PASSION PICTURES and pixitmedia Create Cloud-Based Animations Using AWS

PASSION PICTURES is a full-service global production company with teams in London, Paris, New York, and Barcelona. Its multiple creative divisions, partner companies, and diverse talent roster have worked together to create animations and film projects.

 The company has succeeded for 30 years by possessing the artistic and production skills to take on a wide range of live animation projects for its clients. At any time, it manages more than a dozen projects for advertisements, animated features, video games, and documentaries.
 
Demand for its content has risen in step with the recent ascension of video-on-demand from online streaming services. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the predictable workflow and absence of live actors in animation also contributed to increased demand for its work. PASSION PICTURES was busier than ever and its team grew by as much as 150 percent.

PASSION PICTURES wanted to be able to bid confidently for and take on new work, and expand into longer-form content. But its on-premises production pipeline lacked the sophisticated data orchestration and storage management it needed to create high-end animations on predictable timescales and with accurate cost forecasts.

PASSION PICTURES transitioned its virtual pipeline backend to AWS Partner pixitmedia's products ngenea, pixstor, and pixstor Cloud, all built using AWS. “We do not want technology to be the reason we don’t do a job,” says Tim Wharton, Head of Systems at PASSION PICTURES. “Thanks to working with pixitmedia and AWS, we now have more capability and confidence in growing that.”
Ben Leaver, Executive Vice President of Business Development at pixitmedia adds that its clients help it to develop leading solutions. “It’s because of our trusted relationships with customers like PASSION PICTURES, and the invaluable feedback they give us, that we can be industry-leading and forward-thinking,” says Leaver. “We use that knowledge to develop solutions that enable the effective movement and storage of the assets that make businesses function. We have proven to the production industry that our solutions give our customers confidence that they’re prepared for the unexpected.”

The studio can now adjust and ‘right-size’ resources as needed for projects, even increasing limits at short notice to meet tight deadlines. The cloud-based pipeline also supports teams working collaboratively around the world, giving PASSION PICTURES access to the best talent, regardless of where they’re located. And it’s all done in a secure manner to protect intellectual property rights and maintain client confidentiality.

The project began with PASSION PICTURES approaching pixitmedia, its technology partner for more than 8 years, about building a global production solution that’s cost-effective, flexible to shifts in market demand, and that allows it to seamlessly scale up and grow its business.
pixitmedia immediately recognized the need for a hybrid solution that would offer on-demand resources. “We love working with pixitmedia because it’s a really open and collaborative relationship,” says Wharton. “We come to them with problems or ideas and we sit around a table and discuss the best tools and technology to help us achieve our business goals. Because they have so much experience in the media and entertainment industry, they have a real-world understanding of what we need to succeed.” 

Because PASSION PICTURES had an urgent need to pitch for new projects, pixitmedia worked to a tight timeframe and installed ngenea and pixstor in 1 hour. It then completed the full switchover to the new hybrid pipeline in a matter of days. pixstor provides storage for hybrid environments and ngenea is an intelligent data management system that automates the movement of information across multiple sources.

The changes to the pipeline were transparent to the artists, so they could stick with their usual workflow and processes. Only now, on the backend, resources are shifted to the cloud as needed.

The global nature of AWS means PASSION PICTURES can easily provide access to the production systems to artists based in Europe, Asia, or the UK, and quickly add new resources to accommodate for future growth.

ngenea also provides extensive customization features so the team can be flexible depending on the project’s needs. “We can decide which files and images to move, so we can get really granular about how to organize the data,” says Wharton. “The system also has scripts that automate certain tasks, which saves us time and effort.”

The computer rendering of images to create animations is a resource-intensive and expensive process. The longer-form content PASSION PICTURES is creating requires even more intensive compute power. The new pixitmedia infrastructure uses Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) for secure and resizable compute capacity. PASSION PICTURES can now support up to 300 nodes for computer rendering, where previously it could access only a third of that number. This means it can render as much as 3 times as fast as it could using the on-premises system.

ngenea automatically pushes the content to the AWS so it’s there when artists and producers need it. To manage compute power for rendering it uses AWS Thinkbox Deadline, a hybrid admin and compute management software for render farms, and AWS EC2 Spot Instances, which takes advantage of unused Amazon EC2 capacity to provide on-demand computer power. “Using AWS, we can choose the right system for the job to scale up as and when we need more compute power or storage,” says Wharton. “This saves us money and allows us to right-size our resources for production, and to accurately forecast and account for costs per project.”

PASSION also experiences fast performance and cost-efficiency from Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), an object storage service. The team can set parameters to automatically switch to cheaper tiers of storage when possible, and can effectively archive materials for disaster recovery.

Working with major media and entertainment clients, PASSION PICTURES must protect intellectual property. Using the new virtual pipeline, the team creates separate networks for each project, and uses encryption, access control, and two-factor authentication to ensure all data is only seen by authorized staff and artists.
The most essential benefit of the cloud-based production pipeline solution, and the overarching goal of the project, is giving PASSION PICTURES the flexible workflow and resources it needs to evolve. “We’ve seen so many benefits from embracing cloud technologies,” says Wharton. “We want to build a studio that can grow and flex and take on the projects it wants to take on. Working with pixitmedia and AWS supports our ability to do this. It’s really exciting.”