Altered Images provides media management solution to Big Cat Week

Bristol-based post house Films at 59 recently completed postproduction on the new series of 'Big Cat Week' for the BBC Natural History unit.
To enable the production team to manage their media, Films at 59 supplied and supported an Avid LanShare EX system, purchased through Shepperton-based Altered Images.
Shown at prime time on BBC1 over five nights during the first week of January, Big Cat Week 2005 was filmed over 30 days in the Masai Mara in Kenya. Shooting started at first light and finished at dusk, following the lives of Kenya’s three big cat species: lions, cheetahs and leopards. The complex operation involved a specially erected camp on the banks of the Mara river, 35 crew, four wildlife camera teams, three DV synch director / camera operators, two editors and two edit assistants.
Each Big Cat Week project generates some 80 hours of wildlife footage and as much, or more, sync footage. To simplify the production process, all cameras are one format, DVCam, and the chosen editing platform is Avid Express Pro. Editing while on location is vital to make sense of the footage, identify and follow stories as they develop and start distilling the results into five 30-minute shows. Media management is key. The first Big Cat Week in 2003 used a number of separate 250GB drives to house the media out on location and then back in the UK. This proved a big headache, hence the decision to use an Avid LanShare EX this time.
Films At 59’s postproduction manager George Panayiotou said: “The Avid LanShare system meant all footage for the latest Big Cat Week could be managed and edited by several workstations simultaneously, while the production was out in Africa.” Nicknamed Lara by the location team, the LanShare had 2.8 terabytes of storage, enough to store all the rushes from the shoot at DV resolution, and quickly became an essential and much loved part of the production family.
Altered Images worked closely with Films at 59 to supply and support Lara out in Kenya.
Altered Images’ project leader Tim Cunningham said: “The challenges of the location were unusual to say the least – a system had to be supplied that could deal with a hostile environment, heat, dust and sometimes an unreliable electrical power supply.”
Altered Images designed a unique flight case enclosure containing Lara the LanShare, an uninterruptible power supply with batteries, dual dust filter screens and a unique stand arrangement to keep the whole enclosure off the ground to avoid Lara’s fans sucking in dust from the floor.
Lara and her supporting kit flew to the Masai Mara by charter plane then moved by tractor to the crew’s camp on some of the worst roads in the world.
After performing so well on location, the system was then shipped back to the UK for the editors to package the shows – they were up and running within three days of returning to the UK. Having a consistency of kit through post production meant spending less time packaging than the previous year, as the LanShare made sharing sequences between cutting rooms as easy for editors as ‘drag and drop.’
(GB)