How Vaudeville Sound Group runs a secure, centralized audio post operation with LucidLink

Meet Vaudeville Sound Group

Multi-award-winning Vaudeville Sound Group specializes in creative sound design and mixing for television, streaming platforms, commercials, trailers and promo spots for broadcast, theatrical & immersive formats.

They work with some of the most respected talent in media and entertainment, with studios in the UK, USA and Canada. Their client list includes Disney, Apple+, Hulu, Warner Bros., Discovery, Amazon, BBC and Sky.

Background: a distributed business model

Vaudeville was built to be distributed from day one. Alongside a hub in central London and sister facilities in the US and Canada, the studio draws on a global network of freelance sound designers and re-recording mixers — scaling up or down based on project demand, and always putting the right talent on the right project.

"Part of my job is to find freelance talent and to bring them into the fold," explains Luke Hatfield, Group Head of Sound. "As a talent-led industry, it is vital to fit the right talent to the right project to make sure they feel a part of the team."

That flexibility is what lets Vaudeville maintain quality while keeping an eye on budgets. But as the roster and project volume grew, so did the complexity of managing media across locations and keeping it secure.

The challenge: managing media across a global team

With files arriving in multiple formats from locations around the world, efficient media management was never optional at Vaudeville. For a while, the team relied on file transfer tools like WeTransfer and Aspera to move sessions between clients and mixers, but this became increasingly challenging.

“Going back a few years, moving projects around the way we were doing it was inefficient. Links could expire if not downloaded in time. It was messy,” said Luke Hatfield, Head of Sound, Vaudeville TV.

With so many departments working on the same project, tracking, grouping and conforming media became a time sink.

“It became potentially too easy to duplicate a project or open up an earlier incarnation, which could lead to expensive mistakes,” recalls Hatfield. “That was a risk we couldn’t accept and made it imperative that we find a better way of working.”

What Vaudeville needed was a single source of truth: one place where everyone could access the latest version of a file, save their work and hand it off without anyone losing track. Ideally, nothing would live on local machines, both for accuracy and for security.

“I didn’t think there was anything that could do that,” says Hatfield. “Then we found LucidLink.”

The solution: centralized media and security on lock

After testing LucidLink, Vaudeville's management rolled it out group-wide immediately.

The fragmentation problem disappeared. With all media stored in the cloud and accessed from a single location, there was no more version confusion, chasing files across hard drives or risking someone opening an outdated session.

“It was as if everyone was in the same building working on the same media, even though they are, in fact, miles apart,” shares Hatfield. LucidLink solved another problem too.

“Because many of our mixers are freelancers, they could quickly move on to another job a few days or even hours after finishing one of ours. If we needed to make a change to a job they were working on, we would have to chase them for the media,” continues Hatfield.

“Now, with LucidLink, I can access all the media and give it to anyone else to make changes. The flexibility of jumping on projects anytime was suddenly much greater.”

Security peace of mind

Security was the other major win. With large teams working outside the premises, keeping media secure had previously depended on trust and manual processes: encrypted drives logged, tracked, formatted and backed up one by one.

“LucidLink gave us peace of mind. Now, all the media is locked, encrypted and streamed. Nothing is copied locally. Only the assigned person has access, and we have one verifiable copy of the live media,” explains Hatfield.

That control extends to client relationships too.

“Customers trust us with their content, and using LucidLink, took away all the worry. With LucidLink, I know that all the data is secure and accounted for, and only the right people that are supposed to have access to it are looking at it.  We control who needs the media and for how long,” said Hatfield.

“LucidLink gives you that ‘internal post’ feeling even though people may be five thousand miles apart.”

The backbone of future growth

Today, every Vaudeville team member accesses the media and assets they need through LucidLink. All facilities collaborate in the cloud, with remote freelancers communicating via Google Workspace and pulling everything they need from a shared LucidLink filespace.

“LucidLink is much more than a way of streaming media assets. It’s the backbone of our media asset management. Team members can see each other’s departments and pull scripts, ADR cues, production notes, and video and audio. If one department isn’t supposed to see something, I can change their access,” adds Hatfield.

With media that's always accurate, always accessible and always secure, Vaudeville can move faster without compromising quality. This frees the team to take on more projects, find new clients and deliver the kind of work that keeps them at the top of the field.