Case Study: Titmouse
20 Episodes in 16 Weeks
In February of 2009, Titmouse received confirmation that MTV was picking up its pilot, DJ and the Fro, a creator-driven mixed media animation series that weaves viral web videos into a narrative plot. The production deadline was very aggressive: 20 episodes in 16 weeks.
“It was a big undertaking,” says Hend Baghdady, MTV’s producer of DJ and the Fro. “We had one week’s notice to set up 30 computers, a new network, the workflow, and we had to figure out how to divide and conquer the storage and server system and read and write accesses.”
To accommodate the production and an estimated crew of 35, it was necessary for Titmouse to acquire a new space in a building a half a block away from their facilities.
Titmouse president and co-founder Chris Prynoski hired DZ Solutions to help him ramp up production. “We had to hit the ground running and we knew DZ Solutions is really good at deploying quickly,” said Prynoski, who has a long history of working with DZ Solutions. “We needed workstations set up really fast, and DZ Solutions knows our requirements.”
Foresight, Speed, Scalability
In addition to setting up workstations, DZ Solutions was responsible for connecting Titmouse’s servers to the new building.
“It was a daunting task,” explains Mike Shellenbarger, DZ Solutions’ Support Engineer working onsite at Titmouse. “We had to run fiber optic cable from one building to the next, upgrade the switch that routes all of our network traffic, purchase new Mac Pros and Cintiq tablets for the artists to draw on, install Ethernet for all of the work stations, purchase new software, and install the software on all of the computers.”
Fortunately DZ Solutions’ President and Founder Tom Gilsenan had the foresight to construct the switches to accommodate more users than were expected. This worked out well for Titmouse.
“Initially we thought the crew would be about 35,” explains Prynoski, “but because of the short production schedule, what we needed was 55. Tom always constructs your switches to handle twice as many people as you think you need because before you know it you’ll need them, and we did need them really quickly and were able to grow into it without doing much additional work.”
DZ Solutions was able to set up production for DJ and the Fro over just one weekend, and were on hand to provide maintenance and additional creative solutions to the show’s unique challenges.
“This show is almost two shows in one—there’s the story part of the show with the characters and then the cutaways of them watching internet videos,” explains Prynoski. “Normally when you set up a writer’s room, all you need is Final Draft®, but these guys needed fast wireless networks to screen internet clips while writing to them. Wireless versus wired is always harder to set up when you’re dealing with multiple people, but DZ Solutions was able to do it and satisfy the writers’ requirements.”
Mission Accomplished
“The wheels are in motion, the train’s left the station and there haven’t been any bumps,” says Baghdady about her experience working with DZ Solutions. “Everyone said it was impossible. We produced 16 episodes in 20 weeks without any media crashes, no files being overwritten and nothing going offline. Nothing’s gone wrong because of the set up of the system—we never reached beyond capacity. Everything worked beautifully which was the only way we could have pulled this off.”
About Titmouse
Hollywood-based, full service animation studio Titmouse specializes in traditional animation using the latest in state-of-the-art digital techniques. Titmouse produces shorts, commercials, cartoons and other animated works, including Adult Swim’s Metalocalypse.
