How Ateliere Tamed Lionsgate’s Library So That It Really Roars
20,000
Titles
40%
Efficiency Gain
From Over 10 Vendors & 24 Storage Locations to 1 Self-Managed Platform
Summary
Lionsgate’s film, television, subscription, location-based entertainment, and interactive games business is backed by an 20,000-title library. With such an extensive library, title visibility and efficient distribution workflows are critical for content monetization and sales enablement. To achieve this, Lionsgate turned to Ateliere and its cloud-based Connect media platform to help it transform its digital media supply chain by deduplicating redundant assets, ingesting distribution assets into the cloud, and normalizing the extensive metadata catalog. When integrated with their own sales and title systems, the combination provides a powerful way for Lionsgate to both identify sales opportunities and better service global distribution customers.
Background
Lionsgate had organizational challenges of a large and growing catalog, managed by multiple legacy systems, with assets housed in more than 24 global locations across more than 10 different distribution servicing vendors. Largely accumulated through acquisition, with complex global rights and availabilities, this highly disaggregated set of titles was managed through 6 different external and internal enterprise systems tracking title management, rights, inventory, and marketing, stored across multiple databases, online shared drives, and those vendor systems that were sophisticated enough to provide a customer portal.
“We needed to radically change our distribution supply chain and how that worked. We needed to take better control. We needed to have ultimate flexibility that would allow us to provide much greater sales enablement to the monetization engines of the company,” said Gray Ainsworth, EVP of Technical Operations & Delivery.
In today’s distribution environment, the ability to localize and sell content for the growing number of global distribution platforms provides significant monetization opportunities for studios like Lionsgate.
Before moving their extensive library to the cloud, Lionsgate had to do considerable human research across multiple systems to sell and service a title. The process typically averaged 3 weeks from research to delivery, which included finding the right assets, QC’ing asset files and “prepping them” to ensure they were in the appropriate format and with the correct deliverables for that sales opportunity which sometimes proved challenging.
In their quest for solutions, Lionsgate aimed to both streamline the storage and management of an expanding distribution library and create a centralized, authoritative repository of everything they owned. This dual objective sought to minimize operational expenses and enhance sales visibility, ultimately bolstering revenue. Lionsgate was acutely cognizant of the escalating significance of efficiency and business agility in light of the industry’s evolving business models.
The project commenced by locating, consolidating, de-duplicating, and refining just the asset metadata. Additionally, it was necessary to identify and locate the “source of truth” picture and sound assets. Those assets were validated and “fixed” where necessary to ensure that dubbing and subtitle language tracks throughout Lionsgate’s extensive library were in perfect sync with the appropriate picture version. The goal was to ensure that only complete, refined, and componentized assets would be introduced into Connect – Ateliere’s cloud-native media supply chain hub. Given the size of Lionsgate’s library, the preparation and ingestion process into the cloud is expected to span over a year.
LIONSGATE WORKFLOW BEFORE ATELIERE SOLUTION
Solution
While assets are being refined and ingested into Lionsgate’s AWS S3 media library infrastructure, Lionsgate and Ateliere are working together to implement a fundamentally 2030 approach to media supply.
- Ingest all assets into the cloud, which will not move.
- Bring applications such as Connect, which manages the media supply chain, and internal financial systems, which manage Lionsgate’s title data – to the media.
- Integrate applications and services through APIs so they can exchange and synchronize messages and metadata.
- Create real time views into title availability and enable automated actionable tasks for servicing.
Lionsgate intends to operate Connect directly as the hub of its media supply chain, integrated into its sales and title systems, as well as its vendor and delivery ecosystems. Lionsgate and Ateliere are working to onboard 100s of distribution endpoints and delivery specifications, which will allow Lionsgate ultimate choice and flexibility for delivery and servicing options.
Lionsgate selected Ateliere Connect to deliver on implementing their “vision” of a cloud-based hub as a first step on their own cloud journey. With a long-term goal of moving their archive to the cloud, Lionsgate’s first focus was on a ‘single source of truth’ which could provide enhanced visibility to a consolidated and more intelligent distribution and servicing library. Their goal was to empower both operations and sales teams to manage and deliver with more speed and efficiency – and to provide greater flexibility in how they interact with service providers and clients directly. Lionsgate anticipates realizing an efficiency gain of over 40% compared to previous workflows.
