Our Work

“We tried to approach the story-telling as a dramatic feature film rather than as a standard biography,” Fergal explained, “and I think this comes across well in the final version. Secrets in the Mist was an unusual project from the start in that the production company, Films@59, is in Bristol, the director lives in LA and I’m based in London. It was also the first time that I’d bought my own equipment for a project, so I really valued Altered Images’ advice. All rushes, archive and film transfers were first ingested by Films@59, who would send the media to me by courier on Lacie rugged drives that I would transfer to my Lacie 5 Big Thunderbolt drive. Because of the enormous volume of the workload from the start, it was critical that I had a reliable system that could solve workflow problems dealing with the many legacy formats in the project, plus one that was up to spec with the overall post production workflow with Films@59. Altered Images worked closely with me to find a solution that could deal with those complexities but that was also within my budget. With a project of this magnitude, when there’s so much archive footage, so many stills and so many formats and frame rates spread across multiple edits, there really wasn’t any other choice but Avid Media Composer.”

The Secrets of the Mist project had over 300 hours of rushes, just under 300 hours of film scans, 90 hours of archive and over 5000 stills, spread across over 1500 bins – around 40TB of storage in total.

“There has been amazing evolution of all the technologies within the Avid family,” Fergal continued. “The biggest improvement in this latest Media Composer system for me is its stability, since a reliable system gives you the confidence to work remotely. Since both Altered Images and Films@59 tested the system after it was built, I was confident with how it would work, and Altered Images also provided on-site support to help with some of the more complex workflow issues.”

Another useful tool in the process was the Forscene cloud-based video platform, which allowed Fergal to view rushes on the cloud as soon as they were uploaded, so there was no waiting around to see material. This meant it was simple for him to email bins to and from the assistants in Bristol, with as much ease as if he was physically sat in the same post house.

“My Media Composer system is a pleasure to work on and is more than up to the task of offline editing; working at home on a dedicated hard drive means I don’t have to suffer that seemingly interminable autosave period using shared storage either. Also I enjoy the added responsibility that comes with providing the edit suite and equipment for the project, which means a closer working relationship with both the production company and the facility.”

Dian Fossey: Secrets in the Mist airs on National Geographic in early December.

About Altered Images

Altered Images is a leading expert in workflow system design and a major technology reseller for the broadcast, television production, education and corporate communications industry. Its highly-skilled team understands visual communication technology, offering everything from a single product to a complete turnkey solution. From consultancy and system design, through to sales, installation and support, Altered Images offers a fully-specified service for production and broadcast professionals.