Noted for going into some of the world’s most dangerous places and coming back alive while also pushing the frontiers of digital workflow, Wild Eyes Productions has recently added 96 Terabytes (TB) of Archion Technology’s Synergy shared storage solution to its Avid Unity MediaNetwork. Wild Eyes’ work in television, documentary and docu-reality filmmaking ranges from military documentaries like Inside Al-Qaeda and Inside the Taliban for National Geographic with reality TV series like The Squad: Prison Police for the A&E Network.
As the company moves into stereoscopic 3D production, Wild Eyes implemented the new Synergy system to handle increasing amounts of HD and 3D content, noted Conor Morris, postproduction supervisor at Wild Eyes.
“Simply put, Archion’s Synergy has proven to be a lifesaver for us,” said Morris. “Like most facilities, our biggest obstacles have always been ‘how do we expand on a budget’ and ‘how do we tie it into the existing workflow.’ Synergy was much more cost effective than Avid, and it runs off of the same Unity interface and we didn’t need a new rack or new wiring to fit it into our system – and it worked flawlessly right out of the box.”
According to Morris, Wild Eyes was not willing to compromise their media and therefore choose to protect it all with Archion’s Synergy solution. Of their 96TB of Synergy storage, 72TB are fully protected and usable. If they went with Avid storage, he noted, they would have been limited to only 64TB. Synergy can actually scale to a full 128TB of usable protected storage.
Morris was also very impressed by Archion’s customer support, which started even before he purchased the Synergy shared storage solution.
“I really liked the Archion people because they made me feel comfortable right from the start,” said Morris. “They walked me through the entire process – what I could expect if I purchased the Synergy box, how the equipment would operate – and really took time to explain everything to my complete satisfaction. That really impressed me.”
“Archion’s Synergy is the highest capacity storage available for the Unity MediaNetwork,” said Zeke Margolis of Key Code Media, Archion’s Burbank-based reseller. “The massive amount of storage needed for 3D television production – twice as much, in fact – required Wild Eyes to add 96TB of Synergy storage to their Unity in less than 90 days. This would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars more if they went with any other option.”
