UK Production Company Wild Dream Films Upgrades Facilis Shared Storage

Facilis Technology, Inc., announced a major upgrade and storage capacity increase to its TerraBlock shared storage system at production company, Wild Dream Films Ltd.

Based in Cardiff, Wales, Wild Dream Films operates in the international television production market with a client list including the likes of National Geographic, MSNBC, Discovery and the History Channel. The company has received Emmy Award nominations for its work and has built a reputation for excellence and high production values in its output.

In order to maintain this quality throughout its production workflow, Wild Dream Films took the strategic decision over 15 years ago to bring all post-production operations in house. Five years ago, the company invested in its first Facilis TerraBlock 24/EX12 24TB shared storage system to support its network of Avid edit suites. The company has expanded and upgraded its TerraBlock to provide 96TB of storage which supports the entire facility and will underpin the company’s rapid growth. Already installed and operational, running off both Ethernet and FC, the TerraBlock supports five offline and one online Avid edit suites.

In developing its post resources, Wild Dream Films has worked with another Cardiff-based company – Brainy Monkey Post Production Ltd. The company’s MD, Andrij Evans, has provided guidance and support in developing this production workflow and he is a big supporter of Facilis technology.

“With the large capacity TerraBlock, ingest and export no longer has to be tied to one specific Avid system,” explains Evans. “Also, the speed of the system is fantastic – it easily copes with supplying multiple streams of video to multiple Avid systems without a hiccup.“

Pre- and post-sale support wins trusted partner status for Facilis
For Stuart Clarke, their decision of which system to adopt rested on more than just the pros and cons of the hardware – it includes every aspect of the support the vendor provides.

“What we really like about Facilis is the support that their team provides,” Clarke explains. “I was amazed that Facilis could move so quickly when we needed a super fast purchase. I was skeptical that the new HDDs would fit effortlessly into our system but within an hour it was up and running without an issue (and still has not had a single issue). The speed of access to the media and sharing media is a key factor in choosing Facilis’ TerraBlock. But more important is the reliability, which has always been superb and has never let us down.“

“Now, with our TerraBlock upgrade, we can undertake more multiple projects with ease. It allows us to expand our storage capability and we can be more flexible in terms or adding more edit suites as we grow the company,” states Clarke . “We aren’t a facility company – we are a production company – and as we grow we are confident that the backup that Facilis provides is a ‘safety net’ for our more complex post production processes. As deadlines are becoming shorter, it’s great to know that we have a solid and reliable storage system that hasn’t let us down over five year’s operation. And we are excited to have a brand new set of drives which will mean we can keep pushing hard in producing quality content.“