to Commercial Reality
For those adults struggling to convince their children that fitness can be fun, the idea that television could be part of the solution seems unlikely.
And yet, LazyTown, one of the fastest selling children’s programmes in history is doing just that. Syndicated to 103 countries in a mere eighteen months, LazyTown is reaching a global audience with a fun yet educational message about the importance of exercise and nutrition.
Featuring a stunning blend of live action, animation and puppetry, LazyTown is the brainchild of Magnus Scheving, a superfit former aerobics champion from Iceland. Each show is a half hour tale following his adventures as the live action super-hero, Sportacus competing for the healthy hearts and minds of LazyTown’s impressionable youth with Robbie Rotten, the lazy, snack eating villain of the piece.
The show may be a creative tour de force but putting it together has been a major technological challenge. “The most ambitious project I’ve been involved with,” says LazyTown’s Executive Producer, Raymond Le Gué.
So what has made it such a challenge? Combining so many styles, satisfying Scheving’s desire to have full creative control on every cut and choosing to shoot the series in High Definition (HD) have all contributed.
High Standards Scheving’s vision was to make a show with the highest production standards possible. He might not have come from a television background but he knew he wanted final say on every shot. “Magnus wants to do it now, immediately and not in any other way”, says Le Gué. “He’s like a child who has no pre-knowledge of what is possible, only that he wants it. He can drive us crazy but it’s rewarding!”
Choosing to shoot LazyTown in Iceland with its limited television infrastructure also pushed the production towards taking a High Definition (HD) approach, which was something Magnus wanted to do anyway. “LazyTown considered film but as the nearest film lab is in London the prospect of sending overnights by plane wasn’t realistic,” says Le Gué.
Choosing HD came with its own set of challenges, namely the production of unprecedented volumes of HD images with real time CGI composites, all timed to meet tight television deadlines. It needs a unique workflow to deal with that. Still, they ploughed on with Series One in early 2004 shooting 34 episodes.
Once aired the show proved a great success but it was touch and go whether they would meet their television deadlines. LazyTown’s 60 persons strong crew came with mostly traditional film experience and were learning the systems in a live environment. Mistakes were being made. According to Technical Manager Gunnar Kristján Steinarsson, “When an editor moves from a local station to editing tapeless on a SAN, there are huge workflow issues in terms of educating people away from their previous mindset into having a more flexible use of the technology.” .
Learning on the Job So when it came to Series Two, Executive Producer, Raymond Le Gué realised that if they were to sort out the numerous production bottlenecks something had to change. Le Gué began talking to a number of manufacturers about developing a more sophisticated workflow before selecting Avid® as their key partner in January 2005. “With a lack of experienced editors in Iceland it made no sense to limit our options further by choosing an obscure system when Avid has the widest user base. I also needed sustainability. Without external support and the knowledge that a company is going to be around in the future to evolve with your production, you are asking for trouble.”
“I also wanted a system that was sustainable for LazyTown itself.” he continued. Having invested millions of dollars in an environment in which there is no indigenous market, their goal was to create a facility that minimized the need for further training and importantly, was good enough to offer later to third party producers. “From the point of view of sustainability and stability only one company could give us that.” said Le Gué.
One other factor counted in Avid’s favour: its initial reluctance. Le Gué says, “I told Avid what we wanted and they said ‘No, we can’t do it. We can build a system that will handle uncompressed HD but not at the speeds you want.’ I realised then that they had thought about our needs. I didn’t want a partner pushing us over the edge in development. I wanted someone to be honest and say ‘This is the throughput we can guarantee you.’”
A New Solution The Avid Professional Services team worked with LazyTown to analyse the existing workflow and design a new one based around real-time working in HD. LazyTown and Avid arrived at a solution calling for a dual workflow which integrated existing key equipment such as the Viper HD cameras and Ultimatte engine while introducing an editing process at the point of acquisition. To do this Avid demonstrated the capabilities of the Avid DNxHD™ codec to Le Gué.
A ‘proof of concept’ demonstration was built at Pinewood which LazyTown executives visited for hands-on input. After agreeing the project concept, Avid’s engineering division built a test installation to create the basis for future acceptance.
“LazyTown was shown, step by step, the actual equipment that would be installed in Reykjavik because they had to know it would work straight out of the box.” says Miguel Ferros, Avid European Market Development Manager.
With no time for a pilot run in Iceland – the system had to work from day one and to ensure a smooth transition the Avid Support function was migrated from Pinewood to Avid’s Norwegian office in Oslo.
The benefits of the new systems have been felt immediately.
“During Series One I couldn’t see the changes I wanted on the studio floor and that was very frustrating.” says Scheving. “As a director I wanted to make a change and see immediately how it would look. Now I can move a background and we don’t have to wait for post to fix it. That’s very liberating.”
For Magnus Scheving, LazyTown, could be a rehearsal for even grander TV or feature film projects. Director Quentin Tarantino recently visited the facility and was reportedly impressed.
“I know I am demanding of my team,” Scheving admits. “I won’t accept that something is not technically possible. I will push them and the machine.” This persistent striving for perfection may be a challenge for his staff, but it has certainly paid off.
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