As the LA Phil neared its 100th anniversary, the monumental task of digitizing, organizing, and cataloging a century’s worth of performances emerged as a critical priority. Reese, drawing upon her extensive experience in TV and film, identified the pressing need for a comprehensive digital asset management (DAM) system. This system was envisioned to act as a centralized digital repository, ensuring the preservation of these invaluable assets and making them globally accessible online.
Alongside the task of integrating the vast collection of existing assets into the newly implemented DAM platform, the challenge of efficiently ingesting newly created content presented itself. The prevailing process was exceedingly manual and time-consuming, resulting in a bottleneck that placed significant strain on the team, as they struggled to upload new content swiftly, leading to an ever-increasing backlog. This issue was further complicated by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which introduced the complexity of a remote workforce into a system that had previously relied solely on an on-premises infrastructure and workflow.
How CHESA Helped Them
Enter CHESA, a name familiar to Reese from her previous industry experience, tasked with discovering the current pain points and bottlenecks within the current systems and workflows. The initial phase involved CHESA identifying specific pain points, user stories, and functional requirements through a comprehensive onsite discovery process alongside the LA Phil team. This involved engaging all stakeholders in detailed discussions, whiteboard strategy sessions, and site surveys to thoroughly capture their needs and the environment.
CHESA’s analysis showed that the LA Phil predominantly relied on “AJA KiPro digital recorders,” paired with nine strategically placed cameras, to capture content and ensure broad coverage of performances. This setup adequately fulfilled the fundamental requirement of recording camera streams to disk. However, it did not meet the advanced need for funneling all streams into a unified collaborative storage solution, nor did it facilitate remote access or collaborative workflows.
Upon completing a comprehensive discovery, the CHESA Solutions Architect team devised a custom solution. This approach was informed by the wealth of data gathered and capitalized on CHESA’s diverse technology portfolio, which has been meticulously curated over years to align with shifting industry dynamics. Key among these dynamics are the growing demands for enhanced cloud connectivity, as well as the development of cloud-centric platforms and workflows, designed expressly to support the exigencies of remote work. This endeavor was characterized by two critical deployments: the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Hollywood Bowl, each tailored to the distinct nuances of the venues and their operational dynamics.
CHESA
LA Phil is an internationally renowned orchestra led by Music and Artistic Director, Gustavo Dudamel. LA Phil is home to the iconic Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, an The Ford amphitheater, representing a hub of musical excellence and innovation. Celebrating over a century of musical artistry since its beginning in 1918, the LA Phil has grown from a city symphony into a global ambassador of diverse musical genres.
Under the direction of Senior Information Technology Manager, Meredith Reese, the organization embarked on a transformative journey to digitize its vast archives of audio and video recordings, with a goal to ensure their preservation and accessibility for future generations. 
“The discovery process was educating, especially with the new territory of cloud captures and camera-to-cloud workflows… CHESA presented the idea of a live proof-of-concept, which allowed us to learn and improve with each concert recorded. This hands-on, agile approach enabled us to see immediate results and continuously enhance our system.” 
