If you’ve watched Avengers – Endgame, Captain Marvel, The Meg, Pirates of the Caribbean, A Wrinkle in Time, either of the Ant-Man or many other Marvel Studios movies, you will recognize the outstanding work and company, Legend 3D, Inc. in Hollywood, California.
Based in the heart of Los Angeles, California – right where the industry’s most prominent film box office successes come into being – Legend 3D does its magic: The experts at Legend 3D step in when real virtuosity is needed to create the perfect illusion, regardless whether the imagery takes place in 2D, 3D CGI, or 3D stereoscopic. The Visual Effects department of the professional organization takes care of massive set extensions, extraordinary compositing and remarkable digital makeup. The team of award-winning artists is complemented by an equally capable 3D division, responsible for 2K/UHD/4K conversion, real-time depth grading, and 3D conform/editorial. From on-set consultation to full-scale VFX creative, production, and post-production services – Legend 3D has it covered and has earned a reputation for producing quality, innovative Visual Effects and Stereoscopic 3D Conversion for major brands, studios, and agencies.
Sometimes there’s something better and smarter than good
We are flattered that Meetal Gokul, Director of Post Production, granted us some precious insight behind the curtains of Legend 3D. Even though he’s only been with Legend 3D for nine months, Meetal has managed to make a huge impact on the overall infrastructure and new business. “Before ELEMENTS, we had a 2K solution at our LA office.” we learned from Meetal. “While we were very happy with the performance of the previous system, we needed a 4K stereo pipeline & HDR workflow which was easy to manage and use.”
Meetal Gokul
Through our investigative process to accommodate a 4K stereo pipeline and beyond, and to effectively handle increased new business demands, I knew ELEMENTS would be the best solution for the future.
Meetal Gokul, Director of Post Production
With Legend 3D being in high demand, the requirements have both risen and changed; hence, it was time for a well thought out plan – and upgrade …
A speedy swap with India
With the need to develop a 2K stereo workflow in their India operation and the necessity to reassess immediate and future requirements for the Hollywood operation, it was time for a very important decision to be made. “It was the perfect opportunity to get both our Los Angeles and our India office what we needed – and the perfect chance to add ELEMENTS’ technology to our setup,” stated Meetal. They decided to go the environmentally friendly route by repurposing the hardware from their LA facility to India – and concurrently integrate a robust, cost effective ELEMENTS solution in their office in Los Angeles.
Meetal is incredibly knowledgeable and grasped the unique benefits of ELEMENTS and how we could augment their workflow.
Roger Beck, Director of Solutions Architecture, ELEMENTS
Working directly with the ELEMENTS team in the US, Meetal and Roger designed a new environment to effectively handle existing and future needs of Legend 3D. Based on ELEMENTS ONE 60bay and JBOD expansion, Legend 3D expanded their previous 96TB infrastructure to a healthy 400TB environment.
Ghostbusters
“Roger and Derek Edwards (Sr. Engineer & Solutions Architect) are great professionals and worked with our IT team to have everything installed quickly and efficiently,” Meetal said. “We had deadlines to meet and new jobs coming into the facility, so it was essential the installation and commissioning be swift and seamless to our operation. ELEMENTS’ achieved this in great form,” Meetal went on to say.
Staying productive around the clock
The concern of Legend 3D was not only to connect their multiple Mistika workstations to the ELEMENTS shared storage, but to be able to create a workflow that would allow them to work concurrently across multiple suites without losing performance. That’s why in the solution building phase a JBOD has been added to the ONE. Together they effectively deliver the bandwidth and performance necessary. Going forward, this environment can easily be scaled well beyond 1 petabyte within a single 60Bay ecosystem.
We really like that ELEMENTS allows us to run multiple 2K and 4K HDR color sessions simultaneously – without losing performance.
Meetal Gokul, Director of Post Production
After the smooth install of the ELEMENTS ONE and JBOD, enabling flawless and uninterrupted collaboration between all workstations, Legend 3D is able to run the Mistika hero suites concurrently and at full capacity, while using “secondary suites” for the preparation of upcoming jobs. This way the hero suites and theaters continuously work productively and profitably.
ELEMENTS = more flexibility and fewer restraints
Aside from making sure that all workstations, including all Mistika’s, enjoy high-performance at all times, another essential criteria for Legend 3D was that all workstations would be able to access all media files at any time – without the need to shuffle files from one volume to the other. It goes without saying that running merely one streamlined storage infrastructure, dramatically simplifies administration and maintenance efforts. Especially with ELEMENTS embedded workflow tools, providing easy-to-use project, workspace, and user management is a breeze. With significantly more space under the hood than the previous setup, it is logical that Legend 3D can now operate more freely, knowing that they have lots more storage space available.
Black Panther
Having ELEMENTS ONE as our high-speed storage, we can confidently meet our industry’s demands at 4K and beyond!
Meetal Gokul, Director of Post Production
But in addition to providing fast, reliable media storage, ELEMENTS has integrated unique features that the experts at Legend 3D appreciate even more: “The Web GUI is one of the strongest aspects of the ELEMENTS,” said Meetal. “Very user-friendly and lots of flexibility. Finally, the design of the chassis is great too. It’s an elegant touch!”
We are thrilled to have Legend 3D as part of the ELEMENTS family and proud that some of the coolest and most sophisticated movies have been finished on one of our systems!
ELEMENTS ONE
