All3A's James Voda Shares Post Production Remote Working

Producers at Levity Live consider themselves lucky. The shows they were working on — like Food Network’s “Restaurant: Impossible,” Adult Swim’s “Black Jesus” and HGTV’s “House Hunters” — had all wrapped principal photography by March when the pandemic hit. There was only one problem: Post-production needed to be completed.

But the company was also prepared. In the weeks before the coronavirus forced the closure of many offices throughout the entertainment industry, Levity Live preordered huge hard drives to transfer more than 520TB of footage per day that enabled it to move its 140 post workers from the office to their homes.

John Bravakis, executive VP and chief operating officer at Triage Entertainment, a production company owned by Levity Live that also produces Ovation’s “Inside the Actors Studio,” notes that early planning — along with the good fortune to not have any serialized reality shows in its pipeline — meant Levity and Triage didn’t miss a beat. “We could have been on Episode 6 of 9 on a competition show,” he says. Instead, “we were able to continue the workflow and migrate that content to our editors and post coordinators. All the shows had promo and marketing, and we were able to deliver on time.” 

All3Media America, which produces shows like Fox’s “Gordon Ramsay’s 24 Hours to Hell and Back” and HBO Max’s unscripted dating series “12 Dates of Christmas,” also was ready for the coming storm. “We were bouncing ideas around prior to the lockdown,” says James Voda, VP of post production. “We reached out to our vendors, talked to producers and discussed what would work.” …