Case Study: Cinema Mercantile achieves faster final cuts and real-time client collaboration with Hightail

Cinema Mercantile - Customer Case Study

Cinema Mercantile is a New York–based documentary and cinematic portrait studio run by director/cinematographer Mike Collins and producer Rich D’Elia. While filming a months-long project documenting Jane Motorcycles (and producing short-form portrait series like Sixty Second Cinema), the team generated large amounts of footage and struggled with slow, unreliable workflows — shipping hard drives, delayed edits, and no consistent client review process.

By switching to Hightail Spaces they uploaded raw files directly to editors, enabling same-night cuts (turning a weeks-long turnaround into days) and used real-time, in-context commenting to speed revisions. High-quality compression, versioning and customizable Spaces gave clients a professional review experience, reduced overhead and costs, and let Cinema Mercantile deliver polished work faster and more efficiently.

Cinema Mercantile

Mike Collins

Founder