says. “One week, I wanted to be a firefighter; next, I wanted to be a doctor; then, I wanted to become a magician. During the first week I was watching ‘Rescue Me,’ during week two I was watching ‘House,’ and, during the third week, I started on a Penn and Teller magic show. That's when it dawned on me... it was the video production that I loved so much. That’s when I realized the impact you can create from storytelling.”

Together, Parker and Monteforte guide Riverview’s busy creative efforts, which range from live-streaming events, to commercial shoots, to full-scale studio rentals, and more. And Parker brings a uniquely tenured expertise to the operation. Through his nearly 50 years in the film industry, he has established a clear understanding of what it takes to thrive. He’s witnessed his fair share of trends, products, and technologies fade away, but he’s also seen what works—advancements like non-linear editing that effectively revolutionize how the industry operates.

Today, Riverview is one of the longest-standing users of Suite Studio, and one of the earliest adopters of Suite Storage for creative teams. Here’s the story of a homegrown studio finding new avenues of success, and a tight-knit team of editors thriving thanks to Suite's cloud-based creative workflows.

Remote workflows that actually work for Riverview

Riverview’s transition to Suite and cloud-based workflows came out of necessity, at first. Effects from the pandemic left the company’s 2,450-square-foot studio more vacant than usual, so live-streaming events and jam-packed production schedules ensured the business could stay afloat. In turn, the Riverview employees began working remotely more often. Not only was the business producing more content on tight deadlines, Riverview’s team of editors were also more dispersed. “The whole idea of working remotely impacted us immediately,” reflects Parker.

With editors now taking more time to chop and cut from home, away from the Riverview office, the team tried establishing patchwork connections to make content flow easily. For a period, the team relied on Google Drive and Dropbox to transfer files. But the remote workflow wasn’t working quite as well as the team hoped. “It was clunky. It was awkward,” explains Parker. “Team Viewer didn't work [at all], so we tried Remote PC. Remote PC did work—because we could get audio—but there was a lag during playback. Suite has been a game changer, a game changer!”

For Monteforte, editing remotely is a mainstay in his lifestyle, in big part thanks to Suite. “The biggest draw was ‘the cloud of it all,’” he says. “I come from a freelance background, so I have always edited directly off external hard drives. I don't know how many [hard drives] I needed to accidentally drop or lose before I saw the advantage of the cloud. Now, I just store my files and I don't have to worry about breaking a hard drive… Suite keeps everything safe for me.”

Monteforte relies upon Suite to do the heavy lifting of cloud workflows, file security, and infrastructure management, so all he and his team need to do is drag and drop files and get back to work. The real-time, everyday effects shine through. “From home, I can step right into a project. If the client asks for an additional edit… I don't have to come back to the studio to make that change. I can just edit from home and boom, it’s back to the client.”

Riverview’s smooth transition to Suite cloud storage

“I can edit directly off of cloud? Are you sure? I don't think that's possible. That can't work…”

Like many newcomers to cloud technology, Parker and his creative team at Riverview had initial hesitations about making the switch to Suite; they even expressed disbelief about its capabilities and connectivity when they first heard about the groundbreaking technology. “We used to have a 144 terabyte server,” Parker says of Riverview’s former on-prem setup. “That’s how we traditionally edited, right off the local server.”

Maintaining instant access to files and seamless, real-time playback at all times during the post process are two major reasons why many video/post production teams opt to edit locally. When the team of editors at Riverview began considering cloud-based workflow solutions for the studio, these were two crux points in the decision-making process. “We had to ensure that fast connection would stay the same,” says Parker.

To test Suite’s performance, Riverview started small but quickly scaled, placing an entire project on Suite within days of getting started. “I could sense the potential immediately,” says Monteforte, speaking of the connectivity granted from their new cloud storage workflow. “We moved a feature-length documentary exclusively onto Suite; the project includes nearly 60 interviews of high-quality 4K footage, occupying multiple terabytes of storage.”

Recognizing the real-time benefits of storing, sharing, and editing media on the cloud, Riverview now works entirely off of Suite. For our growing business, this is an important moment—Riverview's entire creative process exists on the cloud built by Suite. From storing media right after a shoot to rendering the final cut via a virtual workstation in Suite Studio, Riverview operates seamlessly. “With Suite, it's as if I'm working off of that local server,” says Parker. “It's really as simple as working off an external hard drive,” adds Monteforte.

How Riverview uses Suite in two unique ways

At Riverview, like many studios, the editors have their own preferences, styles, and “way of doing things.” For Parker and Monteforte, this means utilizing Suite in two unique ways. Monteforte, a longtime Mac user, prefers to use Suite Storage in its simplest form, mounting the cloud drive directly to his local AppleOS computer. This looks and feels just the same as any other hard drive. “I can mount Suite Storage locally and edit directly off of it,” he says. “It's just a folder on my computer. I can drag and drop; I can click around intuitively. It’s fantastic… really, it’s a dream.”

Parker, however, uses Suite Storage in combination with Suite Studio; not only does he mount the cloud drive locally (Storage) but he also taps into the power of cloud-based virtual workstations (Studio) to complete his editing work without having to invest in new hardware. This is how it works: Suite’s virtual workstations connect any local machine to turbocharged cloud-based computers, and this editing experience happens through a Windows/PC interface—a main reason why Monteforte opts to utilize Storage as a standalone product.

For Parker, who edits off of an older computer, utilizing Suite’s virtual workstations is an ideal complement to storing and sharing files on his cloud drive. Now, he can open Adobe Premiere Pro, Davinci Resolve, or any other creative software he chooses, through his cloud-connected, scalable, virtual workstation while maintaining unprecedented connectivity. “I had given up trying to edit on [my old computer] when we began working more with higher bandwidth media, like 4K. But, lo and behold! I'm editing a documentary, working directly off of Suite Storage, and [the older computer] handles the 4K media. It plays, it works, and it just blows me away.”

Suite is adaptable and flexible to match your individual or needs. However you work, Suite can fit right into your workflow, and you might not even notice it’s there. Which is kinda the best part.

Why Suite marks a milestone in post production

There are certain moments in the history of cinema that change how the industry operates. The addition of sound and color to movies is one of the earliest examples. The advent of non-linear editing is a more recent one. Today, Riverview’s President, James Parker, says Suite is the next groundbreaking milestone in post production.

"Looking at major changes in post—from insert editing to non-linear editing—Suite opens up so many possibilities," says Parker. "Suite Storage is a major milestone. I don't have to worry about [my editors] working from home. The team can get work done and delivered from anywhere, and we can share files easily. Suite made it possible."

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