Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/642315
www.postmagazine.com 23 POST FEBRUARY 2016 eams of contestants racing around the globe, treehouse owners with vistas of the stars, cooks competing to gain the approval of a caustic — if not outright demonic — ce- lebrity chef, and a medium who juggles the after-life with suburban life. Reality TV programming spans these extremes and many others. But, like all shows, effi- cient workflows keep them grounded in the reality of delivery compelling content season after season. TREEHOUSE MASTERS The astonishing arboreal structures showcased in Animal Planet's Treehouse Masters aren't the treehouses of your childhood. They're the treehouses of your dreams. The series, which is now airing part one of Season 4, launched in 2013 and features the work of Pete Nelson, world-renowned treehouse de- signer and builder. As can be expected from a show that spends a lot of its time in the treetops, Treehouse Masters poses special pro- duction challenges. Shooters man Sony PMW-300 XDCAM HD cameras as the primary cameras; a complement of GoPro Hero cameras are used for wide coverage in the trees and mounted on helmets and rope pulleys to capture unique viewing angles. Canon 5D MK III cameras are deployed for beauty shots of the finished treehouse, its interior and spectacular vistas. HeliVideo Productions flies one of its Octocopter drones, outfitted with a Panasonic Lumix GH-4 mirrorless Ultra HD digital camera, for 60-frame, full HD shots of the completed structure. Post production supervisor Rick Shirey, who joined the series in Season 2, says that post has remained the same since Treehouse Masters switched from Apple Final Cut Pro to Avid Media Composers with Avid ISIS 5500 shared storage short- ly after he came on board. Offline is done at Discovery Studios, Hollywood. "In the field, the DIT wrangles the camera cards and copies them to two sets of drives," he explains. "One of the shuttle drives is shipped to us in LA. This year we have six editors, one junior edi- tor/AE, two AEs, plus five story produc- ers and two story assistants." Episodes follow a basic story structure with Nelson meeting the client and dis- cussing the kind of treehouse he or she wants, hunting for the trees to support the structure, creating the design and building the treehouse. While the client T BY CHRISTINE BUNISH Animal Planet's Treehouse Masters uses a range of cameras, including models from Sony, Panasonic, Canon and GoPro. The show is cut on Avid Media Composer editing systems.