Point.360 WEST, a leading provider of integrated media management services company to the entertainment industries, provided 100% post-production for Spike TV‘s series “Super Dave Spike-tacular.” Emmy-award winner Bob Einstein reprised his role as Stuntman Extraordinaire, Super Dave Osborne, in a four-part Spike TV event following the Super One as he prepared for a death-defying stunt each week.
Camouflage Films turned to Point.360 WEST to piece the individual components together – previsualization, visual effects, dailies, graphics, edit, titles, audio record/ mix and delivery.
Point.360 WEST collaborated with Executive Producer Bob Einstein, Director Morris Abraham, and Camouflage Films, to streamline the various complex steps of production and post production. Jeff Hixon, General Manager at Point.360 WEST, says, “The process may sound as easy as – if you have all the technology and talent under one roof. Well that’s only half the battle. What really brings the show together is being able to collaborate with the production company from the beginning, so you don’t have to fit a square peg in a round hole”.
Point.360 WEST worked with Camouflage at the beginning creating previz and storyboards for the visual effects. This helped Abraham to correctly compose his shots for editorial. Once production started, WEST was on set supervising visual effects and continuity issues. This alleviated all concerns when it came to post.
Dailies started at Point.360 WEST for overnight digitizing. Hixon recalls, “the schedule was tight so we needed to work out getting all assets to the bays as soon as each tape was finished.” Shooting wrapped at 10pm and dailies were ready for viewing at 7am the next morning.
At the end of the second day, visual effects supervisor Jason Hearne and artist Jeff Kaplan assembled and completed a “clown car” shot (Episode 1, hundreds of immigrants pour out of Super’s Mini Clubman) to prove concept on the angle that Abraham shot. “It looked amazing”, says the director, “once we saw how the shot worked and how good it was, we had no issues pushing forward.” Other VFX shots include, Dave getting crushed by a wrecking ball, shot with arrows, thrown from a car, shot through a wall, and driving his motorcycle into a brick wall, and many others were completed in the next room while Abraham worked with WEST editor Bradley Warden. VFX worked closely with offline (approximately 20 feet away) to achieve a sense of early completion. Hearne says, “instead of the editor having to slug white text on black holes to make up for the lack of the shot, we were able to quickly get a rough version ready to play with so Morris could lock his cut earlier”.
The offline was split up across multiple workstations which consisted of Final Cut Pro and Avid with media accessed via a Unity server. Senior mixer at Point.360 WEST, Mitch Lindskoog recalls, “Bob [Einstein] was concerned about his voice in a number of shots, so we scheduled time for ADR in the Record booth. After seeing the audio replaced over his picture, he just about gave me a noogie he was so happy”.
After sweetening it was shuffled over to the colorists for final insert and laid off to multiple formats and delivered to client. Justin Hixon, EP at Point.360 WEST, says, “When the tapes were sent to Spike, it was the only time the show ever left the secure building.”
ABOUT “Super Dave Spike-tacular”
“Super Dave Spike-tacular” is produced by Camouflage Films in association with Spike TV. Spike has aired all episodes which are available for viewing at Spike.com.
ABOUT POINT.360 WEST (NASDAQ,PTSX)
Point.360 (PTSX) is a multifaceted post production solution with multiple facilities on both West and East Coast. For more information please visit: www.point360.com.
