Post Magazine

February 2013

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getting real "Resolve is totally awesome," reports Faris, who is the main colorist. "It's perfect for reality programming because we can easily put a mask around things to blur sponsor and copyright issues. Resolve has one of the best trackers I've ever used and makes quick Sharp Entertainment: Avid editor Chris Young at work with Resolve colorist Liam Lawyer on Property Wars. and easy changes for color fixes." Season Two is implementing the same post workflow established with the show's debut season; a growing editorial team is now in place for the series. "We're proud of our workflow," says Faris. "It's well thought out and fast. It has to make sense for reality programming where you get hours and hours of footage — we get 40 to 50 hours per show in actual footage time. We can shoot one day and be editing segments the next." Season Two is being mixed at VSI Media in Connecticut, which also handles all the deliverables and international versioning for Discovery. The Division has in-house 5.1 mixing capabilities via Adobe's Audition software. The Division also produces Lynch for Hire, about odd-job men, which airs on MAVTV, and is pitching The Reel Life, a behind-thescenes look at making reality TV… at The Division! "We're excited about The Reel Life. We get a lot of people emailing us asking how we do our shows, so this is a partial answer," says Faris. "It's tech-y to some extent, but it's mainly a character show like all our programs. The Reel Life is a funny, goofy show set in a production company that's trying to make it." GEORGE TO THE RESCUE George to the Rescue, a weekly national home improvement show on NBC, features George Oliphant and a team of contractors and interior designers who travel the country rescuing the homes of deserving people. It's produced by LXTV, the network's lifestyle entertainment brand, and posted in facilities at 75 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. 18 Post • February 2013 Post0213_016-18,20-RealityRAV4finalread.indd 18 "We're our own island on the eighth floor," says post supervisor Mike Fernandes. "We have studio space, 30 SAN-connected machines and 15 to 20 floating edit stations." LXTV runs Apple FCP X, exclusively. Now in its fourth season, George to the Rescue began as a segment on the He and Yost do all the color and audio work themselves. "Once we started playing with the color tools, it was eye-opening," he reports. "We can do everything we need to do in the one application, and the show comes out looking great." The workflow is completely tapeless. Finished episodes are connected to servers for broadcast. "It's kind of shocking how smooth that is," Fernandes laughs. "You almost feel you're forgetting the keys when you're walking out the door…Did I send the file right? It's almost too easy." Fernandes, who handles all the post operations for the group, which also works on pilots and special projects, plans to roll out Final Cut Pro X to other programs soon. "Open House has started to integrate X into its workflow already," he notes. Open House series, then spun off as its own half-hour series. The 12 episodes currently in production will include a number of homes devastated by Superstorm Sandy. PROPERTY WARS & MANY MORE "We've grown steadily every year New York City-based Sharp Entertainand added other cameras to the ment (www.sharpentertainment.com) promix," says Fernandes. The show uses duces a large slate of reality and recreation three or four Panasonic DVCPRO HD cam- shows. Currently airing are Property Wars, eras recording to P2 media, plus GoPros on The United States of Bacon, My Collection equipment rigs and DSLRs for family profiles. Obsession and Rattlesnake Republic on DisIf shows are shot locally, operators return covery; Feed the Beast and Toy Hunter on to LXTV's facilities to offload the P2 media Travel Channel; Call of the Wildman on to the SAN-connected edit systems; on the Animal Planet; Doomsday Preppers on road they offload footage to external hard National Geographic; and Extreme Coupondrives and send a duplicate to New York — ing on TLC. Fishtank Kings for Nat Geo and 42TB of Promise fiber-optic storage are avail- Dates from Hell for Discovery ID are also able in the facility with another 120TB on in post production. hand in Drobo back-ups. "Cameras and network deliverables An assistant editor sorts through footage determine how post production follows while Fernandes and fellow editor Courtney through," says Lisa Brunt, Sharp's post proYost discuss the best way to tell the story. duction supervisor. "Each network has its "Shooting multiple cameras over two weeks own set of needs." gives us a lot of footage to shrink to 22 minutes," he notes. "We have a rough idea of the story, but when construction begins it can throw you some curve balls. We pull the best bites and the strongest moments." The editors migrated to Final Cut Pro X last season. "We can mix, master and color correct within the app itself," Fernandes reports. "There's less thinking about codecs: We cut natively or Final Cut Pro X creates optimized media for George to the Rescue: LXTV cuts on Apple's FCP X. you in the background. And X is really tactile: It feels kind of like cutting Sharp has an inventory of five Sony 16mm again — you work as quickly as you PMW-F3 and 12 PMW-EX3 file-based camthink. It's more organic. eras but still uses six Panasonic HDX900 "Dealing with all the codecs and camera tape-based cameras. GoPros are routinely formats, it's easy to get bogged down; that's integrated into shoots. a by-product of what we do. But the perk Property Wars uses EX3 cameras, offloadof X is that we can really concentrate on ing its SD cards onto rugged field drives, the storytelling." which are shipped back to Sharp headquar- www.postmagazine.com 1/23/13 6:52 PM

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