Taking a cruise isn’t necessarily synonymous with adventure travel. But the Princess Cruises trips to Alaska open the door to the kinds of adventures that only they can provide—adventures that allow so many people to create their own unique stories.

To create our latest customer story, we accompanied the video team that produced the “once in a decade” marketing content for their Alaska sea and land packages. Their small and intrepid team traveled to the remotest of locations with seven cameras, captured 15TB of footage, and worked with a globally distributed post-production crew and stakeholders to deliver what their CMO declared “a home run.”

In this installment of Made in Frame, we meet Senior Manager of Media Production Scott Martin and editor Kristin Rogers, who took us through their journey to Denali National Park and beyond, as they explored the far reaches of Alaska—and the features in the all-new Frame.io—to create memorable results.

Cruising altitude

With a fleet of 18 ships that serve 330 cruise destinations across more than 100 countries on all seven continents, Princess Cruises, owned by Carnival Corporation (the largest cruise operator worldwide), are ranked #1 for Alaskan adventures for bringing the most people to the region. After 55 years of operating in the territory, Princess not only understands how to navigate the waters of Alaska, they also provide travel experiences on land by train, glacier trips by air, and five inland lodge destinations.

Still, Princess knows that they have to consistently deliver the kind of eye-popping content that ensures their continued success. And they have exactly the right team to do it. More specifically, they’ve been able to craft the perfect team, irrespective of location, to deliver their most ambitious shoot to date—with the help of Frame.io and their all-Adobe creative workflow.

A 15-year dream

Led by Scott Martin, this project represents an ambitious rebranding. Designed to humanize The Great Land for people who haven’t personally experienced it by spotlighting authentic, emotionally resonant moments, as well as highlighting the magnificent landscapes that only Princess provides access to, a shoot of this magnitude comes but once in a decade. Deliverables including brand new video and photography assets required them to capture extensive B-roll, deploy A and B photo teams, a drone team, and a team capturing product content.

The project is the culmination of a 15-year dream for Scott, who has specialized in making films in remote locations since the beginning of his career. What makes that pursuit so challenging for most people is what fuels his desire to take big creative swings. “When I was in my twenties and I was spending a lot of time in Alaska, I learned valuable filmmaking lessons from Alaskans because they just do more with less. There’s a tenacity. There’s a toughness that I think we, as filmmakers, can learn from,” he says.

One of the most important images for the team to capture was Denali at sunset and sunrise. Seeing it is the reason so many people travel to Alaska and, for Princess, including it in the campaign was a must. “The most challenging thing about Denali is she’s only visible 30 percent of the time. So 70 percent of the time, that gorgeous mountain is unfilmable,” Scott says. “What I heard the most was that this was going to be impossible, and for our team, that’s the strongest motivator. As soon as I heard the word ‘impossible’ I knew we were going to be standing at Denali, mile 62, sunrise and sunset with beautiful light. And we were going to nail it.”

Which, of course, they did. But not without intense preparation, the confidence that comes with having spent more than 300 days over the course of a career in that environment, and a lot of luck with the weather.

“We planned and practiced meticulously and had an A, B, C, D, and E option for everything,” Scott says. “The number one thing that we could really lean on was that we had so much experience in Alaska. We knew Mother Nature was going to be a challenge, and we accepted that challenge. I think that’s what’s beautiful about filming in Alaska. If you want control, don’t film in Alaska. If you want the idea of being ready at all times, or if you want a filmmaking experience that’s ripe with adversity and changes and with being on your toes all day, then Alaska is the place you want to go.”

Charting the course

But even more importantly than where they were going was perhaps why they were going. “We’ve accumulated a lot of trust over the years and have a track record of going into very remote environments with small teams, but it’s still important to make sure the stakeholders feel that it’s a strong investment,” Scott states.

For a shoot of this importance, the team needed to make sure they were as creatively prepared and aligned as they were logistically. In addition to stakeholders, they had four staff members along with approximately 35 contractors to support the production component. Not to mention the dispersed nature of the team—with members from Colorado and Texas to London and beyond. It almost goes without saying that Frame.io was vital to keeping everyone in the loop from the very beginning of pre-production.

