Alright. I think we'll we'll get started.
My name is Matt Schneider. I'm product marketing for LucidLink, based in Brooklyn, New York City, joined by my colleague, Marcy Walker, in Denver, Colorado, and we are delighted to have two, great folks here with us, Sam Lemp from Filmlight and Jack Jones from Roundtable, postproduction.
And I think I'm gonna kick things off by just, I see my friend, Mike.
Another colorist has joined us. Welcome, Mike.
I'm gonna get started by talking a little bit about what LucidLink is. So if you're not familiar with LucidLink or, actually, what is LucidLink magic hour, I'll start there.
This is a live event series that we presented by LucidLink. We try to host magic hour several time a month, and we like it to be a learning experience, for everyone focusing on artists, tools, and their workflows. Sometimes we have technology companies. Sometimes we have artists. Today, we have both. So delighted that Sam and Jack are joining us.
Sam Lemp from head of business development from Filmlight, as well as Jack Jones, co owner and colorist from Roundtable Post.
If you're not familiar with what LucidLink is, I'll do a quick, quick explanation on what Marcy and I do for LucidLink.
We are a storage collaboration platform. Basically, you put your heavy media files, any kind of media in the cloud, but LucidLink presents like a normal hard drive and performs like a normal hard drive. And this really helps to empower our creative teams to work in real time at scale over distance and eliminating a lot of the friction that we've largely gotten desensitized to over the last decade. Downloading, transferring, syncing, we make all of that go away and we wanna empower creatives and creative teams to be able to work the way they want to without changing their workflow and without changing their choice of tools.
So we are about real time collaboration.
Instant access, we like to say is once it's uploaded into LucidLink, it's already everywhere and provisioning access is instantaneous.
And, of course, we do this safely and securely.
Earlier this month, we went to NAB, and, we're delighted to win our fourth consecutive NAB product of the year award. I think that might be an industry first to win four consecutively. So we're very excited about that.
Few fun pictures from our booth and around the show floor.
And at NAB, we introduced some pretty exciting new features really designed to expand the loose link experience to the other touch points found in any creative workflow, specifically the web browser and iOS and Android. So we introduced a brand new web browser where you can browse your file space contents directly in any conventional browser. No need to install any software.
We launched the LucidLink app for Android back in November, and at NAB, it was joined by its sibling app, LucidLink for iOS.
Brand new implementation for single sign on. We now have single sign on based on the SAML protocol at all four touch points, desktop, browser, Android, and iOS. So from a security standpoint, we're very excited about that. And we also announced that we're now available on the AWS marketplace.
So exciting and successful NAB for LucidLink and our partners, and we were delighted to see everybody at the show. Alright. Onto the good stuff. Like I said earlier, we're welcoming Sam and Jack.
Sam, I'm wondering if you could start by talking a little bit about what Filmlight is for those of us who either haven't heard of Filmlight or just haven't had the, the pleasure of using one of your solutions.
Sure. So yeah. Hi, guys. I'm I'm Sam Lemp. This will be my tenth year at Filmlight, I think.
Filmlight is probably around twenty five years old, just about. So we've been around for quite a long time. And if you're a colorist, an international colorist, you've probably heard of us before.
We're basically one of the major, color correction softwares. We we designed a product called Baselight. We started designing scanners, DI scanners, in the early days. And naturally from that, we basically moved into color correction and everything color.
And since then, we've become sort of a main, grading tool. In fact, both Matt and Jack were customers of ours at one point. Jackson is now, but Matt was at one point, during his career. So, yeah.
And in the last year, we've released, a brand new product called Nara, which is why it says that behind me, which is sort of focusing on on slightly different problems, but we'll talk about that closer to the end.
Fantastic. Thank you, Sam. Yeah. So, before LucidLink, I worked for Postworks New York, great postproduction facility here in New York City. They were and still are a Filmlight customer, and Baselight was a big part of the workflows that we did, for Conform and Finishing.
Speaking of final color, Jack, could you tell us a little bit about Roundtable Post? And, we'd love to hear a little bit about your own story and something about Northern France, even though that your team is back in London. How exactly is that working?
So, yes, I'll start with roundtable. So, roundtable post is a full service post production facility. We started up in, twenty thirteen. So we've been going up a fair in fact, before two thousand eight, way back.
So we've been going for quite a while now, and we are we are boutique. We, you know, we like to offer personalized treatment for each of our clients. We we have ten in house offline suites plus, you know, scalable remote solutions in terms of offline, and then two grade, two sound, and two online suites. So grade, we've got projection for DI, and where we do a lot of feature documentaries.
You know, it's it's essential. It's the only way you can tell how your film will look in a festival. So we make sure we have the right kit, the right staff, best creatives to to be able to achieve, achieve those results, as well as things like HDR and all sorts.
And yeah. And then as for France, I I married a French lady a while back. She's now my wife.
And, and, yeah, kids have sort of reached an age where they were, ready to go off to sort of school.
And we sort of discussed what we were gonna do about that, and we decided that, you know, Northern France, where my wife's family are from, would make sense, from that point of view. And then it was just how to make that work with with work. And, and it's been a it's been a, you know, as with you can imagine it. It's it's not the most straightforward of moves because, it's an industry that is very, built on, collaboration, connectivity, and and how we all, and how we communicate with with each other.
And there's a lot of in person, elements to that, so particularly around the color grading.
So it's been, yeah, it's been a it's been a fascinating change, and I've been I've been out here now for over a year.
And along the way, I've learned a lot as well as, found different ways of working and, you know, spending every day in contact with my team and, and using a whole bunch of different, remote solutions, to connect into the office in in London. And, and, yeah, and keep things moving.
