FORESIGHT.

Michael Cioni on Digital Asset Management

Written by Mary Yurkovic

Growth of file-based acquisition requires more education while bringing changes in common expressions.

Over the past decade, CEO & Founder of Light Iron Michael Cioni has been a leader in file-based acquisition and desktop-based post production. Michael has served as a Digital Intermediate Supervisor on over 200 feature films. He has instructed several workshops and online courses for Createasphere. In 2010, Michael received the DAMMY Award for Best Strategy or Solution for Digital & Media Asset Management during the Acquisition of Content.

In preparation for the Second Annual DAMMY Awards, I asked Michael a few questions about the state of the industry:

How did you get into the digital asset management space?

My motivation for getting involved in the DAM space comes from a rapidly changing media ecosystem that is clearly affecting every corner of the market. Sort of like a significant climate change or volcanic eruption, everything that falls within a certain distance from the epicenter is affected in a cascade-like effect that starts small and gets bigger and bigger and bigger. This type of trend is great for our business because we know that investments, research and attention to DAM content are ascending businesses, whereas alternative and more traditional tools are on the decline.

What do you see as the biggest challenge(s) in digital asset management?

Education. Plain and simple. The more I research and evaluate past trends of all types of tools and technologies, the more I find that people forget to look to the past in order to help predict trends in the future. The transition to exclusive dependence on file-based acquisition and digital asset management is not unlike the transition from flatbeds to AVID, or vinyl to CD, or type-setters to word processing. Evolutionary steps towards file-based manipulation are nothing new to the world, but they are new to major motion pictures. Educating a group of industry professionals and master of the craft is where we focus a huge percentage of our time. In fact, an average of 6 hours per week is spent teaching producers, directors and editorial members about digital asset management at Light Iron. Our transparency and training are critical in building a better future for DAM.

How do you see DAM looking 10 years from now?

Ten years from now will be a very different place for data asset management. The main difference will be that the majority of our society will consider DAM a normal part of their life. The concept of “rewind” and “record” will be virtually forgotten. “Sound Speed!” will be a saying that people use, but they will forget its origin. “We’re filming right now” will even go away as society will start to replace the verb of “film” with words like “capture” and “footage” with “data.”

The transition from asset capturing systems like film and tape are declining at an alarming rate. So fast that many people are unaware of the change because it’s hard to tell the difference unless you are evaluating these technological and creative trends from the inside. The community should be aware that film-acquired narrative projects on the big screen and television now make up less than 50% of all captured media (print, television and feature film) and that 2009-2010 was (in my estimation) the last year in history where film was the dominant acquisition format. Furthermore, the speed in which file-based acquisition is being adapted is probably likely to double it’s penetration each year for the next 4 years, until it makes up 95% of the market for motion picture in (what I predict) will be 2015-16. By that time, file-based acquisition will run the market forever and the leftover few percent  will be for formats that people choose to use for specialized creative reasons only because those formats will be expensive to shoot, expensive to post and in limited supply.  That said, the desire to shoot a particular format like film and it’s actual availability might be two different stories.   Especially with the elimination of Technicolor film printing (announcement last week).

How do you use DAM in your personal life?

I personally am dependent on file-based tools as much at home as I am at work. At home, I keep two databases of drive archives for all my past and present assets. I break down the assets of my life into “active” and “passive” categories, which allows me to store non-essential content from my past on a separate system than the more prominent assets I need on a more routine basis. I also have a set of drives that I no longer use from the past. Those drives are plugged in and spun-up semi-annually to ensure they are still in working order. With two copies and routine spin-up maintenance and mounting, I am easily able to make media last for more than 10 years with out expensive or time-consuming methods and without the risk of losing anything, no matter how insignificant. The longest drives that I own and still run with data have just turned 11 years old.  It is 100 gigabytes with a single FireWire400 port and 1 USB 1.0 port.  

Why is it important for people to attend Createasphere’s DAM Conference?

It’s important to attend Createasphere’s DAM conference because it’s one of the rare places where people can get focused and nearly exclusive access to the industry’s brightest minds that are building the roadmap for the future. Currently, it is fairly rare to have such a concentration of digital asset management companies all working together to explore and exhibit DAM tools. But even more important than the equipment at this DAM conference is the fact that there will be personalities there as well. It is the people that can make DAM sink or swim, not just the technology, and having the opportunity to interface directly with people is one of the most valuable components to Createasphere’s mission.

What have you been working on since receiving the 2010 DAMMY Award for “Best Strategy or Solution for Digital & Media Asset Management during the Acquisition of Content”? Does Light Iron Digital have any new strategies in workflow that you can share with us?

Since receiving the DAMMY Award in 2010, Light Iron has been developing a larger fleet of OUTPOST on-set post production. We have developed new additions to our fleet with our LilyPad systems for color correction, iPad applications and increased our impact on the market to by providing the post production on some of the worlds largest 2D and 3D feature films without the use of the post house. Like all good ideas, they start as small disruptive technologies and work their way-slow and steady from the bottom of the community until they become the normal way in which all people think, talk and execute their work, regardless of the budget.