The “Frankenstein” Workflow is Killing Your Post-Production
(And AI Won’t Save You)
If you’ve ever lost an hour trying to find the real “final_v3_for_real.prproj” file or waited all morning for a Slack reply just to get an asset, you already know post-production is fundamentally broken. We keep throwing more storage and shiny new tools at the problem, but it’s often just making things worse.
Recently, Projective CEO Derek Barrilleaux joined the Formula Media Community podcast, hosted by Jason Pomeranz and Conner Stirling, to talk about exactly this issue. His take was refreshingly blunt: stop chasing point solutions, stop getting distracted by AI hype, and start fixing your project foundation.
The Hidden Cost of Context Switching
Most facilities build their workflows reactively. You need more space, so you buy a new NAS. You want remote access, so you tack on Teradici. You need review tools, so you buy Frame.io. Before long, your media is scattered across a half-dozen platforms, and your editors are paying the price.
Derek calls this the “Frankenstein” workflow. But the real casualty isn’t just a messy server, it’s time. Every time an editor has to stop cutting to hunt down a file, their creative flow is shattered.
“A couple of our customers were basically saying that up to 20 hours a week per editor were spent just looking or waiting. First off, think about that. That’s half of your working hours.”
This is the silent killer of post-production. It’s not just the five minutes it takes to locate a file; it’s the mental tax of context switching that turns a 9:00 AM task into a 1:00 PM task.
Stop Buying MAMs for Work-in-Progress
When storage fills up or files get lost, the knee-jerk reaction is often to invest in a Media Asset Manager (MAM). But as Derek points out, a MAM is built for finished assets and archives. Pointing an expensive MAM at thousands of transient, in-progress files is a recipe for a polluted database.
What creative teams actually need is a Production Asset Manager (PAM) like Strawberry.
A PAM sits right where the messy, chaotic work happens. Instead of manually navigating a maze of shared servers, an editor simply opens a project in Strawberry, and the correct workspace, complete with exact folder templates and access rights, mounts directly on their machine. It doesn’t matter if they are cutting in Premiere, finishing in Resolve, or mixing in ProTools. The storage is unified, and the push-and-pull of duplicating files across servers is practically eliminated.
The AI Reality Check
In an industry currently obsessed with artificial intelligence, Derek’s stance is incredibly grounded. While Projective utilizes media intelligence to power features like visual search, he refuses to market the company as an “AI startup.”
Why? Because AI is useless if your underlying data is a disaster. You can’t just point an algorithm at a deeply unorganized, siloed storage network and expect magic.
“The gap between real value to the business and what’s being promised and discussed in LinkedIn or at trade shows, it’s a big gap. And so I think a lot of customers are wise to wait and let the dust settle a bit.”
The pragmatic takeaway here is simple. Before you start worrying about how AI is going to revolutionize your facility, get your house in order. Secure your content, standardize your project structures, and stop forcing your editors to act as file clerks. Once you have a coherent foundation in place, you’ll actually be ready to extract real value from the technology of tomorrow.
Watch the full video podcast below:
Published: 22 September 2026