Park Slope Productions is an award-winning producer of original programming for the likes of OWN, TLC and MTV, and knows what it takes to create engaging television. The production house pores over hundreds of new programming ideas all the time. So when an associate producer came upon a family of nine living off the grid in the rugged Alaskan wilderness, the Park Slope team knew it had found something unique.
Now in its second season on The Discovery Channel, Alaskan Bush People averages more than four million viewers per episode. Recently, the show scored the highest ratings in all of Friday night prime time. Aside from its interesting characters, location plays a huge role in Alaskan Bush People. Everything is shot in Alaska, making shooting and producing more complex and challenging than anything Park Slope had taken on before. But location is just the beginning of what makes the show unique. The length and very nature of shooting, as well as the scope and number of people editing the show, make it an excellent showcase for the capabilities of the EVO shared media server.
The Next Phase of Reality Programming: The Docu-Series
Nothing about Alaskan Bush People is ordinary, including its format. Unlike a lot of so-called reality shows, Alaskan Bush People is shot like a documentary, according to Jose Berrios, post production supervisor for Park Slope Productions. In true documentary style, that means having to simultaneously shoot a lot of footage on as many as nine different cameras.
It gets tricky, said Berrios. Normally there are four cameras on the family, but they will split up and go to different parts of the island, so the same story may be happening in two different places. Everything has to be shot at the same time so that the story stays in sync, and still makes sense by the time it reaches our story editors in New York.
A variety of cameras capture the action on land and water. Alaskan Bush People uses XD cameras (Sony PMW 300), GoPros, drones and even helicopters. The show is created entirely from original footage, with none of it canned or from a library.
Before EVO, producers and editors had to email each other to inquire about certain pieces of footage, and it was easy to lose track. With EVO, everything is constantly up to date. Editors can simultaneously work on different aspects of footage and see the most up to date version at any time.
At one point the family went fishing, says Berrios, We had seven GoPros stationed all around the boat, and another camera following the boat. All eight of those cameras have to be synced, so that when the story editors watch them, they are watching the exact same thing from different angles.
Shaping all of that multi-cam footage into a whole happens on the other side of the continent in Park Slope's midtown Manhattan studios. During months of rigorous on-location shooting, Park Slope uploads several terabytes of media every week to its EVO media server, where nearly two dozen producers and editors make it ready for prime time. From Cubes to EVO The first season of Alaskan Bush People consisted of five episodes, which required about 15 terabytes of footage. To store, edit and produce the footage, the Park Slope team, which started out rather small, used four individual 10 terabyte Thunderbolt-connected drives or cubes that shuttled among editors and were manually replicated and kept up to date. All of that changed when Discovery ordered more episodes - 16 to be precise, plus three specials.
Even before Discovery ordered Season 2, however, Park Slope encountered workflow issues with their Thunderbolt drive-based workflow. We ran into a lot of issues with scratch audio [temporary narration], says Berrios. With the 10 terabyte cubes, we had to go around looking for who had what on their computers. There was a lot of email back and forth.
During pre-production for Season 2, simple math dictated that the Park Slope team would need a media server to accommodate as much as six hours of footage per camera per day. So Park Slope got serious about finding a media server solution that would support a more sophisticated workflow involving more hands on deck and lots of multi-cam footage. It would prove to be a prescient decision, as Season 2 of Alaskan Bush People generated approximately 60 terabytes of media.
One of Park Slope's media partners strongly recommended they look at the EVO Shared Media Server, which has become a standard for production teams all over the world. EVO provided a combination of flexible, high-performance storage - including the ability to configure the system as both Storage Area Network (SAN) and Network-Attached Storage (NAS) - plus the ability for team members to simultaneously work on separate projects in shared folders, all using the same media. EVO's compatibility with major media editing applications, including Final Cut and Avid, also meant the Park Slope team was free to continue using its tools of choice.
In the months leading up to the start of shooting in September 2014, Park Slope conducted online research to identify servers that could do the job. The team explored potential setups and pricing and talked to different vendors. Based on service, hardware and price, Park Slope decided that EVO was the best solution to satisfy its complex workflow. Once delivered, Park Slope's media partner had EVO up and running in less than an hour-and-a-half, and ready to start taking in footage for Season 2.
Since we started, we have not had one issue. With the amount of deadlines we have, we can't afford to have any hiccups at all. We pushed EVO to the limit and never experienced any kind of slowdown.
For Park Slope, EVO's biggest impact was its ability to streamline and simplify workflow across numerous producers and editors. Another major advantage for
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Park Slope Productions is an award-winning producer of original programming for the likes of OWN, TLC and MTV, and knows what it takes to create engaging television. The production house pores over hundreds of new programming ideas all the time. So when an associate producer came upon a family of nine living off the grid in the rugged Alaskan wilderness, the Park Slope team knew it had found something unique.
