Enabling Easy UGC Collection for Special Operations Studios and Fiona Apple

Who Is Special Operations Studios?

Special Operations Studios is a commercial arts and entertainment company that provides creative, production, and post services for blue-chip corporate clients, and has produced music videos for big name artists such as Beyoncé, James Taylor, and Fiona Apple.

Frederic Brehm, co-founder of Special Operations Studios, recently directed Apple’s first music video in a half-decade for Pretrial (Let Her Go Home) – an emotional piece that draws attention to the issue of pretrial detention in the U.S. justice system. Special Operations Studios also co-produced the video while Mo Rabani, Ian Park, and Christian Mroczka handled editing.

The team, however, decided to take a somewhat different approach than most music videos.

“Putting a $2 million music video together didn’t really make a lot of sense,” Brehm says. “So how do we make this an authentic expression of what the song is about? My thinking was that if they could just give us their camera roll, I could make the whole video out of that.”

🏆 Special Operations Studios Highlights:

• Founded in 2017 in Brooklyn, NYC; offices in Baltimore and Los Angeles.
• Works with clients such as the New York Times, Amazon, Samsung, Nike, and Heineken.
• Provides a range of creative, production, and post-production services, from branding and strategy to ad campaigns, branded content, motion graphics, color/retouching, and sound design.

The Challenge: Collecting, Ingesting, and Tracking UGC From Non-Technical Users

The video collaboration involved Scott Hechinger, owner of Zealous (a criminal justice reform nonprofit), and Fiona Apple, who, along with being a well-known musician, is also passionate about criminal justice reform.

However, a traditional, high-budget music video felt inauthentic for the song’s message.

That’s when they reached out to music video production veteran (and MASV client) Frederic Brehm of Special Operations Studios.

• Brehm suggested a documentary-style video using user-generated content (UGC) from women detained pretrial.
• Zealous had access to a network of women willing to share their real-life footage and stories illustrating the impact of pretrial detention.

But several challenges remained, including how to collect hundreds of GBs of video footage from women without advanced tech skills (and sometimes even without access to a computer), get legal sign off, and ingest it into storage with minimal manual intervention.

Challenge #1: Efficiently collecting UGC from non-technical users in a browser

Brehm says his fellow collaborators were initially very concerned about ensuring any content collection workflow was accessible to people without a computer at home, and without needing to install software applications.

“Submitters had to be able to go on their phone, in the browser, select their camera roll and just press ‘go’” without technical issues or complicated processes, he says. “If we were to have sent them a Dropbox or Google Drive link, we would have been adding a lot of steps.”

Challenge #2: Ingesting media to storage without manual steps

Collecting thousands of video clips, then manually ingesting them into multiple storage destinations, is a time-consuming process that’s inefficient and sometimes even error-prone.

To ensure the UGC content ingestion process to storage went as smoothly as possible, the workflow required easy-to-set-up, no- or low-code integrations with Special Operations Studio’s Frame.io account and on-prem QNAP network attached storage (NAS).

Challenge #3: Permissions and Administration

Collecting UGC is one thing. Legally using that content, however, is quite another – and as we showed in MASV’s State of User-Generated Video Report 2024, many brands use UGC without getting permission from content creators (or just outright steal their content).

To ensure they had legal clearance, the collaboration needed an easy, fast way of setting up a terms of use form for the women to acknowledge before submitting content.

Challenge #4: Tracking media (and uploaders) throughout the production process

Brehm says he knew they’d be working with a ton of media – and he was correct. More than 4,000 clips were uploaded by around 45 women, with some uploading their entire camera rolls.

The production team required a simple way to quickly identify that footage by themes linked to song lyrics (such as work scenes, father figures, or grandmothers) during the production process, along with file transfer and management visibility tools to help organize content for editing.

The State of User-Generated Video 

UGC can be a powerful tool, but its unauthorized use is pervasive: Around half the creators we surveyed have had their content stolen.

Learn More >

The Solution: A Drag-and-Drop Upload Portal With Cloud Integrations and Custom Forms

As a MASV client for years, Brehm says he immediately knew the solution to the team’s workflow challenges: A MASV Portal as the linchpin of the project’s content collection phase, along with cloud integrations and other features.

“As soon as we came up with the idea, I was like, ‘give me five minutes.’ I went on MASV and spun up a Portal,” he says. “Setting up a MASV Portal and integrations with Frame.io and QNAP NAS was literally a five-minute process that completely defined the way we did this project.”

Drag-and-drop MASV Portals that work from a mobile device

The team deployed a MASV Portal for collecting UGC directly via browser without requiring app downloads. To keep things professional looking, Special Operations Studios had its designer apply a unique background and the company’s logo to the Portal.

• The Portal enabled easy upload from mobile phones, addressing any concerns about accessibility and tech skills.
• Setup was quick and user-friendly on both technical and user sides.
• No major upload issues were encountered; users found it easy to submit content.

“We were prepared for potential issues,” he says. “But it was such an easy thing for people to use. The fact that there are no apps or installations was huge. It was completely seamless.”

Cloud and connected on-prem integrations

After spinning up a pair of integrations in minutes, the MASV-to-many workflow was set: When content was uploaded to the MASV Portal, it was sent to both Frame.io and a QNAP NAS automatically.

• Content was auto-transferred securely to the QNAP NAS editing server without requiring files to be manually moved, allowing editors to see the files in storage as soon as they were uploaded.
• The MASV integration with Frame.io allowed Zealous and Fiona Apple’s teams to view, comment on, and categorize footage remotely in real time.

“Fiona and Zealous could see the content coming in in real time,” he recalls. “And even if I wasn’t in the studio, if I was waiting for the train and some footage showed up, I’d get a notification and could start marking it up right then and there.”

Custom forms for legal sign off

A MASV custom form containing legal terms of use was deployed within minutes to ensure proper consent and legal clearance. File transfer logs and CSV files generated by the MASV platform helped the team closely track uploads by creator, simplifying the compliance process.

“I’ve never had such a smooth legal clearance, especially with thousands of pieces of pieces of media,” Brehm says.

Persistent metadata and file transfer visibility tools

MASV’s metadata and file transfer visibility tools didn’t just help with compliance – custom forms were also vital for tracking the names and contact information of uploaders. Marking footage by themes linked to song lyrics (such as work scenes, father figures, or grandmothers) helped organize content for editing at every step.

“It was great,” Brehm says, “because the uploader’s name is the name that shows up in the folder on Frame.io, which really helps keep things organized,” with any metadata attached to files being retained throughout the post-production process.

The MASV Dashboard and activity log were also critical tools for tracking uploads throughout the process.

“You can see which person uploaded what, at which time,” he says, “which is important when you’re working with labels, because you have to keep everything really above board and show where you got all your content.”

The Result: A Powerful Statement For Social Justice – and a Smooth UGC Workflow

The approach taken by Brehm and the rest of the team created a powerful, authentic narrative by combining multiple women’s stories into a visually stunning video. The project gained significant press coverage due to Fiona Apple’s involvement and the social justice theme.

Brehm says that without MASV, getting such a project turned around as quickly and easily would have been a lot less feasible.

• MASV Portal, integration, and file transfer automation setup was quick and user-friendly on both the technical and user sides.
• No significant upload issues were encountered; users found it easy to submit content.
• The platform’s compliance features and workflow integrations were critical to project success.

This use case exemplifies MASV’s value for UGC collection, or any file transfer workflow requiring the ingestion of large video files, Brehm says. The ease and speed in which MASV tools were spun up was a huge enabler of the project.

“It meant that we were able to get our footage faster, which meant we could start editing faster.”

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