Behind the scenes on The Brutalist

How Signiant Media Shuttle helped create an Oscar-buzzed workflow that stretched across continents for The Brutalist.

Signiant sent this one in to us and we liked it enough that we're reproducing it pretty much as is below. Effectively it details the challenges that Budapest's Post Office Films faced working on The Brutalist; including transferring 15+ terabytes of daily footage, managing over 700 terabytes of total footage, and supporting remote editing spanning Budapest, New York, London, and Sydney, all while navigating tight deadlines. 

Post Office cues

Based in Budapest, Hungary, Post Office Films is a vital post-production hub for global productions. Known for handling high volumes of data and complex workflows, the company collaborates with teams and partners across continents, providing services from editorial to dailies to final delivery. Their ability to manage such intricate processes has made them a go-to partner for ambitious and complex productions.

  “I founded the company just trying to make a post-production company that suits editors’ needs,” David Jancso, editor and owner of Post Office Films, reflected. “It started as a band of five editors. Today, [we’re] a hub for productions — American, Japanese, Australian — wherever.”

This international expertise has earned Post Office Films a place on several highly acclaimed projects, including Pieces of a Woman and The Monkey Man. However, Post Office Films and David Jancso are much more than just service providers. Jancso, who also served as the editor for these films, brings a creative vision to their work. Their latest endeavor, The Brutalist, earned widespread critical acclaim and received prestigious accolades, including Golden Globe wins and Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Film Editing. 

And Jancso is adamant: they could not have reached the finish line without the help of the Signiant Platform.

Voluminous production, global team

35mm & 70mm printing for The Brutalist

The Brutalist is one of those rare films that comes along once in a blue moon. Everything about it is oversized — from its ambitious runtime to the sheer production scale. Shot on 35mm VistaVision, the film spans over three and a half hours and generated more than 10 million files to create it.

 “It was shot on VistaVision, so it’s eight perf 35mm — the equivalent of 70 millimeter — and scanned as 6K DPX files. We’re talking about 15 terabytes a day!” Jancso said. “The scans of the original footage were over 700 terabytes.” 

As the project progressed, production began moving across the globe, requiring the editing media to be moved efficiently, securely, and reliably. This is where Signiant proved indispensable, ensuring smooth transfers and helping the production stay on track despite its global complexity.

“We started editing in Budapest, we moved to New York, then we moved to London. Then back to Budapest. We had to upload the DPX files to the VFX vendors in London, but the material was in Budapest; our sound team was all around the world — in Adelaide, in Sydney, in London,” Jancso recalled.

The sheer global scale of The Brutalist posed logistical challenges that would have been insurmountable without a robust file transfer solution. With terabytes of data generated daily and team members spread across multiple continents, seamless collaboration was crucial. The production demanded not just speed but precision, security, and reliability at every step — demands the Signiant Platform was uniquely positioned to meet.

For The Brutalist, Post Office Films utilized all three types of Media Shuttle portals — Submit, Share, and Send. 

• Submit portals facilitated one-way submissions from the film lab to the dailies lab, ensuring materials were delivered securely without granting access to the destination’s contents. 
• Share portals acted as collection points for editors, gathering editorial materials and distributing offline versions.
• Send portals enabled the seamless transfer of materials to the London VFX team and audio teams in Australia.

The adoption of Signiant Media Shuttle transformed Post Office Films’ workflows, enabling global teams to collaborate seamlessly. However, as the team approached the film’s completion, the demands of creating countless international versions posed an even greater challenge. 

Global deliverables

The final Avid timeline

Managing the global deliverables for The Brutalist required round-the-clock coordination across time zones, with teams in Sydney, Los Angeles, and beyond, needing constant access to large amounts of footage. 

“For the Venice Film Festival premiere, we barely finished the edit. We were still in the mix and to push terabytes to be recorded onto film. Everything was last minute,” Jancso said.

Physical solutions like FedEx shipments and LTO tapes proved unreliable, often arriving too late to meet critical deadlines. The production team again turned to Signiant to push the necessary materials efficiently and without delays, ensuring the project could move forward seamlessly despite the high-pressure environment.

“You're talking about 24-hour standby time, and everybody has to be constantly awake and constantly have access to all this footage. At a certain point, we said, ‘Okay, we're pushing everything through Signiant.’

“As an artist, that type of freedom kills me,” Jancso continued, “because the directors can make a last-minute change. As a business owner, it’s so much less of a headache because ‘Okay, fine,’” he said. “It’s great that there's so much time to fiddle till the last moment.”

Getting the film premiere done was daunting, but when it came to versioning, that is where global workflow complexity came in. 

“For The Brutalist, it was triple times as crazy as normal,” Jancso recalled. “One lab was creating 35mm. Another was making 70mm, and of course, there were digital copies that went around.

“It was a very international film, so the constant DCPs going back and forth for reviews,” explained Jancso. “That was quite intense. We had to make versions for each distributor: A24, Focus Features, and Elevation in Canada. There's SDR and HDR, and different aspect ratios — 1.66:1 for the film; there’s a different version for TV. I can’t even tell you how many versions there are. The delivery is still going on.”

The race to complete The Brutalist in time for its premiere was a test of endurance, creativity, and technical precision. With countless versions of the film to deliver — each tailored for different distributors, formats, and regions — the stakes were higher than ever. Signiant proved to be the backbone of this global effort, ensuring every file, every version, and every deadline was met without compromise. But as daunting as these challenges were, they underscored the vital role of technology in enabling ambitious storytelling. The experience offers a clear takeaway: seamless, reliable workflows are essential for modern filmmaking on this scale.

“Because of the global partnership, there was no other solution than Signiant to have this film be done in the way it has been done,” Jancso said. “Every other platform is just not adequate enough for this.”

Seamless workflow; complex project 

The Brutalist serves as a testament to the power of technology in overcoming the complexities of modern filmmaking. From managing immense amounts of data to enabling seamless global collaboration, Post Office Films relied on Signiant to keep their workflows efficient, and their teams connected. 

“The world has gotten smaller, especially after COVID, where a lot of remote work has formed into being really remote,” said Jancso. “We’re sending to Sydney, Tokyo, LA, New York, and that’s a constant thing now. I have yet to work on a project that isn’t at least two to three continents.”

Today’s production footage is no longer just about transferring dailies or proxies. With the help of Signiant, original camera negatives, high-resolution film scans, and countless other production elements are seamlessly integrated into the global file transfer equation, ensuring teams can handle even the most complex workflows with ease and efficiency. 

“It’s one of the most useful tools for us, especially in this globalised world,” Jancso explained. “For shoots and dailies creation, post, deliveries — I don’t think any company could live without it, honestly.”

tl;dr

• Post Office Films in Budapest faced significant challenges while working on *The Brutalist*, including transferring over 15 terabytes of daily footage and managing a total of over 700 terabytes, all within tight deadlines while collaborating across continents.
• The film, shot on 35mm VistaVision, generated more than 10 million files and required efficient, secure media transfers as production moved from Budapest to New York, London, and back, involving various teams worldwide.
• Signiant Media Shuttle facilitated this workflow by providing three types of portals: Submit for secure file submissions, Share for collecting and distributing editorial materials, and Send for seamless transfer to VFX and audio teams.
• As the project neared completion, the team relied on Signiant to manage global deliverables efficiently, overcoming the unreliability of physical shipping methods to ensure timely access to large volumes of footage across different time zones.