Thank you, Jack. You know, I am curious about a little bit more about the timeline because as you say, you know, post production historically, it's an on prem kind of a lifestyle. You know, in general, the equipment has been historically heavy. It's been something that goes into a machine room. It requires a lot of on prem connectivity and storage. It requires a lot of connectivity in terms of video, audio, sync, time code, all those things.
When did the idea occur to you that you potentially wanted to bring your professional life elsewhere? I mean, was that was that a a result of a pandemic? Was that after the pandemic? You know, did you have a sense that this could work or were you just gonna wing it and see how you could, how you could make it work?
I mean, it, it was always sort of on the cards. There was always this possibility.
You sort of but I think I certainly thought it was a slightly different time scale to than my wife. I I didn't quite realize they started school a bit younger in France.
So that was interesting. I my my daughter started school, just, when she turned three, whereas in the UK, it's more commonly sort of five years old. So, that was a bit of a surprise. So we were kind of working on that timescale of in my head, I had five years and suddenly it was three years. And then there's an element of kind of how, you know, one, will it work? Is it even gonna be possible?
Because I think that's a a big factor to to have. You know? Is it is it gonna work within the team and and how you know, I I have a very varied role. So apart from being just a digital colorist, which I'm doing less of based in France, I also have you know, I also look after a large port portion of the on-site engineering, which is now mostly remote and software based, as well as getting involved in all sorts from, DSP creation, deliverables, you know, client management to a degree as well and and talk through workflows and cameras and lenses and formats. And, you know, there's a lot of different elements there that that all have their own challenges being away from the business, on a on a on a larger you know, on a on a bigger basis. And, you know, I've been I've been back and forth a reasonable amount to to try and fill in some of those things. So, you know, we had, I had a grade back in, October time, which I went back to the UK, did five days.
But there is also still there's still challenges around that and date slipping and anything like that. You you know, you have to you have to kind of prepare for everything. And, I mean, the pandemic certainly helped some of it because as a facility, we moved into, you know, overnight, everyone suddenly became remote, and we all suddenly look at new different technologies. How are we gonna do it? And and that I was a huge, part of the technical decision making team on that. So, you know, I was proposing things, to myself, to my business partner and the and the team as to what solutions can work.
And then, yeah, we we had to, you know, put those in place. And and some of that, I think, has enabled it to feel more possible.
You know? You don't need a powerful computer in your home anymore. You are remoting into other equipment.
You possibly do need, more powerful yeah. For what I do, you you need more powerful other bits of kit, so potentially grade panels or monitors or, maybe better Internet than the average person.
You know, I've got eight gig fiber to my house and and the, you know, ten gig network switch and all sorts. So, you know, a bit more than the common person might have at home, but it was all to sort of just increase that reliability and and reduce downtime. And, you know, when problems come up, making sure that we're able to kind of troubleshoot them, fix them quickly.
Is is your color workflow, is that the exception when it comes to remote workflows, or are there other aspects of your post business that are also remote and distributed? And I'm curious, what else have you worked with from a technology standpoint, from tool standpoint to kind of make it all work? You know, in general, as I know you guys know, very often, it's try this, try that, see what works the best. Alright.
That didn't work for that workflow. Let's let's pivot and try something else. That's a lot of what I think we all experienced, certainly when the pandemic started and none of us knew exactly how to do this. But what other aspects of your business, if there are any, are also working in a in a distributed fashion?
So, I mean, pretty much every kind of department in some way is using remote.
Whether or not they're using it on a day to day basis or if it's just client usage or otherwise, we're we're using remote a lot.
So as a facility, we we kind of doubled down on, HP Anywhere, which was terrored HP server IP. And we went down the software route very early on. So Escape Technology were a partner in helping us sort of make those, you know, come to the right decisions around that. And we were looking at whether we do part with sort of hardware, AMULA, hotkey style stuff, and we ultimately opted for software, which has worked really well for us, you know, a a broker on-site for that type of thing. And then in terms of then, offline machines, so the offline edits, they're all PC based. We're running Teradici or HP Anywhere as they have renamed it.
And so offlines are accessible remotely. They've got SRT streaming through Avid and through, Premier as well.
And then we can also spin up cloud Avids and Premiers, and connect that those to our our our Nexus storage.
And so there's well, we you know, we've had premier jobs using using LucidLink, for example.
And so being able to add more systems, you know, which aren't taking up any CapEx or physically arriving up, you know, landing in a building and taking up space, you know, you can you can spin them up tomorrow and suddenly have edits, you know, more edits available.
So, you know, offline uses remote quite a bit. In terms of grading, we make use of, Baselite's client view, which, you know, we use on most jobs. I think, you know, we we we don't charge our clients extra to be able to log in and and check-in on a session.
And, you know, client view's got some amazing features that are kind of indispensable. So being able to sort of point at the screen with virtual laser pointers, and, I mean, that's incredibly useful.
And then even me remote to, our our senior colorist, Paul, who's who's in the suite most of the time. You know, I'm able to point at things he's able to point at things for me so we can actually communicate as well from an engineering point of view if if he's got challenges or, particularly around, you know, sort of image science things. You know, if if he's blockiness or artifacts or something wrong with the lot or anything like that, we can discuss it and look at it.
If if you don't mind, Jack, I just want to for those who don't know ClientView much or haven't used it, I just wanted to give a brief overview of what that is.
Yeah.
And it's good you spoke about the pandemic there because that sort of forced us as a company. I think it forced most manufacturers actually to kind of step back and think about how they can provide these sort of remote solutions immediately. You know, they parked a lot of the projects they're working on and and folks quite heavy on that as well. Certainly, we did. And something that came out of that was client views, what we call it. It's now sort of being rebranded as film like Connect.
