TMT Insights: A Day in the Life Series with Jake Russell
Jake Russell discusses the skills and solutions needed for success in the M&E industry
TV Tech is publishing an exciting new sponsored content series, “A Day in the Life ….,” developed and hosted by TMT Insights, in collaboration with the Global Media & Entertainment Talent Manifesto. This new series focuses on the evolution of skills needed for success in today’s cloud-focused, hyper-competitive Media & Entertainment (M&E) industry.
The “A Day in the Life …” series will highlight a diverse group of M&E professionals who share their stories of career development, as well as the challenges and rewards of adapting to a constantly changing market landscape. In the series’ first edition, Jake Russell, TMT’s Director of Media Solutions, discusses the importance of standards, what drew him to M&E, the value of the proper mindset, how the cloud “changed everything,” and what’s on his wish list for M&E’s future.
TVT: Describe your current role.
JR: In my role as Director of Media Solutions, I design, configure, and test the deployment of media workflows and tooling, mindfully navigating new content delivery specifications and profiles for global distribution and providing media engineering and operational support across the content lifecycle.
The way I see it, I am a part of a team that bridges a variety of groups from traditional content operations to development/engineering and IT serving as a “beacon” for future-proofing supply chain workflows that support industry best practices within the organization. For some clients, this means that I’m configuring more efficient workflows that optimize the supply chain, for others I may be involved in a cloud media asset workflow migration initiative. What I most commonly see day-to-day is the tight collaboration with technical content operations. For those running in production, my role may also encompass “triage”, working hand-in-hand with engineering and product teams to identify the root cause of systemic errors, such as why the tooling isn’t locating a source master asset, or diagnosing and implementing fixes for a specific transcoding profile.
TVT: What sparked your drive to go into M&E, and what continues to fuel your passion?
JR: I was attracted by the intersection of creativity and technology. I didn’t know if I wanted to be a colorist or visual effects artist, but I really liked the engineering aspect of M&E combined with the exploration of limitless creative possibilities. It’s quite rewarding to be tasked with maintaining the quality of an artist’s original vision when a piece of content is played back in the cinema or from the comfort of someone’s home. I’m a part of making that happen in terms of content distribution.
TVT: As the industry continues to migrate from on-prem to the cloud, describe how that has impacted you directly and the work you’re required to fulfil?
JR: With the ongoing shift to cloud-based workflows, we’re working toward faster time-to-market and scaled content distribution. Cloud adoption has enabled more agile and scalable workflows, but it’s also driven a shift in mindset towards solution-oriented problem solving and continuous innovation.
The transition from linear broadcasting to multi-platform, on-demand content distribution has increased the complexity and scale of media supply chains, requiring more automation, API integrations, and cloud-based infrastructure. It’s placed the focus on strategies for optimizing media workflows and leveraging automation, such as normalizing inbound inventory, building reusable transformation profiles, and using cloud-based scalability. It’s critical now to have a holistic view of the end-to-end supply chain to identify opportunities for efficiency and reduce manual intervention.
It doesn’t mean everything needs to change all the time, but we should always test things and kick the tires, no matter what it is. It comes down to fostering curiosity, engagement, and excitement. Many of our industry’s most innovative products were born from operational challenges that we see within the industry, leading us to ask, “there’s a gap there, maybe we can create a nice tool that people would actually use to advance their business.”
TVT: What does your average day look like?
JR: My role requires being a bit of a Swiss Army Knife. Any given day involves a mix of technical, operational, and strategic tasks. One day often packs in a variety of internal and external efforts spanning from client meetings about an implementation for our operational management platform, Polaris, including a review of the delivery workstreams, project milestones, and additional internal collaborations that ensure maintenance of spec documentation, as well as a continuous cycle of configuration and testing of the content profiles being deployed. This will of course ripple across additional 3rd party tooling being leveraged within the technology stack; such as Dolby Hybrik, Adobe Premiere, Interra Baton, Closed Caption Converter to name just a few.
Additionally, since the pace of innovation is rapid, I always try to carve out time in my days to stay up-to-speed on the latest technology and how that will impact my day-to-day. For example, in this role 5 -10 years ago, having a strong understanding of Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud applications was still a “nice to have” – fast forward to today and a deep understanding of those cloud applications as well as maintaining familiarity with software coding frameworks such as Django/Python is a critical “must have” for the role.
As most others I’m sure can relate, I can start my day with a well-organized to-do list and by 10:00 am that list is already out the window, but that’s part of the fun when you’re playing in both the operational and R&D sides of the business.
TVT: Is true transformation all about technology? What role does mindset play?
JR: Shifting to the cloud forces you to rethink the way you’ve always done things and become more focused on problem-solving. It’s almost as if the traditional constraints are now removed and your ability to iterate, test and innovate has multiplied exponentially.
With rapidly accelerating advancements in media supply chain technologies, everyone is more cognizant of the value they can add to organizational growth with the right tools, and the right mindset. Now the mindset is about continually delivering outcomes: “We’ve got to deliver over the in six months, let’s figure out what we can start building and iterate. Embracing change and uncertain or evolving requirements while remaining flexible and agile. All while being prepared to adapt and reprioritize based on current needs and feedback.”
TVT: What’s on your wish list for the M&E business?
JR: Everyone’s doing their best , but there’s still too much variation in distribution specs, despite all the great work towards standardization by organizations like MovieLabs and their 2030 Vision, or other industry bodies encouraging adoption of standards like SMPTE and EIDR. Having visibility across all operations, with data and insight, is the future.
We have also only barely scratched the surface of AI and ML in terms of how these transformative technologies can complement what we do, from identifying library issues to inventory control to localization and translation.
These are the future areas of focus, combined with a solution-oriented, action-driven mindset to address evolving requirements, that will really help drive our industry forward, with everyone thinking outside of their own sphere.