By Neal Romanek, November 2, 2007
It was a mammoth undertaking: 40 cast members. An enormous set, covering an area of two square miles. The full range of natural lighting situations. And a challenging reality TV format that called for events to be captured as authentically as possible.
The show is Kid Nation, featuring 40 kids from age eight to 15, who work together to build a new society in a remote New Mexico ghost town. For the young stars, Kid Nation was the experience of a lifetime. But for Wexler, which provided the entire video and postproduction infrastructure for the six-week shoot, the production challenges were all in a day’s work.
"We really view our role as the backstage team, working behind the scenes to help bring the producers’ creative vision to life," said Chris Thompson, president of Wexler. "For Kid Nation, that meant bringing together the right mix of technologies and pushing them to their limits to produce the right result."
The right result, Thompson, said, hinged on creating a “bulletproof” audio workflow that would enable all 40 cast members and an additional 20 crew to be simultaneously recorded. “We scanned the site and figured out what was possible for frequency sweep and allocation, to get 60 wireless mikes working at any given time,” he said. “Digital microwave technology was also critical for keeping the quality of the transmissions as high as possible.”
For the remote location, Wexler supplied a custom mobile trailer built out as a video/microwave and audio control room equipped with all of the monitors, microwave and audio control equipment normally found in a permanent control room. On the video side, Wexler supplied up to 12 Sony PDW 530 XDCams recording onto optical disk. "They're one of the "fastest" cameras in the world, which was really important for all of the low-light shooting that was required," Thompson
said."
Each camera sent digital microwave signals back to the control room, enabling technicians to monitor both video and audio from a single location and simultaneously record feeds from multiple widely=dispersed scenes. “Everything had to be in sync: the wireless mike technology from each cast member, to the mixer, to the cameras, and then the microwave technology from the cameras to the control room, and the audio from the mixer to the control room,” said Thompson. “With such a wide-ranging location, and for such a long production period, there were plenty of variables that could have thrown everything into chaos. But I’m happy to report that it all worked flawlessly.”
For post production, Wexler designed a workflow that would enable the post team to digitize eight to 10 disks simultaneously. A special digitizing rack, using proprietary, "intelligent switching" technology allowed techs to continuously digitize material as they were editing. “Post is all about the creative process, so the technology needs to be managed in the background with machine-like precision,” said Thompson. “We created a process for the editorial team to get the material into their system quickly and efficiently, which freed them up to concentrate on the creative aspects.”
As a supplier of end-to-end broadcasting technology solutions, Wexler’s list of credits reads like a Who’s Who of reality TV series. "We have great respect for reality producers because they’re trying to create something extraordinary: to encapsulate a slice of life in a TV show," said Thompson. "The process is enormously complex and requires tremendous creativity. We aim to make our services as transparent as possible, so at the end of the day the customer is thinking about the creative process, not the technology."
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