Avid Customers Heralded at BAFTA® Television Craft Awards

Avid® (Nasdaq: AVID) today congratulated its award-winning and nominated customers for their outstanding achievements at the BAFTA® Television Craft Awards 2015, hosted by the British Academy of Film & Television Arts (BAFTA®). Many of Britain’s most respected creative professionals embraced Avid Everywhere™, using creative solutions powered by the Avid MediaCentral Platform, to deliver a catalog of compelling and unforgettable programming.

In the Editing: Fiction category, editor Yan Miles, an Avid Media Composer user, won for his work on the season three finale of the multi-award winning series, Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. In His Last Vow, a reworking of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton, Miles weaved together the gripping plot strands using Avid Media Composer®, the industry’s preeminent editing solution and part of the Avid Artist Suite.

“It’s a privilege to have won a BAFTA among such a high caliber of television content creators. Media Composer is vital when I edit drama,” Miles said. “On His Last Vow there were many challenges and some particularly complex sequences, such as Sherlock’s near-death experience. For this intense emotional scene, the biggest challenge was blending the mind palace of the character Charles Magnussen into the story, but never giving the audience too much so we didn’t lose the element of surprise. Knowing how to use Media Composer doesn’t qualify you to be an editor, or storyteller, but it definitely facilitates that process.”

Acclaimed supervising sound editor Doug Sinclair, series re-recording mixer Howard Bargroff, production sound mixer John Mooney and dialogue editor Paul McFadden won in the Sound: Fiction category. They used the industry-standard Avid Pro Tools® to create the intense soundscape that accompanied Miles’ work in the final episode of Sherlock.

“Creating a soundscape for such an emotionally charged episode like His Last Vow was challenging, both artistically and technically,” said Sinclair, owner and co-founder of Bang Post Production in London. “We worked hard to weave a cohesive narrative of sound using Pro Tools, comprising clear, concise dialog, music and effects that all added to the intense emotion of Sherlock’s distraught fight for life. Our BAFTA win comes as a great commendation of the team’s hard work and we’re very proud of all involved.”

Another BAFTA award-winning project crafted with Avid solutions was the critically acclaimed BBC crime thriller, Happy Valley, cut on Media Composer. Director Euros Lyn was nominated in the Director: Fiction category, and lead writer Sally Wainwright won in the Writer: Dramacategory for their creation of the compelling and provocative drama series that explores the grittier, darker side of everyday British society.

“Avid Everywhere has enabled the UK’s most talented, creative storytelling professionals to connect with their audiences more efficiently, powerfully and collaboratively,” said Avid Chairman, President and CEO Louis Hernandez, Jr. “We congratulate them on their outstanding achievements and can’t wait to see the work that they and their peers create for all of our enjoyment in the future.”