Will Pisnieski, VP of Post Production at leading LA-based production company Authentic Entertainment, will tell you creating quality reality content is not only an art form, but also having the right mix of post production tools is critical when capturing unscripted moments. That’s where CoreMelt, manufacturer of Lock & Load X and other high end visual effects plugins for Mac, comes in.
''Authentic Entertainment is constantly striving to bring an element of creative vision that exceeds expectations and delivers television that expands viewers’ reality,'' said Pisnieski. ''Most of our shows are filmed on various locations, often requiring us to integrate footage from multiple platforms, always under heavy deadline constraints with abbreviated post production schedules that necessitate using tools that will allow us to post and edit quickly.''
In recent seasons, Authentic has produced such shows as Ace of Cakes, Flipping Out!, Toddlers & Tiaras, The Best Thing I Ever Ate, Auction Kings, Track Me If You Can and many more series and specials for top networks including the Discovery Channel, Food Network, TLC, History Channel, National Geographic, Showtime, Planet Green, Travel Channel, Animal Planet, Bravo, Sundance Channel and WEtv.
CoreMelt Complete, the software developer’s line of over 200 GPU accelerated video effects plugins, was integrated into the production pipeline at Authentic Entertainment over a year ago in both their editorial and graphic design departments. Previously, Pisnieski said that they had been using a competing set of plugins for Final Cut Pro, but after much frustration with the amount of time that it took to render a single effect, they decided to research other options.
''CoreMelt proved to be a solid choice in terms of variety of effects, plus the cost savings when purchasing a volume license really made these plugins a smart purchase,'' Pisnieski says. ''We have the plugins installed on more than 30 Final Cut Pro work stations and we find them easy to apply and manipulate to achieve great results.''
A good example of how CoreMelt complete is used can be found on the Discovery Channel reality special, Track Me If You Can. During post, the Authentic Entertainment crew relied extensively on CoreMelt plug-ins to speed up the overall workflow.
''This production was shot a lot like a theatrical action film with footage that needed to be integrated from many different points of view including traditional film shots, nightvision, aerials, spy cams, computer cams, traffic cameras, security cams, and more,'' MJ Loheed, Senior Editor at Authentic Entertainment says. ''One of the great benefits about using the CoreMelt plug-ins on Track Me if You Can was that we were able to apply a bunch of interesting effects early on in the offline stage such as Bleach Bypass, Optical Glow, Filmic Look, Advanced Vignette, Digital Glitch, Advanced Reflection, Old TV--as well as others--that helped us deliver a multitude of looks right out of the gate. Many of the filters I applied in my first rough cut were never tweaked--even during the finishing process.''
Pisnieski adds, ''Core Melt plugins give us the flexibility to provide a variety of services from color correction to transitional effects that add that extra sparkle, which makes our shows stand out. In our business, speed is everything and CoreMelt plugins definitely render faster than others with Final Cut Pro. Plus, we haven't had to deal with hardware crashes--something we were plagued with in the past when working with third party plugins.''
Source is http://www.dv.com/article/109370
