Case Study: How Daily Behind-the-Scenes videos for ‘Aphetor Games: Ultimate Guitar Battle’ were Filmed in LA, Project Managed in Leeds, UK, and then Edited in Brazil.
The Aphetor Games Ultimate Guitar Battle recently took place in LA. Sticks & Glass brought me onto the project to edit the longer-form pieces, which aimed to look behind the scenes and give deeper access to the content creators involved.
As their site explains to brands, Aphetor are:
“…a unique hybrid of sponsorship, influencer marketing and product placement. Nothing else allows you to reach the born-digital generation more authentically and more efficiently, through the content they want on the channels they use.”
The Brief
Being an inherently social company, the content created for Aphetor was short-form, quick-turnaround pieces for social platforms. Sticks & Glass assembled a dedicated team to manage and create this content.
I was tasked with creating videos to post on YouTube. They were planned to be much longer, somewhere between 6 and 12 minutes, giving us more time to get to know the 14 participants. And we had to post one a day—which is a pretty tight turnaround!
Challenges
Extremely tight turnarounds:
Editing and publishing one video per day meant we needed to minimise the potential for amends, as this would significantly impact the time set aside for each video.
In my experience, the more eyes that need to see a video before it’s agreed that it can be published, the longer it can take. With their existing relationship and previous experience, the client trusted S&G and agreed that only internal sign-off was needed.
Timezone Maths:
I live in Brazil. During UK summer/BST, Brazil is only four hours behind the UK, and LA is another four hours behind Brazil.
LA is 8 hours behind the UK, so the rushes delivered at the end of the LA day would be uploaded during UK nighttime, ready for work the next morning. To simplify things, I decided it would be best if I assumed UK hours and started at 5am Brazil/9am UK, along with the rest of the UK-based team.
Production Workflow
Cameras to Post
Sticks & Glass had two cameras on location. A Cam filmed vox pops and was the primary camera during the events. B Cam was for cutaways and additional B-roll.
Both cameras were filming at 25fps, and a simple REC709 colour profile reduced the need for additional grading beyond basic colour balancing. It’s behind the scenes, so you want that fly-on-the-wall feel for authenticity.
📝 Truth and authenticity are probably the most critical factors in gaining the audience's trust in documentaries and news.
This is why videos and films with a considered grade in which colours, light, and shadow are used to help tell the story and add production value feel too manipulative in these genres and could lose that trust.
As a side note (to a side note?), this is why you’ll see jump cuts, bad-quality video, and bad-quality audio on social media content. When the creator relies on their authenticity to connect with their audience, these ‘lapses’ in quality control instead become a feature.
Media Management
Cards were uploaded as and when possible throughout the day, but usually at the end of the day when returning to base at the hotel.
We used Google Drive for this project, and Sticks & Glass created a script that automatically downloaded and copied all new rushes onto their server.
Remote Access
Sticks & Glass specialise in remote post-production, so their team were more than prepared for this project and had backup plans on backup plans in case adversity struck.
For this project, we used Parsec remote desktop to allow me to access one of their edit suites in Leeds. This enabled them to store and manage all media on-site, putting them in a better position for their tech ops and edit assistants to handle any potential issues and reduce unnecessary download time compared to downloading it locally to my suite.
I use a Mac at home, while the edit suite I used in Sticks & Glass was a PC—this isn’t an issue. I spent a few minutes setting up my keyboard shortcuts in Adobe Premiere. (But I quickly learnt that some of my MacOS keys would inadvertently set off some Windows Explorer navigation!)
📝 Edit tip! It’s very tempting to set up as many shortcuts that suit you and your workflow as possible, especially if you switch between different editing software.
I know you can save keyboard shortcuts to a pen drive and bring that with you. However, I advocate learning the native controls for each one. I believe it actually helps muscle memory when getting used to all the different UIs.
Adam Bennett, Director, Stick & Glass says:
Hybrid workflows have become more and more popular we have invested heavily in an infrastructure capable of supporting multiple remote productions across any NLE.
Using our powerful ingest department including tech ops and edit assistants, we can offer various levels of support that can suit most budgets.
