Remote post production

The time zone is the whole argument

South Africa sits two hours ahead of London, one hour ahead of most of Europe, two behind Dubai and three and a half behind India. That is an unusually useful position: there is a full working overlap with Europe, the Gulf and the subcontinent on the same day, and still enough offset that work handed over at the end of your day is waiting when you come back.

For teams in Dubai, notes sent at nine in the morning are being worked on by seven. For teams in London, a cut delivered at the end of the South African day lands mid-afternoon.

Where the work has actually gone

Projects here have delivered to clients and agencies in Dubai, India, Europe and the United States — property and lifestyle work in Downtown Dubai, manufacturing and pharmaceutical work for Indian companies including ACG and Vantage Nutrition, trade content for European exhibitions, and corporate work for international financial and FMCG brands.

None of it required being in the room. The individual project pages set out what each job involved.

How the workflow runs

• Rushes arrive by managed transfer, your cloud storage, or a couriered drive for large volumes
• Material is held on local storage with a second copy, so nothing waits on a download
• Cuts go up for review as compressed streams with timecoded comments
• Notes are worked through asynchronously; a day's work is delivered before your morning
• Calls are scheduled in your hours, not mine, and kept to the ones that need a call
• Project files are handed back media-managed, in your structure and naming convention

What it costs, and what it does not

R6,500 per day. There is deliberately no second rate for international clients: the number is the same for a Johannesburg producer and a Dubai agency, and it is not marked up for the currency it will be paid in.

For agencies outsourcing overflow, the maths is usually the point — a South African day rate against a London or Gulf one, with no loss of working hours to the time difference.

Material handling

Unreleased campaign material is treated as unreleased: no consumer file-sharing links, no work posted before an embargo lifts, and no credit claimed on anything delivered under an agency's name unless you offer it. Non-disclosure agreements are signed as a matter of course.