Before the dawn of full digital video production, around the early noughties, cameras still used physical tapes. Here’s a quick history lesson for anyone below the age of 35. As a result, having a robust workflow and data protection plan is essential, which is why we have invested heavily in our global infrastructure – implementing LTO tape technology along with Cloud based back up and archiving solutions. Every year we generate terabytes of data and the shift to 4K means these volumes are increasing dramatically. I always like to keep this story front of mind, because it’s my responsibility to manage the film content of MerchantCantos. This amazing stroke of good fortune allowed the studio to salvage the film and avoid an extremely expensive mistake. Luckily, humanity was saved this misfortune thanks to an employee on maternity leave working on the film remotely, unconnected to the main network. The world was very close to forever losing the heart-warming tale of Buzz, Rex and Mr Potato Head rescuing Woody from a museum of toys… a cultural disaster on a par with the Mona Lisa going up in smoke, or the Leaning Tower of Pisa finally toppling over. To make matters much worse, it was subsequently discovered that the back-up system had failed to work properly.
A $90m movie literally began disappearing in front of the animators’ eyes. During the production of Toy Story 2, already years into its production, someone working on the film accidentally ran a command deleting content from the file system. In 2012, Pixar, the world famous animation studio, endured a back-up failure on an industrial scale. As the panic prickles up the spine, we all find ourselves thinking exactly the same thing: ‘I hope my back-ups are working’. In this digital age, it’s become just as easy to do even worse with personal photos and films – priceless wedding albums or precious memories of children’s birthdays and family holidays can all be erased with the errant click of a mouse. Many of us have experienced that moment of absolute dread when we’ve accidentally deleted documents we’ve been labouring over for hours. By Jermaine Allen, MerchantCantos (EVCOM Member)