Taking a cruise isn’t necessarily synonymous with adventure travel. But the Princess Cruises trips to Alaska open the door to the kinds of adventures that only they can provide — adventures that allow so many people to create their own unique stories.
To create our latest customer story, we accompanied the video team that produced the “once in a decade” marketing content for their Alaska sea and land packages. Their small and intrepid team travelled to the remotest of locations with seven cameras, captured 15 TB of footage and worked with a globally distributed post-production crew and stakeholders to deliver what their CMO declared “a home run.”
In this instalment of Made in Frame, we meet Senior Manager of Media Production Scott Martin and editor Kristin Rogers, who took us through their journey to Denali National Park and beyond, as they explored the far reaches of Alaska — and the features in the all-new Frame.io — to create memorable results.
Cruising altitude.
With a fleet of 18 ships that serve 330 cruise destinations across more than 100 countries on all seven continents, Princess Cruises, owned by Carnival Corporation (the largest cruise operator worldwide), are ranked #1 for Alaskan adventures for bringing the most people to the region. After 55 years of operating in the territory, Princess not only understands how to navigate the waters of Alaska, they also provide travel experiences on land by train, glacier trips by air and five inland lodge destinations.
Princess Cruises provides travel experiences that include glacier trips by air in Alaska.
Still, Princess knows that they have to consistently deliver the kind of eye-popping content that ensures their continued success. And they have exactly the right team to do it. More specifically, they’ve been able to craft the perfect team, irrespective of location, to deliver their most ambitious shoot to date — with the help of Frame.io and their all-Adobe creative workflow.
A 15-year dream.
Led by Scott Martin, this project represents an ambitious rebranding. Designed to humanise The Great Land for people who haven’t personally experienced it by spotlighting authentic, emotionally resonant moments, as well as highlighting the magnificent landscapes that only Princess provides access to, a shoot of this magnitude comes but once every ten years. Deliverables — including brand new video and photography assets — required them to capture extensive B-roll and deploy An and B photo teams, a drone team and a team capturing product content.
The project is the culmination of a 15-year dream for Scott, who has specialised in making films in remote locations since the beginning of his career. What makes that pursuit so challenging for most people is what fuels his desire to take big creative swings. “When I was in my twenties I was spending a lot of time in Alaska. I learnt valuable filmmaking lessons from Alaskans because they just do more with less. There’s a tenacity. There’s a toughness that I think we, as filmmakers, can learn from,” he says.
One of the most important images for the team to capture was Denali at sunset and sunrise. Seeing it is the reason so many people travel to Alaska and, for Princess, including it in the campaign was a must. “The most challenging thing about Denali is she’s only visible 30 per cent of the time. So, 70 per cent of the time, that gorgeous mountain is unfilmable,” Scott says. “What I heard the most was that this was going to be impossible and for our team, that’s the strongest motivator. As soon as I heard the word ‘impossible’ I knew we were going to be standing at Denali, mile 62, sunrise and sunset with beautiful light. And we were going to nail it.”
Denali delivers the money shots.
Which, of course, they did. But not without intense preparation, the confidence that comes with having spent more than 300 days in that environment over the course of a career and a lot of luck with the weather.
“We planned and practised meticulously and had an A, B, C, D and E option for everything,” Scott says. “The number one thing that we could really lean on was that we had so much experience in Alaska. We knew Mother Nature was going to be a challenge and we accepted that challenge. I think that’s what’s beautiful about filming in Alaska. If you want control, don’t film in Alaska. If you want the idea of being ready at all times or if you want a filmmaking experience that’s ripe with adversity and changes and with being on your toes all day, then Alaska is the place you want to go.”
Charting the course.
But even more importantly than where they were going was perhaps why they were going. “We’ve accumulated a lot of trust over the years and have a track record of going into very remote environments with small teams, but it’s still important to make sure the stakeholders feel that it’s a strong investment,” Scott states.
For a shoot of this importance, the team needed to make sure they were as creatively prepared and aligned as they were logistically. In addition to stakeholders, they had four staff members along with approximately 35 contractors to support the production component. Not to mention the dispersed nature of the team — with members from Colorado and Texas to London and beyond. It almost goes without saying that Frame.io was vital to keeping everyone in the loop from the very beginning of pre-production.
With a roughly 100-day runway to prepare, the team needed to work with producers and stakeholders to make sure that everybody was on the same page. “Those 100 days are focused on aligning the purpose and objectives of the shoot. We spent a tremendous amount of time on that before we got into the fun, creative aspect of it,” Scott says.
Frame.io functions as a centralised platform for all assets and information from pre-production through delivery.
