Quick Chat: Frame.io’s new SVP of global innovation, Michael Cioni – postPerspective

Production and post specialist Michael Cioni, whom many of you might know from his years at Light Iron and Panavision, has joined Frame.io as SVP of global innovation. He will lead a new LA-based division of Frame.io that is focused on continued investment into cloud-enabled workflows for films and episodics — specifically, automated camera-to-cutting room technology.

Frame.io has been 100 percent cloud-based since the company was formed, according to founder Emery Wells. “We started seeding new workflows around dailies, collaborative review and realtime integration with NLEs for parallel work and approvals. Now, with Michael, we’re building Frame.io for the new frontier of cloud-enabled professional workflows. Frame.io will leverage machine learning and a combination of software and hardware in a way that will truly revolutionize collaboration.”

Quoted in a Frame.io release that went out today, Cioni says, “A robust camera-to-cloud approach means filmmakers will have greater access to their work, greater control of their content, and greater speed with which to make key decisions,” says Cioni. “Our new roadmap will dramatically reduce the time it takes to get original camera negative into the hands of editors. Directors, cinematographers, post houses, DITs and editors will all be able to work with recorded images in real time, regardless of location.”

We reached out to Cioni with some questions about Frame.io and the cloud.

Why was now the right time for you to move on from Light Iron — which you helped to establish — and Panavision to join Frame.io?
After 10 years at Light Iron and over four at Panavision, I have been very fortunate to spend large portions of my career focused on both post and production. Being at both these groups gave me more access to the unique challenges our industry collaborators face, especially with more productions operating on global schedules. Light Iron and Panavision equipped me with the ideal training to explore something entirely new that couples production and post together in an entirely new way. Frame.io is the right foundation for this change.

What will your day-to-day look like at the company?
I will be based in LA and helping build out Frame.io’s newest division in Los Angeles. I will also be traveling regularly to New York to work directly with the engineers and security teams on our roadmap development. This is great for me because I loved living in New York when we opened up Light Iron NY, but I also love working in LA, where so many post and production infrastructures call home.

Frame.io was founded by post pros. Why is it so important for the company to continue that tradition with your hire?
I find that the key to success in any industry is largely dependent on how deep your knowledge well goes. Even though we in media and entertainment serve the world through creative means, the filmmaking process is inherently complex and inherently technical. It always has been.

The best technologies are the ones that are invisible and let the creative process flow without thought about the technology behind what is happening in your mind. Frame.io CEO Emery Wells and I have a profound respect for post production because we were both entrepreneurs and experts in the post space. Anyone who has built or operated a post facility (big or small) knows that post is a hub linking together nearly all workflow components for both creative and technical team members.

Because post lives at the core of Emery and myself, Frame.io will always be grounded in the professional workflow space, which enables us to better evolve our technology into markets of every type and scale.

Your roadmap seems in line with the MovieLabs white paper on the future of production, which is cloud-based. Can you address that?
MovieLabs is arguably the best representation of a technological roadmap for the media and entertainment industry. I was thrilled to see an early copy because it parallels a similar vision I have been exploring since 2013. I believe MovieLabs paints an accurate picture of the great things we are going to be able to do using cloud and machine learning technology, but it also demonstrates how many challenges there are before we can enjoy all the benefits. Frame.io not only supports the conclusions of the MovieLabs white paper, we have already begun deploying solutions to bring a new virtual creative world to reality.

Main Image: (L-R) Michael Cioni and Emery Wells