And the idea essentially is to basically take an output stream from the back of a baseline and allow clients from anywhere in the world, to connect to that using a browser. But the key port the key part of that is to maintain color accuracy to the to the best of our ability. And there are other products out there who do that, but, one of the main reasons it took us so long is because, with the reputation we have in our industry, if we were to release something that wasn't color accurate, and couldn't be used for reference grades for your clients, it would be rather embarrassing. So that's I think that's what Jack is is is referring to that.
Yeah. And I mean, it that's where being able to use it for judging the kind of color science aspects of it as well is is kind of vital to have something that actually displays correctly. So so, yeah, in terms of color, we we utilize that. And, again, we're using HP Anywhere for our baselights so that I can open a a baselike here, you know, miles away from it.
And then in same for sound. We're using HP Anywhere in our sound suites, with Pro Tools. And then our online suite, we use a whole mix of different software. Primarily, for the feature docs, we finish on Baselight. So we use, Baselight on a Mac, and that's our our finishing software.
And, and then, you know, we can take it back into theater to review it in theater as well. But, it you know, that's one of the most seamless ways of working. And then if we're doing, you know, Avid style round trip jobs or premier round trips again, it's just round trip through Baselight and, back into in software. So the the Mac sort of set up there to do whole variety of different things. But, yeah, it again, if it's a if it's an Avid session, we can do SRT streaming, for an online. If it's, if it's a baseline online, we can we can stream using client view.
Oh, connect. Sorry. Has it rebranded?
And in this new kind of this new world of working in this distributed way, how has the kind of the the client review from a human standpoint, has that changed a lot? Is it does it feel the same? You know, you're in Northern France. You're not sitting in the same room all the time with the actual clientele.
And technology certainly makes things bridges the gap in many ways, but there's still that need for for human connection. What is it like working with a client in this distributed way?
It depends on the job. It depends on the client.
Certain things are right for some people and not for others. I've done sessions where I've controlled the system remotely and been on the phone with someone, whilst, you know, there's not much point in a video call in a dark room. But, you know, whilst they're sat sat in looking at the projection screen.
And it's not something that I thoroughly, like, strongly recommend. It works, but I think you're far better off for that type of thing to to have a good amount of connection in person as well. So, you know, even if it's a case of doing a lot more of the prep work in advance so that, you know, when you're turning up for day one of the grade, if you've got you know, let's say, it's only five days.
You you know, if you've if you've prepared it and spent a lot more time doing the prep work and looking at the narrative and building a structure. And I mean, this is something I I spoke about, at camera, with with film work was was saying how with the with the twist of film on Netflix, it was very much a case of of, planning for, like, three months for how the story was gonna gonna be in doing the look development so that and much of that was done remotely with the client, you know, with Alex direct from, DP as well on the phone. And and then when they came into the session, we kind of already had a plan.
We already pasted most of our grades. We already had the thing looking right. And so, again, I think I think when you talk, you know, when you talk about sort of workflow of things, it's that, the bespoke sorts of boutique nature, which I think is where most I think it's where facilities are evolving to as well. I think there's a lot more sort of this sort of boutique y style outfit, and they're I think, you know, they they everyone gets absorbed and consolidated, then they split out again.
And I think we're at that point where the boutiques are sort of reappearing more. And and it just you just get a far more, personal service in many ways, I think.
Yeah.
Excellent. And at what point did LucidLink enter the workflow, and what exactly were you looking to do, or what pain points were you looking to solve by introducing a collaborative storage platform, such as LucidLink?
So I did think I I thought about looking up when I first installed Lucid, and I I didn't.
But, I mean, we must be using Lucid now for a long I mean, five years. Is that possible?
I I that's possible.
I'd say I remember when you you first installed it actually, and you got super excited because you you got it work with the base. So you called us in, and we came to have a look. And I'm pretty sure that was probably about about five years ago now.
Yeah. And, I mean, really, that just comes around from my sort of tech geekery.
I mean, I love the latest, greatest, techiest thing even if there's a chance of breaking things. I mean, I live in beta land with most bits of software because I think it's just a good place to to to be, to be testing, to finding out. I mean, sometimes you find out things the hard way and, you know, you're not necessarily supported on a job and you're trying to do something you shouldn't do. But equally, you have an ability to impact, like, input, you know, whatever feedback you that you find. And, you know, getting getting Lucid working on the baseline on Linux, you know, was quite it was quite a I mean, it was quite a fun thing. It was relatively easy. It I just sort of ran the installers, and we had we had some issues around permissions with our active directory setup.
But sent Lucid an email, and twenty four hours later, we had everything working.
No problem. And and it was mostly through curiosity, and then a couple of jobs came up where it made sense to use it. We had one where, it was a, short form piece for, the Imagination Group in the UK who do a lot of things like, they do, like, lots of car launches and live live event pieces as well as a whole load of other stuff.
And, yeah, they had a car launch project where, where the director was based in France. So I was in London at the time. And the director was in Wales. I was in London, and the VFX artist was in France. And, you know, the VFX artist was just making changes based on the director in real time whilst I was grading.
Those changes would get get rendered straight to Lucid. We'd we'd run them as a an automatic sort of sequence updating thing in in baseline. So it will just you know, if there's a new version, it spots it. It will it will update.
And so as I'm grading, you know, maps are changing, you know, the the actual VFX shots are changing, and all of it's just sort of being cached in real time. So there was no there was no real delay as they made changes. Even if the the files hadn't fully uploaded, I was able to still access parts of it. So it was, you know, I it's very impressive to to use.
And then, you know, I know, you know, I have an account where I just sort of store stuff on.
