Sci-fi short “Europa,” written and directed by Jacqueline Elyse Rosenthal, is the Entertainment Technology Center’s latest project to test the expanding possibilities of virtual production and remote collaboration. To call “Europa” a cloud-first production is to rethink filmmaking from the ground up. This wasn’t just a distributed team working online — it was an ecosystem where every workflow, from previs to final VFX, operated entirely in the cloud. It wasn’t a workaround; it was the foundation. And powering that foundation — every tool, every task, every decision — was AWS.

In legacy production models, the work ends, and the shipping begins. On “Europa,” the editorial launched in the cloud before the first frame was shot.

GPU-powered render nodes were deployed in the AWS Region us-west-2, where the data resides. Dailies operators in New Zealand remotely accessed the workstations and processed dailies overnight; the results were then instantly reviewed in Los Angeles.

Camera and lens metadata flowed in real time into structured knowledge graphs, accessible globally by AI-driven tools. The data didn’t wait for handoffs — it moved, evolved, and informed decisions live.

This real-time orchestration wasn’t just supported by AWS — it was made possible only because of it. It served not only as the infrastructure but as the backbone for every application, every workflow, every collaboration:

• BIND Studio, led by Jason Fotter, ran entirely on AWS. It built a virtual facility that gave artists instant, secure access to editorial and VFX environments.
• Under Mike Urban and Pete Harrow, The Rebel Fleet used AWS to move camera and script metadata through Konsol, logging every shot with frame-accurate precision and making it immediately available in the cloud editorial system powered by Avid NEXIS paired with Avid Media Composer running on AWS.
• Cintegral, with Dane Brehm, leveraged AWS to automate compliance and architected the pipeline for capturing and distributing lens and camera data, captured once and accessible across departments throughout.
• Eric Roth’s VFX team tapped into AWS’s Deadline Cloud to render, publish, and review massive simulations at scale, without dependence on local infrastructure.

Each of these applications was independent in capability but interconnected through AWS. The cloud didn’t just host files but made them usable, searchable, and actionable across the globe. Collaboration became code. Infrastructure became intelligence. And the architecture itself became a creative enabler.

As we move to a cloud-based workflow, the archive becomes the source of truth — not a final resting place but a live, queryable system of record. AWS enabled this by providing a unified platform for active storage, intelligent data mobility, real-time workflow orchestration, scalable rendering, continuous archival access, secure collaboration, and AI enablement — powering every aspect of the film’s creative and technical pipeline.

What emerged wasn’t just a movie — it was a cloud-native blueprint for production at a global scale: fast, coordinated, and creatively in sync — one pipeline, one truth, one backbone, powered by AWS.

This is not the future. It’s already working.

Welcome to the architecture of cinematic evolution.

Note: Open workflow diagram image in new tab or window to enlarge.