The Rebel Fleet: Fast, secure media transfer

Setting the scene

Based on the 1981 film by Monty Python star Terry Gilliam, Time Bandits is a 10-episode fantasy-adventure TV series conceived by Taika Waititi, Iain Morris and Jemaine Clement.

A substantial production, the creation of so many imaginary ‘worlds’ meant a huge VFX workload and a need for some serious data transfer, storage and wrangling.

Adding to the challenge, shooting would take place in Wellington, while post-production, including edit and VFX, would take advantage of The Rebel Fleet’s infrastructure in Auckland.

To make that 600km separation disappear, The Rebel Fleet engaged in a smart collaboration with bespoke internet solutions provider Rogue Unit and telecommunications software experts Devoli. The end result was a dedicated data pipeline intended to link the teams in two cities as though they were one.

The challenge

The complexities of the shoot brought challenges such as the generation of masses of data, and the attendant metadata that allows VFX teams to have proper oversight, clarity and control.

Shooting–both on location and in studio–was based in Wellington, which offered plenty of variety in a short travel radius. Including locations that were a great stand-in for 1920s New York in one of the episodes. Miniatures and other studio work were based at Stone Street Studios, with The Rebel Fleet providing on-set DIT, Video Assist and Dailies services across Main and Second units. This helped with collaboration on the shoots and ensured a high degree of consistency. 

All media produced would then be piped directly to The Rebel Fleet base in Auckland where TRF had all the required infrastructure. The sheer amount of data this would involve began to cause questions about the use of public networks, and whether the separate teams in Wellington and Auckland would be able to work seamlessly together.

It wasn’t the only geographical issue. The production team included LA-based DOP Mike Berlucchi, while the writing and directing team of Taika, Jemaine and Iain are about as internationally mobile as you can get. Remote viewing and approval would have to be available, and it would have to be 100% consistent. 

It soon became clear that this was going to require an integrated data and telecoms solution with serious capacity. So TRF approached industry experts Devoli and Rogue Unit to help specify and establish one.

The solution

A dedicated pipeline was needed, capable of reliably transferring large amounts of data while being responsive to needs in Auckland and back at the shoot in Wellington. It would also serve as a dependable backbone for serving up remote viewing and approvals. 

For the underlying infrastructure, Rogue Unit worked with Devoli to help quantify the endpoints for a Layer 2 connection between The Rebel Fleet and Stone Street Studios. This was effectively a 10Gbps fibre link to transfer the data produced by the Main and Second Units. It proved invaluable, transferring an average 5 TB per day. By the end of the project 882 TB was backed up on LTO tape. 

Once the connection was established, Rogue Unit also provided hardware and on-site assistance to ensure the connection was delivered to TRF equipment in Stone Street in the preferred format. 

To get it all up and running, Devoli tapped their 400G Auckland metro network core, extensive nationwide capacity and network automation expertise. This delivered the high-speed, high-volume connectivity needed, and avoided all the stress, cost and potential delay involved in physically transporting hard drives. 

Main Unit camera media was sent to Auckland throughout the day and written straight to LTO, with camera cards released immediately back to the camera team. Second Unit was shooting sporadically. So, instead of sending Dailies hardware to their shoots, media was offloaded from the camera cards directly to the storage infrastructure at TRF in Auckland, leveraging the Dailies team there. It also ensured tight deadlines were always met, along with rigorous, reliable LTO archiving, even though the shoot was 600km away. 

Result

The result was a system that delivered confidence, cost-efficiency and major time savings for all involved. For Josiah Carter, Network Engineer at Devoli, it was a hugely positive experience. “We really enjoyed partnering with TRF and New Zealand’s film industry,” he says. “There’s a real ‘challenger’ spirit to the movie industry and we feel aligned with that, being an independent telecommunications provider. We’re happy to provide a service that helps them succeed and we look forward to delivering for similar projects going forward.”

The new series of Time Bandits began streaming on Apple tv+ in July 2024 and attracted critical acclaim.