Post Magazine

February 2013

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getting real ters. Footage is backed up on larger drives on location and a back up is also made in New York. Material is ingested into Avid Media Composers 6 for editorial. "We bring everything in in high resolution and edit high resolution, so there's no typical online process for the up-res," says Magical Elves provides post for the Top Chef franchise, including Top Chef Masters. They edit in Media Composer 5 and mix with Pro Tools. 20 Brunt. "We have enough storage memory to permit this." Sharp occupies two floors at one Manhattan location and two at another; one location has an "older Unity that's still running strong," while the other has multiple EditShare storage systems for a total of 300TBs company-wide. Set in Arizona and following people who bid on unseen properties, Property Wars fields a camera crew for each bidder as they discover whether they've made a great buy or taken a loss. "There's a basic premise, but the show evolves during production," Brunt explains. Episodes develop further in post as editors seek "great moments" that enhance the spontaneity of the bidders' discovery process. Editor Liam Lawyer crafts the Property Wars shows and does some finishing. He's supported by editors Steven Santos, Emily O'Brien, Alfredo Mercuri, Eric Schatzman and Nicholas Vorolieff. Colorist Chris Young uses DaVinci Resolve for color grading working simultaneously with the audio review. Although Sharp has a 5.1 Pro Tools room for mixing, Property Wars is mixed at Pomann Sound in NYC. Sharp creates the deliverables required by Discovery and uses LTO tape to archive masters and file footage for the series. "A lot of networks have tweaked deliverables within the last year," Brunt notes. "Some that were behind with file-based deliverables have come out with new specs Post • February 2013 Post0213_016-18,20-RealityRAV4finalread.indd 20 — it's a transitional period for them." Along with accommodating changing deliverables, companies like Sharp must be nimble enough to incorporate changing camera inventories, too. "Our F3s needed Avid 6 to bring in footage natively," she explains. "The post workflow is always changing based on specifications of the camera, so we look into the back end of the process before we purchase cameras." lot of time on B-roll beauty shots, riding, transitions. In order to bring this show to life, the bikes and riding also need to be treated as characters on the show." The series has a totally tapeless workflow. The camera cards go right to a portable drive, which is backed up in the field. Then the footage comes to post where it is backed up again before importing into Avid. The Devil's Ride is posted in Bischoff Hervey's own LA facilities where two offline bays cut episodes concurrently. Footage is ingested at low resolution and assembled on Avid Media Composer 5.5.3 on Mac. "We do a lot of prep work, which makes post flow well," Vetri explains. "We research the club and the members' lives and come up with a plan so we can follow the stories as we shoot over four days for an episode. That's how I like to work on all the shows I do: put a lot of work into prep so you know what you're trying to accomplish by the time you get to post." After two rough cuts, notes and revisions, episodes are onlined on Avid Symphony Nitris DX, where footage is up-rezed and color corrected in what Vetri calls "a leanand-mean operation." The mix is done by 2 Pop Sound. "We spend a little extra time to amp up the bike sounds that identify this show," says Vetri. "After final review, we deliver on HDCAM SR so Discovery can get all the audio tracks they need. That's the only tape we use in the entire process." According to Vetri, the only problem concerning The Devil's Ride "has been a wonderful one: The network really likes the show and wanted to push the airdate up, so we THE DEVIL'S RIDE An executive producer/director with LA's Livin' The Dream Entertainment, LTDE, (www.livinthedreamentertainment.com), a content creation company he founded in 2006, Adam Vetri also works as a showrunner and director for hire. In addition to the current slate of programs in development at LTDE, Vetri has sold several reality projects to a variety of networks and a scripted comedy to Columbia Tri Star. He's now shooting a pilot he created for National Geographic. Vetri is also executive producer on Bischoff Hervey Entertainment's The Devil's Ride reality docu-series, set to begin its second season on Discovery this month. The show gives an inside view of the subculture of a San Diego motorcycle club. "Season Two is following the footsteps of the model we established for the first season. We set up a strong infrastructure for preproduction, production and post," he says. "It's a really good template for solid storytelling." The second season saw a change in acquisition formats from Canon 5D and 7D and Sony EX3 cameras to the Canon EOS C300 with EF lens mount. A number of GoPro cameras capture dynamic riding shots. "In the field the C300 gave us the option to use a variety of Canon lenses and had good monitor capabilities," Vetri says. "The lowlight capabilities let us shoot some The Devil's Ride: Producer Adam Vetri says the Canon really interesting night scenes. It also C300 "let us shoot some really interesting night scenes." had a built-in intervalometer, which made it easy to do timelapses." added more bays and brought in more He also notes that the C300 offered people. That's an exciting problem to have!" advantages over the 7D in post. "Having true Vetri pursues a similar post workflow for timecode, the XDCAM codec and the XLR his own content at Livin' The Dream, which audio inputs gave us files that were easy to uses post vendors for its programming. "It's import and sync up for grouping." an infrastructure I've used for many years," Vetri points out that "we want to capture he notes. "I tend to work with the same the raw reality of the club, but we like to make the show look amazing, so we spend a continued on page 43 www.postmagazine.com 1/23/13 6:53 PM

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