What’s the best way to manage the massive amounts of footage that come
hand-in-hand with reality-TV production? Three
Wishes post producer Ke’alohi Lee selected Teresis Production
Asset Management as a replacement for a former program, which shows have used
to create a database of notes related to clips on tape. “The problem
with [what we were using before] was, if someone [else] was looking at footage on that
tape, you had to wait,” she explains. “And the tapes took up a lot of
space on the shelf.” The post department also needed a solution that
would let executives and producers in other locations access the
footage and communicate remotely with the post department.
Teresis takes all the original tapes and encodes them as Windows Media
files, then stores the files on a server. Once there, the footage is
all accessible from a Web browser anywhere in the company. The
transcriber sits at a computer with foot-pedal control of the image
and, as he creates a Word document, a keystroke enters the timecode as
a hotlink. That’s handy for the story editor, who can then call up the
Word doc and click on hotlinks to see the video with accompanying
transcription. According to Lee, the new system was so fast for loggers
that the production didn’t need to send any tapes to an outside
transcription house.
Replacing DVDs and FTP
The post team quickly realized that Teresis PAM could be used for tasks
requiring remote viewing. Cuts can be uploaded for approval. “It’s so
much better than sending out a DVD,” says Lee. “They can actually see
it five minutes after we upload it, no matter where they are. The
casting department has also adopted it to keep executives in touch with
casting decisions, and story producers use Teresis to write their
scripts, for all the advantages of being plugged into the database from
the very beginning.
The familiar Web browser “replaces the FTP system, it replaces DVD and
it replaces shuttling tape copies around town,” says Teresis
founder/CEO Keri DeWitt. “Now you just send an email to an executive
with a hyperlink to log in securely and he sees the cut you want him to
see.”
Facing the Future
Version 2 of the system, says DeWitt, will provide a scene editor that
will allow the user to go from raw footage to edited scenes, all from
the Web browser, and put together an EDL in CMX format that can be
imported into an Avid or Final Cut Pro. Another upcoming tool,
Storyboard, will let the producer build each episode out of the created
scenes and keep all the episodes online, with scripts and notes
hyperlinked and integrated with Avid and/or FCP.
In the future, DeWitt says, Teresis PAM won’t just save costs but help
generate revenue, making it much easier to license unused footage in
low-res form for Web sites and cell phones. In the meantime, the Three
Wishes post team has had its own wishes fulfilled: they’re saving
money, they’re saving time (an estimated 30 percent) and they’re curing
at least some of the headaches generated by reality TV’s massive
amounts of footage and tight deadlines.
Post your comments below
