The explosion of digital data storage is invaluable to us at Mann Made Media – not only for the operational value of instantly retrievable video and multimedia materials, but also as a service we offer our clients.

The combination of Apple Xsan and a robotic Tape Library makes Mann Made Media fly

When we talk about ‘corporate memory’ we are most often referring to the cultural history of a company or organisation. Too often this memory rests in the minds of older employees as anecdotes, or as tapes, pictures and documents locked in the physical archives of discarded boxes stowed away in dusty basement rooms.

In both instances unlocking the power of this resource can be haphazard and unproductive and so much of this innate value can lie untapped and inaccessible.

This is just one reason why the explosion of digital data storage is invaluable to us at Mann Made Media – not only for the operational value of instantly retrievable video and multimedia materials, but also as a service we offer our clients.

To date we have archived around 88 Terabytes of data since we started our digital archiving system just two years ago.  This is the equivalent of over 18,700 DVD’s. (If we had to archive that way, we’d need a stack of DVD’s about 260m high!) At DVD video quality, 88TB would be enough to hold just short of 6 years of continuous video.

To put this in perspective, it is estimated that the total Internet traffic for the year 1993 amounted to approximately 100TB.

But the real value of archives is what you can do with them, and when you consider that the Apollo 11 Landing Module needed just 74KB of memory to land on the moon you can appreciate what we can achieve with vision, creativity and a vast library of visual resources at our command.

Which is why we’re happy to see this vast repository of client collateral as one small step for Mann, one giant leap for Mannkind!

Mann Made Media is proud to announce that they have bagged the full-time services of experienced and multi-award winning Creative Director, Nick Warren…

Mann Made Media is proud to announce that they have bagged the full-time services of experienced and multi-award winning Creative Director, Nick Warren. As the Group Executive Creative Director of VWV between 2005 and 2009, Nick brings a wealth of experience, creative vigour and strategic insight to Mann Made Media.

Having worked with Mann Made Media on a number of hugely successful projects (including the nationwide Standard Bank Roadshow and the Toyota Dealer of the Year Gala) over the past eight months on a project basis, Nick is now in a position to accelerate the company’s recent move into the broader eventing and experiential market.

Born in Chester, England, and graduating from Brookes College, Oxford, Nick has been a professional writer for over twenty years. Having worked as a senior writer and creative director for the advertising and events industry for the past 17 years, he has also worked on TV comedy and dramas, as well as educational programming for radio and TV.

Many of his plays have been professionally produced around the world including London, Sao Paulo, Dublin, Krakow, Copenhagen and Johannesburg. Most recently, his play The Trojan Women was produced off Broadway in New York.

Nick has received a number of awards including the Writer’s Bursary from the Arts Council of Great Britain, a clutch of international awards for Takalani Sesame radio and TV, a small flock of Loeries for his experiential work, and the international Philip Pullman Young Minds Book of the Year Award for his memoir Thirty Years in a Turtleneck Sweater.

Nick is excited by the opportunities presented at Mann Made Media. ”It’s great to work with a solid team of inspired people who are unhindered by the weight of experience. They are constantly coming up with astounding, original and technically innovative ideas that they have the skills and the energy to bring to life. I am enjoying myself, and looking forward to the future.”

Nick’s appointment signals a new era for Mann Made Media, as a wealth of creative and strategic experience is coupled with the company’s legendary passion, technical innovation and creative fearlessness. This new formula offers a refreshing alternative to those experiential clients looking for high quality, cutting-edge creative and production services.

All too often, a sales convention or a training intervention is limited to the time and the venue of a conference…

All too often, a sales convention or a training intervention is limited to the time and the venue of a conference. But how can we maximize the client investment and create real and long-lasting value for the organisation?

This was the question posed by our clients at Standard Bank PPB Africa after we produced their recent Sales Summit. As usual with creative clients who want to push the envelope, the brainstorm results were surprising and exciting.

We conceived a multimedia pack of written materials containing instructions, questions and feedback forms, together with a call for video and stills footage feedback and commentary from all members of our video audience right across Africa.

The core idea is that rather than passively watch the video productions, the audiences are invited to give real usable feedback in multimedia formats that will be broadcast on internal TV. It will also create real on-the-ground feedback data that can be used in future conference gatherings, and finesse the sales activities of all countries in the future.

