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LIFETIME TV RELIES ON SAPPHIRE PLUG-INS TO ENHANCE STORY TELLING
Offering the highest quality entertainment and information programming is paramount at Lifetime Television, the leader in women's television and the number one cable television network in primetime. And for the last couple years, Sapphire Plug-ins have played a key part in helping the network's Editorial Post Production Department create high-quality content across its program offerings.The main focus of the Editorial Post Production Department at Lifetime is to cut the promos for all programming. Currently, Lifetime has four Avid Symphony systems, all running GenArts' Sapphire Plug-ins. The style and the pace of the promos they create require the use of both subtle and dramatic effects to achieve the desired results, and this is where they rely heavily on the Sapphire Plug-ins.
"We've been using Sapphire Plug-ins for about two years now," says Dave Gross, senior editor at Lifetime. "We picked it up to replace our previous effects package when the company went out of business. We didn't expect Sapphire to become a key part of our creative process – but it is a tool we use on every show now."
"The variety and depth of the total package makes Sapphire the only effects tool we need. Without it, we would need multiple products to get all the effects we are able to create with Sapphire," says Steve Coffey, Lifetime Television's V.P. of Post Production.
At Lifetime TV, the Sapphire Plug-ins are used to give the network promos a very distinctive look, explains Coffey:
"We use Sapphire Plug-ins with all our Lifetime Sunday and weekly episodic promos campaigns. We like to give our promos a lot of energy and Sapphire has just the right set of tools for that. Sunday night is a showcase for our original dramas, that's our big night, so it's very important that these promos have a lot of visual appeal and catch viewers' eyes."
At Lifetime, each show has its own individual look and the editing team finds that each single effect can achieve a multitude of different looks to suit each show. "I particularly like Glow," says editor Gross. "Depending on how you set it, Glow can give you a lot of different results; but every time, it gives you that little bit of extra something that makes all the difference; it makes the whole spot coherent and different from the rest."
"Since we do a lot of episodic programming, we also look for a consistent 'dramatic' look in our promos. Almost all our shows are shot on film and Sapphire Plug-ins help push the 'dramatic' look a little further. We regularly use FilmEffect, ScanLines, and the '3Gs' of course, Glow, Glint and Glare. For some of our more topical shows, we also use Edge Rays quite a lot," says Gross.
"One of the other things I really like about Sapphire is that you can take a number of shots that may not be from the same source and put a Sapphire effect on it like Glint and instantly cause all the images to look more uniform. Sapphire allows us to be more creative, and it's also a huge time saver for our team. They offer an amazing complementary set of tools to what Symphony can already do," he adds.
"These plug-ins are very organic: they don't look like canned effects at all. So we always try and use them in such a way that the viewers really wouldn't know that they are seeing an effect. We don't use Sapphire for fancy effects but we use them to truly emphasize the content of the promo. This really requires a lot of user creativity and a lot of flexibility from the system," concludes Gross.
About GenArts' Sapphire Plug-ins
Sapphire Plug-ins provide digital artists with a collection of over 200 state-of-the-art image processing and synthesis effects. They fully and seamlessly integrate into a number of editing and compositing systems including: Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere; Apple Final Cut Pro and Shake; Avid Media Composer, Xpress, Xpress DV, Symphony and Avid|DS; Discreet combustion, flint, flame, inferno, fire, and smoke. Sapphire Plug-ins offer a comprehensive suite of tools and effects that can transform any film or video clip. They are resolution-independent, include multi-processor support for faster rendering, and run on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Irix. Effects in the package range from everyday tools such as Glows, EdgeRays, LensFlare, Glint, Blurs and RackDefocus, to more exotic effects like Lightning, FlysEye, JpegDamage, HalfTone and Textures.About GenArts, Inc.
Based in Cambridge, Mass., GenArts, Inc. is a premier provider of digital visual effects plug-ins for the film and video industry. Introduced in 1996, Sapphire Plug-ins have become an industry standard for high-end visual effects creation at leading studios, broadcast and post production facilities around the world. They are widely recognized for their unrivaled quality and ease-of-use, and have been used extensively to create an array of feature films such as The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars-Episode I and II, Spider-Man, The Matrix, Ice Age, Pearl Harbor, Final Fantasy, Dinosaur, Titanic, Armageddon, Planet of the Apes, Contact, Star Trek and Godzilla. Additional GenArts product information can be found at http://www.genarts.com.Contact:
Nicole Panas
GenArts, Inc.
1-617-492-2888
info@
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