Reality TV workflow!!

[Dylan Reeve]

[Ed Dooley] “BTW, I’m a fan of World’s Deadliest Catch (otherwise known as a documentary).”

I think you’ll find Deadliest Catch definitely fits the general description of Reality (not Reality Game Show like Survivor) rather than Documentary. Episodic story lines are crafted from the documentary footage in Deadliest Catch to create character story arcs.

Something like Cops on the other hand is much more Documentary, where it’s told with no narrative or presenter and simply show fly-on-the-wall stuff.

In my opinion, calling Reality ‘lowest common denominator’ or blaming it for some perceived decline in TV quality is a massive cop out.

[Dylan Reeve]

[Eron Otcasek] “anyone have any insight to weather the big networks are hip to using FCP or if it’s still all AVID? how bout’ smaller networks like MTV?”

The shows aren’t normally made in house by the networks, so I doubt they care as long as the end product passes the tech checks.

In New Zealand it’s almost all Avid. I know a few places using FCP for little shows, but all the major shows are Avid. There are various features that are quite ingrained in the production workflow that make a change quite difficult. Things like clip colouring are big for a lot of editors. Plus Avid’s ScriptSync feature can be unbelievably helpful, especially on multi-camera shoots. Also, Avid’s Unity network system is in place in a few of the larger companies.

Obviously that isn’t the case everywhere. Each company will have it’s own systems and reasoning for that.

Either way, it’s definitely worth learning both systems.

[Dylan Reeve]

Wow Andrew, that sounds incredible. I don’t think any of the shows I worked on generated more than 25 hours of footage a day. I kind of like the idea of planning setups like that, but the ‘nothing in or out except through an AE’ thing is great. It’s amazing how easy it is for a whole workflow to get messed up by careless ingest.

We used to edit all our shows at 15:1 offline in the Avid. Then I think moved to DV25 offline when the drive space became a little more plentiful.

[Eron Otcasek]

thanks for responding

[James Sullivan]

This has been the best thread in a while. I work on reality shows and have used them to learn how to be a good post guy. I cannot say editor because I have to do it all. Organize, cut, make selects, online, troubleshoot technical bits, graphics. All the steps you need to know how to make a good product are involved. One day when I get a chance to work on something that will change the world I will know how to do it. The editors are the ones who make the shows. (I guess producers help too?) Writers are very important and are worth the money. Finallly, for the love of god turn the camera off every now and then. Shoot a begining middle and end. Compose, light a scene, anything. Keep the mics on. Room tone! We have been beating ourselves up. What about those field people. They suck too!!!!

much love,

James

P.S. I love that this has not been a tool argument but a people suck arguement.

[Sean Oneil]

[James Sullivan] “This has been the best thread in a while.”

I completely agree.

Sean

[Andrew Kimery]

[Dylan Reeve] “Wow Andrew, that sounds incredible. I don’t think any of the shows I worked on generated more than 25 hours of footage a day. I kind of like the idea of planning setups like that, but the ‘nothing in or out except through an AE’ thing is great. It’s amazing how easy it is for a whole workflow to get messed up by careless ingest.

We used to edit all our shows at 15:1 offline in the Avid. Then I think moved to DV25 offline when the drive space became a little more plentiful.”

Yeah, it was pretty crazy w/all that footage. And Avid can only do (or at least at the time could only do) two banks of 9 cameras for multi cam and we had more than 18 cameras for most of the show so that just made the sucky job of ‘grouping and stacking’ twice as sucky. The organization thing is key and, like a diet, the hardest part is sticking to it especially when things get hairy and 5 different people all need something done ‘now.’ We kept full rez versions of all the gfx on the Unity so when we up-rez’ed we wouldn’t have to dig thru stacks of CDs/DVDs to find stuff but, of course, some stuff came up as located on “Bob’s Thumbdrive” or something and all of a sudden the wheels on the up-rez bus start to come loose. It was a nice feeling though being an AE and getting to firmly, but politely, tell the exec prod he cannot, under any circumstances, give any assets to the editor’s he *must* give them to an AE and we’ll properly do the labeling, ingesting, and let the editor’s know where to find the asset.

-Andrew

[Grinner Hester]

Lets bring this thread back. As more and more places adhere to reality due to budget decreases, more and more work flows are introduced. I like actual reality. Non-scripted. That’s what reality is to me. Today there is very little of that. The last “reality” show I worked on had a crew of a half dozen, having the shop they were shooting at do it over and over. Then I edited together what was there, then wrote to it to make it make sense, then they went out and reshot a lot. Doing it this way, we could just go back to how it use to be, write something ideal, go shoot that, then put it together under budget.
The reason I love editing non scripted programming is I get to tell the story in post. And that makes my job the most creative in the entire process.

[Audrey Hurd]

Yes, please bring back this thread!

I found this thread in the hopes of finding I’m on the production side (coordinator) and post keeps losing (even deleting!) days of footage! It’s a long form reality show (Eps shoot simultaneously over months and the EPS #s continually change). We’re sending over shot logs daily, but post has flat-out told us that they DON’T READ THEM. This is incredibly frustrating, especially when post is calling me about a scene we shot WEEKS ago. We’re also getting conflicting shooting instructions (slate/don’t bother slating, cut/absolutely don’t cut, keep it steady/get creative) and my conversations with the post supervisor have not been constructive.

Not only is this a complete waste of production resources, but demoralizing/infuriating.

I would appreciate any advice on what production-post communication has worked best for you guys. Dropbox, excel, sorted by episode or character, whatever works.

Thanks!