HOLLYWOOD, CA — Los Angeles-based production company 51 Minds Entertainment pioneered the celeb-reality genre with wildly popular VH1 shows including Flavor of Love and The Surreal Life. In the past four years they have produced 11 different franchise series – so when it was time for a complete editing equipment upgrade at this continually busy entertainment company, executives knew it had to be done right.
We needed the ability to deliver shows in high definition and to upgrade our older editing equipment to the latest technology in order to gain speed and stability,” says 51 Minds Director of Post Production Operations Alex Palatnick.
They considered several possible companies to handle the upgrades, but only one partner was able to meet all the project parameters.
We were looking for work that was good, fast and affordable – usually you get to pick two but with Creative Mobile Solutions we got all three,” says Palatnick.
With a tight timeframe and a focus on quality, the Creative Mobile Solutions team worked quickly to select, plan, source, set up and install the new equipment. The technology included 19 Avid Media Composer Nitris DX Mac Systems: four in an ingest rack configuration for rapid footage capture and 14 in an editor configuration for editing with maximum power and ease. In addition, two Avid Symphony Nitris DX Macs were configured as online bays with patching, monitoring and quality check capabilities and three 24-terabyte Avid Unity MediaNetworks were added to allow for footage sharing between bays.
The transition to the new systems was extremely smooth and seamless,” says Palatnick. ”The systems arrived preassembled and took less than an hour to integrate, so we could start capturing and editing on the day they arrived.”
For the editors, the new technology delivers a creative, uninterrupted editing process.
“With this type of editing work you need instant feedback to get good results, and now we have that,” says 51 Minds editor Josh Petok. “Creative Mobile Solutions was sensitive to the needs of the editor and listened to our input. The new system is state-of-the-art technology with the best hardware quality I’ve experienced.”
The new equipment has created time savings for 51 Minds as well. Editors are now free to jump between edit bays because footage is stored on a centralized system. This eliminates downtime spent waiting for a bay to free up or a show to finish rendering. The time for a show to render has also decreased by half, and the time needed for footage capture has been reduced by 20-percent.
“These savings allow us to increase our productivity and deliver an even better product to our clients,” says 51 Minds VP of Post Production Anthony Zaldivar.
According to Palatnick, it’s the expertise and dedication of Creative Mobile Solutions that made their project a success.
“I’d absolutely recommend their services,” he says. ”They’re capable, experienced and able to hit a deadline on time and on budget. Every suggestion they’ve made is valuable, and by pursuing those recommendations we’ve saved money in the long run.”