It’s why Frame.io is so critical to pre-production. “We have to align on our purpose in pre-production versus in post-production. That was something I learnt too late as a filmmaker. The stories we’re telling today are largely leveraging a 10- or 15-year asset library. Frame.io really helps us to understand at the beginning exactly what we have so we know exactly what we need to go get,” Scott adds.
It’s also why the team is fully invested in Adobe Creative Cloud, according to Scott. “I use Photoshop heavily in pre-production because I spend a lot of time putting screengrabs together or storyboards for our DPs, producers and crews. Often, especially when I’m using an image from a very specific location, there might be something that will detract from what the creative will see. So, I’ll spend time in Photoshop erasing things because I want them focused on something very granularly,” he says.
Another Creative Cloud tool that the team relies on during pre-production is Adobe InDesign. Marketing Creative Director Dani Bartov uses it extensively to “build inspiration boards and visual reference for everything from action and framing for a given scene to wardrobe, hair and makeup,” she states.
Momentum is fire.
They set out in July, when the days were long and the opportunity to capture Denali at both sunrise and sunset was packed into an inconvenient window from midnight to 4.00 am. But that didn’t deter Scott.
The team was equipped with seven cameras, including an Alexa 35, a helicopter outfitted with a RED Raptor and an 8 mm film camera. “They ended up shooting about 15 TB of footage and we were actually able to deliver a select reel 24 hours after wrapping, which is pretty incredible,” Kristin says.
Most importantly, when Scott is out in the wild, he needs a way to not just collaborate closely with Kristin and stakeholders, he needs to know what he’s got in the can and what he still needs — while the clock is ticking.
Scott’s selects help Kristin work more efficiently when he’s out on location.
“Scott and I work normal daytime hours when we’re editing other projects for Princess,” Kristin says. “But here he’s out shooting for sometimes 18 hours a day. I know this because I’d get notifications from Frame.io at 3.00 am [when she was working from Austin during week one]. They have so much going on — drone teams that are driving almost 3,000 miles — and he’s managing all of that. With Frame.io, we’re able to communicate much more effectively, because even though he’s shooting in remote places, he has his iPad or his phone. He can go on Frame while he’s at Denali and mark his selects and send them to me. We could then sit down at breakfast or coffee or dinner [when she was in Alaska for week two] and I would get everything that I needed from him based on a quick chat and on his notes in Frame.io.”
For Scott, being able to review dailies in Frame.io was not just about helping him to feel confident about what he’d captured or to pivot if he hadn’t yet captured it — it was more about helping his team collaborate faster and more effectively.
Scott’s able to access his dailies so he can start envisioning the edit while he’s still shooting.
“My perception of what happened while I was directing is often very different from what’s in the footage. What Frame.io does is it basically gives me access to the most up to date information, so as I’m directing, I’m building the edit in my head with the comments that are going into Frame.io. The transition to watching dailies in Frame.io and commenting and all that communication going out to our editors immediately, was life changing for our collaboration velocity,” Scott says. “Because I think in creativity, we have to remind ourselves that motivation is a spark and momentum is fire.”
Delivering the impossible.
As it happened, that momentum helped the team pull off what seemed, at best, improbable and at worst, impossible.
Kristin recounts the story. “I was doing a radio edit and Scott had just got back from Camp Denali and immediately received an urgent email — ‘Can you build a select reel for Princess’s meeting?’” — a meeting scheduled for a mere 36 hours after the shoot wrapped.
An urgent, but polite, request.
The leaders making the request naturally understood the magnitude of the ask and put no undue pressure on the team. Which made the fact that the team came through such a pleasant surprise for everyone.
“We had never delivered anything that quickly in our entire production history,” Scott says. “But it became possible because we had Frame.io. We were able to let Kristin see 14 days of footage very quickly and were able to communicate at speeds that we have never been able to before.”
In the pre-Frame.io days, Scott figures it might have taken a week or more to accommodate that request. We often talk about how much money or time Frame.io saves customers — but can you put a price on feedback like this?
And the delighted reaction of the Princess execs.
Not to mention that using the Adobe creative workflow enables other types of fast turnarounds.
“Sometimes things don’t always go as planned when you’re on a production,” Kristin says. “For example, the drone team was trying to capture this epic shot of a train passing with the Princess ship, but the timing was off between the ship and the train. They had a beautiful ship shot, but no train. And they had a great train shot with no ship. With Frame.io and Adobe, I was able to send Charles, our in-house VFX artist [based in LA], shots from Premiere Pro and then he was able to take them into After Effects and put them together seamlessly. Instead of having to wait for somebody at an external post house to put them together and send them back, he did it and was able to send it right back to me through Frame.”
