Amazon Studios brings the next-generation studio to life with cloud-based production

From the moment that Amazon announced it had acquired the television rights to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings in November 2017, a global wave of anticipation began to build among fans of the beloved books and films. Over the next five years, Amazon Studios, the company’s film and television production subsidiary, developed the groundbreaking new series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power mindful of the legacy of one of the most popular fantasy epics of all time.

“Amazon Studios is the home for talent to create and produce original films and television series that premiere exclusively on Prime Video,” says Eric Iverson, director of product strategy at Amazon Studios. With its content available in more than 240 countries and territories worldwide, the studio’s creative output extends beyond TV and film via extensive marketing activities within the broader Amazon ecosystem.

To reach the highest standards of creativity, aesthetics, and production values for this new chapter in The Lord of the Rings saga, Amazon Studios pushed the limits of innovation and scale. “Today, we must produce more content in shorter timelines, by more artists, working anywhere around the globe, around the clock,” Iverson says. “Advances in our industry have brought many great new tools to create, market, and distribute content. But these advances have also led to a significant amount of complexity.”

As productions move faster and remote teams have become the norm since the global COVID-19 pandemic, all phases of a project are happening at the same time—making the production process even more complex.

“Addressing the challenge of increased complexity requires us to think differently about the process of storytelling,” Iverson says. “How can we create a home for top talent distributed across the globe?” Amazon Studios set out to evolve into a “next-generation production studio”—and reinvent the way their teams make films—based on three principles.

First, the next-generation studio must be socially responsible by design. “Customers expect more than just great stories, ‘A-List’ talent, and stunning visual effects,” he says. “They care about how we are producing the content they watch. We hold ourselves accountable to a higher bar when it comes to diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and sustainability.”

Second, the studio must be globally cloud-connected to support the future of production. The 2030 Vision Initiative established by MovieLabs, Hollywood’s research and development joint venture, lays a path forward for content to be stored, secured, and shared in the cloud.

And third, the studio must empower teams with smart, nonlinear workflows to better orchestrate increasingly complex productions. “Hundreds, if not thousands, of hours are wasted because of inefficient manual steps required to coordinate tasks, move assets, and collaborate across distributed teams,” Iverson says. “The tools and workflow automations we offer must also evolve to support them.”

“We are absolutely thrilled that Autodesk is an active partner in these principles and shares MovieLabs’ 2030 vision,” Iverson says. “There are many ways that Autodesk is helping us reach our vision—in particular, with Flow Production Tracking (formerly ShotGrid) and Flow Capture (formerly Moxion).” Embracing digital transformation with these cloud-enabled production tools has helped Amazon Studios become more connected and collaborative.

Flow Production Tracking, Autodesk’s production management software, is used on Amazon Original productions for real-time project tracking. “This tool helped us orchestrate production workflows during COVID,” Iverson says. “Dashboards help productions track many VFX shots and vendors.” Amazon Studios has also experimented with using Flow Production Tracking’s APIs to orchestrate assets between Flow Production Tracking and Amazon Web Services (AWS), and minimize tedious and repetitive manual tasks.

To accelerate creative reviews, Amazon Studios also leverages Flow Capture, Autodesk’s dailies and review software for real time review. Flow Capture brings raw footage from on set into one flexible tool for review by anyone, anywhere, moments after capture. Studios that use Flow Capture with Flow Production Tracking to connect the production pipeline in the cloud can ensure that on-set data flows to postproduction in nearly real time.

“Amazon Studios uses Flow Capture for creative reviews for shows of all sizes,” Iverson says. “It helps streamline the handoff from production to postproduction, making the workflow more efficient.” Flow Capture also has been instrumental in connecting creative teams from around the world, making the creative process more inclusive. To date, Amazon has used Flow Capture on more than 115 productions—involving 4,500 users, 1,300 hours of content uploaded, and about 1 petabyte in storage.

On September 1, 2022, the day of its release, 25 million people worldwide watched The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power—the biggest premiere in the history of Prime Video. Millions more engaged with the eight-episode first season, and viewers are already anticipating what will come next for the show’s characters and their world.

“Creating stories and experiences audiences will love requires us to work really hard to understand our customers and what will resonate with them,” Iverson says. “To deliver on these stories requires us to work even harder.” Amazon Studios’ commitment to becoming a next-generation studio is critical to delivering on this promise.

To create the dazzling and expansive entertainment experiences that Iverson calls “magic at scale,” cloud-based production enables Amazon Studios to effectively manage highly complex projects. “We have a lot of work still to do on the invention side as we’re connecting all these tools,” he says. “We’re working hard to get there right now. However, we can’t do it alone.” A new world of possibilities is opening up as cloud-based platform technology evolves, and Autodesk is partnering with the teams at Amazon Studios to bring together data, processes, and tools in one open environment.“

All of us do this important work so creative teams can continue to love the process of telling amazing stories,” Iverson says, “stories about heroes saving enchanted civilizations like Middle-earth.” And the saga of The Rings of Power goes on: Season 2 production began in Fall 2023, and Amazon Studios progresses to become even more efficient, agile, and creative at delivering the magical experiences that audiences love.