With a roughly 100-day runway to prepare, the team needed to work with producers and stakeholders to make sure that everybody was on the same page. “Those 100 days are focused on aligning the purpose and objectives of the shoot. We spent a tremendous amount of time on that before we got into the fun, creative aspect of it,” Scott says.

It’s why Frame.io is so critical to pre-production. “We have to align on our purpose in pre-production versus in post-production. That was something I learned too late as a filmmaker. The stories we’re telling today are largely leveraging a 10- or 15-year asset library. Frame.io really helps us understand at the beginning exactly what we have so we know exactly what we need to go get,” Scott adds.

It’s also why the team is fully invested in Adobe Creative Cloud, according to Scott. “I use Photoshop heavily in pre-production because I spend a lot of time putting screengrabs together or storyboards for our DP’s, producers, and crews. Often, especially when I’m using an image from a very specific location, there might be something that will detract from what the creative will see. So I’ll spend time in Photoshop erasing things because I want them focused on something very granularly,” he says.

Another Creative Cloud tool that the team relies on during pre-production is Adobe InDesign. Marketing Creative Director Dani Bartov uses it extensively to “build inspiration boards and visual reference for everything from action and framing for a given scene to wardrobe, hair, and makeup,” she states.

Momentum is fire

They set out in July, when the days were long and the opportunity to capture Denali at both sunrise and sunset was packed into an inconvenient window from midnight to 4:00 am. But that didn’t deter Scott.

The team was equipped with seven cameras, including an Alexa 35, a helicopter outfitted with a RED Raptor, and an 8mm film camera. “They ended up shooting about 15TB of footage, and we were actually able to deliver a select reel 24 hours after wrapping, which is pretty incredible,” Kristin says.

Most importantly, when Scott is out in the wild he needs a way to not just collaborate closely with Kristin and stakeholders, he needs to know what he’s got in the can and what he still needs—while the clock is ticking.

“Scott and I work normal daytime hours when we’re editing other projects for Princess,” Kristin says. “But here he’s out shooting for sometimes 18 hours a day. I know this because I’d get notifications from Frame.io at 3:00 am [when she was working from Austin during week one]. They have so much going on—drone teams that are driving almost 3000 miles—and he’s managing all of that. With Frame.io, we’re able to communicate much more effectively, because even though he’s shooting in remote places, he has his iPad or his phone. He can go on Frame while he’s at Denali and mark his selects and send them to me. We could then sit down at breakfast or coffee or dinner [when she was in Alaska for week two], and I would get everything that I needed from him based on a quick chat and on his notes in Frame.”

For Scott, being able to review dailies in Frame.io was not just about helping him feel confident about what he’d captured or to pivot if he hadn’t yet captured it—it was more about helping his team collaborate faster and more effectively.

“My perception of what happened while I was directing is often very different from what’s in the footage. What Frame.io does is it basically gives me access to the most up-to-date information, so as I’m directing, I’m building the edit in my head with the comments that are going into Frame. The transition to watching dailies in Frame.io and commenting, and all of that communication going out to our editors immediately, was life changing for our collaboration velocity,” Scott says. “Because I think in creativity, we have to remind ourselves that motivation is a spark and momentum is fire.”

Delivering the impossible

As it happened, that momentum helped the team pull off what seemed, at best, improbable, and at worst, impossible.

Kristin recounts the story. “I was doing a radio edit and Scott had just gotten back from Camp Denali and immediately received an urgent email—‘Can you build a select reel for Princess’s meeting?’” (Scheduled for a mere 36 hours after the shoot wrapped.)

The leaders making the request naturally understood the magnitude of the ask and put no undue pressure on the team. Which made the fact that the team came through such a pleasant surprise for everyone.

“We had never delivered anything that quickly in our entire production history,” Scott says. “But it became possible because we had Frame.io. We were able to let Kristin see 14 days of footage very quickly and were able to communicate at speeds that we have never been able to before.”

In the pre-Frame.io days, Scott figures it might have taken a week or more to accommodate that request. We often talk about how much money or time Frame.io saves customers…but can you put a price on feedback like this?

Not to mention that using the Adobe creative workflow enables other types of fast turnarounds.