There was also paint work required on those shots and the anchored comments feature in Frame.io made it much easier for Scott to specifically show the VFX artist what needed to be fixed. “Scott was able to go to my edit, tag Charles and say, ‘Hey, can you replace this? I want this in the sky.’ And then Charles was able to understand what Scott was thinking at that moment, while he was in Alaska and turn those shots around extremely quickly so I could drop them into my edit,” Kristin says.
The ability to send attachments with comments eliminates ambiguity.
The ability to send attachments with comments is something that Kristin immediately found value in. “I love it because sometimes, Scott would upload a still frame or something that’s from a previous Alaska shoot that’s not in this particular footage and say, ‘Maybe we should consider using this shot in addition to these shots,’ and then I know exactly where to pull it from,” she says.
An all-inclusive platform.
In the days prior to Frame.io, Scott’s team had assets spread across multiple hard drives, RAIDS, NAS and cloud systems. Now, all their assets are centralised, along with their collaborators and stakeholders.
“A lot of internal and external folks use Frame.io to access our system,” Scott says. “So whether it’s an editor or a VFX artist or a producer or an outside agency, all of them are heading into Frame.io to get the information and the resources they need. We also have stakeholders based in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and Asia and we’re constantly sending review links out all the time. The Enterprise features really allow us to collaborate with whomever we need to.”
For Scott and team, when there is a unified place where everything you need for your project is available — with proper safeguards, of course — the people involved with the process can focus more fully on the creative process.
“The Enterprise features really allow us to collaborate with whoever we need to.”
“The entire post-production process for me has drastically improved since implementing Frame.io for multiple reasons. A big one is the way that I communicate with clients and the way that clients actually communicate with each other,” Kristin says. “If I post an edit for clients and 15 stakeholders are making comments on one particular edit, they can work it out in the comments. And I appreciate that because I don’t have to go to each one of them individually. I can instead reply to all of them and get them to arrive at a decision.”
For Scott, it’s about unfettered creativity. “One of the things that large organisations struggle with is trying to put creativity in a nine-to-five box. I am an adamant believer that creativity is at its best when it’s flowing. But I also understand that it’s incredibly disrespectful to your collaborators to expect them to be online all the time. Where Frame.io becomes so special to me is I can communicate at my speed. Prior to Frame.io, I didn’t have a tool or software or technology that could work at the speed of our team’s imagination,” he says.
Frame.io lets you access and share your assets in one place.
“When we send review links out, our stakeholders and our collaborators can comment on that link 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. That is what builds content velocity. If I’m commenting on something in Mountain Time in Colorado, by the time our producer in Vancouver has got up, that’s the first thing he’s going to see. It’s also eliminating several communication channels, because prior to Frame.io, whether it was Teams chats or WhatsApp, I believe that destroyed the creative review process because as soon as you decentralise that process you’re essentially decentralising your leadership and your creativity, as well.”
It’s easy to infer that Scott doesn’t often stay still. Which is another reason why Frame.io is important to his way of life. “Let’s say Kristen is in an edit and she delivers that Frame.io link to me. It doesn’t matter if I’m at my desk, if I’m at my kid’s jujitsu class, if I’m having a picnic, if I’m on a walk,” he says. “Frame.io is just as good on my phone or my iPad, so it doesn’t matter what platform you’re on. Frame.io is always at your fingertips.”
Wherever Scott goes, Frame.io goes with him.
Creating bespoke workflows.
Ask most creatives and they’ll tell you that no two projects are the same. Sure, you always have to shoot, edit and deliver something and you’ll need to share work-in-progress for feedback and approvals.
But especially when you’re travelling to far-flung locations, shooting documentary-style interviews and your B-roll is heavily dependant on weather conditions and access, having a workflow that helps you to sort through a massive amount of footage and organise it into something manageable is critical.
“One of the features in Frame.io that I absolutely love is metadata and I use it in all of my Adobe editing products,” Kristin says. “Frame.io has 32 standard metadata fields that you can utilise, but you can have customised ones, as well. You’re able to label something as a wide shot, a medium shot or a closeup. Or, like with this shoot, they were using the Alexa 35 and some fantastic lenses that gave us some beautiful lens flares. Being able to actually mark which shots they were doing very specific light tricks with was incredible.”
Metadata helps Kristin organise the huge amount of footage so she can easily find what she needs.
Adding customised metadata fields to your media enables another new feature called Collections that lets you use those tags to create smart folders containing assets grouped by whatever criteria you assign. “With a standard file structure, you’d have to go through every single file. But with metadata, you can actually sort by specific keywords, by duration, by frame rate or anything else,” she says.
For Scott, using metadata gives his team a couple of key advantages. First, it’s the ability to customise statuses within the workflow. “Frame.io previously didn’t really map the way we think about our post-production process, whereas now Frame.io is a guide and a map that helps you to understand who’s delivering what and when they’re delivering it.”