And I don't feel a need to sort of trim it down there because, again, the default, you know, you the default amount of storage you get is pretty big anyway.
And so, yeah, it's it's sort of it's it's a kind of unsung hero in what we do. It's it's used, but most a lot of clients wouldn't even be aware that we are using it for things.
I I think something that we were super impressed by when we came in when you showed us that it was working is the the way it presents on Bayside. The majority of Bayside's analytics, we do have Mac now, but they basically just Lucid just presents as a drive on on the system as as you pro you know, Lucid customers probably expect. And it means that in terms of working with Bayside, it it's no different for the software from our side. You know? We we basically just read the files. It caches locally, which also then means we're not constantly going back to it unless, you know, as Jack said, you you you check the new versions once they're written.
But it it means that, ultimately, if you had on premise storage and you swapped it out for Lucid, you wouldn't pretty much, I'm assuming, Jack, you wouldn't really tell the difference, which which is I don't think, yeah, I think I don't think people would know.
I I and that's a test that I like to do. I mean, one of the sort of CTOs I'm I'm I'm I'm kind of, look to from time to time is a guy called Tate McNabb.
And he, he he said to me, one of the the best things you can do is is just swap out systems for remote systems and don't tell anyone. Just see what see if anyone notices, see if it affects anything. And that's that is a bit my mentality. I mean, you don't wanna impact someone's job.
But at the same time, if you if you're in a sort of safe space where you know, there's not gonna be any material impact to just doing it and trying it and seeing what happens, you've got a client that's open enough to sort of do that. Just just trying some of these things sometimes and seeing seeing what happens is, I think, important to keep the keep the industry evolving and and, and moving on. And, I mean and that kind of brings me into sort of what excites me at the moment, which, you know, obviously, there's a lot of talk around AI and generative AI and things like that. And there's the challenges around the legal side and the copyright.
Lots of lots of interesting things around there. But the bit that excites me more is is this vibe coding that is, it might just be in my in my Internet ecosphere.
But, people being able to create their own workflows through code without knowing how to code.
And it's a fascinating thing. And, you know, so I think it sort of originated around September time, but for me, it kind of appeared in my world around around Christmas. I had some time off and had had some annoying jobs to do over Christmas, where we needed to ingest, about eighteen terabytes worth of material and drives.
They were unsorted. There was mixed of stills, audio, all sorts on there, and it was just to ingest them to ProRes, proxy mods.
And so just writing an application to run on Mac, but you drop some you drop some drives into it, and you put pick a location and hit go, and it just does it.
But being able to build something for your own workflow, and then this you know, then since then I've expanded beyond that and you start looking at things like, you know, everything has APIs. So film like Baseline has an API, for example, and being able to, you know, I've always been around code, but I'm not I don't particularly I can't particularly code, but being able to write things like plugins and, tools and join different bits of software together. So for example, we joined, our baseline to our, Phoenix system for restoration. So being able to send a a shot in baseline by going up to a menu and saying any any files that are tagged this certain way, send them off to, the other piece of software, have them have them dustbusted, and then have them returned and automatically cut in. And all of that then shows in the queue in baseline.
So being able to kind of write these things and do these things without, without any knowledge of code, It's I think that is the remarkable next step where I think by the end of the year, we're everything is moving so quickly. It's I I find it fascinating.
So I'm so glad you brought that up. This is the kind of stuff that, as you guys well know, at least, like, when I worked in post, a lot of the workflow glue, you know, stitching one step of the process to the next was really accomplished by people, by human beings who, you know, flipping an EDL into an XML or, you know, bringing a final cut sequence into Avid and then flipping that into AF so you can go into, Baselight.
That was largely done by the analog way, people.
The the way you're creating a workflow now using, AI or agents, is that something that you're initiating inside the Baselight toolset, or is this is this external to Baselight? Can you talk a little bit more about how that is actually working? Because this is completely fascinating stuff.
So it could be a bit of both. So, so, typically, you people are using, people I'm saying, generically people, mostly developers are using, software development bits of software, so IDEs.
And the the common ones at the moment are Cursor, and there's one called WinSurf. There's also Versus Code, which is the one that most people are using.
And that's got plugins such as Cline and Copilot.
There's a whole load of different options there.
And then there's some incredible tools that are sort of built on top, to to expand that. And so, for example, there's a a I think called an MCP server, which is a way for a, a chat LLM, like chat GPT or, Claude or, Mistral, any of those to be able to actually talk to, tools and call on tools. So I've got a little prototype in development of of, a a chat agent running inside Baselight. So, with Baselight, you can use the UI to you know, you can use Flappy to create UI elements.
And so I've got a little chatbot there that you can type in, and it responds back to you, building it so it will run locally, you know, off off Internet. And then to give it the ability to call tools, so to be able to actually get it to call the the b b l conform tool, for example, when run a conform for you. But not to but not to ask it directly to use the tool, just to say to it, I have a turnover. It's in this folder.
Can you conform it? And then if you build on that as time goes on, you can add in other these MCP servers and or APIs as different ways of doing it. But you can have those in as well, and so you can have some scheduling software that's talking to the the chat agent in the middle as well. So you can have the that then choose which tools to use and send it off into baseloades.
So it's it's a mix. I mean, some of that obviously, a a lot of the development side at the moment, I'm doing outside of Baselite. But already, I've built thing I know I've built some shaders that can sit inside Baselite.
I'm yet to build any of the, any of the flexi plugins that the the ML plugins that are available in in to to build. But for something that I was I mean and I'm I'll be honest. It was incredibly overwhelming around Christmas time to suddenly realize almost any idea I can think of, I can probably build now.
And that's an and that's a fascinating thing.
