I’ve always wondered this, because any answer seems insane to me.
After a long day of filming a movie, where is the footage stored? Is it just on some computer? And then when everything has been filmed, edited, etc. is the whole finished movie just on some single hard drive?? I’m sure they have it in multiple places, but it seems crazy that all of the footage of a marvel movie or something similar has to be saved somewhere so simple. In short, I guess I’m asking where movies exist in their final form before they’re available to the public.
And as a secondary question, how is the finished film distributed? How does it go from being a finished project to being in movie theaters? Does the theater receive some sort of electronic “file” that then is stored on a computer system within the theater? It seems like the process would have to be more complex than a fancy email, but I have no idea.
In: Technology
>And as a secondary question, how is the finished film distributed? How does it go from being a finished project to being in movie theaters? Does the theater receive some sort of electronic “file” that then is stored on a computer system within the theater? It seems like the process would have to be more complex than a fancy email, but I have no idea.
This one is easier. Traditional movie theater films are distributed to the theaters either with a secure physical harddrive they get in the mail, or sent to them digitally, generally via a fiber connection. Both systems are in use. If a movie is on actual film, its generally delivered by a delivery company, actual film can be really expensive to make and transport though, and is increasingly rare, even for movies shot on film (they are generally just converted to digital)
Film festivals and such are a bit more lenient and often give film makers the option to just like upload a copy of the film or commonly, just ask to be sent a private link to the film on Vimeo.
Modern digital cameras basically shoot directly onto high speed drives. There’s a team on set called DIT who are responsible for moving this over to the edit team by copying stuff around. Fundamentally it is just all using normal computer “stuff” but within literally minutes of them stopping filming the data is already in more than one place.
The director then goes through all the takes with the editors.
I read somewhere that half of Toy Story was nearly lost (due to accidental deletion or hard drive failure or something) but was saved because an intern (?) had backed up a copy and taken it home. (Or something like that).
The files that make up a “finished film” are put into a DCP (digital cinema package). This contains the video file(s) (jpg2000 encoded mxf). Audio files for various sound mix setups (5.1, 7.1, atmos), and metadata files like timed text (subtitles). All the files follow a strict folder structure, colorspace requirements, and file format.
Modern films often have up to 100 different dcps, each with different cuts of the film or foreign language audio. For example, some markets might require all nudity to be blurred or cut entirely. There are also many stories of films that the Chinese government required changes to, plot and/or character, in order to be released in China.
Where does dcp come from? A standards organisation called SMPTE organized and published the standards. They have also released a new standard meant to replace DCP called IMF which extends to broadcast/streaming as well and has already been adopted by Netflix and Amazon prime. How does smpte influence the studios? It is made up of technical decision makers from all of the studios.
Source: I used to make dcp and imf packages for the film industry.
I can answer your second paragraph as I work in movie distribution.
Distributors have vendors who distribute the movies to the actual cinemas themselves. cinema chains or independents have film bookers who decide what film they want to screen and when etc, the distributors receive this who place the order at the vendors. It’s then the vendors responsibility to get that content to the cinemas on time, be it transfer or physical HDD (depending on studio, setup, location, Internet speed etc).
The studios make the movies, then it gets edited and mastered and made into DCP files, which are sent to the vendors to then distribute. Usually, studios have distributors for each region who look after their local country and ensure timely deliveries etc.
The transfers and HDD’s are very closely monitored and protected, and even if the files got into the wrong hands, 90% of the time they’re encrypted and require a KDM given to them by the vendor or studio, allowing them to access that file in-between certain dates and times etc. That’s why cinemas can’t just play a film 2 weeks before it comes out, they physically can’t.
You mention about a fancy email, and oddly enough that is something which happens sometimes, but usually for VF’s (these are smaller files which affect things like the audio, add subtitles etc) which are often sent by email
Source: I used to do this for a living.
For the sake of keeping this simple, let’s leave actual film out of this and just discuss digital cameras like the Alexa or RED.
The cameras shoot onto solid state hard drives, they take different form factors but they’re all the same. The camera only records to one card at a time so when the card is full it gets handed off to the Digital Utility/Loader/DIT. This person has a screaming fast computer connected to a raid array and a shuttle drive. All footage from the day is transferred to both drives simultaneously off of the drive that came from the camera. At this point there are three redundant copies of the data. Footage is reviewed and checksums run to make sure the data transferred correctly. At the end of the day all the drives from the camera are stored in a pelican case on the data cart. The Raid Drive is usually stored there too but on some productions goes to the production office. The shuttle drive goes to the post-production facility (this part is twice/day, once at lunch, once at wrap)
Triple redundancy for day 1.
The next day, an email confirmation comes from post production that they have transferred and checked the files from the previous day. They are stored in at least two places in post-production. Usually in two locations. They wipe the shuttle drive that sent the files over and send it back to set.
At this point the previous day’s camera drives can be wiped for reuse. The Data will still be kept on the raid for 5 days so there is a failsafe.
The only time the footage is ever only stored in a single place is when it is sitting on the loader’s desk waiting to be transferred. That would be a bad time to spill coffee….
Film on the other-hand was always a single point of failure. At the end of the night, the collective work of every member of the film crew is sitting in a box in the darkroom. On a union production they get handed to a teamster and driven the lab in a van to be developed and processed. On a lower-budget shoot it’s usually handed to the lowest paid Production Assistant to be driven to the lab in their personal car… How’s that for a single point of failure…
> After a long day of filming a movie, where is the footage stored? Is it just on some computer?
So this is a bit complex. Raw footage for a day of shooting with all the cameras is going to be pretty verbose.
The cameras themselves will be recording to redundant storage right away so that shots aren’t lost randomly. This will be either periodically or continuously transferred to some on-site storage array, and then either periodically or continuously transferred to something back at the production studios.
> And then when everything has been filmed, edited, etc. is the whole finished movie just on some single hard drive?? I’m sure they have it in multiple places, but it seems crazy that all of the footage of a marvel movie or something similar has to be saved somewhere so simple. In short, I guess I’m asking where movies exist in their final form before they’re available to the public.
It would be stored using a mechanism that has geographical redundancy. To the users, they wouldn’t need to consider this. There’s just some infrastructure set up to do all of this.
> And as a secondary question, how is the finished film distributed? How does it go from being a finished project to being in movie theaters? Does the theater receive some sort of electronic “file” that then is stored on a computer system within the theater? It seems like the process would have to be more complex than a fancy email, but I have no idea.
The films are either sent to theatres (or theatre companies who then redistribute) via physical drive being mailed, or via digital download. Most movies will be sent early, but will be encrypted, with the encryption key only being made available at or shortly before the release date. This means they won’t be bottle necked before the release and can allow the theatres to have them ready~ish beforehand.
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