Boosting Creative Output for Entertainment Blockbusters

PhantomFX creates visuals behind some of the most entertaining movies and television shows in the world. Modern visual effects need increasing amounts of data to bring visions to life. With Pure Storage, the company keeps productions secure and helps artists focus on being creative.

Visual effects (VFX) in movies and television look spectacular and effortless on screen, but they take hard work and immense amounts of data to create. VFX studio PhantomFX has worked on projects ranging from Hollywood films such as The Avengers to television and streaming shows including Sense8 and The Flash. The company decided to adopt a modern data storage and management solution to address data challenges.

“When we started out, we had a very basic storage setup,” says Boopathy Thangamuthu, IT Manager of PhantomFX. “All the content was saved on a local storage system. Artists spent a lot of time moving content to and from the system. These inefficiencies caused delays, wasting both production time and money.” 

As the business grew and the team size increased, so did the storage requirements. PhantomFX decided it was time for a storage upgrade. Pure Storage and channel partner Techfruits Solutions, the Chennai-based trailblazer in delivering advanced IT solutions, worked closely with PhantomFX to consolidate data from its separate storage systems onto FlashBlade//S™, Pure Storage’s file and object platform.

“Timelines for movies are very tight, and we need to be fast and accurate in what we do. With FlashBlade//S, we now have real-time data stores that save us up to 30% of our time and help us meet deadlines,” says Boopathy.

Data compression is one of the biggest benefits of FlashBlade//S. PhantomFX has several departments, each working on a different aspect of VFX such as modeling, rigging, lighting, and compositing. They use high-performance creative applications such as Maya, Houdini, Blender, Nuke, and Photoshop, all of which are supported by Pure.

“TechFruits’ in-depth understanding of PhantomFX's data storage challenges led us to recommend Pure Storage's FlashBlade//S. This powerful solution's ability to handle large and complex VFX datasets was instrumental in overcoming their storage bottlenecks,” says Lenin Christopher, Director at TechFruits. “Pure Storage's FlashBlade//S has delivered truly transformative results for PhantomFX. By eliminating bottlenecks and network latency, the solution has optimized workflows and significantly reduced data transfer times. This translates to a 30% boost in productivity for PhantomFX's VFX artists, allowing them to focus on their core expertise: creating stunning visual effects.”

Previously, each department had their own storage system. By consolidating data onto FlashBlade//S, the company can simplify the environment and eliminate time spent copying data between systems, leading to easier handoffs and collaborations.

The data capacity and compression help PhantomFX not only simplify operations but make them more sustainable. FlashBlade//S takes up less space due to its higher rack density and improved performance. The 58% smaller footprint--from 12U to 5U--allows PhantomFX to reduce energy consumption by 35,000 kWh per year.

Boopathy says, “We co-produced a Tamil movie called ‘Ayalaan’, and the VFX work for it involved around 350 TB of data. We also have many smaller projects underway. It seems unbelievable that all this data can be stored on a single storage system, but that’s exactly what we have managed to do with FlashBlade//S. We are now gradually doing away with the old storage systems, which helps us reduce our carbon footprint.”

The VFX industry is a major target for cyberattacks, particularly from ransomware. PhantomFX takes data security very seriously, as lost data can dramatically delay production. The company achieved the coveted ‘Trusted Partner Network’ certification in 2018 and prides itself on being a ‘data-secure ecosystem’. FlashBlade//S has strengthened its security posture even further.

“With SafeMode ™ Snapshots, even if there is a ransomware attack, we can recover the immutable data snapshot without any errors. SafeMode is one of the best features of the solution, as it gives us peace of mind because we know that even in case of any mishap, our original data is secure,” says Boopathy.

Like any IT head, Boopathy is wary of performance issues and customer complaints. FlashBlade//S has taken that load off his mind. “The reliability of FlashBlade//S is truly remarkable,” he says. “There was a project before FlashBlade//S where we faced issues every day with storage and network latency. In contrast, now even with a project even as big and complex as ‘Ayalaan’, there hasn’t been a single complaint pertaining to the IT infrastructure. Pure Storage FlashBlade//S is the only storage we intend to use in future.”