All of us in the entertainment industry have seen the vast shift in both production and postproduction work flows. We went from film, to videotape, and now we have entered heavily into the world of file based tapeless delivery.
We have seen scripted movies of the week make way for faster paced reality based programming. Within this subsection of reality based programming, there has been many changes on within itself and that is what I would like to address here in this blog.
Traditionally, reality TV shows were cut in house, at production companies’ own edit bays and offices, sent over to one of the many production centers that rents rooms and Avids such as California Independent Production Center, or sent to one of the many post production companies around Hollywood or the valley. A third company party that specializes in audio postproduction services such as Argyle post typically handled the audio.
In recent months, Absolute Rentals has really noticed a shift, they have been called on to supply 5.1 portable mixed stages and including sound editors and re-cording mixers to be located in house at the production companies facilities. Absolute rentals has been asked to do everything from acoustic treatments of the rooms, setting up a 5.1 speaker system, pro tools system with de-command consoles. As well as run the sessions do the laybacks to the SRW 55009 when necessary and pretty much handle all aspects of the postproduction sounds. I found that this is not simply for the production company to save money, but to be able to hear the temp and final mixes of the project without ever having to get in their car and leave the facility.
Absolute Rentals began renting portable dub stages over 10 years ago when they received a phone call form Skywalker films for the Adam Sandler movie, Punch, Drunk, Love, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, who wanted to have 5.1 temp stage sitting in his office right next to his avid room. Since then Absolute Rentals have done 5.1portable systems for the feature films Collateral, Miami Vice, Avatar, Alice in Wonderland, and countless others. The shift of Absolute rentals to supply crew along with the systems has really only existed for the last year, however what Absolute Rentals has found is that the more Absolute Rentals offer a fully integrated turn key approach to allowing production companies to keep their post production audio under one roof. The more phone calls Absolute Rentals receives and the more systems reality production companies seem to order.