GB Labs’ NebulaNAS production cloud storage solution was used by film-making senior students at The University of Southern California to create a documentary about Rwanda to help envision the first themed entertainment experience in the country.
Over the last 10 years, Rwanda, a beautiful and rapidly modernising country, has emerged as the Silicon Valley of Africa. This Rwandan renaissance caught the eye of Memphis Grace MacPherson, a Senior at the University, who collaborated with a major Rwandan philanthropist to envision the first themed entertainment experience in the country. They designed a ‘Soaring-over-Rwanda’ style attraction, planning on taking guests soaring, diving, and gliding through Rwanda’s awe-inspiring landscape.
Choosing this endeavour as my capstone project was a natural way for me to combine my love for themed attractions with my favourite college class: IMAX and Giant Screen filmmaking. After attending the Giant Screen Cinema conference in 2021, I was compelled by the intersection of these two worlds and knew merging them would be the perfect way to encapsulate Rwanda’s natural allure while creating a widely accessible experience, said Grace.
Grace formed a company and began reaching out to themed attraction designers, trade groups, non-profits, and even the Government of Rwanda to learn everything she could and make the necessary connections to see her dream come to life, after graduation.
During the research phase of the project, Grace was invited to Rwanda by members of the Rwandan Government, with the aim of further understanding their geopolitical placement and putting together a preliminary sizzle reel to be premiered in Hollywood. Partnering with her college friend and cinematographer, Hunter Hartz, they headed off to Kigali in February 2024.
The Challenge
Working internationally, Grace and Hunter knew there would be a possibility of something happening to their footage in transit. Crossing international borders and transporting gear opens the potential for many things to go wrong (which they soon did as Grace’s luggage failed to leave Los Angeles and their drone was confiscated at the Kigali airport!)
There was also a time constraint due to the need to present the footage along with Grace’s business plan at two major conferences, less than three weeks from returning to Los Angeles (LA), with the hope of reaching new investors.
We needed to get the footage back to our team in LA as quickly as possible. We also needed the peace of mind that our footage wouldn’t be lost in transit and we really wanted to get notes from our IMAX professor on the framing, since it is unique compared to traditional film or television framing, said Hunter.
The Solution
The solution chosen was NebulaNAS from GB Labs.
NebulaNAS provided shared post-production in the cloud without the complexity of VPNs, proxies or websites to navigate and upload/download from. Through one small app, GB Labs Connect, the team could mount a shared workspace directly on their desktops from the NebulaNAS cloud. They could then work with their favourite apps like Premiere and Davinci.
Working with NebulaNAS was an absolute relief”, said Hunter. “Knowing our footage was already secure in NebulaNAS before we left, eliminated a ton of stress and it was so simple to use, by dragging and dropping the footage into our mounted workspace.
Hunter could then edit the footage directly from the shared workspace while it uploaded in the background. By the time we were ready to go and shoot again, the project could be opened by our collaborators in LA and all the footage linked immediately.
With a short turnaround and funding on the line, every moment for editorial mattered.
Our local WiFi connection was unstable. Thankfully NebulaNAS’s architecture is robust and we were able to keep editing and uploading our 4K BlackMagic RAW footage on cell phone tethers when we needed them, said Hunter.
NebulaNAS can work over the weakest of internet connections and it’s robustness gave Grace and Hunter more than a day of additional editorial time on the journey home from Rwanda. On the 6-hour flight from Kigali to Doha and the 16-hour flight from Doha to LA, Hunter was able to use the unstable airplane Wifi to work with Grace on the rough cut and share their work with the team in LA, while in transit.
Editing on the journey home made a huge difference. NebulaNAS gave us extra time to work while the experience was still fresh in our minds and before we had to dive back into classes and start making up missed work, said Grace.
The Value
Even with outside support, every cost matters to a college student and simple billing mattered too.
We loved that we could set-up shared media storage with no upload or per user fees. Not needing to worry about a complex billing scheme that could leave us with a giant unexpected bill, saved us a lot of time and stress in Rwanda and that allowed us to spend more time on the shoot, said Hunter.
Cost wasn’t the only value. The time savings that NebulaNAS provides through its ease of use and its ability to rapidly move large sets of data around the world, makes more time available in the creative process.
Thanks to NebulaNAS, Grace presented her inspiring sizzle reel at conferences, which has led to much interest in her project and many new business connections.
But the value of NebulaNAS doesn’t end with the final edit and Grace may need to go back to the footage several times before full production. NebulaNAS offers a cost saving archive tier, allowing her to seamlessly move footage to a secure, redundant, low-cost storage safe and readily accessible for when she needs it.
