The Customer
REL Productions has more than 25 years of experience producing award-winning videos that capture important stories for their customers. The video production company collaborates with its clients through iconik, a smart media management solution that allows key stakeholders to select the most eye-catching imagery and perfect music for their videos.
Rod Reding is a seasoned producer and editor for REL Productions. While he serves his customers by creating videos for marketing, sales, and education, he also helps clients manage their media libraries.
Reshoot or Rethink Media Management?
One of REL’s customers is Corteva Agriscience. As the newly formed agribusiness expanded its media library, Corteva officials began to feel the pain of not knowing where their content was stored or what content they owned. When ad agencies or internal marketing departments needed media assets, Corteva leaders faced the difficult prospect of reshooting content in which they had already invested high-end production and talent. In 2017, REL stepped in to offer a solution.
Today, the REL team manages the entire Corteva library of more than 50,000 photos and videos, ensuring Corteva has consistent access to its media library.
Gaining Cloud Benefits for MAM
Rod first relied on a more traditional MAM solution. As he saw remote access becoming more important, he began searching for additional cloud-based solutions with strong search capabilities that would utilize existing metadata and have the ability to access original assets from anywhere — beyond H.624 files or proxies. Above all, it needed to be user-friendly for the customers of REL.
Tom Grotting, from Digital Pictures, knew about the problems Rod needed to solve, and he encouraged Rod to check out the solution iconik offered.
After the first look at iconik, I was really impressed by the powerful search tools, speed of the product, its development and the responsiveness of the iconik team.”
Since adopting iconik at REL, it has been heavily used for client-facing tasks, including:
- Sharing media assets, collections, and projects
- Written and drawn time-stamped annotations on media
- Seeking media approvals from all key stakeholders and legal experts
Today, REL uses a traditional MAM system for the company’s on-premise workflows while iconik manages all the cloud collaboration workflows. The ability of iconik to be used as a utility to work over nearly any existing infrastructure is an important feature for Rod. He has also enjoys being able to store media anywhere while iconik tracks just about every type of file—and he admits that this is just scratching the surface.
“I love how iconik is easy, yet complicated. You can work as simply as dragging and dropping things into place or go deeper to create intricate workflows.”
Media Workflows at REL
- REL stores media on a Tiger Box Storage Server where it is managed and clipped in CatDV.
- When ready for iconik, content moves to an iconik Storage Gateway (ISG) that manages on-premise storage locations.
- From there, only certain types of files are recognized and sent into iconik as proxies.
- From within iconik, media is made accessible to clients remotely where they begin to collaborate and create together.
Adding iconik to this workflow has allowed REL to serve its end-users much faster.
Remote Video Editing
More recently, REL has been able to use iconik to set up multiple remote editing bays during the COVID-19 pandemic. Rod trained his team to use the iconik panel for Adobe Premiere Pro to access original footage. His team was able to remain safe and efficient through uncertain times.
Meeting Unique Metadata Needs
Since the metadata REL adds in CatDV stays intact as it moves to iconik, deep folder trees are no longer needed to organize media because the metadata provides multiple paths to a single file. This is changing how some major clients work with the media.
One of the agencies using Corteva’s media is Bader Rutter, one of the largest, full-service advertising agencies for agribusiness in America. The demands the agency had for organizing media were fairly substantial. They had an established way of working with media that included details on how each asset was structured and the contents of the metadata.
Some of the customer requirements iconik is meeting for REL are:
- Notifying customers when asset usage rights are about to expire
- Including links to model releases within the media asset
- Sharing different media versions with users based on whether they can download
- Access to B-roll proxies with the option to download originals
With iconik, REL can present its clients with the relevant metadata that is gathered into custom views (schemas) for specific users and groups.
Support for Creating New Solutions
In the fast-moving world of media, there’s always a new challenge around the corner or new requests from clients. But with every new support issue or feature request sent by Rod and his team, the iconik team has been quick with a helpful and positive response.
“Being in the video production business for 25 years, this is the best support team I’ve ever seen.”
All Plus More, not All or Nothing
Agility is at the heart of iconik. In the case of REL, which was already very familiar with its traditional MAM solution, iconik can be tailored to offer more functionality while keeping what works in place.
But for anyone who plans on using iconik in a limited sense, we offer this heads-up from one of iconik’s G2 reviews, "Trying it is adopting it!“
Back to Blog