LIONSGATE WORKFLOW AFTER ATELIERE SOLUTION
Architecture
Lionsgate has established a centralized repository for media assets, which is hosted on AWS S3. This repository aggregates content from various sources, including on-premise locations and other cloud-based environments. The ingest of media assets from vendors is tightly controlled through IAM policies and access keys, ensuring that only authorized content updates are allowed.
The centralized S3 bucket, managed by Lionsgate, is configured to issue notifications for specific events, such as the upload of new media files. These notifications are sent to AWS SNS (Simple Notification Service), which can then trigger AWS Lambda functions that execute code in response to these events, facilitating automated workflows like metadata updates or content transformation.
Ateliere Connect serves as a middleware platform within this architecture. It has access to the S3 bucket and utilizes the AWS services to manage the media assets. Through its event bus system, Ateliere Connect enables subscription-based notifications, allowing external systems to receive updates and interact with the content hub. This setup allows for the real-time processing and distribution of media assets.
The architecture leverages AWS’s suite of services, including EventBridge for application-event data routing, Step Functions for coordinating the workflows, and API Gateway for providing secure access to APIs. These services work together to support the ingestion, packaging, and distribution of content while allowing for the system’s extensibility to incorporate additional services or systems as needed.
Ateliere’s integration with external systems like Lionsgate’s financial and CRM/sales systems is facilitated through the use of AWS Lambda functions and AWS EventBridge. The system captures events internally, which are communicated through an event queue linked to AWS SNS, signaling any significant activity, such as uploads to an S3 bucket.
Lambda functions are employed to handle various tasks associated with these events. They are set up to perform different roles, enabling Ateliere to interact with external systems in a flexible manner. For instance, these functions can process data, trigger workflows, or synchronize information, depending on the needs of the specific integration.
AWS EventBridge serves as an event bus that orchestrates the flow of information. It routes events to the appropriate Lambda functions based on defined rules, allowing for a clean separation between the event source and the service handling it. This setup ensures that as events occur, they are managed and processed efficiently, enabling real-time responses and interactions with financial systems, or any other connected systems.
The overall design ensures a scalable and secure management of media assets, with a robust infrastructure for real-time data communication and integration capabilities.
While this implementation is still in process, it is being designed by the Ateliere teams in a way that allows for flexibility and the ability to continue to implement key principles of the 2030 Vision and support open standards. A key technical and architectural goal is that this solution and the Ateliere Connect platform serve as an interoperable service in the evolving cloud media supply ecosystem.
Lionsgate Media Supply Chain Hub / Ateliere Connect Infrastructure Architecture
BENEFITS
Prior to integrating Connect, Lionsgate’s library and servicing was fully stored on premises, in the hands of key trusted global vendors, as has been the practice in the industry for many years. And while this model allowed for supply chain “accountability” and provided a certain degree of global reach, scale and choice, it also ultimately limited flexibility and made navigating metadata and asset information challenging. The benefits of the cloud and in fact, the principles of the 2030 Vision became a key driver for implementing this new approach. With Connect, Lionsgate can take advantage of the global reach and scale of the cloud itself and now has direct control over its own assets, while maintaining ultimate choice.
Because the process starts with hands on content “fixing”, AI based de-duplication, and refining of metadata, when all assets are structured properly for ingest into the cloud and do not move, the applications that come to this “intelligent library” can provide additional deep benefits, As Connect itself “connects” to Lionsgate’s sales and title systems, the ability to uncover opportunity and begin to automate the creation and delivery of distribution assets are enabled. With 100’s of distribution endpoints being onboarded into this system; Lionsgate’s will have both a better ability to identify opportunities along with more direct, efficient, and flexible servicing options.
Importantly, this centralization of accurate and synchronized metadata allows Connect to act as the ‘single source of truth’ for metadata which enhances operational efficiency, reduces the risk of errors, and supports more informed and effective decision-making.
