Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/256240
22 Post • February 2014 www.postmagazine.com ally happened. But it's not all about the case — we also show the officers as human beings; we get into their world, go in and out of their personal lives. It's not just chases, jumping over fences and yelling, 'Freeze!'" Three camera teams manning Canon C300s ride with the units. Vixia cameras are mounted inside police cars and run continu- ously throughout the shift. The C300s also capture sit-down interviews and personal moments outside the job. Aerial photogra- phy gives the big picture of the entire city of Boston and its component neighborhoods. Each show features two or three stories. Dixon says the show's 14 episodes to date approached 9,000 hours of footage. Season two's six episodes consumed close to 20TBs of hard drive space. Before post begins, the field team lays out on paper how the units' stories might come together and how they might work well with each other. "We want to make sure there's a beginning, middle and end for each episode, so you see the arc of a character or a case," he explains. Footage is downloaded in Boston so the story pro- ducers and show runners can see how cov- erage is progressing. The camera cards are sent back and forth between Boston and New York. Footage from the cards was downloaded to drives in both locations so field producers can have footage in Boston and the post team can begin work in New York. Post takes place on Mac-based Avid Media Composers (V.6) with ISIS storage at Technicolor-PostWorks in New York City. The paper story treatments done in Bos- ton serve as a blueprint for Dixon and his team of editors, but they have the flexibility to move stories and characters to other episodes for a better fit. "Because we have so much footage, it's compressed to 14:1 SD for put- ting episodes together ; after the fine cut we up-rez to full HD," says Dixon. "The last round of notes is done in the full HD path." When the picture is locked, sequences are sent upstairs to colorist Eli Friedman for grading on Assimilate's Scratch. "We want the show to feel very gritty and real," says Dixon. "Eli's work adds the hallmark gritty, high- contrast look of the show by bringing out the richness of the color and deep shadows that the camera teams capture, espe- cially in low-light conditions dur- ing the night shoots." When Friedman finishes, sequences come back into the Avid for the final online with graphics and text, and marriage to the mix performed by Mike Fisher at Broadway Video. "We ask the Avids to do a lot and they've worked flawlessly for us," Dixon repor ts. "All the media manage- ment, this many hours, this many terabytes, going back and for th from SD to HD… The oppor tunities to mess up are huge, but it never happens." Donnie Wahlberg remains hands-on with the show, submitting notes for every episode to Jarrett Creative owners and executive producers Seth and Julie Jarrett. He also works with Dixon on the edit and records the voiceover. "We were TNT's first foray into the reality arena — they call it 'unscripted drama' — and we think we've turned out something they like and want to do more of," says Dixon. "There's a never-ending supply of stories to tell about Boston's Finest." I BRAKE FOR YARD SALES & MORE LA's Hula Post Production (www.hula- post.com) provides facilities and services for a number of reality series, which follow vari- ous models for post. HGTV's new I Brake for Yard Sales features celebrity reporter Lara Spencer hunting for stylish, one-of-a-kind pieces to decorate her friend's new home. The series, along with season three of HGTV's Flea Market Flip, has a "classic, simple, tape-based workflow," says Josh Rizzo, vice president of technology at Hula Post. "They shoot DVCPRO HD, so there are no piles of hard drives and very straightforward asset management. Each show uses a four-station digitizing rack we designed and built, and a 16TB Avid Unity, which expanded from the original 8TB fully- mirrored system. Each show has four or five Avid Media Composers and two or three software-only systems for producers and story editors to use on their workstations. "Footage rolls in, they're hooked to the Unity and keep feeding machines tapes at 20:1 resolution, which is the flavor of choice for reality programming because of the volume of media and shooting ratios," Rizzo explains. The shows' parent company, Banca Studio, also produces TBS's Deal With It, which has a completely file-based workflow. "We pro- vide them with 48TBs of nearline NAS stor- age for raw material and back up to LTO," Rizzo says. "They hook up multiple editing systems to the NAS and batch transcode in overnight renders to the Unity at 20:1. "In furnishing their edit suites and on-site tech support for Deal With It, we guide them through the offline and a bit of the con- form. They relink to the high-res source mate- rial and consolidate on a hard drive, so when they roll into the finishing bay, everything is ready to go," Rizzo explains. I Brake for Yard Sales and Flea Market Flip conform via tape off-site as part of the traditional online. Hula Post also sets up mobile post facilities for clients. One major producer of numerous reality shows has an "enormous installation" featuring 50 to 60 Avid systems and an 80-plus terabyte ISIS 7000, Rizzo reports. Yet another post model is followed by The Amazing Race, with whom the team at Hula Post has worked for its 24 seasons on the air. The production's offices in El Segundo, CA, boast 12 Avids and a 16TB Unity Media Net server. "They shoot XDCAM HD pri- marily, plus a large number of file-based camera sources such as the contestants' GoPros and helicopter aerials," says Rizzo. "We assisted them with a workflow that homogenizes all the file-based systems to an XDCAM disk with timecode. Our XD Direct product provides faster-than-realtime ingest of XDCAM proxy video with high- resolution audio. XDCAM really benefits them since they can archive the disks and treat them as files, so they get the best of both worlds." Hula also supports a hybrid model clients that purchase their own equipment, "We often continue to provide overflow Avid and storage rentals, day-to-day tech support, as well as our XD Direct and WorkflowEngine products," says Rizzo. "We see growth opportunities with companies that want to buy equipment but still need a resource for high-level technical and workflow expertise." Hula Post works on I Brake For Yard Sales, which is shot on DVCPRO HD. Posting Reality TV