BROADCAST PRODUCTION EDITING
MOVING IMAGE AMERICA: THE STORY OF US
“The footage
required a fair degree of comping in visual effects, which Nitris is very good at”
SARA HILL commercial director PRIME FOCUS
primefocusworld.com
Telling the entire, epic history of America, from the pilgrims to President Obama, was the ambitious challenge set by production company Nutopia and the History Channel for the 12x60- minute series America: The Story of US. The production reveals the saga of the country’s 400-year evolution using cgi animation, dramatic recreations and insights from American artists, business leaders, academics and intellectuals. Prime Focus completed post production across its facilities in New York and London. “We started off with one Avid suite, grew it to three or four and at one point were using 14 suites linked to shared storage,” says Prime Focus’ commercial director Sara Hill. “Although each programme was different there were some common elements such as celebrity interviews and drama
AVIDS IN ACTION ON
reconstructions shot in South Africa, which had dedicated editing teams.” Along with music and large volumes of multi-formatted archive material, these elements were held in shared storage for editors to build the episodes. The offline took six months and the sheer quantity of HD footage meant it was performed at 10:1. “The production cut some footage and digitised it on location in South Africa to check the material was working and to perform a rough cut that was sent back on drives,” says Hill. The EDLs were conformed and given a pre-grade in Nitris. “The nature of the footage required a fair degree of comping in vfx while the reconstructions needed clean up tools – both functions Nitris is very good at,” says Hill. The style of the dramatisation scenes was quite intense, says online
editor Ronnie Newman: “We devised a series look and used flash effects on the transitions to enhance the sensation of speed already present in the cut.” QuickTime files were output from
Avid and loaded onto Clear (Prime Focus’s content and workflow management platform) and transported as high quality images to Prime Focus’ Manhattan branch for review by The History Channel execs. “The marketing department at the History Channel needed access to a lot of last minute material so we’d pull them together overnight and send them by FTP,” says Newman. OMFI files were created for sound designers Phitz Hearne, Rada Danilovic and Alex Bingham to mix and tracklay in Avid Pro Tools. The audio post included organising a transatlantic voiceover with actor Liev Schreiber over ISDN.
AMERICA: THE STORY OF US • 14 Avids were linked to shared storage for the parallel editing of 12x60-minute episodes • QuickTime files were output from Avid and routed for review by execs in New York
create STO R I E S
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