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roof," says Gruskin. "We have a team-oriented relationship with Broadway Video. They've cre- ated a fantastic environment for us in terms of technical support, Avid support and working with us as we developed our workflow. We did it very much hand in hand with them." Leopard has three editors working on the Shed Media US (www.shedmediaus.com) produces and posts a number of reality programs, including America's Supernanny, Bethenny Ever After…, The Real Housewives of NYC, Baseball Wives and All American Muslim. The company uses Panasonic HDX900s for acquisition, shooting DVCPro HD. Editing is performed via Avid DX. Most of the shows are delivered in HDCAM SR, but some, such as Housewives (pictured) are sent as digital files. the final programs. Broadway Video was the post production home for the show, which took approximately three months. "We knew we needed three contestants per epi- sode, and were hoping to get up to eight contestants in a day," says Gruskin of the production. Pumped! is shot using five cam- eras — three tape-based Panasonic HDX- 900s capturing DVCPro HD, and two hid- den cameras — small HD Sony models that record to memory sticks. The show has a crew of nearly 30, who set up tents out of sight, behind the service sta- tion. This includes an office area and several non-Leopard members that focus on compli- ance rules for the game aspect of the pro- gram. According to Gruskin, all five cameras have wireless microwave transmitters that send signal back to a truck for monitoring and direction. The show was not switched live, however, and instead comes together in post. The small Sony cameras do not record timecode, so the team overcame that issue, in part, says Gruskin, by running time of day for reference purposes. "We were able to keep track of when things were done, but they had to be manually synced in our post workflow," he explains. "We had to deal with that separately." Leopard rents four Avid Media Composer suites and some additional office space at Broadway Video. They bring in their own edi- tors for the offline, and then Broadway's Anthony Verderame provides online and color correction services. The audio is posted at Broadway Sound, with Sean Canada hand- ing the mix. "It's all being done under one show. Doug Fitch handles a rough assemble, which Gruskin says is pretty straight forward as the story is very linear. "Then, that gets turned over to two heavy duty editors (Jason Alberti and John Cirabisi) who finesse it and polish it up, and get the pacing right. In the meantime, our assistants are working on the graphics. We have a tremendous amount of text in there." Graphics are built in After Effects by Justin Kavoussi, Tim Watson and Aubrey Myers. The show is shot in 720p but is converted to 1080i 59.94 for the Avid edit. A deinterlace filter is later applied. Leopard Films creates an HDCAM SR master for its archive and deliv- ers a 720p 59.94 D-5 tape to the network with a Dolby Surround soundtrack. Leopard Films credits also include show- runner Julian Locke, head of post Ilene Meren- stein and post producer Jennifer Langheld. PING PONG PRODUCTIONS Brad Kuhlman and Casey Brumels set up Ping Pong Productions (www.ppong- productions.com) in Los Angeles about five years ago, and have had success producing and posting unscripted programs that might be categorized as mysterious or paranormal. In addition to SyFy's long- running series Destination Truth, the studio also pro- duced Cartoon Network's Dude, What Would Happen and Discovery's The Super- naturalist. At press time, Ping Pong was posting the second season of Finding Bigfoot for Animal Planet. The show centers around a team of four researchers who follow up on reported sightings throughout North America. The first season of Finding Bigfoot was shot over 10 weeks and consisted of six episodes. Season 2 will fea- ture eight episodes, some of which have already aired, with the studio working to www.postmagazine.com Post • February 2012 27 deliver a new show pretty much each week. According to Brumels, there are a number of challenges the studio faces in producing the Animal Planet program. For one, the team travels to different locations through- out the country for each episode, so just the logistics of getting the crew and gear from Los Angeles to the area of interest takes coordinating. Another challenge comes from the shooting conditions. Each episode involves nighttime shoots that make use of both night-vision and thermal-imaging cam- eras — all tools that the investigators use in hopes of capturing Sasquatch imagery. None of the cameras record timecode, which affects post production down the road. continued on page 46 Ping Pong's Finding Bigfoot airs on Animal Planet. Editing is via Avid Media Composers.