That is remarkable.
I'm happy to share that, when it comes to APIs, LucidLink will also have an API. Actually, there'll be two implementations, not available quite yet, but later this year, there'll be an SDK, that you can effectively bed in some other technology stack.
There'll also be an s three API gateway, so you can do programmatic gets and puts, at an API level through LucidLink. So, when that's available, perhaps we'll have you back on magic hour, and you can do, some demonstrations on some of the workflows that you're developing, with, no code or little code, leveraging some of the API and SDK elements from from LucidLink and and, the Flappy, film light API. Is that right, Sam?
Please call it film light API.
Film light API. Okay. Film light API.
It was just an unfortunate acronym, but yeah.
I, yeah, I mean, I I also just wanna comment on that. I think from certainly from a vendor's perspective, I don't know about you, Matt, but it's those kind of stories that we really, really like to hear is when, obviously, the we build the API for generic calls and and to do sort of, you know, various things from within the application, but we never ever expect what it is that we're gonna, you know, find certainly talking to our customers and how it is they're gonna use it.
And and, you know, we we have a a great relationship with Jack, so he's always showing us new stuff that he's doing. But it really helps us in terms of development to not only put new calls in there so that they can do even more things, but also just give us an idea of what's actually these problems that a lot of our customers want want to solve.
And and I think you mentioned there, Jack, Flexi, which is basically our back end ML API. And at the moment, that's how we're writing all of our ML based tools that are coming out in version seven. But what we're really hoping is once that's released and once people start using it, they're gonna, you know, all of a sudden find new and amazing things that they can develop with the application. So, yeah, we're we're we're super happy to always have stories like that.
I'm I'm man, I'm I'm having trouble containing my excitement because I was kind of a human API in my post production days, you know, just doing things analog with a lot of mouse clicking.
Again, as somebody who kinda sat in between, various stages of post production and bridge the gap from from one stage to the next. Yeah. We gotta have both of you guys back on later this year, and we maybe we can do some demos of some of the workflows.
When when did, Sam, I'm curious. When did Filmlight start to develop, this kind of extensible, aspect of baseline? I mean, my my understanding of baseline is a bit limited from years ago when it was really a hero grading tool.
Yeah.
This is another another aspect, and I'm Yeah.
I mean, I I can't exactly remember to the date when it was released, but I think it it lined up with our version five release. And for those customers who know us, version five was somewhat notorious. It it took ages for us to release it, because we wanna put everything in it. And, one of the main things there was the API. But since then, yeah, we we've developed quite heavily on that. And a lot of actually the tools that we've released are leveraging primarily the API.
You know, things like Connect, for example, it has it does it does quite a lot with our with with the API that we have there, and a lot of, like I said, with the flexi tools that we're releasing. So I think it kind of it it was a natural progression. You know? Quite a few of our developers have been have been wanting to do that for a very long time, and and so they did that.
I think we did have these sort of Linux based or bash tools, basically, like, Jack mentioned, BL conform there, which has been around for a long time. That's less it's not really an API. It's more basically, a bash script that gets run on the local machine that can be called. And so what we're doing is slowly porting those kind of custom tools over to the API to make them sort of more accessible and a bit more dynamic.
But I think that I was gonna say, I I think that's what's really fascinating, though, with all of this the ability sort of vibe code as it again, it's been called.
Because you can take all these different languages. You can take systems that are older, that are Windows based using bash and link them into a Mac and link them into a, a Linux system. You and combining flexi and those traditional bash strips scripts into one one thing. So you can create these workflows, and automations that just previously required potentially multiple different people. And now it's just it's all all possible.
So it's amazing.
How much, I'm sure a lot of folks who are listening may be thinking, alright. This sounds it sounds fascinating, but it also sounds pretty technical. How much technical aptitude does one need to have to do some of the stuff? You know, because we all want efficiencies. We all want, you know, to eliminate or lessen the the more tedious, laborious aspects of of our work so that we can focus on the fun stuff and focus on the creative part and focus on the the stuff that brings our clients value.
How much technical expertise does one really need?
I I think I think it builds. I think it's something where I don't think you need a lot to begin with. I think you could start by downloading and installing something like Cursor or, WinSurf.
You can run it on a Mac or PC Linux.
And just start by and I think the biggest challenge is you're gonna build something, and you're gonna need to delete it and build it again.
Because so much of it comes down to the planning and the prep. And so you you'll you'll come up with an idea.
Let's just say something simple like, converting an EDL to an XML.
And so you initially you'll give it a load of examples and say, I want these things to become these things, and it will get eighty percent of the way there on its own. And then it's that last twenty percent where you've got to kind of help it, and that's the hardest bit.
I mean, it's it's like building anything. I imagine the developers at film, like, have the same challenge where they have an idea and they can get somewhere with it quick so you can present something, but actually having it genuinely work and perform is hard.
That's why they're experts.
But I think being able to you'll you'll do it. You'll get quite far along, and then you'll I'd advise probably deleting it and literally starting again, but this time with a bigger brief. And and so, you know, there's lots of different models that are available in, in in Cursor or Windsurf. So you can be using Google's Gemini models or, Claude, or from Anthropic. You could be using OpenAI's, various models. And I mean, even on that, just at a very basic level to get involved in in using AI in a different way, not just this this sort of generative AI that is what most people seem to be thinking about.
You know, get yourself a subscription to something like like Claude or to OpenAI's ChatGPT and just start using the different models and, you know, I mean, I've I've been using the o three model a lot lately, to just you just ask it questions, let it go off, do its research, and come back with with various results. And and, you know, I'm not I'm not an engineer engineer. I'm very much a jack of all trades.
