How HBO’s ‘It’s Florida, Man’ is using cloud workflows in post-production

The HBO show It’s Florida, Man is all about how massive mistakes compound. Behind the cameras, everything also needs to go right from an IT perspective.

For its second season, It’s Florida, Man—a show that features actors and comedians reenacting ludicrous tales from around the state of Florida, in addition to interviews with locals—adopted a cloud-based workflow via LucidLink, which allows for remote file access and collaboration, and integrates with other production software. That allowed the show’s employees, including a post-production team in Los Angeles and a crew in Florida, to collaborate more effectively.

Benjamin South, post producer and post supervisor for It’s Florida, Man, told IT Brew that, with multiple locations and fast timelines, those working on the show needed quick access to content. LucidLink offered the ability to upload smaller versions of the “big files” generated from cameras so the post-production team could start the workflow much quicker.

In the not-so old days…Before cloud-based workflows and fast internet, post-production professionals would store filmed media on drives that could be physically shipped from location, then upload that footage to servers holding terabytes—potentially even petabytes—of data. Workers often needed to be in the same room with each other to get work done.

The movie and television industry’s move to software like LucidLink started during the Covid-19 pandemic, when crews worked remotely on post-production, according to South.

“Uploads were still a thing pre-Covid,” South said. “I do think it was much more common to basically say, ‘We’re going to put [it] on a drive, we’ll ship it, and based on what you can afford, you will overnight, it’ll be with you tomorrow and that still remains a solid option.’”

And now? Cloud-based software gives professionals immediate access to footage, which South said was a game-changer for bigger production teams. For example, he said, 15 people could access a show’s media in real time with just an SSD plugged in, without needing to receive terabytes of raw footage.

“I think for us, it was the fact that someone could be in New York, or LA, or even London, at that point, and you can access it in real time,” South said.

Since television timelines are so quick, South said the team had to trial the software as quickly as possible. While he had faith, “you essentially are walking into this a little bit blind because you haven’t necessarily stress-tested something that much, and at some point you’re a little bottlenecked.”

However, cloud tools have their drawbacks. For instance, if a team doesn’t have a strong internet connection at a hotel or on location, the post-production process of accessing media can take hours. For a cloud workflow to operate seamlessly with potentially poor internet speeds, It’s Florida, Man’s digital imaging technician had to shrink the “big original camera media,” which ranged from one to two terabytes per day, to closer to 100 to 200 gigabytes per day.

South said that the team prioritized having media backups via traditional systems like a shuttle drive, in case LucidLink was unable to support the work.

Keeping the “man” in It’s Florida, Man. South said he wants production tech to get easier—specifically, he wants a future where the TV industry doesn’t get hung up on poor connectivity, or automate human beings entirely out of workflows.

“In terms of what I would like for the future, is that as much as I would like tech to continue pushing forward, as much as I am an advocate for these remote workflows, I also don’t want to lose that human element,” South said. “I think it’s important to remember that while the tech is fantastic, there are some incredibly talented individuals behind those pieces doing the work.”