Avid Scores A Hit With 'Riverside'

Sidney Sampson's Riverside was probably one of the catchiest tunes of last year and the global chart success was undoubtedly helped by a fast paced and colourful pop video to accompany the track.
The Black Dog Film shoot took advantage of some energetic performances from Sidney and friends, with some help in post-production from AVID Media Composer and AVID DS.
In an age of numerous pop promos all vying to be the latest and greatest, one of the main challenges for any director and editor is to put together an original piece of work that not only stands out, but complements the track it's promoting.
The Riverside video was no exception. Director James Copeman, Offline Editor Max Burgess and Online Editor Damian Dolniak worked closely together in pre-production to ensure that the shoot and post-production worked hand in hand.
The end result portrays a clever mixture of live action using a background of moving posters, splashes of vivid paint and a stylistic use of composited imagery. To successfully achieve this, key decisions about the post-production process were discussed at length in advance of the shoot. It was clear there was going to be a large amount of compositing and it was essential that the shoot, offline, grading and online linked together seamlessly.
The main action was shot in a small studio in London using RED multi-camera features and several green screens. Approximately four hours of footage was shot to capture the live performances during multiple takes. It was then up to Max Burgess to use the source material to pull together the offline using AVID Media Composer. The output of the RED camera was stored directly onto hard drives using REDrushes which were then transcoded directly into Media Composer using AVID DnxHD36. No time was lost in a lengthy ingest process and the offline could begin to take shape.
Even with such a large amount of cuts and source material the offline took just three days.
Media Composer proved an excellent tool for sequence cutting and putting together the main structure of the edit. Burgess worked with multiple timelines to start to bring the final edit to life. He notes that “one of the reasons I like Media Composer is that it’s a perfect tool for fast-paced editing. Its intuitive nature and user friendly timeline allows you to trim and re-position material with the minimum of effort.”
Grading and the online edit were handled by top post-production company, Splice. Grading was completed using Baselight with AVID DS handling the compositing and final edit. One of the great advantages of using Media Composer in the offline was the ability to export all the sequence information directly into AVID DS. Having the AVID products talk to each other in such an efficient way meant there was no danger of any shots or sequence information being lost.
Using AVID DS Damian Dolniak at Splice worked with up to 200 different layers to achieve the fast-paced final result.
This again took just three days. The end result is testament to the skills of the project team along with the flexibility of Media Composer and DS - and it means the video is now just as unforgettable as the song itself.
(BMcN/BMcC)