“Sometimes things don’t always go as planned when you’re on a production,” Kristin says. “For example, the drone team was trying to capture this epic shot of a train passing with the Princess ship, but the timing was off between the ship and the train. They had a beautiful ship shot, but no train. And they had a great train shot with no ship. What we’re able to do with Frame and Adobe was that I was able to send Charles, our in-house VFX artist [based in LA], shots from Premiere Pro and then he was able to take them into After Effects and put them together seamlessly. Instead of having to wait for somebody at an external post house to put them together and send them back, he did it and was able to send it right back to me through Frame.”

There was also paint work required on those shots, and the anchored comments feature in Frame.io made it much easier for Scott to specifically show the VFX artist what needed to be fixed. “Scott was able to go to my edit, tag Charles and say, ‘Hey, can you replace this? I want this in the sky.’ And then Charles was able to understand what Scott was thinking at that moment, while he was in Alaska, and turn those shots around extremely quickly so I could drop them into my edit,” Kristin says.

The ability to send attachments with comments is something that Kristin immediately found value in. “I love it because sometimes, Scott, especially on this shoot, would upload a still frame or something that’s from a previous Alaska shoot that’s not in this particular footage, and say, ‘Maybe we should consider using this shot in addition to these shots,’ and then I know exactly where to pull it from,” she says.

An all-inclusive platform

In the days prior to Frame.io, Scott’s team had assets spread across multiple hard drives, RAIDs, NAS and cloud systems. Now, all their assets are centralized, along with their collaborators and stakeholders.

“A lot of internal and external folks use Frame.io to access our system,” Scott says. “So whether it’s an editor or a VFX artist or a producer or an outside agency, all of them are heading into Frame to get the information and the resources they need. We also have stakeholders based in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, and Asia, and we’re constantly sending review links out all the time. The Enterprise features really allow us to collaborate with whoever we need to.”

For Scott and team, when there is a unified place where everything you need for your project is available—with proper safeguards, of course—the people involved with the process can focus more fully on the creative process.

The Enterprise features really allow us to collaborate with whoever we need to.

“The entire post-production process for me has drastically improved since implementing Frame.io for multiple reasons. A big one is the way that I communicate with clients, and the way that clients actually communicate with each other,” Kristin says. “If I post an edit for clients and, let’s say there’s 15 stakeholders making comments on one particular edit, they can work it out in the comments. And I appreciate that because I don’t have to go to each one of them individually. I can instead reply to all of them and get them to arrive at a decision.”

For Scott, it’s about unfettered creativity. “One of the things that large organizations struggle with is trying to put creativity in a nine-to-five box. I am an adamant believer that creativity is at its best when it’s flowing. But I also understand that it’s incredibly disrespectful to your collaborators to expect them to be online all the time. Where Frame becomes so special to me is I can communicate at my speed. Prior to Frame, I didn’t have a tool or software or technology that could work at the speed of our team’s imagination,” he says.

“When we send review links out, our stakeholders and our collaborators can comment on that link 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. That is what builds content velocity. If I’m commenting on something in Mountain Time in Colorado, by the time our producer in Vancouver has gotten up, that’s the first thing he’s going to see. It’s also eliminating several communication channels, because prior to Frame.io, whether it was Teams chats or WhatsApp, I believe that destroyed the creative review process because as soon as you decentralize that process you’re essentially decentralizing your leadership and your creativity, as well.”

It’s easy to infer that Scott doesn’t often stay still. Which is another reason why Frame.io is important to his way of life. “Let’s say Kristen is in an edit and she delivers that Frame.io link to me. It doesn’t matter if I’m at my desk, if I’m at my kid’s jujitsu class, if I’m having a picnic, if I’m on a walk,” he says. “Frame.io is just as good on my phone or my iPad, so it doesn’t matter what platform you’re on. Frame.io is always at your fingertips.”

Creating bespoke workflows

Ask most creatives and they’ll tell you that no two projects are the same. Sure, you always have to shoot, edit, and deliver something, and you’ll need to share work-in-progress for feedback and approvals.

But especially when you’re traveling to far-flung locations, shooting documentary-style interviews, and your B-roll is heavily dependent on weather conditions and access, having a workflow that helps you sort through a massive amount of footage and organize it into something manageable is critical.

“One of the features in Frame.io that I absolutely love is metadata, and I use it in all of my Adobe editing products,” Kristin says. “Frame has 32 standard metadata fields that you can utilize, but you can actually do customized ones, as well. You’re able to label something as a wide shot, a medium shot, or a closeup. Or, like with this particular shoot, they were using the Alexa 35 and some fantastic lenses that gave us some beautiful lens flares, and being able to actually mark which shots they were doing very specific light tricks with was incredible.”