This centralization not only simplifies the process of locating and managing assets but also enhances collaboration across different teams and departments. The cloud-based nature of Ateliere Connect ensures scalability and accessibility, allowing Lionsgate to adapt to evolving business needs and access a vast content library from anywhere, at any time.
Alignment with MovieLabs® 2030 Vision Principles
PRINCIPLE 1
The very notion of Principle 1 – that all assets are ingested directly into the cloud and do not move in fact inspired Lionsgate to begin their cloud journey. Fundamental to their own vision, Lionsgate understood the benefits of having their entire serviceable library in the cloud to streamline their media supply workflows and as a disaster recovery repository.
PRINCIPLE 2
With all assets in the cloud, Ateliere’s Connect reaches into Lionsgate’s media repository as does Lionsgate’s own financial and CRM/Sales systems as “applications that come to the media”. This ability to access and query media and create automated tasks without file movement is a core aspect of next generation workflows.
PRINCIPLE 10
What took days and sometimes weeks of research around title and asset availability can now be understood in real time. And once an asset is identified for a sale opportunity, the ability to order, create, package, and deliver can be completely automated and accomplished in a fraction of the time it took before using the Ateliere Connect platform.
PARTNERS
Lionsgate worked with system integration partners and Amazon Web Services to help them build their cloud-based media servicing repository capability. As Lionsgate worked with Ateliere to onboard Connect and integrate distribution endpoints, Lionsgate worked with existing servicing vendors to locate and identify content for refinement and delivery. Lionsgate cloud vendors provided automated audio and subtitle synchronization, and when more “hands on” processes were needed, partnered with a media service vendor to deliver refined assets directly into Lionsgate’s S3 media library infrastructure.
In addition, Ateliere’s long-time partnership and integration with AWS and many Amazon Web Services based tools and services helped to accelerate the Lionsgate implementation.
LESSONS LEARNED
While this effort will take time to fully implement, key early lessons included the importance of starting with the consolidation and de-duplication of asset metadata to streamline the task of preparing assets for ingest. And while the goal was to get assets into the cloud as quickly as possible, taking the time to ensure that assets were fully “groomed” as in sync, quality-validated, audio and video components, with vetted, enhanced, and standardized metadata prior to ingest, allowed to scale and test the solution at the same time. Because this is a solution that will be operated directly by Lionsgate, it was important for early testing and deep user stories to be shared and understood across both the Lionsgate and Ateliere teams. And for extremely open dialogue and clear expectations across technical and security teams to plan for Connect to integrate directly with Lionsgate’s internal sales and title systems. In taking this project in steps, the teams are learning together on this implementation journey, with the ability to optimize along the way, such as the early efforts to incorporate Gen AI into the workflows.
NEXT STEPS
A key focus for Ateliere is the rapid expansion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) within the platform to provide significant business value to customers by leveraging machine learning (ML) and Gen AI for smarter data analysis, predictive insights, and automation of complex tasks. In addition, Ateliere is focusing on how the Connect platform can increasingly be integrated within both their customers’ internal ecosystems as well as connected to other services and applications in the media supply chain to help their customers gain deeper insights into their libraries for opportunities to streamline, deploy and monetize their assets.
MOVIELABS PERSPECTIVE
The work Ateliere has done with Lionsgate demonstrates the power of a ‘single source of truth’ in the cloud for a media library. By centralizing both assets, and critically, the associated metadata, Lionsgate can speed content to market to take advantage of sales opportunities, but also reduce the complexities, chance of error and confusion that can come from manual find and retrieval workflows. The Ateliere solution also now enables the use of powerful tools like automation and AI to replicate the mundane and error prone work in manual servicing workflows and bring potential future benefits that the cloud unlocks.
The case study also makes a powerful case for cloud-based disaster recovery and resilience planning as calamities can happen and it’s hard to plan and practice for them if it’s unclear where the assets are stored and whether they are all protected to the same and sufficient levels. “Single source of truth” does not mean a single copy, by moving all the assets to the cloud, Lionsgate can now specify and create Service Level Agreements that match their planning for disasters and ensure the library is always available for clients with robust, diverse, and resilient protection of their most critical studio assets. All within their compete control.
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