Little Frog in High Def

Hi Shane,
as always, good episode. $200K delta…really makes you wonder.
However I cannot help but think that you might be putting the blame (for the other company’s expenses) just a little bit in the wrong direction.
By casually listening one gets the impression that what caused the huge price tag is the tape-based workflow (obviously the completely wrong way to go after a P2 shoot), and that all that cost could have been avoided in a tapeless postproduction.

I just can’t help but think that the tape overhead was only a fraction of the cost and that the real problem was that they kind of “used rocket launchers against ants”. Here’s why: You said editing took TWO WEEKS, online took MULTIPLE DAYS on a Flame, and da Vinci color correction took another FOUR DAYS.

For a 2 by 5 minutes program.

Without having seen the product, this simply sounds like overkill. As a frame of reference: In my facility, a da Vinci session for a one hour episode of a prime time TV show takes one day, 10 hours max. Four days for a 10 min web video sounds like the client was ripped off.
One of the reasons the da Vinci sessions are pricey is because with a good operator the system not only produces great quality but does so in a short time.

Then, why would they use a Flame, one of the most expensive systems there is, for their online? (Somehow I doubt the program was stacked with visual effects) Also I have yet to witness an online conform session that takes up multiple days for a 10 minute project.

If you use such a combination of very expensive systems (and their expensive operators: think da Vinci and Flame) for such a long time, the resulting cost will inevitably be astronomical. At that point, wether you use tapes or data to move the footage around will probably be peanuts in comparison.

Unless I’m missing something?

There were many factors…but too many to get into for a small podcast. I sprinkled in enough to give people the idea of the waste. And yes…4 days of color correction. They built in time for changes and revisions. It was a total mess.

And I have to keep many details generic and close to the chest. I cannot let many details get out, otherwise people might recognize that the situation is about them, and then I catch a lot of heat.