Adding customized metadata fields to your media enables another new feature called Collections that lets you use those tags to create smart folders containing assets grouped by whatever criteria you assign. “With a standard file structure, you’d have to go through every single file. But with metadata, you can actually go to specific keywords and you can sort by them. Or you can sort by duration or by frame rate or anything else,” she says.

For Scott, using metadata gives his team a couple of key advantages. First, it’s the ability to customize statuses within the workflow. “Frame.io previously didn’t really map the way we think about our post-production process, whereas now Frame.io is a guide and a map that helps you understand who’s delivering what, and when they’re delivering it.”

But although, as Scott says, that increases your content velocity, it’s even more important when you’ve invested in an expensive shoot and want to ensure that you’ve found all the best bits for both the current project and future use, as well.

It’s what Scott refers to as the cost per asset. “You start to look at it more like stocks and portfolios, because you can see that the cost of capturing those assets can depreciate over time. The first time I went into the new version of Frame and I started playing around with the Collections, I got incredibly excited. Because suddenly I was looking at this vast Alaska library that needed to be distributed to lots of different people.”

A creativity solution

As a visionary creator, Scott feels energized by the possibilities that Frame.io’s features unlock. “I think right now is the best time to be a creative person. Being a filmmaker in 2024 is way different than it was 50 years ago or even 20, 10, or 5 years ago,” Scott says. “I believe Adobe is developing the best creative tools, and they’re the ones I want to use. I know they’re going to work, and when we’re in very remote environments, dependability and consistency are key.”

There’s also the fact that their entire workflow is based in Adobe Creative Cloud, something that’s important to Scott. “One of the benefits of having these tools under one big brand is they start to work together a lot better than having a lot of bespoke tools,” he says. “One of the biggest challenges is that we do a lot of manual tasks and work in a lot of different systems. So the more that you can reduce those manual tasks and have most of your team hanging out in the same spot, collaboration velocity is just going to continue to grow.” Notably, the broader Princess team is adding Workfront and AEM to their Adobe ecosystem to further streamline their production workflow.

Kristin is likewise an Adobe devotee. “The way I look at editing platforms is that it’s like a palette of tools. I’ve used every editing platform, and I’ve been using Premiere for about 20 years. I do a lot of documentary work and for me it’s the most seamless platform. I actually do a lot of my own mixing in Premiere, even if I have 20 to 30 audio tracks,” she says. “Same thing with After Effects. I love that you can right click on your timeline and you can seamlessly go into After Effects. You can bring in Photoshop documents, and you can choose whether you want to merge them or not. Everything just works so well together.”

What’s also exciting for Scott is that the Adobe environment is helping to bring video and photography workflows together. “I’d hang out with my video team in Frame.io, and I’d hang out with the photo team somewhere else, which naturally creates a division between those two teams, whether it’s a physical barrier or a software barrier. It’s like, ‘That’s the photo team, and that’s the video team.’ That is not how I operate as a director. I want those teams to be in the same places,” Scott says.

“Now, the photo workflow is as cool as the video workflow. So we’re starting to bring in some of the photographers and retouchers, and they’re starting to hang out in the same watering hole as our video people. Now when I think about Frame.io, I don’t think about it as a video solution. It’s a creativity solution.”

When I think about Frame.io, I don’t think about it as a video solution. It’s a creativity solution.

Beyond that, Scott appreciates that working in an integrated environment gives him better visibility into what his creative collaborators are doing and a better understanding of their process. “I can now create a space in Frame.io for every lens on the pipeline, whether it be an editor, a stakeholder, a producer, a director, or a DP. I now have a space that’s only for that person, that makes them truly feel seen and heard. What Frame.io buys me is different lenses into the different perspectives of people that need the information to make excellent films.”

The impact of change

It almost goes without saying that Scott is a creative with an insatiable drive to create. Filmmaking is what makes him get up every day with a smile on his face, and the possibilities that Frame.io opens for him are part of what puts it there.

