Client success: The Father, four Golden Globe nominations

Congratulations to everyone nominated at the Golden Globes 2021, in a year of filmmaking that had to work around everything COVID-19 threw at it.

Our client The Father took four nominations at the 78th Golden Globe Awards:

• Best Drama Motion Picture
• Best Screenplay
• Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture: Olivia Colman
• Best Actor in a Motion Picture: Sir Anthony Hopkins

The photographer uploaded as they shot

The Father is Florian Zeller’s adaptation of his own stage play, starring Sir Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman. Eight days of photography produced just over 3,000 images, with six actors holding approval rights, and the production ran it on our In-House option so they kept direct control of the process.

The part worth copying is how the images reached us. The unit photographer had their own account and uploaded frames to the platform as they were taken, rather than handing over a drive at wrap.

That single change moves the whole job earlier. The unit publicist could start tagging cast on day one instead of waiting for a batch delivery, so by the time photography finished, most of the preparation was already done. Approvals began from a set that was ready, rather than from a hard drive somebody still had to unpack. Welcome Packs then went out to talent and their representatives, and the production office was never asked how to log in.

What has changed since 2021

The Father is an early project for us, and it would be dishonest to describe the platform it ran on as the one we offer now. Several things productions rely on today did not exist then:

• Easier actor tagging, on an interface that cuts the time spent assigning images to cast.
• Stakeholder accounts with selects, so approved stakeholders mark their choices directly in the platform.
• Live reports on image counts and kill allowances, showing in real time how many images each actor appears in and how much of their allowance they have used.
• Automatic tagging error detection, with one-step correction across every affected image.

Each of those came from watching productions like this one work around a gap.

Start at the start

Nearly everything that goes wrong with stills approvals is a scheduling problem wearing a technical disguise. Images arrive in one lump after wrap, tagging starts from cold, cast get their links late, and a first-look deadline turns into a scramble.

Give your photographer an upload account on day one and most of that disappears. Ask us about setting that up, request a demo, or read more about how talent approvals work.