Simon Green, founder and CEO of EditCloud, on why cloud technology alone is only part of the solution for production transformation, how combining technology, talent, and training saved Come Dine With Me 25% of its production schedule, and why the creative experience must sit at the heart of any workflow change.
"I have no agenda. I have no building. My only objective is to ask: what are you trying to achieve?"
Why cloud is only part of the solution, and why the creative experience must sit at the heart of production transformation
Simon Green spent his career as an editor and production professional in the broadcast and advertising world before recognising that the physical infrastructure of the industry, studios, buildings, on-premise edit suites, was becoming a liability rather than an asset. EditCloud was conceived in 2017, before COVID accelerated everything, and was built on three pillars: agnostic cloud technology, the talent to use it, and the training to bridge the gap between the two.
In this conversation Green talks about the ITV Studios transformation, where EditCloud helped the production of Come Dine With Me, a format exported to 42 territories and made for twenty years, shift from traditional on-premise workflows to cloud, saving 60% of logging and capture time and making the overall production schedule 25% faster. He also talks about working with Walter Murch, the editor of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, whose observation that remote collaboration is not new, only the access to it has changed, became foundational to how EditCloud frames its proposition.
"I've always been an owner-operator. I've always worked in the production space in film and television and advertising. My craft was in editing. EditCloud came from within my production business. We were looking at doing a very big CapEx investment and Cloud was still out there but not many people were using it in commercial terms. We were like, why would we spend all this money when we can see the landscape was changing very quickly. We were early adopters of Cloud before anyone knew what the word COVID was."
Green describes a founder's instinct born from the specific experience of running a production business and watching the economics of physical infrastructure become increasingly hostile. The CapEx model of studios and edit suites that had underpinned the production industry for decades was becoming a liability rather than an asset as content demand grew and the tools to create it became cloud-native. EditCloud was the direct response to that observation.
"Technology only gets you part of the solution. At EditCloud, we're fiercely agnostic around building in the best technology that is out there. We can plug it in and plug it out. But how do we then connect that Cloud-based technology and put it in the hands of great talent anywhere in the world? And where appropriate, how do we train that talent? It's a combination of those three parts around technology, talent, and training that accelerates content creation but also democratises access."
The three-pillar model is both a product architecture and a critique of how cloud technology is typically sold. Most technology vendors sell the technology and assume that talent and adoption will follow. Green's experience as a production professional taught him that the creative community has a legitimate resistance to workflow change, rooted in hard-won expertise and genuine frustration with past bad experiences. Talent and training are not optional add-ons to the technology sale but the conditions under which technology transformation actually works.
"We worked with Walter Murch, the editor of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. We were talking about the future being virtual collaborative. He said to me, this isn't new. When I worked on Return to Oz, I was in London, I had my editor in Oregon, and we would systematically hold up the film to the light, synchronising over a phone. This was the first iterations of remote working and remote editing. It was a privileged few that had access to that. What we're seeing is the democratisation of the technology."
The Walter Murch story reframes the narrative of cloud production from disruptive innovation to democratising technology. Remote creative collaboration is not a new idea; it is simply a previously exclusive practice that technology is now making available to anyone. Green uses this frame to address the resistance of experienced professionals who see cloud workflows as inferior to what they have always done. The answer is that what they have always done was a physical approximation of what cloud now enables more easily.
"Come Dine With Me is one of ITV's biggest exports. It's in 42 territories around the world. It's been made for 20 years. They were doing it in quite a traditional way in their very tight shooting schedule. For us, being in cloud means you can get content in faster, you can get it out faster. We were basically able to save 60% of their logging and capture time. And for that show, it meant that we made the overall production schedule 25% faster."
The Come Dine With Me case study is EditCloud's most compelling proof point because it involves a well-established production with deeply embedded workflows and an experienced team. The fact that the transformation worked, and that editors who had been using on-premise Avid tools for twenty to thirty years went through a training academy and came out the other side saying this is brilliant, demonstrates that the resistance to change in production is not categorical but is about execution and experience.
"I have no agenda. I don't have a building. I don't have studios that I need to pay for. My only objective is to say, what are you trying to achieve here? It's quite refreshing working with teams to say, what are you trying to do? For ITV it was around sustainability, driving innovation, setting themselves up for the future. But of course it was also around productivity and efficiencies."
Green's vendor-agnostic positioning is unusual in the technology space and is central to how EditCloud wins trust with clients. Because EditCloud does not own studios or have fixed technology relationships it needs to protect, it can genuinely start from the client's needs rather than from a preferred solution. The willingness to give clients multiple options, including ones that are not the most commercially advantageous for EditCloud, is what produces the trust that makes large-scale transformations like the ITV Studios engagement possible.
"Great creativity comes from challenging times and limitations. That's where creative thinking really comes from."
Host For those that don't know EditCloud, give us a bit of a career journey and tell us what you have built.
Green I've always been an owner-operator. My craft was in editing. I worked across documentaries, live sports, advertising, social campaigns. I rode that wave of changes as brands became the new broadcasters. EditCloud came from within my production business. We were looking at doing a very big CapEx investment and Cloud was still out there but not many people were using it in commercial terms. For us it was like, why would we spend all this money when we can see the landscape changing very quickly. We were early adopters of Cloud before anyone knew what COVID was.
Host What accelerated your evolution and formation as EditCloud?
Green I've always been a big believer that necessity is the mother of all invention. I had a TV studio, a few post studios around London. We were working in LA through COVID. I was thinking, why have we got these buildings here that cost me a fortune? Actually there is amazing talent and amazing creative opportunities. The last five or six years I believe that great creativity comes from challenging times and limitations. That was the breeding ground for EditCloud.
Host What are the three pillars of EditCloud?
Green Technology only gets you part of the solution. We are fiercely agnostic around building in the best technology that is out there. We can plug it in and plug it out. The sweet spot for us is how do we connect that Cloud-based technology and put it in the hands of great talent anywhere in the world? And then where appropriate, how do we train that talent? It's a combination of technology, talent, and training that accelerates content creation but also democratises access, which we are particularly passionate about.
Host Tell me about the Walter Murch connection.
Green One of our early projects was a lifelong dream. We worked with Walter Murch, the editor of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. When I was at university I read all his books. We were talking about the future being virtual collaborative. He said to me, this is not new. When I worked on Return to Oz, I was in London, I had my editor in Oregon, and we would hold up the film to the light and synchronise over a phone. This was the first iteration of remote working and remote editing. It was a privileged few that had access to that. What we are seeing now is the democratisation of that technology.
Host Tell me about the ITV Studios transformation.
Green We have been working with ITV Studios in the Come Dine With Me production. It has been made for 20 years and is in 42 territories. They were doing it in quite a traditional way. In cloud you can get content in faster and get it out faster. We saved 60% of their logging and capture time. For that show it meant that we made the overall production schedule 25% faster. We had to train their teams from on-premise Avid workflows into Adobe workflows through our training academy. These were editors who had been on those tools for 20 to 30 years. They were self-confessed dinosaurs. We had a 97% satisfaction rating through our academy. The day after the editors finished, the head of production called and said, we are in. Let's do it.
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