So being able to get that little bit of extra information to get you a little bit further along can be a little dangerous.
So you you do have to make sure you read what's coming back and What kind of danger are you referring to?
Well, for example, with find dangerous.
Well, I had a good example yesterday of, you know, if if if you're being advised, for example, to change something networky and you don't know what it is, probably don't do it because you might not have access to that machine later on. It might cut off the Internet or whatever.
And I think I think sometimes it's just a case of reading it and learning it. And I would really strongly advise any facility, any any place of work to give your employees access to these tools, get them using them, and just just learning how to how to communicate differently with them. Because then they're not humans, and they don't respond like humans.
And they go through changes or you know, the change is just incredible, the speed at which things are changing. But if you're having an issue maybe with your rapid software with Premier and it'll probably get you an answer that's gonna get you further along than waiting in a queue for some someone in a longer support process to come back to you. Obviously, film like support is super quick because they're on the phone twenty four seven.
But if you if you're just needing to, you know, if you end up on a support forum, why wait there when you could have a conversation that gets you somewhere further as well?
I think to to to answer that slightly as well, Matt, I I would say that, you know, where definitely don't write scripts and deploy them during, you know, midway through your production. That's probably not the best idea. But, what we have found is is definitely for facilities who have the ability to do that, where they have people like Jack, it it it it's sort of priceless to a certain degree. You know? There's a lot of features that we get back from our customers, which we would wish we had the resource to implement. We really do.
But, ultimately, we only have so many developers. We only have so much time. And and I think sometimes just being able to give them the tools to build their own, and, you know, when they have when they have people like Jack there and and and and and and and, other technical people, being able to do that for them is is is hugely useful. So I think, yeah, it's it's sort of, you know, give them a a what's that saying? Give them a a fishing rod, and they can fish forever. But give them a fish, and they can eat once.
So So I'm glad you brought this up because, I wanted to ask, you know, as a technology manufacturer, Sam, obviously, you guys mastered color grading and color science a long time ago.
And the world has changed a lot in the last couple of years. You know, what kind of new thinking do you guys you know, what do you guys talk about, you know, inside Filmlight in terms of how the the toolset and the workflow cannot just adapt, to to the kind of needs that someone like Jack needs, the kind of needs that that Jack needs and uses.
But where else do you think you wanna go? It sounds like Baselight is much more extensible than what I'm familiar with back from my customer days. You know, what's the thinking? You have a new solution called, Nara and would, love to know a little bit about that.
Yeah. So, yeah, we we we have been doing base art for for for so many years now, and and we poured our heart and soul into it. And we really, you know, focus heavily on on providing colorists and finishing artists the best tools possible. But it's true. I think, it's it's clear that, you know, certain parts of that industry are either shrinking slightly or they're being pivoted elsewhere or or problems that people are talking about are slightly different. And what we what we realized was is, you know, the technology we're sitting on top of doesn't necessarily just have to sort of present itself as a as a color grading software.
And one of the biggest topics, certainly born out of the pandemic and certainly being spoken about now and is a very similar, thing to what you're solving is how can you move and get media incredibly quickly and accurately, and how can you service these very, very distributed workflows that we're seeing in the industry. And Nara basically, is is put there to sort of try and solve this problem. And, essentially, the way it works is it's a media streamer, so we can connect to any storage, LucidLink especially, and we can allow the user from any location on their browser to browse whatever's on there and stream whatever's on there to their laptop.
But you can also do other things. You can transcode from the application. You can do live review sessions with, you know, DCPs and IMFs.
And I think what we're taking is we're taking our extensive expertise when it comes to handling media, and that means any media, raw camera files, intermediate area XRs, you know, high end deliverables like IMS and DCPs, and basically giving people very readily accessible, viewing for for for that data regardless of where they are.
And it it it it sort of on the face of it, you think that problem might have been solved, but it's very difficult. There's so much nuance when it comes to handling these files and presenting them accurately and knowing what to do when you see a new camera from a from a new manufacturer that's got a brand new SDK and you can't do bear it. So all of that stuff, they're basically leveraging the last twenty five years of of dealing with that.
And, yeah, it it basically it's it's us it's us, you know, leveraging our IP and and pivoting it slightly to sort of focus on different problems, you know, keep our developers, busy.
No doubt.
And something that I think this would be a perspective that you would have a better perspective, Sam and Jack than I would, in this re in this respect.
Facilities themselves, you know, we have traditional facilities for years and years, decades and decades, then the pandemic happened. Pendulum swings wildly in the other direction where everything's remote. Pendulum has, in the last year, kind of bounced out a little bit, from what I understand, where now there's kind of a harmony between on prem and distributed.
Where do you think that trend is going? And I the reason I wanted to ask you guys this is, you know, we're collaborative storage. We don't always necessarily know when people are using our solution.
But I think you probably, Sam, you have a much clearer sense as to when people are working in a traditional brick and mortar facility. And then there's someone like Jack who is working in a distributed context.
What is what is the state of the traditional facility? It's something I wonder about all the time being somebody who comes from that world.
Certainly for post production, it's always hard to say. I think, probably if you asked me a year ago, I would say everyone's cloud curious, and and no one is no one is kind of, like, fully, you know, putting all their eggs in one basket. Now I think it's it's very different. There are a lot of hybrid workflows.
There's a lot of facilities who are pushing more into the cloud, but still remaining on prem. So I think this hybrid hybrid workflow is is is sticking around slightly. I would say that certainly from what I've seen when it comes to the major studios, I think they do push quite heavily to push to to run things in the cloud quite often in their own VPCs. That seems to be a topic that came out of NAB this year.
