Fluid Post: The Travel Bug
Post Production Company, Fluid Post used Digistor supplied equipment in the production of a new series, The Travel Bug currently airing on Channel Ten.
Managing Director of Fluid Post, Gavin Dutfield commented on the technical side of the process “So far we have graded 8 X 1 Hour episodes from Final Cut Pro offline source in the AVID Symphony. All the media was ingested at DNxHD 185 10bit at 1080 50i. Storage was Avid Unity 5. The show was mastered to HDCAM and the Blackmagic Ultrascope was used for all line up and legals as well as general colour grading reference.”
In terms of the performance of the equipment Dutfield stated, ”The system performed beautifully and didn’t miss a beat. The source footage originated mostly from an F900 HDCAM, however there was a lot of EX1 XDCAM footage intercut throughout the timeline. This presented some obvious colour matching challenges, though nothing the Symphony didn’t handle.”
One of the challenges the producers faced was an extremely tight shooting schedule. They would often land in a location on a light aircraft, quickly scramble to get the camera’s up and running, shoot the location, then pack up and take off. This tight schedule meant that luxuries like lighting and even finessing the camera setup simply wasn’t possible. The directors brief was to make it look like a “glossy, high profile international travel show, that makes you feel like you are on holidays!”. The reality of the source footage was sometimes far from that. This is where creative colour grading and the power of the Symphony stepped in.
"With some well placed masks, a heap of tracking, and Symphony’s real time secondary colour correction, we were able to add mood to flat scenes, saturate certain colours to lift a shot, enhance a tonne of blue skies, and quickly create a consistent feel of being on holidays throughout all 8 episodes. The producers and I are really happy with the results.” said Gavin.