Home to hit reality shows like FOX’s American Idol , ABC’s Shark Tank , and History Channel’s Ancient Aliens , along with popular episodic series like HBO’s Game of Thrones (a recent pick-up), CW’s Pretty Little Liars , and MTV’s Teen Wolf , Hollywood-based Chainsaw is a well-oiled machine. Add Post Factory NY , one of New York’s largest independent post production facilities, to the SIM Group family (Chainsaw, Bling, Pixel Underground, and Tattersall Sound & Picture) and you have a post powerhouse that easily serves both East Coast and West Coast clients.
We recently talked with online editor & colorist Seth Buncher from Post Factory NY and online editor Randy Magalski from Chainsaw to find out how they currently use Boris FX.
Post Factory: Online Finishing "The First 48"
Seth Buncher is an experienced online editor & colorist whose proudest accomplishment has been finishing almost 300 episodes of A&E’s The First 48 .
“ The First 48 spends five days in online but that is a beast of a show. It’s a run and gun production,” notes Buncher. “I get assets of every conceivable frame rate and resolution from UHD to 320x240 surveillance footage often right next to each other in a timeline. BCC is my problem-solving toolbox . I ride the workhorse filters.”
“I use it to fix problems that arise from having a mishmash of resolutions, frame rates, scan types, and bitrates,” continues Buncher. "BCC allows me to guarantee that every shot looks as great as it possibly can."
Seth's top filters include: Flicker Fixer , Deinterlace , Film Grain , and Motion Blur.
“When I have a show with thousands of effects like The First 48 , I plainly don't have time to leave the editing app to do work,” ends Buncher. “So round-tripping effects is out of the question except for the most extraordinary circumstances. Being able to drop a Boris Continuum effect on to a segment, see the change immediately, modify it to perfection, and move on to the next one is of primary importance to me.”
Other projects Buncher recently used Continuum Complete on include: National Geographic’s Dirty Rotten Survival , Oxygen's Player Gets Played , MTV's True Life , and a film for Atomic Entertainment called 14 Minutes To Earth .
Chainsaw: "The Amazing Race"
Randy Magalski is one of fourteen online editors at Chainsaw. The 30+ year industry veteran has been nominated for six Primetime Emmys.
“In online, we use visual effects in a variety of ways to polish and fix clips in practically every session,” says Magalski. “Although we use a wide variety of the tools within the Boris Continuum suite, there are a few we use consistently.”
Randy's top BCC filters include:
Extruded Spline , to easily create 3D circles to highlight elements in a much more visually interesting and compelling way; Magic Sharp , an indispensable tool for improving focus-challenged shots and sharpening footage. The shallow depth of field that DSLR’s shoot, along with the plethora of cameras that are sent out into the field in less-than-ideal circumstances, means that we run across a fair amount of shots that require a little help; DeNoise , helps overly-compressed or poorly exposed clips; and Chroma Key , particularly helpful because you can combine it with other effects (Multi Filter Start/Mid/End), allowing for greater control than with Avid's SpectraMatte alone.
“BCC allows us to stay within Media Composer to create very high-end effects without sacrificing quality and while staying within the budgets and deadlines of our projects,” notes Magalski.