Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1014407
47 Q3 2018 / CINEMONTAGE effects and audio runs so deep that he will often sit with the team and ask them to experiment, even doing temp audio mixes, just so he can have the sensibility "of someone in tune with the picture," including his evaluation of the soundtrack, visual effects and more, according to Kraut. Costantino elaborates that this approach is particularly helpful to everyone involved in the show's post process in terms of getting each episode to the finish line. "Seth's a human jukebox; he hears audio fields," Costantino explains. "He knows the boundaries of who does what, and we don't cross-pollinate. But his input literally helps everybody's position on the back end to save the edit — and save himself some headaches — because, after all, it's a marathon and not a sprint." The Orville's editing home includes seven in-house Avid workstations, plus an iMac used as a dailies transfer station. Thus far, editors have cut the show using Avid Media Composer v.8.9.3, but revealed at press time that the production was in the process of upgrading to version 2018.5. For media storage, the team has been using 45 terabytes of Avid ISIS storage, but recently converted over to the Avid NEXIS storage platform. Crucial plug-ins include Sapphire and BCC for Avid effects, Mocha for tracking, plus Photoshop and ScriptSync, among others. They also use Shotgun as their visual effects database and various custom apps for translating Avid data into that database. The editors say that ScriptSync — the dialogue search-and-sync tool for Media Composer — is central to helping the team efficiently track and monitor the orgy of assets they have flowing in and out of their system. "ScriptSync's scripts are the same as ours, very detailed," says Wills. "Bart and I do it manually, so we are very careful to catch every reset, every line. We color-code things, so if someone doesn't finish a sentence, for example, that's a different color. It is a big help for me; if I'm helping Tom with something, I go to the script before I go to the bin, because it's so much more detailed and easier to find stuff." The Orville also features a well- oiled visual effects pipeline for one of television's more effects-heavy shows in the sense that it utilizes in-house visual effects editorial and producing teams, as well as a few on-site effects artists, with Kraut serving as a form of glue between their work and what the principal editors are doing along the way. "In television specifically, the visual effects editor is largely becoming sort of a finishing editor — not in terms of going in and changing edits but, for example, in terms of knowing where and how to help the picture editors solve particular problems," Kraut explains. "It can be hard on a sci-fi show to time when to have or not have a laser blast, for instance. So a frame here, a frame there; I work with the picture editors to make sure it all gets dialed in. We have to figure out ways to get things done, because sometimes the studio or producers will request things at the end of the process. "We don't have the luxury of waiting for an episode to be completely locked before handling visual effects," Kraut continues. "So we all have to be hyper-focused on detail Scott Powell.