CASE STUDY

Client: Hoplite Entertainment

Post-production of Culinary Escapes: 10-part travel series

Date: 2019

THE PROJECT

Californian production company Hoplite Entertainment tasked Story Productions with transforming hours of raw footage into an international travel series that takes viewers on a journey to the world’s most luxurious destinations, watch the trailer.

Kerri Zane and Christina Cindrich swim in an indoor pool
Kerry Zane and Christina Cindrich sit on wooden benches at a spa
Christina Cindrich and Kerri Zane swim in a pool

THE CHALLENGE

It’s not every day you get to stay in five-star hotels or try the food of Michelin-starred chefs for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Unless you’re Emmy-award winning travel experts Christina Cindrich and Kerri Zane that is, who traveled with a camera crew to luxurious destinations around the world to experience the finest cuisine for the television series Culinary Escapes. 

When Hoplite Entertainment told us about their ambition, the challenge that fell to Story Productions was transforming the footage into a polished television series that would inspire and entertain an audience. Each episode focused on one single destination. In 26 minutes, we had to convey the beauty of each place as well as package the best of the hosts’ adventures and interviews in a sequence that made narrative sense. 


No two people or places are the same, however, and creating a consistent pace and style across the series, with such different material, required more than a few post-production tricks.

The production crew had filmed a number of venues and experiences on location at each destination, over the course of a few days, and so packaging the footage was a challenge for our script team, and the first part in a creative process that involved writers and editors, production assistants and an art director. 


THE SOLUTION

Story Productions spent six months working on Culinary Escapes. There was no single quick fix but a lot of dedication from our team, and close communication with Hoplite to make sure they were on board with our decisions every step of the way.

Two chicken breast and rosemary sauté on a black pan

The secret is in the script

“The Culinary Escapes script was created through an inverse process,” says lead script writer Sérgio. “The programme had been recorded first and the episodes written afterwards. Our first task was to define the overall tone of the series: fun and informal in which the viewer travels the world with Kerri and Christina, having fun but learning something along the way”.


Once the overall tone was agreed with Hoplite, we got to work on a narrative structure. Each episode would be split into four segments, and each segment would feature an experience or a meal during the day and one at night. This gave it the feel of a full day’s itinerary, transitioning from day into night in a way that felt natural to the viewer. We put this to the test with the first episode and, happy with the result, worked to that structure for all the other episodes, starting and ending each episode with an opening and closing sequence. 


Branding and motion graphics

In parallel to the script process, we got straight to work on creating a visual identity for the series. Story Productions hired an art director who produced a logo that brought together the concepts of food and travel in a neat icon. To that we added a palette of bold colours and a typography that felt clean and simple but with modern art-deco cues.  The logo formed the basis for the motion graphics that are used throughout each series, in the title sequence as well as across all lower thirds. We gave each programme its own stamp – literally – playing with a postcard visual to label the destination of each episode. 

Christina Cindrich and Kerri Zane eat a pastry treat in a crowded restaurant

In the edit suite

This is where the script and the footage came to life, episode by episode. A team of three editors worked from the video script, cutting together the best footage, laying down the voice over, and picking the perfect music to create a stunning series from start to finish. 


“Often with post-production, we’re bringing someone else’s creative vision to life, but in this instance we were working hand-in-hand with Hoplite to define the creative direction,” says Story's Post Production Supervisor Fred. Hoplite would approve an offline version of each episode via frame.io, feeding back their comments, and we would then work on the colour grading, the final voice over and a final sound mix before delivering the final series via ftp.

Managing a complex process remotely

Throughout the six-month process, we didn’t meet the Hoplite team once. They were in Los Angeles and we were in São Paulo. This was pre Covid-19 and we were already using technology to work closely with a partner thousands of miles away, from fine-tuning the scripts to tweaking the final cut. Online video review tools and a static IP address with large upload/download speed capacity facilitated this process.


Our production coordinator developed a timeline for each episode that built in milestones for script and edit approvals, meaning we could stick to a schedule and get the series delivered on time. Each part of the team worked on a different episode at any one time, from logging to scripting, editing to motion graphics.



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