“It’s the ultimate team creative discipline and the best sets are the ones where world-class teammates are really working together,” Scott says. “Frame.io was the first piece of software or technology that worked at the speed of our team’s imagination. If you want to become a power user on day one, you can. If you want to learn at your pace, you can. If this is your first time using Frame.io, it’s fast, it’s intuitive, and it’s built for creatives.”

But then Scott becomes more introspective. “The three things we all have in common is what’s on our gravestone. We have the year we’re born, the year we died, and we have the dash in between. The dash represents the choices we make about how we live our lives,” he says. “In this industry, we’re asked to constantly evolve and change as creatives. Frame.io is a software platform that has constantly changed as I’ve changed. Adobe tools are proving that creativity is going to continue to be democratized, and creativity is not for the few. It’s for everybody.”

Change is a constant, but the images that Scott and his team capture endure as a reminder of the majesty of our world. Whether those images serve to inspire people to fill their lives by visiting these places and creating their own stories, or to give those of us who may never visit them a chance to see them through Scott’s lens, we at Frame.io feel honored to play a supporting role.

RBMH, whose own motto is “Giving wings to people and ideas,” is as fearless as some of the athletes they film when it comes to taking calculated risks with the technology and workflows they employ. Specifically, the Frame.io Camera to Cloud workflow has helped RBMH deliver footage from events like the FIM Hard Enduro World Championship races to the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series.

So it’s no surprise that when they learned we had a new addition to our C2C workflow—Real-Time Logging (RTL)—they took the leap to see how it could help them soar to new heights in terms of ease and speed of delivery for their eye-popping content to news and social media outlets.

Living on the edge

Based in Salzburg, Austria, RBMH employs approximately 1,100 people who manage the media production needs for the many events the World of Red Bull produces globally. Known for their support of extreme sports, Red Bull needs extremely knowledgeable tacticians to surmount the many challenges that covering these events present. With crews ranging anywhere from five to 200 people in size, RBMH is responsible for making sure that their coverage conveys the excitement and high stakes of the event—and keeps fans engaged in the thrill of the moment.

Dennis Wiehberg, senior project manager innovation for RBMH’s Media Production Services unit, has moved through the ranks of RBMH first as an ingest technician, followed by a stint leading the production engineering team, before moving into his current role. When the word “innovation” is in your job title, pushing technological boundaries is obviously a given, and during his tenure Dennis has helped RBMH develop new, more efficient, and faster workflows both in the field and in their editorial operations. With a workflow based in Adobe Creative Cloud, Frame.io functions as the centralized platform for their end-to-end creative workflow.

Stocked with an arsenal of cameras from Sony, RED, and ARRI, as well as iPhones (using Filmic Pro), and Atomos and Teradek solutions, the production teams specify the right gear for each unique purpose—which has to be rugged, light, and reliable. After all, the production team is out in the same conditions as, for example, the Hard Enduro motorcyclists traversing the Austrian terrain for the Erzberg Rodeo. The races go on for days at a time, often in inclement weather, taking both rider and videographer through narrow, muddy trails, up steep ravines, and over rocky embankments.

From camera to completion

As the production team does their best to capture all the action, which tends to take on some form of insane (good, great, or unbelievably terrifying), they also need to solve the challenges of getting that footage to their four editors as quickly as possible. Based safely back in Salzburg, the editorial team then needs to turn around that content to feed the fans who hungrily consume short- and long-form versions of it on streaming platforms and social media.

It’s this kind of challenge that prompted Dennis to try Frame.io Camera to Cloud initially. The Hard Enduro races are typically two to five-day events with a production team of six to eight videographers capturing somewhere between 3-4 TB per day. Understanding that this workflow could potentially provide a way for them to bypass the need to download camera cards and upload files, or to ship hard drives, meant that they could basically get footage from remote locations worldwide to Salzburg and out to social media within hours rather than days.

After that, RBMH began using C2C for the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series. “Basically, it’s how we do news from there and we’re also looking into rolling it out throughout the entire highlight production,” Dennis explains. “For multiple camera systems, we’ve reduced the time it takes to release highlights—it’s, like, two days less.” Even with Frame “just” serving as a central platform for rapid uploading and downloading in the field, it’s a huge time saver for the teams.

