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www.postmagazine.com 46 POST SEPTEMBER 2014 Didn't you also create a Howard the Duck character for the end credits? "Yes, we were on a conference call with Marvel, and they said, 'We need you to build a character.' Then the artwork came in and I was like, 'Oh my God, they're bringing Howard the Duck back.' So, they basically said they had the artwork [for Howard the Duck] and they needed it in one shot, and we had to build a character. And honestly, talking about what's impressive, the engine room was absolutely impressive, but we built a character that had cloth, fur, it was animated, talked, every- thing. In two weeks we had fi nal renders — from start to fi nish. All we got handed from Marvel was a piece of artwork, an image. Animate it, model it, texture it and they needed it right away. But that's the stu I love. Honestly, just watching people of di erent skill sets work together to fi gure out a solution of how to get something done so quickly and successfully." CONTINUED FROM PG 25 GUARDIANS reviews you could watch online were on YouTube: teenagers in their underwear in their moms' base- ments," he recalls. He felt there was room for an "interesting, contentious and intelligent discussion about movies" and made a short pilot. He shopped it around, and a network encouraged him to do one or two shows a week as a Web series. He admits that his team lacked technical profi ciency at the time, and the network ultimately passed on the show. But his team decided to stick to it and perfect Just Seen It on the Web. They fi ne-tuned the show and posted episodes on YouTube, which started to generate more interest. Southern California public television began to carry the show, and Freedman learned "how expensive it is to put together a half-hour broadcast show with closed captioning" for a local market with limited advertising. After three months he pitched Just Seen It to national public television, which agreed to o er the series to a l- iates. "Once that happened it really dropped our costs," Freedman says. The show became one of the fi rst in public television history to be digitally delivered; it's in its seventh season and just added the public TV World channel to its outlets. Freedman says that Just Seen It was "kind of a hobby when it started as a Web series two years ago. Then we had to step up our game [for public television]." The studio shoots migrated to Panasonic 1080 HD cameras and added "more sophisticated sound, lighting, production values, post production and graphics." Editors have been cutting on Apple Final Cut Pro 7, but will be changing over to Premiere shortly. A roster of nine industry professionals — pro- ducers, directors, screenwriters, actors and critics — reviews movies and television programming for Just Seen It on an LA studio set. Four segments comprise a show; one segment each week or every other week is devoted to a special industry interview, such as a recent talk with Hercules direc- tor Brett Ratner. Freedman believes that for a Web series "to be successful out the door it has to keep costs down to a bare minimum while looking professional so it can di erentiate itself and achieve some longev- ity." That's no mean feat. "Don't over-produce," he advises. "Pick a theme, a premise and stick to it. And make it look great. You need a great idea, good execution and the money to fund it for a few months. We were extremely ambitious at the beginning and wasted money we shouldn't have." Web content that stands out from the crowd will fi nd its audience and, potentially, viewers be- yond the Internet, too. distorted audio; Declick & Decrackle to remove clicks, pops and vinyl hiss; and Remove Hum for eliminating bass frequencies and their harmonics. In addition the RX3 Advanced also has iZotope Insight to help users comply with loudness stan- dards; Radius for time stretching and pitching shifting; SRC for changing sampling rates; Dither for bit rate reduction; Gain & Normalize to increase and attenuate signal level; a six-band parametric EQ; Channel Operations for adjusting phase and delay; Spectrum Analyzer to detect and display signal peaks; Batch Processing to process multiple fi les simultaneously; Compare Setting; and third party plug-in support. In all, it includes lots of powerful features that seemingly make it a global favorite in the industry. The RX3 Denoise tool is Fry's go-to solution for cleaning up background noise. For example, on the series, A Young Doctors Notebook, starring Jon Hamm and Daniel Radcli e, there were many exterior snow scenes that were actually done in the studio using snow machines. Using Denoise, Fry was able to reduce the machine noise to a point where everyone was happy. "Once I added wind sound e ects back in, the snow machines couldn't be heard." Fry uses the RX3 during the pre-mix phase. After the dialogue editor has assembled the track, Fry typically processes it using Denoise, Declick, and Spectral Repair. Recently, he mixed the TV se- ries Youngers, which is shot near Heathrow Airport in London. The Spectral Repair feature allows Fry to remove specifi c frequencies, which was really helpful when dealing with planes fl ying overhead. "Using the Spectral Repair, I could see where the plane sounds were in the dialogue, and I was able to completely get rid of them. It was phenomenal. The clients were amazed when the sound of the planes just vanished," he says. Fry also recently mixed a PBS series called Your Inner Fish. Often, the location recordings were captured in noisy labs. Fry cleaned up background noise on the host's dialogue track using Denoise. In addition, Fry says, "I used the Declip tool be- cause some of the sync sound was a bit distorted, just from a fault with one of the microphones. De- clip removed most of that. It was pretty amazing." Fry mentions that his award-winning col- league Nigel Edwards, head of sound at The Farm Group, also uses iZotope's RX3. Currently, Edwards is using Denoise to clean the dialogue tracks on a series he's mixing called The Hon- ourable Woman, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal. Fry says, "Everyone here uses iZotope RX3 and we all love it. Compared to other restoration tools, there's more control with the RX3 plug-ins and they seem to be more forgiving. They seem to remove more noise without producing as many digital artifacts." CONTINUED FROM PG 35 WEB SERIES CONTINUED FROM PG 39 FAVORITE AUDIO TOOLS Just Seen It began as a Web series and is now seen in 140 markets nationwide on public television.