Avid (Nasdaq: AVID) announced that Boston public broadcaster WGBH has embraced Avid Everywhere™ to integrate its creative teams across all of its programs. Powered by the Avid MediaCentral Platform, the new workflow will help WGBH to maximize the value of its content across platforms, while boosting productivity, efficiency and flexibility.
In addition to its locally produced content, WGBH is the single largest producer of television, web and mobile content nationally for PBS, acclaimed for its award-winning series Frontline, Nova, and American Experience, among many others. WGBH recognized that it needed to leverage content across all of its brands to successfully compete in today’s challenging media environment, but did not have a common storage environment or integrated metadata sharing. To overcome this obstacle, the company turned to Avid Everywhere to create a tightly integrated, file-based workflow powered by the MediaCentral Platform.
“To distinguish ourselves in a very challenging marketplace, we needed to create an interconnected multimedia company in order to leverage all of our content in a better way,” said Tim Mangini, senior director of production technology at WGBH. “With Avid we can achieve that in one highly integrated ecosystem. The main benefits of our new workflow are that it enables us to be much more efficient. We’ll enhance our ability to share content with the click of a mouse and we’ll increase productivity by refining many of our processes.”
WGBH has connected all its edit suites and mixing rooms—including 45 Avid Media Composer suites and five Avid Pro Tools 5.1 surround sound mixing rooms—with the Avid Storage Suite’s Avid ISIS | 7500 shared storage system. This gives every media creator access to the same material—whether they’re part of the post-production team, the web unit, the editorial group, or the local news team—without having to put anything on a drive or FTP, resulting in huge productivity gains. The new workflow will also become the backbone of a more streamlined process for local news production.
The next phase of the rollout will see WGBH implement the Avid Media Suite’s Interplay | Production asset management system, enabling creative teams to use metadata to more effectively find and leverage content. In the final stage, WGBH plans to roll out Avid MediaCentral | UX, the cloud-based web front end to the MediaCentral Platform, and the Avid Artist Suite’s Media Composer | Cloud for efficient remote collaboration.
“Media organizations like WGBH are under intense pressure to boost productivity and efficiency, and to extend their brand across multiple screens,” said Jeff Rosica, sr. VP, worldwide field operations, Avid. “Avid Everywhere has brought together WGBH’s teams, enabling them to produce and monetize media across programs and platforms much more efficiently—and maintain their competitive edge.”
Rom-Com Mainstay Hugh Grant Shifts To The Dark Side and He’s Never Been Happier
After some difficulties connecting to a Zoom, Hugh Grant eventually opts to just phone instead.
"Sorry about that," he apologizes. "Tech hell." Grant is no lover of technology. Smart phones, for example, he calls the "devil's tinderbox."
"I think they're killing us. I hate them," he says. "I go on long holidays from them, three or four days at at time. Marvelous."
Hell, and our proximity to it, is a not unrelated topic to Grant's new film, "Heretic." In it, two young Mormon missionaries (Chloe East, Sophie Thatcher) come knocking on a door they'll soon regret visiting. They're welcomed in by Mr. Reed (Grant), an initially charming man who tests their faith in theological debate, and then, in much worse things.
After decades in romantic comedies, Grant has spent the last few years playing narcissists, weirdos and murders, often to the greatest acclaim of his career. But in "Heretic," a horror thriller from A24, Grant's turn to the dark side reaches a new extreme. The actor who once charmingly stammered in "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and who danced to the Pointer Sisters in "Love Actually" is now doing heinous things to young people in a basement.
"It was a challenge," Grant says. "I think human beings need challenges. It makes your beer taste better in the evening if you've climbed a mountain. He was just so wonderfully (expletive)-up."
"Heretic," which opens in theaters Friday, is directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, co-writers of "A Quiet Place." In Grant's hands, Mr. Reed is a divinely good baddie — a scholarly creep whose wry monologues pull from a wide range of references, including, fittingly, Radiohead's "Creep."
In an interview, Grant spoke about these and other facets of his character, his journey... Read More