So it's hard to say. I think it all depends on what what you know, how you started, what the first job was that you needed to get through the door, what it is you needed to invest in at the time, and then and then where you went from there. I don't know what Jack's thoughts are there.
I mean, I think I think, I think there's just this need for productions to chase the sun.
And therefore, we need you know, facilities are gonna not necessarily expand and become you know, there's obviously companies that spread across the world already, but I think there's gonna be a lot more partnerships between smaller companies, internationally. And that effectively creates remote working.
You know, although they're different businesses and they might be independent or even the same business working depend yeah. With different management teams there. I think there's gonna be more, yeah, a big shift to to trying to keep productions going through faster, but at a high quality, but yet in these smaller facilities.
So directors can be based anywhere and their editors and whoever else can be somewhere else in the world. I mean, we're certainly doing a lot more productions where we end up with edits happening either in the US or with the directing producing team in the US. And, I, you know, I think that that global nature means there will will be this continued remote remote need.
So, you know, and I think but I think with all that, there is also gonna be this, this challenge around, just not only how that data flows, but also how how we do that, in a sort of environmentally sustainable way as well, making sure that we're not, just I mean, this is the the counterargument to me saying go AI and, you know, chat GPT, etcetera, is there's a hell of a lot of GPU usage. And, and I think looking at interesting solutions around, around all of that as well so that we're not just burning burning the world down at the same time. I think I think there's interesting need for the remote because the remote solves the, you know, need to be on a plane all the time.
But it doesn't it you know, everything there's a balance, isn't there? I'd be interested to see where where it will lands.
Yeah. I'm I'm curious to see where that goes to.
Given that so given that, eventually, the the difference between on prem and remote is gonna kind of get reach kind of a a a normal blurriness by design where it doesn't really matter where you're working from. But given that, I have to ask from the standpoint of how LucidLink can best support this.
As a customer, Jack, what does LucidLink not have that you need?
What do we need to work on? And and, you know, what should I be talking to Sam about, for example, in terms of how we better partner to support your workflow needs?
The API being a huge thing. I mean, for for I mean, to be able to build anything using Lucid would is is part of the key. Being able to suddenly you know, if we need to make the tools ourselves, being able to do that.
I think that's that's quite an interesting interesting statement. I think for how we're using Lucid at the moment, it it fulfills all the needs.
But to then be able to take it further and integrate it for more with other products, I mean, sure, you can use watch folders and things like that. But if you can use watch folders that have triggers and, that's another step. And then if you just take it straight into the API and, yeah, you can you can do some quite quite fascinating things and, yeah, it's it's very exciting where it's all going.
And from your standpoint, Sam, what what else should Lucid Lim be doing as a technology partner?
Well, I I I would love to see some some direct and official integration with Lucid. But like I said, is it it it's sort of so seamless with the way it interacts with any server that it kind of acts like that already. So, we certainly, that that's what I really liked about the software, when when when I first saw it when when Jack showed us. But I think, yeah, I mean, as as soon as that API is available, we'd be more than happy to to do some some more sort of dynamic and advanced workflows with with the application.
Absolutely.
Fantastic.
We should, we should workshop that. Yeah. The, at the moment, we only have integrations inside Premiere Pro and After Effects, which largely revolve around performance, through our pinning capability.
Seems like maybe we should have some kind of in in in ways like pinning capability that is specific to the to the timeline rather than pinning things on a on a Linux level, on a on a desktop level. That's that's definitely that seems like low hanging fruit in terms of things people would enjoy having. I don't know how difficult that would be to develop, but it's certainly something that we should talk about.
Yeah. And watch folders, that's also, audience member just mentioned watch folders.
But we should also workshop how we can support what what Filmlight is doing in terms of extensible workflows when it comes to the API, which from the LucidLink standpoint will be, definitely out later this year. I'm hoping by IBC, crossing fingers by IBC, we're gonna we're gonna have something. I can't guarantee it, but, man, that would be, that would be amazing. The SDK, I will say, is working now today. That's actually what's at the core of our new web interface, which is, which we as I said earlier in the session, we launched at NAB. But, yeah, very, very excited to workshop that with you, Sam. And, Jack, you're gonna be the, hopefully, the, the, the beneficiary of of those, workshops.
That'd be amazing.
Just just to pick up a up a bit from the chat, I mean, Greg's points out replic dot com, in terms of the and, way of develop you know, doing some of this this vibe coding.
And that was actually the first bit of software I used, to to build some things.
And I I think it's it's quite, an easy easy way to, get started in the it's one of the competitors is love lovable.
They're just web based, so you you're not actually even having to be exposed to the code in the same way.
You know, when you're using something like cursor or windsurf, you're sort of seeing seeing a bit of the coding, which can look scary if you don't know much about it. So it's, those are quite interesting solutions for for just having a play. Make your own website or come up with a tool that changes something or yeah. Just try try these things.
Outstanding.
Well, we have a few minutes. So if anyone, who has joined us today would like to ask questions, please feel free. You can either put it in the audience chat or in the q and a panel, and, Sam or Jack or myself can certainly answer.
Jack, I have to ask while we wait for questions to filter in, have you tried, LucidLink three point o?
I haven't yet. No. Just being honest.
That's alright. I can't wait. I would love to, I'll give you a demo at some point. We'll we'll we'll talk after, today's session. Be happy to, and Sam, you guys as well.
We would actually love to. I mean, we we're it's it's funny. Internally, we deal with media as well. We we publish things, and we always look back and think, you know, we provide these super advanced workflows for our customers, and sometimes we're still using FileZilla to move files around between and, you know, so, yeah, it it it we we would love to for sure.
I think my my, quirky Jewish mother would refer to that as do as I say, not as I do.
