How the makers of Shogun unite a global manufacturing staff

The highly anticipated TV show trusts Bluescape’s secure workspaces to connect 400+ crew members and break down barriers in remote production.

About Shogun

Shogun is an upcoming limited FX series based on James Clavell’s best-selling 1975 novel. The show follows a shipwrecked English sailor, an ambitious daimyo, and a mysterious samurai woman as their fates are intertwined.

It was previously adapted by NBC as a 1980 miniseries starring Richard Chamberlain. Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo are co-writers on the project, with Marks also serving as executive producer.

Create a rich, authentic world with a scattered crew

In a pre-COVID world, it was much easier for costume and set designers to meet in person. Casting directors could actually shake hands with their potential stars. Traveling to the Scout locations wasn’t that cumbersome. Now studios are forced do all of these tasks virtually.

Shogun is set in 17th century Japan and requires a detailed and historically accurate setting with an international cast. The key challenge in creating a television series of this size in a digital-first environment is managing the amount of content and the people who interact with it.

When Shogun’s geographically dispersed production team could no longer gather in the same room, Bluescape filled the void.

“With Bluescape we can make mistakes faster and correct them faster.”

– Justin Mark, Executive producer of Shogun

Overcome the barriers of television production remotely with Bluescape

Bluescape provides an infinite virtual workspace that doubles as a meeting room and storyroom where casting, costume, design and other teams can see and discuss all of their content in a collaborative environment.

This content view is not possible in content storage solutions such as Box, Microsoft One Drive, Google Drive or in other solutions that require the content to be opened file by file. Bluescape gives the team a bird’s eye view of their work and the ability to break it down to the smallest detail. By sharing work and collaborating in a virtual workspace, the Shogun Team is able to access the best talent, make faster decisions and increase the visibility for their leadership.

“If the information isn’t in Bluescape, it doesn’t exist.”

– Justin Marks

Bluescape allows the shogun casting team to make decisions about talent even though they are miles apart. The shogun costume team evaluated hundreds of designs simultaneously; Quickly browse, reference, and compare clothing options in your Bluescape workspace. In addition, Bluescape makes it easy to visualize a full range of choices and decision history to easily coordinate actions and resolve differences.

The Shogun team can now focus on finding the best talent no matter where they are. For example, the costume team was even able to win over one of the most influential costume designers in Japan, who was “in the” Story room“Anytime, regardless of the 17-hour time difference between Japan and LA. Bluescape’s virtual workspaces make it possible to expand the team, improve its performance and reduce production costs at the same time.

Bring the big picture to life

With Bluescape, Marks is able to quickly showcase workspaces created by the arts, set, costumes and props departments to instill the care needed in constructing a historically accurate and emotionally evocative fictional world to key stakeholders is expended.

Despite immense and unprecedented challenges, the Shogun crew coordinates an interdisciplinary group of creators in a distributed environment via Bluescape. The first creative review within the Bluescape workspace gave everyone an “Aha!” A moment when they can visually communicate intentions and make decisions quickly, even when they are spread around the world.

“This show would not have been possible without the technological solutions we discovered during the pandemic. Bluescape offered us a virtual meeting room for access to people we would never have reached before the pandemic. “

– Justin Marks

The immediate results were groundbreaking. Even as production resumes personal activities, Bluescape is embedded in its expectations for efficient, high quality work and will continue to form the basis for creative collaboration on content for future productions.