Pick any person out of a crowd – casual TV watchers, gamers, denizens of the internet – there’s a good chance they’ve seen BUCK’s footprint in some form. With a body of work encompassing 2D and 3D animation, as well as visual effects for live action productions, BUCK is one of the most significant global creative companies around.
Of course, managing such a vast library of work and media assets can be difficult. That’s why BUCK uses Simian to store and organize media, create demo reels, and ultimately win new business.
We spoke with Kevin Hall, Head of Production at BUCK, to get a better idea of how Simian improves BUCK’s workflow, as well as what it brings to the table that other platforms lack.
BUCK has been with Simian for a little over a year now. What was the catalyst to make the switch, and how has it been an improvement over what you were using previously?
We were using Wiredrive to send demo reels, but the lack of sophisticated tagging tools created an unorganized library that made the process difficult. While we knew having a tool for sending reels was important, we also believed having a well-tagged and curated library would have benefits outside of the demo reel process.
We made the switch from Wiredrive for a number of reasons. We could see right away that Simian had improved tagging tools that would allow us to first build our library, and then let that library feed the demo reel process. We also preferred the pricing model that charged based on storage rather than user count. This better fit the intent to build a library that many users would want to access without being charged extra for users who may or may not use the tool. And last, while trialing the tool, the support we got from the team made it clear that we were important to them. They helped us with the migration process, while quickly implementing feature requests we had!
Every Simian user uses the platform a little bit differently; what’s your method? How does Simian fit into BUCK’s workflow?
Our Executive Producer team uses the demo reel tool to help demonstrate our capabilities and win new business. Our Creative team can access and search our library of work to help flesh out our creative treatments and provide references.
What aspects of Simian do you find most valuable to your creative and new business processes? How important is it that Simian fulfills these needs?
Simple tagging tools that allow us to keep our library well tagged, along with an open API that allows us to utilize data across our organization.
How would you characterize Simian’s approach to introducing new features and enhancing existing features? What does this say about Simian’s regard for its users?
Simian is one of the only tools we’ve ever worked with that ACTUALLY implemented one of our feature requests! And it was done within days, not quarters!
How responsive have you found Simian to be? What’s your experience with Simian’s support?
I always get a response from our customer rep faster than anticipated.
If one of your peers at another studio asked for your thoughts on Simian, what would you tell them?
Just. Do. It.