HUGE FILE-BASED PRODUCTIONS
MOVING IMAGE THE APPRENTICE
Delayed to avoid conflict with the general election and then Big Brother, the sixth series of The Apprentice began its 12 week run in October with another set of candidates pitting their business acumen against each other and testing the judgment of Lord Sugar. Talkback Thames took the series away from tape and SD, shooting mainly on XDCAM HD at 50Mbps with some additional EX material at 35Mbps. Both the hi-res and low-res rushes (130 hours per episode) are ingested simultaneously from the Professional Discs. Talkback then access low-res proxy files from six Cinergy logging stations at its Newman Street offices and Evolutions retain the hi-res versions for later conform on a 40TB ISIS. “At Talkback, production editors view, log and begin to group clips such as interviews together and
HANDLING CLIPS FOR
assemble cuts so that when it’s transferred over to us the editor has a good headstart,” explains Evolutions’ workflow specialist Gary Bradbury. “The Cinergy is simple enough to be used by anyone unfamiliar with edit systems but it is also intuitive for those familiar with Avid since it has drag and drop functions similar to Avid’s.” An EDL (as AAF) is imported from Cinergy and relinked to the original media in the conform, which takes about a day in contrast to the much longer batch capture from tape of previous series. Offline proceeds in seven Media Composer suites at Evolutions, with a grade in Baselight, finishing on Symphony and audio mixed in Avid Pro Tools. “We’ve now have an identical workflow for series seven since series six worked so efficiently,” says Bradbury.
THE APPRENTICE • Hi-res & proxy clips ingested into Avid & Cinergy • An identical workflow is being used for series seven
“At Talkback, production editors view, log and begin to group clips such as interviews together”
GARY BRADBURY Workflow specialist EVOLUTIONS
MOVING IMAGE ESCAPE FROM SCORPION ISLAND
The Foundation’s adrenaline-fuelled CBBC game show Escape From Scorpion Island, shot on location in Queensland, Australia, required extensive organisation and tracking of file-based rushes.
Series four and five of the series, totalling 28 hours, were shot simultaneously over a month on 12 Panasonic P2 cameras and a variety of portable mini-cams. Rushes from the P2 cards were copied to a Rapid Writer, which itself copies to two drives (of 42TB combined) simultaneously, providing an instant backup. “On set we used Avid Media Access (AMA) to inspect all the clips from each camera to make sure everything was correct, with no pixel errors, focus errors or white balance issues,” says post superviser Zeb Chadfield, Clear Cut
NO ESCAPE FROM
Pictures. “A lot was shot by APs so we needed to check.”
AMA is a media management tool in the latest versions of Media Composer that enables users to work with tapeless formats without having to import and trancode any of the media into MXF.
Back in London, Clear Cut used Media Composers running on laptops to group the rushes into different folders for each of the challenges of the show before loading onto Unity, editing at DVCPro-50 resolution on Adrenalines and finishing in Symphony. “The episodes were effects heavy. requiring Sapphire effects and glows to pep the show up but, on top of that, it’s very intricate cuts-wise,” says Chadfield. “A standard hour-long BBC doc for example might contain 900 cuts, but each Scorpion needed 12-1600.”
MASSES OF FOOTAGE • Media management was especially critical for this large and rapidly-cut file-based show
“On set we used Avid Media Access (AMA) to inspect all the clips from each camera”
ZEB CHADFIELD Post supervisor
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