But although, as Scott says, that increases your content velocity, it’s even more important when you’ve invested in an expensive shoot and want to ensure that you’ve found all the best bits for both the current project and future use, as well.
It’s what Scott refers to as the cost per asset. “You start to look at it more like stocks and portfolios, because you can see that the cost of capturing those assets can depreciate over time. The first time I went into the new version of Frame and I started playing around with the Collections, I got incredibly excited. Because suddenly I was looking at this vast Alaska library that needed to be distributed to lots of different people.”
A creativity solution.
As a visionary creator, Scott feels energised by the possibilities that Frame.io’s features unlock. “I think right now is the best time to be a creative person. Being a filmmaker today is way different than it was 50 years ago or even 20, 10 or 5 years ago,” Scott says. “I believe Adobe is developing the best creative tools and they’re the ones I want to use. I know they’re going to work and when we’re in very remote environments, dependability and consistency are key.”
There’s also the fact that their entire workflow is based in Adobe Creative Cloud, something that’s important to Scott. “One of the benefits of having these tools under one big brand is they start to work together a lot better than having a lot of bespoke tools,” he says. “One of the biggest challenges is that we do a lot of manual tasks and work in a lot of different systems. So the more that you can reduce those manual tasks and have most of your team hanging out in the same spot, collaboration velocity is just going to continue to grow.” Notably, the broader Princess team is adding Adobe Workfront and Adobe Experience Manager to their Adobe ecosystem to further streamline their production workflow.
Whether at her office or in the field, Kristin can rely on Adobe Premiere Pro.
Kristin is likewise an Adobe devotee. “The way I look at editing platforms is that it’s like a palette of tools. I’ve used every editing platform and I’ve been using Premiere for about 20 years. I do a lot of documentary work and for me it’s the most seamless platform. I actually do a lot of my own mixing in Premiere, even if I have 20 to 30 audio tracks,” she says. “Same thing with After Effects. I love that you can right click your timeline and you can seamlessly go into After Effects. You can bring in Photoshop documents and you can choose whether you want to merge them or not. Everything just works so well together.”
Bringing the photography and video workflows together makes it easier for the teams to align creatively.
What’s also exciting for Scott is that the Adobe environment is helping to bring video and photography workflows together. “I’d hang out with my video team in Frame.io and I’d hang out with the photo team somewhere else, which naturally creates a division between those two teams, whether it’s a physical barrier or a software barrier. It’s like, ‘That’s the photo team and that’s the video team.’ That is not how I operate as a director. I want those teams to be in the same places,” Scott says.
“Now, the photo workflow is as cool as the video workflow. So, we’re starting to bring in some of the photographers and retouchers and they’re starting to hang out in the same watering hole as our video people. Now when I think about Frame.io, I don’t think of it as a video solution. It’s a creativity solution.”
"When I think about Frame.io, I don’t think of it as a video solution. It’s a creativity solution."
Beyond that, Scott appreciates that working in an integrated environment gives him better visibility into what his creative collaborators are doing and a better understanding of their process. “I can now create a space in Frame.io for every lens on the pipeline, whether it be an editor, a stakeholder, a producer, a director or a DP. I now have a space that’s only for that person, that makes them truly feel seen and heard. What Frame.io buys me is different lenses into the different perspectives of people that need the information to make excellent films.”
The impact of change.
It almost goes without saying that Scott is a creative with an insatiable drive to create. Filmmaking is what makes him get up every day with a smile on his face and the possibilities that Frame.io opens for him are part of what puts it there.
“It’s the ultimate team creative discipline and the best sets are the ones where world-class teammates are really working together,” Scott says. “Frame.io was the first piece of software or technology that worked at the speed of our team’s imagination. If you want to become a power user on day one, you can. If you want to learn at your pace, you can. If this is your first time using Frame.io, it’s fast, it’s intuitive and it’s built for creatives.”
When the team is working collaboratively they achieve great results.
But then Scott becomes more introspective. “The three things we all have in common is what’s on our gravestone. We have the year we’re born, the year we died and we have the dash in between. The dash represents the choices we make about how we live our lives,” he says. “In this industry, we’re asked to constantly evolve and change as creatives. Frame.io is a software platform that has constantly changed as I’ve changed. Adobe tools are proving that creativity is going to continue to be democratised and creativity is not for the few. It’s for everybody.”
Change is a constant, but the images that Scott and his team capture endure as a reminder of the majesty of our world. Whether those images serve to inspire people to fill their lives by visiting these places and creating their own stories or to give those of us who may never visit them a chance to see them through Scott’s lens, we at Frame.io feel honoured to play a supporting role.
Lisa McNamara is Frame.io's senior content writer and a frequent contributor to The Frame.io Insider. She has worked in film and video post-production approximately since dinosaurs roamed the planet.
