Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/34797
shows, and that’s often the direction I would get from a producer: make it look expensive. But once the economy hit the shitter, and nobody had any money, that became the opposite. I had one person say,‘Don’t make it look like a Fish Eggs graphic.We want it to look really clean and simple.’” Fish Eggs is a Mac-based facility, relying on Adobe CS4, including Illustrator, Photoshop and After Ef- fects.The studio also calls on Maxon’s Cinema 4D for the bulk of its 3D work. “I started real early in Cin- ema 4D,” Roe recalls.“I remember asking around, and Maya seemed like total overkill. Cinema 4D has grown some and more people have made models that adapt to it. It’s a lot easier to do some of the simple stuff [in 3D] as opposed to Maya. One guy here is fluent in Maya, but we still do a bulk of the work in Cinema, and it seems to work real well.” The studio has a small greenscreen set up for shoots, but Roe says since most of their work is for reality programming, which tends to shoot an exor- bitant amount of footage to begin with, they often receive material from the show’s producers and then add their own graphical treatment. Another trend Roe has witnessed is what he de- scribes as the death of the main title sequence.“The main title sequence is almost going away now.” He Fish Eggs recently completed work on a new competitive reality show called Expedition Impossible. Roe describes it as Eco Challenge meets Amazing Race, where teams of three have to get past different challenges in foreign lands. The first season takes place in Morocco. “They hadn’t shot anything and gave a general de- scription about what the show is about,” says Roe of the design challenge. “They didn’t direct us.They did say it was going to be in Morocco and they wanted some of that flavor, but the logo had to be generic enough that it could apply to different locations, sim- ilar to Survivor.The basis of the logo stays the same, but they adapt it to each location.They said they liked the idea that the logo wasn’t just text, that it felt enclosed and could envision it on a patch or some- thing like that.” Fish Eggs tapped into the culture of Morocco, and went with a textured, matte feel that was authentic and not at all glossy.“The main thing we came up with and eventually sold them on was that the logo was on a flag. Each team has to get to a flag — a lo- cation — and plant their flag, and [then] they are the winners. I don’t think they put the logo on flags for the actual shoot, but that was kind of the inspiration: a symbol that can sit on a flag.” IDS, PROMOS & MORE North Miami’s 2C Media (www.2cmedia.com) is a six-year-old facility that creates IDs, promos and long-form content — and sometimes all three at one time. The studio is headed by executive creative director Chris Sloan and his wife, co-president Carla Sloan. 2C Media is home to 10 Final Cut Pro suites running on Mac Pros. They also have five iMacs with FCP, Facilis TerraBlock storage and an HDCAM SR deck. Swamp Wars is a good example of a 2C Media’s clients include Fuse and MSG Varsity. sees show opens becoming more or less title reveals, especially in reality programming where characters are often cut early and mid-way through the season. This eliminates the need for introductions in many cases. “They’ll use [a] super tease to explain the show concept, catch you up to where you were be- fore, and then there is a logo resolve and they get you right into the show.” program that makes full use of the facil- ity’s resources. In addition to conceiving the show — which airs on Animal Planet and focuses on venomous snakes — 2C Media also produces and edits the program, as well as designed the open and created promos. Design director Luis Martinez says the 2C team shot snakes — including a diamond back and a python — against a greenscreen at a local insert stage using Sony EX and Canon 7D and 5D cameras. Maxon Cinema 4D was used for graphics. Sloan says that having all of the program’s elements under one roof helped when creating a package, as everything is right there to draw from. The studio also created two :10 IDs for Fuse that use the network’s “Where Music Lives” slogan. In the continued on page 47 www.postmagazine.com June 2011 • Post 19