Out in the field it’s a run-and-gun situation. The clips they capture—in the neighborhood of 50-60 assets—are destined for social media platforms including YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.  “Our social media teams are one or two people—a producer and a shooter/editor. Usually they’re on location with each other, but even on location, depending on the actual event that you’re covering, with the distances you need to cover on foot Frame.io can be super helpful,” Dennis says.

Real-time reactions

But there’s more to the Red Bull content than just speed—quality is key. That’s where the new Real-Time Logging (RTL) feature in Camera to Cloud enters their workflow. RTL is enabled by connecting Ambient NanoLockit devices to a Frame.io project, and is available with the current version of Frame.io today (V4 compatibility arrives later this year).

With buttons that are pre-programmed to indicate certain comments, RTL creates a heat map of timecode-accurate, customizable comments that go directly to the editor. For example, one button on the device might indicate “great moment” while the other might indicate “leave this out.”

Not only does it save time by essentially creating an instant log of “circle takes” for the editor, it lets the director or producer stay more connected to the post-production process by letting them give immediate feedback that helps carry their creative intention through to the final product.

Dennis felt that Hard Enduro could be a great test case for RTL. “We had a bunch of interviews and B-roll that was shot around the event, and we first gave it to the director to use on the interview day,” he says. “The editors could simply jump to certain markers in that cloud proxy and go through the footage without having to listen through the idle talk in between, which was actually quite cool.”

Connectivity solutions

Of course, for any Camera to Cloud workflow to function at peak efficiency, internet connectivity is a factor. RBMH’s production equipment rental service outfits the teams with a variety of solutions. “I think there’s pretty much a solution for every budget out there at the moment,” he says. “You have a hotspot on your phone, and then there are mobile multi-SIM modems that you can carry around with you. We recently switched to battery powered dual SIM Celerway modems, but have used Netgear and Pepwave equipment in the past. We found one company that’s got great ruggedized Starlink deployments for the field with 10-hour battery operation. It all depends on how much bandwidth you need and what you want to spend.”

Pushing C2C to the extreme

At RBMH, the production teams are as extreme as Hard Enduro riders in pursuit of new ways to improve the efficiency and speed of their production and post-production ecosystem. It was in that spirit that they conducted a recent test during a maintenance flight in their media helicopter to see if they could use Camera to Cloud while flying.

Their rig: a Shotover F1 gimbal system with an ARRI Alexa 35 and an Atomos Shogun Connect. And, yes, they were able to send HQ proxies directly to Frame.io while flying.

For us, there’s nothing more thrilling than being able to partner with smart, inventive, and intrepid customers as we continue to develop our product, and nothing more gratifying than witnessing (and sharing) their success.

Making commercials for an international client for the Olympics is a tall order for any production company. But doing it with a small team requires discipline and training—not unlike that of an Olympian.

Based in London, Stamp Productions works at the top of their game with a lean and agile staff of just six principals. And as a B Corp, using Frame.io as part of their Adobe-based ecosystem has helped them make a big impact while leaving a small carbon footprint. In this Made in Frame, we rode along with Stamp for their Bridgestone Tires Olympics ad campaign to learn more about how their intense preparation and careful selection of tools give them a winning combination of creativity, speed, and security with clients across sports, automotive, and fintech.

Stamp takes off

Fifteen years ago, Stamp Founder and Director Ben Uttley pivoted from acting to working behind the camera. As a former professional rugby player and fan of sports programming, he felt that the UK broadcasts were inferior to American sports journalism. “I was massively inspired by the NFL Series Hard Knocks at the time, and we tried to emulate that in the rugby world to make it more cinematic,” Ben says. “I shot a lot of documentaries myself using a Sony FS700 and cine lenses.”

Expanding from there into the corporate and commercial segments of the industry, Ben’s mission has always been to tell good stories, digging for them even if they might not be obvious. “There’s always something there,” he says. “Whenever there’s conflict, there’s always a good story.”

Whenever there’s conflict, there’s always a good story.

Along the way, Ben produced and directed four feature-length documentaries, including Silver Spitfire [co-produced by Red Bull Studios] in which a group of six flew around the world in an iconic interceptor aircraft that saw 51 battles during World War II. “It was incredibly dangerous, and everyone told us it was impossible, but it was an amazing trip. I did all the filming and stills myself. It’s quite hard work and when you’re doing it over the ice caps, or you’re in Asia in the deserts, I had to get some support,” Ben explains. “I was using Frame.io to send clips up so the guys could download and edit the social media.”

