Cold Collaborative, an Austin, Texas-based production company, has taken on plenty of bold projects, but none as demanding as “Call of a Lifetime.” Produced for the Life Time Grand Prix and presented by Mazda, this series attempts a near-impossible goal: Capturing 100-mile cycling races and releasing polished highlight videos within 48 hours.
These races unfold in remote areas, and the production crew gathers hundreds of terabytes of footage from chase cars, helicopters and motorcycles. Connectivity is limited, and synchronization is a constant hurdle. Yet Cold Collaborative found a way. With OWC’s portable network solutions — like the OWC Jellyfish Nomad — and fast SSDs, such as the OWC ThunderBlade, they built a workflow that keeps pace with the action.
Inspired by Formula 1
The original plan was straightforward. Cold Collaborative wanted more than a standard sports recap. Inspired by “Formula 1: Drive to Survive” (2019 – present), they planned a character-driven series that put athletes front and center. From the first shoot, though, they learned harsh lessons. A full day of filming yielded only eight minutes of usable content. Still, they pressed on.
Editor Blake Campbell dove headfirst into cycling culture. He’d tackled big projects before, but he had never covered a sport so spread out and unpredictable. Then, halfway through filming in 2023, their livestream partner pulled out. The partner found it too difficult to continue broadcasting in such remote settings. That forced Cold Collaborative to find a new way to keep viewers engaged. They tested same-day recaps in August of that year, filming from a helicopter and handing the raw feed to Blake. He cut a 15- to 20-minute highlight on the spot. The result was bare-bones — a single audio feed, two camera angles — but it proved that near real-time coverage was possible.
A critical turning point
Soon, they aimed even higher. At the Big Sugar race in Arkansas, they tried to juggle multiple cameras for a more detailed highlight. They ended up pulling an all-nighter to handle all the media. Syncing files and moving huge chunks of data under time pressure nearly broke the team. Afterward, Blake made a list of every bottleneck and realized they needed a more robust infrastructure. They determined that their biggest issue was storage and access to the footage they shot. This needed to be solved if they were to keep up with demand. Thankfully, they found a solution.
During the off-season, Cold Collaborative discovered OWC’s network solutions. The Jellyfish Nomad allowed multiple editors to tap into the same centralized server. This eliminated the hassle of swapping hard drives. By the 2024 season, they had a refined workflow. It wasn’t perfect. Internet outages still happened, but at least the team had a solid file management system. Footage came in, editors accessed it immediately and final highlights got out the door on schedule. They had a system that not only worked but was also manageable. And by the time Big Sugar in 2024 came around, they were ready and delivered. The difference between Year 1 and Year 2 was night and day.
The gear that made it all possible
The OWC Jellyfish Nomad
After discovering the OWC Jellyfish Nomad, Cold Collaborative found the flexibility they needed. Smaller than the Jellyfish Nomad but just as powerful, the Nomad is an essential element in Cold Collaborative’s remote setups. With this portable network-attached storage (NAS), the crew gained a portable SSD powerhouse that didn’t require advanced IT knowledge. They could show up to a race, open the Nomad’s case, plug in their workstations and be up and running in minutes. The system’s six 10 GbE ports gave each editor direct access to the same ultra-fast storage — no clunky adapters or messy wiring. For an on-location crew, that was huge. The Nomad took away the pressure of juggling extra switches or fighting weak Wi-Fi connections.
Productions like Cold Collaborative could also benefit from the OWC Jellyfish Nomad’s ability to handle raw footage. In Cold Collaborative’s case, with speeds of up to 6,000 MB/s, they could transfer hours of cycling highlights in a fraction of the time. That advantage freed editors to dive into their timelines without waiting on file copies or dealing with dropped frames. If they needed more capacity, the Nomad came in three sizes—16 TB, 32 TB or 64 TB raw. After accounting for performance buffers and RAID overhead, they still had a robust amount of usable space.
Cold Collaborative soon realized the Jellyfish Nomad could be just as valuable to any on-the-go team, not just those covering endurance events. With its minimal footprint and near-silent operation, the Nomad fits into tight edit bays or trailers in the middle of nowhere.
OWC ThunderBlade
However, Cold Collaborative’s setup challenges weren’t only tied to networks. They also needed portable, lightning-fast drives to shuttle footage between editors without wasting time. The product that filled that need was the OWC ThunderBlade. This compact, fanless Thunderbolt RAID SSD gave the team the speed required to handle uncompressed 4K and 8K files in the field.
With data rates up to nearly 3,000 MB/s, the ThunderBlade turned what could have been a 30-minute file transfer into a matter of minutes. That meant no one was left tapping their feet while offloading giant memory cards from chase cars or helicopters. Instead, the ThunderBlade’s rock-solid reliability lets them confidently move their most precious footage between sets and remote editing stations.
Having a single drive capable of both blazing transfers and reliable backup gave the team more room to breathe. They could wrap up a shoot, collect data on one ThunderBlade and hand it off for editing. If something happened mid-transfer, the built-in RAID helped keep their clips safe. And because it is bus-powered through Thunderbolt, they didn’t have to scramble for extra cables or adapters.
OWC Atlas
After adding the ThunderBlade to their workflow, Cold Collaborative needed a reliable way to record their media. They chose the OWC Atlas line. Designed for demanding shoots, Atlas CFexpress 4.0 cards can handle up to 8K RAW video or high-speed bursts without choking a camera’s buffer.
Atlas cards come in different tiers — from the Atlas Pro CFexpress Type B for up to 6K to the Atlas Ultra model for full-throttle 8K — so the team could pick the right card for each rig. Minimum sustained write speeds of up to 1,500MB/s meant no dropped frames and faster offloads at the end of a shoot. That kept production nimble and cut down on missed takes.
For Cold Collaborative, the OWC Atlas line — along with the ThunderBlade and Jellyfish Nomad — made all the difference in meeting 48-hour deadlines.
Defining a new standard
Not long ago, Cold Collaborative was scrambling to piece together eight minutes of footage. Now, they’re taming hundreds of terabytes, stitching together same-day or next-day highlights and telling deeper stories along the way. Their transformation speaks to a mix of vision, trial by fire and the right gear.
In the end, “Call of a Lifetime” stands as proof that the craziest ideas sometimes lead to the greatest breakthroughs. By partnering with OWC, Cold Collaborative met an extreme challenge head-on.
For these filmmakers, 48 hours is all they get to lock down a story that unfolds across miles of dusty roads. Yet, through a potent mix of passion, technology and grit, they’ve turned that constraint into a creative advantage. The result is a one-of-a-kind series that redefines what’s possible—and reminds us that sometimes, a tight deadline is the spark that sets true innovation in motion. And, with OWC’s support, they’ve created a roadmap for rapid-turnaround filmmaking that could reshape how we approach remote productions.
If you would like to learn more about OWC’s portable network solutions, you can go here.
Additionally, if you would like to see the Cold Collaborative finished project, you can watch it on the LifeTime Grand Prix website, which is accessible here.
