LA-based post house, Digital Jungle Post Production recently used its new Quantel Pablo suite to help tell a story of international adventure in providing post services for the Discovery/Travel Channel series 1000 Places to See Before You Die.
Produced by Stone Productions, the 13-episode series follows the journeys of newlywed couple, Albin and Melanie Ulle, who put their lives on hold to travel the world for 14 weeks. The series is based on the best-selling travel book of the same name written by Patricia Schultz.
Digital Jungle served as full-service post house on the project. Facing a tight two-month deadline to finish the series, online editor Alison Andoos employed the companys Pablo suite for online editorial and auto assembly work. Senior colorist Greg Hamlin color corrected the show, while Kim Ho handled titling. Russel Johnson and Lisa Baro served as audio mixers.
Because the schedule was tight, I designed a workflow that was economical for the client and efficient for us, explained Digital Jungle vice president, Kassi Crews.
The series was shot on a mix of formats including DVCPRO 720P, DVCAM, HDVCAM, BetaSP and Digibeta. In addition, Andoos was given QuickTime files and still images in tiff and jpeg format. All of it had to be assembled in the Pablo.
The editors who off-lined the show cut 29.97 DVCAM, without regard to the frame-rate or resolution requirements for the final, said Crews. But with Pablo, that didnt present a problem. It allows media of differing frame rates and resolutions to be assembled on the same time-line. When the show is ready for delivery, everything is output at the correct frame-rate and resolution.
Crews explained that the company recently built a digital intermediate theater around its Pablo, equipped with Barco DLP-90 and 35mm film projectors.
Pablo serves as the central hub of the theater because we can do so many different things on it color grading, restoration, compositing, editing. It has every toolset that we need, said Crews. We can take anything in, and we can put anything out. The Pablo gives us the opportunity to do it all, without having to have three or four different boxes.
With technology changing on a daily basis, I think its important for us as a company to sit down and analyze each job that comes in and see what workflow works best, said Andoos. Every job is different.
Using a high-end piece of equipment like the Pablo helped us get the show out on time. Its an all-in-one system, she added.
Pablos ability to load four HD episodes at once was another key benefit, Andoos said. She explained that this enabled her to start a new episode, while previous episodes were still on the system, awaiting final QC and approval.
The Pablo is a frame-based system not a clip-based system, so every time I needed to do a new version of the show, it didnt take up more storage, she said. I only changed or stored the new frames that were needed.