The team completed the edit during the pandemic lockdown, relying on Frame.io to deliver the assets they needed to the sponsors throughout post-production. They even earned a world record for the fastest circumnavigation by a single seat, single engine piston aircraft—122 days—from August 5, 2019, to December 5, 2019, in which they flew over 26 countries.

A force for good

Meanwhile, over the past 15 years Ben grew the Stamp family to include a select group of like-minded individuals who each seem to quite happily wear many hats to service clients ranging from Rolls-Royce to the English Football League and Bridgestone.

Their shared company ethos accounts for much of their willingness to work smaller. “Stamp is a B Corp, which is all about becoming a better business for people and the environment. We’re legally bound to try to have as little impact on the planet as possible, while trying to lead the pack in terms of social responsibility for our staff and for the  communities we work in,” Ben states.

“Filming is, by nature, a heavy-impact industry on the environment. I think where we differentiate ourselves is by the quality of storytelling, but also the way we do it is important to us. We specifically create our shoots so that we’re telling great stories, but ultimately we realize that in 20 years’ time most of what we’re making won’t be remembered. But how we make that content will. And if we can save ten percent in terms of efficiency for our clients, that’s ten percent they can spend on creating more content or doing something else with that money.”

Initially achieving B Corp status is a rigorous process involving extensive evaluation and auditing, and requiring recertification every three years. From not allowing single-use plastic on their sets to choosing LED lights and carrying a portable solar array with them to offset the energy they’re using, Stamp has earned one of the highest scores among production companies worldwide.

An Olympic campaign

For their recent Bridgestone Olympics campaign, Stamp traveled to five European countries to produce 14 spots for agency WeAreFearless. Each centered on an Olympic competitor—the shoot we attended features paralympian canoer Rémy Boullé, whom they filmed in the south of France.

A team of three drove from London to France with their camera gear rather than flying, and hired local crew to keep the travel footprint small. “I still needed some of my team, producer Martyn Black and editor Fraser Harrop, to be able to see and engage with the content as if they’re there, however,” Ben says. “Frame.io Camera to Cloud allowed us to do that while reducing our emissions by more than 65 percent.”

Benefits for everyone

As the lead editor for Stamp, Fraser cites the multiple benefits of using Frame.io from camera capture through post. “From shoots, we’re able to upload proxies into the cloud and our editors can begin working straight away. Every editor has been in the position where you’re given a bunch of footage at the end of a big shoot and because you weren’t there to be able to give live feedback, there was a crucial shot or a crucial transition that wasn’t collected at the time,” he says.

“Now, with Frame.io, we can begin cutting the rushes as they’re coming in and we can spot really early if there’s an obvious gap in the sequence that would massively benefit the edit or help the final product—and we’re able to give that feedback live.” Although Fraser begins the edit with the proxies, once the shoot is over, he’ll ingest the original camera files and relink to them for the conform.

And there’s yet another advantage. Because Fraser can begin cutting right away, there’s no need to ship drives from the location to the office, or to the many people who also might need to access the dailies. “Some of the people we work with are in the office, some are international. And without a system like Frame.io, managing all of that media and all of those ongoing projects becomes convoluted and difficult,” he says. “Having a centralized platform that is accessible to everyone we’re working with at any given time makes the whole process far more efficient and means we save money, we save time, and we can deliver better projects at the end to our clients.”

Having a centralized platform that is accessible to everyone we’re working with at any given time makes the whole process far more efficient and means we save money, we save time, and we can deliver better projects at the end to our clients.

Then there’s the creative collaboration aspect. According to Fraser, by eliminating the need to dig through email threads, Frame.io makes the editing process far more efficient. “Clients are able to seamlessly make comments on edits and revisions, and making changes is really quick and easy for us and for them. We’re able to communicate clearly with them and make the whole process as smooth as possible for us and, more importantly, for our clients.”

The move to Enterprise

When your clients are some of the most recognizable brands in the world—Honda, Rolls- Royce, Red Bull—and they keep coming back, you have to figure you’re doing something right.

The ease with which Stamp keeps their production costs and environmental impact down, and the ability to streamline the editing process while delivering world-class content, proves they’re doing many things right. But beyond that, they’re also able to serve some of the most security-conscious clients by using Frame.io Enterprise.

