“Ginnaste -vite parallele” is a successful tv program based on an original format aired by Italian MTV. 2012 sees the second edition signed by Fremantle Media, one of the biggest tv production companies in Italy.
Fremantle Media producer, Rachele Fontanesi, tells us: “The idea was born from a contact with “Centro Tecnico Federale di Ginnastica” (Italian Gymnastic Federation) of Milan that is the place where athletes live and train the whole year long and also on because MTV had asked Fremantle for some new format ideas to schedule. So this new experiment was born in 2011 and “Ginnaste, vite parallele” was broadcast during the year with such a quick and notable success to be repeated and widened this year.”
Actually the first series was completed describing the long and tiring training sessions, the international competitions, the selections, including conflicts and friendship and school issues so the second was commissioned right away.
The production group was soon organized and moved from Rome to Milan and the format was a “docu-reality”. The formula is very easy but extremely long to shoot, actually the director went to live side by side with the athletes and started shooting herself with a portable camera, followed by two other cameras as a support.
The tv crews are so very agile, made up of just a filmmaker using a Panasonic AG-HMC151E, camera which is very light and capable of standing the many hours to record without tiring too much the cameraman.
The girls and boys training are followed practically 24 hours, from wake up breakfast, gym training, study at school (within the Sports Centre), their relax in the afternoon an time to bed in their rooms.
These athletes belong to the Italian National Gym Team and spend their lives entirely together and the tv troupes follow them even during the competitions and European Championships and even in recent London Olympics or the previous year in Tokyo for the World Championship.
Three cameras and many shooting hours per day result in an incredible quantity of video material which is physically delivered to MTV production centre in Milan. Here the two authors of this program review everything and start a long first selection in order to create all plot lines.
So in a way this is completely a reverse workflow than traditional, since there is no script before shooting and the “actors on the scene” are actually not acting at all. Images are “stolen” from the real day of the athletes and only after seeing a slot of hours and days of shooting the authors may come up with something which resemble an episode and than a series.
In the first season 30 episodes 30 minutes each were created, while in the second the episodes are 40, each again of 30 minutes.
Around one month shooting allows to prepare one week or five episodes; all images are shot in a similar to news or documentary style; there is no need for a lighting director, no scenes are prepared and a lot many images are not used at all.
Rachele Fontanesi as per the format declares: “There is no playing, it is no fiction: this in not a reality format, the athletes are not acting a part; our images just describe their teenager sports and competition life which is something unique, unknown and interesting by its sake. This is an uncommon choice of life, they left their parents and homes and live together for gym and a sports career.”
After receiving all shot material on SD, it is loaded on server within the post production centre and available for the 2 authors who skim all material and select the sequences to be used and rough edit some guidelines that the craft editors will then follow to create the episodes on Final Cut.
All export is then published on DIGITAL Betacam and addressed to the MTV TX department for transmission in via Belli in Milan.
All graphics are supplied by MTV and the editing areas insert what needed, so every episode is complete before transmission.
