Foo Fighters: Sonic Highways created via Avid Everywhere

The creative teams behind Foo Fighters: Sonic Highways embraced ‘Avid Everywhere’ to create the current HBO documentary series.

The Avid MediaCentral Platform powered a workflow that gave the creators freedom to infuse each episode with a different style, while managing a vast amount of footage and tight timescales.

Directed by the band’s frontman Dave Grohl, the eight-part series sees the group travel to iconic studios in cities across the nation – Chicago, Austin, Nashville, Los Angeles, Seattle, New Orleans, Washington, D.C. and New York – to write and record their latest album, Sonic Highways, which was released on November 10th. Each episode features interviews with influential artists, producers and studio owners – from stars like Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson to recording pioneers such as Steve Albini and Daniel Lanois.

A collaborative post production environment was established with the Avid Artist Suite’s Avid Media Composer and Pro Tools software. According to sound mixer Jeff Fuller, Pro Tools helped the sound crew cope with increasingly short deadlines and develop each episode’s unique style.

“We went from having a week-and-a-half to turn around the first episodes to just three or four days by the end, but Pro Tools was amazingly robust,” he said. “We had absolutely no glitches with it throughout the entire production. The workflow didn’t change much, but we changed the mix stylistically for each episode to keep it fresh.”

Media Composer’s tight integration with Pro Tools also helped boost efficiency and collaboration between the editing and sound departments. “Using Avid Artist Suite solutions for both the audio and video delivered reliability and stellar results,” added video editor Lazarte, who cut the Seattle episode. “I’ve used this workflow on every major project, and I love and trust it.”

For more on Foo Fighters: Sonic Highways, including clips from previous episodes, check out the HBO website.

Picture credit: Kevin Mazur/HBO

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