October 31, 2018 – Murrieta, CA – When Steve Bannerman, CEO of Local Hero – Hollywood’s premiere post-production boutique, decided to replace the facility’s budget-busting storage system, his search led him in an unexpected direction. Instead of purchasing another piece of iron, and committing to another service contract, Bannerman found the system he was seeking in creative.space, an entirely new concept in media storage that not only met his requirements, but surpassed his expectations in affordability, service, support, and reliability. creative.space, powered by DigitalGlue - a leading engineering and integration company, has shattered the paradigm of high-end storage solutions by offering a high-speed, high-capacity On-Premise Managed Storage™ (OPMS) service featuring 24/7 monitoring, technical support and next-day repairs for an all-inclusive, affordable, fixed monthly rate.

Local hero offers true end-to-end post-production and visual effects (VFX) services for independent feature films and prestige TV shows.  These services range from consulting with clients about workflows before they shoot their first frame, to a full suite of picture, sound and VFX services. The company specializes in high-end clients such as HBO, Netflix, Lionsgate and Apple, with credits that include the recent movie Home Again starring Reese Witherspoon, and HBO series “Big Little Lies” and “Sharp Objects.”  

“When we built our facility, we weren’t working on very many 4K shows at all, and now virtually all projects are 4K, and we’re starting to do a lot of HDR shows as well.,” explained Bannerman. “Since 4K requires four times the space as 2K we started having capacity issues which, along with a disappointing vendor service experience, drove us to explore options. During our initial search, we were daunted not only by the acquisition cost of that much storage, but by the ridiculously expensive support contracts that come along with these systems. When creative.space came along, we recognized it as the solution we were looking for. It didn't take very long to pull the trigger on that one.”

Bannerman chose creative.space’s //DEUS EX hybrid NVMe SSD and HDD media storage solution that balances solid state and spinning disk technology with a fully optimized internal architecture to provide seamless playback. Designed for uncompressed, high-resolution, end-to-end post-production workflows, //DEUS EX eliminates the need for separate online and nearline systems, allowing the entire team to work with collaborative workflows like those available in DaVinci Resolve and Adobe Creative Cloud.

Bannerman continued, “Storage is the heartbeat of Local Hero, and there's nothing more crucial than having shared storage that just works. If something's wrong with the SAN and if it goes offline, the entire facility shuts down. We do a lot of ‘invisible’ visual effects, so if you can actually see our work on the screen, we got it wrong. A SAN is pretty much the same thing; if you notice it, something is wrong and you’re in trouble. The support that we get from DigitalGlue is spectacular. It doesn’t matter what time it is; if we have a question, we get a response within an hour. You expect that level of service when you’re making a huge investment, but we’re a small facility without an IT department, so to have that kind of help is crucial.

“creative.space also keeps us competitive with much larger post houses. It gives us the ability to adapt much quicker than our competitors.  When the industry changes, and it always changes fast, we’re able to immediately pivot to another creative.space system without the inconvenience or necessity of having to sell the old piece of iron so we can afford the new piece of iron. We're not locked in. creative.space helps us be nimble, and that’s crucial in Hollywood. We didn’t just need a big, fast piece of storage. We needed a business model that was going to let us stay in the game, and we got it.”