44 TVBEurope The Workflow
www.tvbeurope.com November 2013
“The facility is all brand new, all compatible and all file-based”
Progression andEvolutions
Evolutions is perhaps best known for its post house in London’s Soho, though since the company launched in 1994, it has opened an operation in New York and, this year, a facility in Bristol. Holly Ashford finds out more about the Bristol facility, based in the city’s media district
EVOLUTIONS BRISTOL started operations in June and features several production offices, 16 offline suites, two Avid Symphony online suites, a Pro Tools 5.1 mixing theatre with a second under construction and a Baselight grading suite. “The facility is all brand new, all compatible and all file-based,” explains Gabriel Wetz, head of post production. Rather than opting for FCP, an editing
platform “not really supported any more”, Evolutions chose an Avid platform and ISIS storage. Being competitive means keeping up with the BBC, whose Broadcasting House is situated just a few doors down. The Beeb has replaced FCP with Adobe, so “it goes without saying” that Evolutions “need to offer an Adobe Premiere solution, so that people in the BBC know we’re able to support that and they can bring work to us.” The move seems to have paid off. Wetz stated that he “recently received a quote from someone wanting three Adobe edit suites in January for 60 weeks.”
Staying at the front The machine room will soon accommodate an extra ISIS 5500 and does not include tape decks, “which is probably going to become more common in post in the future,” says Wetz. The company decided to go straight in with file-based delivery, taking note of guidelines issued by the DPP and aiming to stay “right at the front.” The dubbing theatre features Genelec
speakers, and head of audio Will Norie works with Pro Tools 11 on a PC. Traditionally, when offline edits were finished all the data had to be transferred
One Born
Every Minute The production team from Channel 4 documentary One Born Every Minutemoved into Evolutions Bristol as soon as the facility opened its doors. Gabriel Wetz explains the intricacies of producing a rig show, which is filmed in nearby Southmead Hospital. There are three elements to the production: cameras filming inside the hospital, Portakabins stationed outside, and of course all the work that takes place at Evolutions. One of the Portakabins acts as the gallery with vision and audio mixing, as well as a production office at the site. It is “almost mind-boggling in complexity” says Wetz. The One Born team currently occupies 10 suites at the facility, using Cinegy logging software and cutting 20 episodes: filming is 24-hours a day, so the volume of data is huge.
Evolutions Bristol occupies two characterful Victorian properties on Bristol’s Whiteladies Road
from the edit workspace to the dubbing theatres’ hard drives and uploaded. However, with Pro Tools “Will can basically just open the offline workspace and there’s the editor’s timeline, there’s all the sound as the editor left it, with none of the messing around in the middle,” explains Wetz. Dotted around the facility are a number
of small, wall-mounted tablet computers. “This is something we have in London,” Wetz explains: each tablet links to the company’s scheduling system via WiFi, refreshing every 15 minutes to display which clients are using which room and the jobs happening in each. Equally
interesting is the
technology which can’t yet be seen – the launch of a cloud-based FORscene logging system. This is already up and running in London, allowing
The facility at Evolutions
Bristol will soon be full to capacity, and Wetz describes its current state as a “golden phase”
The Baselight grading suite at Evolutions Bristol
Evolutions to ingest client media and load it onto a server, which clients can then access by logging in from any web
browser. This lets users view rushes and add
logging information,
allowing them to get “as far ahead as they possibly can before they even set foot in the editing suite.” Occupying two large Victorian period
properties, Evolutions has moved its facility in without moving any of the “characteristics and charm” of the setting out. The suites are large and spacious, including the two dubbing theatres both of which — somewhat unusually in the industry — have large windows, creating a light, airy environment.
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