Once again we are fortunate to be working with an innovative client who is looking for cutting-edge thinking from their communications partner. We are delighted to be moving forward together.

It’s not often one gets to meet international movie megastars that you’ve never heard of, but Aki and Pawpaw from Nollywood are exactly that…

It’s not often one gets to meet international movie megastars that you’ve never heard of, but Aki and Pawpaw from Nollywood are exactly that. With over 100 movies to their credit and a fanatical following throughout Africa – including South Africa – these movie icons draw crowds wherever they go. Which is why Mann Made Media client, AG Cellular, uses them to promote their phones and airtime contracts.

The problem for AG Cellular was that they just weren’t getting the most value out of the relationship and so we were called in to leverage some opportunities. A quick brainstorm ensued with the two diminutive giants of stage and screen resulting in two TV commercial ideas, a Diski Dance session, a photoshoot and plans for an ongoing Mobile TV comedy drama series!

AG Cellular was working under extreme time pressures and so – true to form – Mann Made Media set up a full studio shoot featuring stills and video cameramen and crew, lighting, sound, props, costumes, and a cast of Diski Dancers… for the very next day!

For the Mann Made Media team, one of the most interesting and rewarding experiences of working on this project is in discovering and leveraging an absolutely massive market of consumers and talent that was previously unknown to us.

Look out for Aki and Pawpaw appearing on an AG Cellular mobile screen near you soon.

We have just completed a major upgrade of our post production facilities. Our centralised Apple Xsan storage volume has now been doubled in capacity to just under 23 Terabytes!

We have just completed a major upgrade of our post production facilities. Our centralised Apple Xsan storage volume has now been doubled in capacity to just under 23 Terabytes! The new increased capacity is immediately available across all our edit suites and office workstations. The upgrade has also increased the speed of our network, and adds redundancy for extra reliability in case of hardware failures. Meanwhile, our “offline” archive has grown to around 30TB (and another 30TB duplicate is kept “off site”). This is a library of LTO data tapes where we store all our completed jobs. In case you didn’t know, Mann Made Media can restore any job in a matter of minutes, no matter how big. And since we store an exact “snapshot” of the final project – including raw footage, project files, design work, documents, provided material, etc. – we can open a job that was completed months or even years before, and start work on it again as if we had closed it only yesterday!

We manage our post production facilities as a state-of-the-art data centre, and take reliability and security very seriously. For example, did you know that all jobs are “ringfenced” by a permissions-based system that ensures only authorised staff (including freelancers) are allowed to “see” the job they’re working on? We also set up our systems to enforce strict policies about external media such as writeable discs and flash discs. So your company information is always safe in our hands.

To ensure that we are able to deliver to our clients 24/7, with no delays, our system has all kinds of redundancies built in. Hard drive failures, power failures, server crashes, even RAID controller failures – all these are catered for, and our system will carry on running in the event of multiple problems.

Finally, all our data is backed up to a separate system every single night, automatically, and copies are taken “off site” every week, for added security. Even if we were to suffer a major system crash or any other catastrophe, our post production facility would barely stumble – and your deadlines won’t be compromised.

Mann Made Media recently concluded a Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment verification process…

Mann Made Media recently concluded a Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment verification process, and we are proud to announce that we have been awarded a BBBEE status of “Level Three Contributor” by the National Empowerment Rating Agency (NERA). You’ll find a copy of our BBBEE verification status confirmation letter here.

We have once again refreshed our website design. We are still powered by Wordpress, but with a brand new look…

We have once again refreshed our website design. We are still powered by Wordpress, but with a brand new look and some great new features. Enjoy!

We have added a page on our site called Making a Difference, which talks about our commitment to charities and good causes. Well worth a look, if you want to see the sorts of values behind our company.

We have added a page on our site called Making a Difference, which talks about our commitment to charities and good causes. Well worth a look, if you want to see the sorts of values behind our company.

Mann Made Media now has a new website, powered by Wordpress. We’ll be expanding this rapidly over the next few weeks.
For now, enjoy some of our latest and greatest productions in the “Recent Videos” panel, above. And feel free to leave comments on our site.

Mann Made Media now has a new website, powered by Wordpress. We’ll be expanding this rapidly over the next few weeks.

For now, enjoy some of our latest and greatest productions in the “Recent Videos” panel, above. And feel free to leave comments on our site.