Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1208556
UNSCRIPTED TV www.postmagazine.com 18 POST JAN/FEB 2020 There were audio challenges to overcome as well. Handslip says that when the team was in Bhutan, they needed to film the kayak team paddling unsup- ported each day. "The sound recordist had to rig a system that could run independently for 12 hours," she says. "The kayak team stopped regularly to scout each set of rapids — this meant that the mics had to be rigged so they could get in and out of their kayaks without dislodging the mics." For these types of conditions, mics need to not only be waterproofed, but be able to withstand com- plete submersion. "The kayakers often rolled underwa- ter and the mics had to continue recording immedi- ately on surfacing without any loss of coverage." All sound was recorded to a Zaxcom device and then downloaded at camp each night. The team had a small generator to power the laptop and drives for the media download. Once the media was offloaded onto mirrored LaCie Rugged hard drives (the Zaxcom SD cards were backed up onto the LaCie's as well), media was copied from the LaCie Rugged hard drives onto master G-Technology G-RAID drives and all media copied onto shared storage at the post facility. All post is completed at UK-based Films at 59. Post producer, Miles Hall, walks us through the workflow. "The material is uploaded to an ISIS network here, at proxy resolution for the edit, which is all done on an Avid," he says. "Then we link back to the high-res media that was kept on the LTO 5 or 6, and then that was restored for each of the online processes of the media. That was all done in Avid and then we did an AAF workflow from the Avid in a Baselight system, where it was graded. Then an AAF back into an Avid for the final online process- es. Audio is similar, as we receive an AAF from the edit with laid time tracks in the edit, we track in Pro Tools and then we mix on the Avid S6 desk." According to Hall, one of the biggest challenges the post team faces is the grading. "The principle part of the grade is to try and tie the material from the different cameras together — and create a sense of atmosphere. There were certain shots, the wides for example, where we tried to make quite cine- matic. What is key in the grade is basically trying to make the cameras match. "Really the colorists' biggest challenge on this show was trying to keep those various cameras and shots together, (and) create a coherent piece, so it didn't feel like you were looking at lots of differ- ent shots. A sense of place and narrative, not only within sequences but between sequences. So that's really the colorist's art really, in anything, to try and create that sense of uniformity and to maintain the narrative so that it doesn't seem disjointed, which I think they did really well here. I think the results were great." Hall also points to audio challenges, for both the production and post teams, saying that anything received from a location took "quite a lot of work to make usable whilst sort of keeping it real and supporting the idea of jeopardy and excitement of the show. A lot of work was done on ensuring that the sound quality was there — sound noise reduc- tion was done to make sure that all the location sound was audible and clean as it could be. We obviously waned to keep the sound audible, but without taking away the colors, the rough edges. We wanted to make sure that we didn't do any- thing that was too highly polished, and kept our sense of place of atmosphere." B IG G ES T & B A D D ES T In the wildlife adventure series, Biggest & Baddest, biologist Niall McCann gets into some dicey situ- ations as he investigates human-animal conflict around the world, brought on by global warming, deforestation and human encroachment into wild places. Season 3, which is produced by Gryphon Productions/Wild Planet Productions for Bell Media/ Animal Planet Canada and ITV Studios Global Entertainment (which also handles worldwide sales outside Canada & the US) and is distributed by Dick Clark Productions in the US, will begin airing first in Canada on March 26th, with dates pending for the US and worldwide. Writer/director/executive producer Peter von Puttkamer, who has spent much of the past 35 years dedicating himself to bringing audiences content that he feels makes an impact on the world with his company Gryphon Production Ltd. (www. gryphonproductions.com), is behind the production and post on the series, while also working closely with post house 24 Frames Digital Films (www. 24frames.ca) in Vancouver, Canada. Here, he talks with Post about some of the show's biggest chal- lenges technically, as well as the various dangers the crew faces while capturing footage amidst some of wildlife's most threatening creatures — such as polar bears, King Cobra's and alligators — and in some of the planet's harshest environments. "I certainly don't want to downplay the danger on the production side of the job — other than ma- rauding polar bears, elephants and gators, we have venomous snakes to deal with at every turn," says von Puttkamer. "We acquire special medical evacua- tion insurance to chopper us out of most situations — as long as the bite and venom time limit is dealt with in time. "Most of the time, we're out of harm's way. But when we're walking in the jungle, where the tigers are, or walking at night on the leopard trails or the elephants, you know, there's always an element of danger and risk involved in this kind of production. We did this one segment with Niall in a storm drain, and it was one of the most dangerous things we've ever done. It was a little crazy. With global warming, Editing is performed on an Avid. Expedition media is offloaded to LaCie storage.