But, yeah, and, you know, we're guilty of some of that too, you know, on the inside.
But, yeah. We should, connect after our session at some point, and I'd be happy to give you a demo of what is, now it was linked three point one, which has, all kinds of new stuff that we launched at, NAB. And then Sam, maybe, you know, I can get a sneak peek of what's coming next from, from the foam light. So not to tease everybody who's listening, but yes, I'd love to, see what's what's next because I've always been a fan of Baselight and, kind of kind of miss it, actually. I've I've missed all this other new stuff that we've been talking about here.
Nice.
We if anyone ever gets the chance, by the way, they should they should definitely listen to Daniele, from Filmlight talk because, you know, he's he's your your lead image scientist. And, Sam, I mean, he just some fascinating ideas, and, obviously, they come from your your team. But, I mean, he's he's fantastic at presenting them.
Yeah. I I I feel super privileged working at work at Filmart. I have to be honest. Some of the some of the level of intelligence there is is quite outstanding. So being able to deal with those guys on a daily basis is phenomenal.
Well, and as a customer, being able to reach out and actually talk to Daniel and, you know, discuss some of these ideas, and I think that's a you know, people sometimes talk about the value of support contractors when you're at a smaller scale. You know, obviously, a big facility, it makes sense. But on a smaller scale, why would why would you need it? And, just be able to to have access to some incredibly, clever people.
Yeah. I mean, we we've always said that too too much abstraction between the developers and and the end users is is typically a bad thing. It can help sometimes because it means the developers don't get too distracted. But I think, certainly, for us, it's been it's been our saving grace over the last twenty five years is is just making sure that they have a very close connection with the people it is that are using the software.
And and people like Daniele were always great with that sort of in between and and taking a conversation and turning it into a tool or a product or yeah.
Fantastic.
Well, Sam and Jack, thank you so much for joining us here on Loosely Link Magic Hour. I think we're just at the top of the hour.
Marcy, if there's any questions that I missed, now would be a good time to hear them. But at the moment, I don't see any questions.
I don't think we have any.
But I think we we will be sharing a link to this recording shortly after the session, probably within the next day or so.
I I lied. I'm sorry. There is one question. Just a quick one. Greg is asking, where can he see more content from Filmlight, Sam?
It's a really good question. It's being a relatively small company, it's always something that we struggle to maintain momentum for, but that is a massive push that we're we're we're gonna be doing. So we have a few panels coming up. We're gonna be at MPTS, which is in the UK.
So if you are in the UK, we're gonna do some some live panels, both with our Bayside customers and with our Nara customers. We also have, that is gonna be recorded, I've been told, so you should be able to watch that, after the fact. And we also should have some new Bayside seven videos coming out, and there is also a Nara, finally, a Nara promotional video that, will have me and my colleague Steve Brittonlin, which is coming out probably this week. What I would also say is if you want to get to know the software, we do actually have on our website a, a pretty comprehensive, training program that you can sign up to.
It's completely free, and it sort of takes you through the very basics to some of the more advanced stuff. And I think at the moment, we have probably close to about a hundred videos up or something, and so you can you can get pretty far. And the other thing is if you do download, Bayside, you can always reach out to our support team. It won't necessarily be a priority in the email queue, but you always you always will get response.
So any questions you have, you can just reach out.
Fantastic. I don't think I realized that you guys have been around for twenty five years. Is that right?
I think so. I'm pretty sure it's I'm pretty sure it's twenty five.
I might I might be wrong by a year, but, it's been a smooth out.
Yeah.
That's amazing. Well, cheers to the, longevity and, having a, you know, a best in class, color grading tool in the color science. And all this other stuff that you guys are working on is pretty pretty amazing. Again, coming from the perspective of someone who was on the customer side and, use Baselight all the time for our our finishing workflows.
Really appreciate it.
It's a outstanding platform and and great people. Love the people at Filmlight and the and the all the Filmlight customers do really, really interesting work. So, delighted that we could have you on the show today, Sam. Thank you.
Thank you guys so much. Thank you for for hosting the platform. It's been it's been brilliant.
Yes. And, thank you for joining us. Jack, especially, thank you for joining and, sharing your story and learning about your journey, both as a colorist and a facility owner.
And thank you for being a Lucelyn customer. And, I'm not kidding when I say we should we should come back later this year and do some workshopping, with an audience who who can watch and as we build agent based workflows using, some of the API stuff that we're discussing. I think that'd be really fun and and, a great a great, session.
To all of us who, to everybody who joined today, to watch, Magic Hour, thank you.
Really glad that we could have this session with our two great guests. Thank you to Phil Knight and to Jack for joining, to Marcy for, doing all the behind the scenes magic. And, we will be oh, I should mention that we will also be at MPTS in London, in the coming weeks, I think in two weeks. So look for, Sam and the film like folks there as well as Lucy. And, looking forward to seeing everybody again on the next magic hour.
Awesome. And thank you for hosting that. You're always such a great host for this.
Alright. Entirely. Thanks, everyone. Glad to be here. Cheers. Bye, guys. Bye.
Tuesday, Apr 29 at 10am Eastern / 3pm GMT
The age old question: How do you guarantee the best quality color grading without being chained to your desk and your gear?
Join us for a discussion with Jack Jones from Roundtable Post as he shares:
his journey through the industry, from his early career decisions to his bold move to remote management
how he’s leveraging Baselight and LucidLink to give him freedom to work away from the office without compromising on quality or connectivity
how he continues to collaborate with his London team seamlessly
We’re thrilled to have Sam Lempp from the Filmlight team join us, too, and talk more about how Baselight and LucidLink are even more powerful when used together.
We'll save plenty of time for live Q&A to answer all your burning questions.