British investment group Octopus is one such client that entrusts Stamp with their sensitive content. The two companies are not just aligned creatively, they share strong corporate values. As a B Corp themselves, Octopus’s stated mission is to “invest in the people, ideas, and industries that will change the world.”

Stamp opted to move to a Frame.io Enterprise account to access the enhanced security features that come with it in order to meet Octopus’s stringent standards, like Watermark ID and password protection of the videos they share. “We’re able to separate out clients and team members to make sure that only the people who are authorized can see some of the material we’re dealing with,” Ben says. “Some of it is financial results for companies that are two or three days out before they’re publicly released, so we need to make sure that we know exactly who has access. For Rolls-Royce, we’re filming highly sensitive equipment, machinery, and IP. I don’t think we would be able to have clients like that without Frame.io Enterprise.”

For Rolls-Royce, we’re filming highly sensitive equipment, machinery, and IP. I don’t think we would be able to have clients like that without Frame.io Enterprise.

Preparation plus tools equals success

There’s a reason why Stamp is trusted by some of the most technically accomplished businesses on the planet. “We’ve seen a lot of technology come and go, and sometimes something comes along that just changes the game,” Ben says. “We’re like a Formula 1 pit crew, trying to shave small fractions of seconds here and there, and in production that’s everything.”

“When I first saw Camera to Cloud it blew my mind. We get quick feedback efficiently and clearly so that we’re not wasting rounds of edits. We can send links to the edits securely. And we can make sure that our freelancers have access to only the relevant projects and everything is secure. The best tools disappear into the background and allow you to connect with your clients or an audience and just help you operate.”

Functionally, saving that kind of time was key to the WeAreFearless Bridgestone campaign. Called “Prepared to Perform,” the stories depict how Olympians rely on preparation, not luck, when competing, echoing Bridgestone’s own corporate commitment to best-in-class performance. Filming athletes is not like filming actors—you have a limited number of hours with them. Stamp went to great lengths to prepare for the shoots with the athletes, carefully storyboarding all the shots so they knew exactly what they had to capture.

“When we were working with Rémy, he’d already done ten kilometers on the water and then we’re doing some sprints with him,” Ben explains. “We’re not trying to go, ‘Hey, the client’s not here. Let’s shoot ten more options just in case.’ If we didn’t have the right systems where people who aren’t even physically there can see the shot and sign off, you could risk injuring him.”

“The quality has to be high in terms of storytelling, cinematography, pacing and accuracy, and it all has to be able to cut together. The technology is helping us to improve that. So if we need to spend more time on one particular take, we can. We can nail the shots and move on,” he adds.

According to Martyn Black, Stamp’s senior producer, using C2C is also a convenience for the clients. “They know that you’re filming at a certain time, but they can be going about their lives doing other things. And then they can look at [the footage] on their phones or on their iPads, which is a massive benefit.”

Stamp also appreciates how all the Adobe Creative Cloud tools work together to offer a complete end-to-end ecosystem. “We use Adobe Premiere, InDesign, and Adobe Stock. We’re using Audition and Audio Enhance, which has been really useful. Our contracts are done in Adobe Acrobat Reader,” Martyn says. “Adobe has a very broad suite of tools.”

For Stamp, it’s all part of staying ahead of the competition and keeping their creative edge. “We don’t keep doing the same thing because eventually our competitors will catch us. We’re using better and better tools and we’re getting better and better at what we do,” Ben says. “For the next stage, I’d like Stamp to become a content engine for big companies that are trying to influence the way the world operates in a positive way. I’d like them to rely on us to create more content for less money than we used to.”

“Sometimes people operate at a lower cost but have lesser tools. One of the things that sets us apart is that we’re willing to do whatever it takes to make sure that we can deliver the best possible experience. At the end of the day, we’ve grown our business because we’ve invested in the right tools and equipment, which gives our clients confidence.”

At the end of the day, we’ve grown our business because we’ve invested in the right tools and equipment, which gives our clients confidence.

Whether you’re evaluating the success of a company or an athlete, actions always speak louder than words. Words alone won’t land a client or win an Olympic medal. Words won’t make a software tool change the way a customer works or the results they’ll achieve.

But when our customers enjoy using our tools, we think that’s a winning combination.