subject: Point 360 West - Super Dave Osborne VFX and All Post - The Process [print this page] During the life of a show, there are many stages. They can be summed up: Pre-Production; Production; and Post-Production. The first two stages are normally handled by the Production company. However, normally the last stage is handled by a third party - the post-production companie(s). I parenthesize the 's' at the end of company because the usual litany of shopping a show around involves dissecting the individual components of the show to many companies that provide specific talent - audio companies get the mixing; editing companies get the offline and/or online; graphics companies get the show title and package; and visual effects companies get the neat stuff. Once each company has finished their portion it all has to be assembled and laid-off to it's proper format per the clients delivery request. This in itself is a full time job. Camouflage Films avoided all this agony by using Point.360 - WEST. Point.360 WEST worked with executive producer Bob Einstein, director Morris Abraham, and Camouflage Films, to make the process of post-production extremely simple. Jeff Hixon, General Manager at WEST, says, "The process may sound as easy as - 'if you have all the components (Audio, Video, GRFX, VFX, Delivery and not to mention the talent) under one roof, then it's a done deal.' Well that's only half the battle. What really brings the show together is being able to work with the production company from the beginning, so you don't have to fit a square peg in a round hole". WEST started working with Camouflage in the beginning doing previz and storyboards for the visual effects. Since this show was originally pitched as Super Dave with high-end visual effects (as opposed to the dummy-double and fancy editing), this helped Abraham understand his edits so to be more careful in composing his shots. Once production started, WEST supervised for visual effects and continuity issues by being on set. This alleviated all concerns of what might happen in post. Once the first tape was all shot up it headed off to WEST for over-night digitizing. Hixon recalls, "the schedule was tight so we needed to work out getting all assets to the bays as soon as each tape was finished." A day's worth of shooting that normally ended around 10 PM would be ready for screening by 7 AM the next morning. By the second day of shooting, Episode 1 was started on all fronts. At the end of the second day, visual effects supervisor Jason Hearne and artist Jeff Kaplan assembled and completed a "clown car" shot (Episode 1, hundreds of Illegal immigrants pour out of Super's Mini Clubman) to prove concept on the angle that Abraham shot. "It looked amazing", says the director, "once we saw how the shot worked and how good it was, we had no issues pushing forward". The other VFX shots which include, Dave getting crushed by a wrecking ball, shot with arrows, thrown from a car, shot through a wall, driving his motorcycle into a brick wall, and many others were completed in the next room while Abraham worked with WEST editor Bradley Warden. VFX worked closely with offline (approximately 20 feet away) to achieve a sense of early completion. Hearne says, "instead of the editor having to slug white text on black holes to make up for the lack of the shot, we were able to quickly get a rough version ready to play with so Morris could lock his cut earlier". The offline was split up across multiple workstations that consisted of Final Cut Pro and Avid. The media was stored on Unity, which all stations accessed. As Warden finished sections of the show, they were pushed to the audio guys and the colorists to begin making their adjustments. As Einstein and Abraham continued with the offline, they would take breaks by walking down the hall to observe the color correction and initial audio mixes. Senior mixer at WEST, Mitch Lindskoog recalls, "Bob [Einstein] was concerned about his voice in a number of shots, so we scheduled time for ADR in the Record booth. After seeing the audio replaced over his picture, he just about gave me a noogy he was so happy". Once the open title was created (artists: Hearne and Rob Garrott) it was sent down the hall to audio for sound effects, music, mixing, and secondary music hits. After sweetening it was shuffled over to the colorists for final insert and laid off to multiple formats and delivered to client. Justin Hixon, EP at WEST, says, "When the tapes got sent to Spike, that was the only time the show ever left the building." Point.360 is a multifaceted post production solution with multiple facilities on both West and East Coast. For more information please visit www.point360.comSuper Dave's Spike-tacular can be seen at Spike.com
Point 360 West - Super Dave Osborne VFX and All Post - The Process
