The Adaptive Production project directed by Seth Levenson at ETC formed subcommittee-style working groups for specialized focuses within the field of adaptive production. Testing implementation and feasibility of specialized projects, these groups, who meet regularly, are comprised of ETC’s current member companies and industry leaders.

The Blockchain working group, co-chaired by Randy Zhang, senior solutions architect at Cisco, investigates potential applications of blockchain in M&E. Specific deliverables include where blockchain is applicable, where blockchain may be applicable with new technology, and where it is not applicable at all. Upcoming projects include crew/contractor identity, “two-factor timecards” (using blockchain for on set/location crew), and supply chain auditing.

Co-chaired by SVP of Archiving at Paramount Pictures, Andrea Kalas, the Archiving working group researches new technologies in the realm of improving long-term storage of M&E assets. This working group will develop the best practices for cloud preservation through defining “fixity” in the cloud, studying self-healing (dealing with a failed health check), and providing transparency to users by requiring reporting from cloud providers. Future projects will look at  DNA/Glass storage as well as best practices for what should be archived.

The Cloud Platforms group has created the VFX Standards Subcommittee, which is chaired by Horst Sarubin, director of production technology at Universal Pictures.  This subcommittee is working on the best practices and delivery standards for VFX including: file naming conventions, asset interoperability, I/O standards, metadata fidelity, and verbal buy-in from the industry. The parent working group explores the next generation of cloud implementations for production and distribution. Future projects include metadata across the production workflow (AI for data normalization), cloud service abstraction (with a focus on storage and file management), and single-source file access (using URLs rather than files as part of the production workflow).