Ever wonder about all the work that goes into your favorite films, shows, and live performances that you don’t see? It begins and ends with the GBH Production Group.
Sure, GBH has “almost unparalleled facilities,” says Tim Mangini, GBH’s Senior Director of Production Technology, “with Hollywood-level television studios, world-class audio recording spaces, renowned color grading and audio-mixing. We’ve won Oscars, Grammy, and Emmys from our work right here in Boston.” But the truth is, all of the cutting edge technology and top-of-the-line facilities would be for naught without the know-how, resolve, and tireless labor of the GBH Production Group.
Longtime members of the team like Phil Reilly, Lighting Director and Scenics Manager, come with stories in tow. Take, for instance, when the Boston Celtics asked GBH’s Production Group for a unique shot for their 2026 playoffs video shoot, inspired by a moment from Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl LX Halftime Show. It involved, among other complexities, constructing a 600-pound revolving camera rig to mount to the ceiling. Mulling over the details, Reilly just shrugged.
Within 36 hours of the request, he had constructed a 55-part device predominantly from pieces “lying around” the recesses of GBH Studios. Come the day of the shoot, his rig performed perfectly. Wheeling constantly overhead, the camera gathered footage to hype up the TD Garden faithful for the team’s playoff run. With credits on multiple Oscar-winning films and north of 20 years of experience at GBH, perhaps that should come as no surprise. Waves of players and personnel shuffled through GBH Studios, moving from one shoot to the next. It went by unremarkably, without a hitch. Par for the course for the GBH Production Group.
“If we’ve done our job well,” says Mangini, “people should not notice.” Mangini, who began his career as a track reader at Hanna Barbera Studios working on Scooby Doo, The Flintstones, and Casper the Ghost and has more than 30 years at GBH under his belt, wouldn’t have it any other way.
The scope of the GBH Production Group’s work extends far beyond pressure-inducing photoshoots of professional athletes, including the production of feature films, radio and television broadcasts, and concerts in GBH’s studios, as well as post-production for award-winning films, programs, and albums.
The Production Group has two divisions, says Mangini. The Studio team is run by GBH’s Director of Studio Operations, Terry Quinn, and they provide all the resources needed for TV shows, concerts, video podcasts, and more from GBH’s studios and theater. In addition, they provide technical equipment and support for shooting “essentially anything,” says Mangini, including direction, cinematography, audio recording and more for internal programs like GBH News Rooted, The Culture Show, and a wide variety of outside clients. They work out of all of GBH’s studios — whether it’s in Yawkey Theater, Yawkey Atrium, GBH Fraser Performance Studio, Studio B, the GBH Boston Public Library Studio — as well as video shoots across the city and Commonwealth with GBH’s Electronic News Gathering (ENG) crews.
The other arm is The OutPost, helmed by Mangini and Senior Post-Production Manager Beth Godlin Lillis, which handles all elements of post-production for GBH programs, including but not limited to FRONTLINE, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, and NOVA, as well as external clients.
It’s unique for a media organization to take on such a wide breadth and volume of production and post-production work. What both sides of the Production Group have in common — besides incredibly high standards — are a wealth of technical experience and ability, combined with an unflappable ingenuity. They are, if nothing else, problem-anticipators and problem-solvers.
Their work in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic on a last-minute cello concerto with Yo-Yo Ma is illustrative of this point. Having worked with GBH in the past, Ma approached the Foundation in May of 2020 with the idea of a live-streamed three hour-long cello performance to honor those who had passed and the first responders. The catch: his father was immunocompromised, so he had to perform in an empty GBH Fraser Performance Studio.
The GBH Production Group got to work, arranging four remote-operated cameras in the studio and preparing the entire building for Ma to safely enter, perform, and leave. The result: “a beautiful concert, streamed around the world,” says Mangini. “And then, the arts community around Boston realized they could reach audiences in a way that didn’t involve cramming hundreds of people into a confined area.”
When Mangini started at GBH more than 30 years ago as a FRONTLINE post-production supervisor, the problem facing the award-winning journalism program was the excessive costs that accompanied outsourcing the editing, color correction, and packaging of their films. Tasked with finding a way to bring these services in-house, Mangini began “The OutPost” — its own distinct (and humble) facility on Western Ave., separate from GBH’s headquarters. Over the course of the next decade or so, Mangini’s team became known — within GBH and in the wider film industry — “for high quality, reasonably priced post-production work.”
When GBH broke ground in 2007 on our Brighton offices, The OutPost was invited into the new headquarters. In 2014, FRONTLINE’s Executive Producer and Editor-in-Chief Raney Aronson-Rath, encouraged GBH to enlist The OutPost’s services for all of GBH’s local and national units. At the same time, Mangini took over managing the Studio Operations team, and the Production Group took its current shape.
Nowadays, The OutPost includes four distinct departments. Audio-mixing, complete with three high-end 5.1 mixing studios and about 400,000 recordings of sound effects, records for GBH productions as well as outside projects based in L.A., New York, London, and beyond. Next are the video suites, equipped with four state-of-the-art, 4K capable color grading rooms which ensure all the footage looks beautiful, video packaging rooms (for credits, lower-third graphics, etc.), and more than 125 video editing systems. Then there’s the tape floor, overseeing file duplication, technical evaluation, as well as incoming and outgoing video feeds. Finally, Offline Island, a pandemic-era addition to the Production Group, is a for-hire team of highly trained editors whose work spans all GBH units and the projects of outside clients.
“Curiosity and camaraderie are the traits I look for when hiring. I want people who really think about how to fix this, or improve that. And I want people who really care about each other. When you’re working late into the night several days in a row and there’s more laughter than complaints, folks tend to go home happy, and the job always gets done.”Tim Mangini, GBH's Senior Director of Production Technology
Composed of 24 staff overall, the Production Group has five people in management positions, seven on the studio crew, and thirteen on The OutPost team — as well as a collection of 45 regular freelancers to help them take on more and larger productions. Though their work is mostly behind the scenes, the Production Group’s efforts are indispensable to the day-to-day functioning of GBH, as well as the remarkable success of its many teams and programs. Asked what he’s most proud of from his tenure at GBH, Mangini is quick to mention founding The OutPost, and his team’s post-production work on FRONTLINE’s Oscar-winning 20 Days in Mariupol.
“It still gives me chills that Raney [Aronson-Rath, FRONTLINE Executive Producer and Editor-in-Chief] insisted on working with us on a film she knew could win an Academy Award. We wear it as a badge of pride that we were not only able to do it, but on time, on schedule, on budget. And win an Oscar.”
Equipped with GBH’s state-of-the-art facilities and tools, Mangini and his teams have earned industry-wide recognition as a top post-production facility, he says, “to the point where outside productions come to us for our services on a weekly basis. Since Congress defunded public media, that additional outside revenue is more important than ever.”
Having recently designed and built a space for recording video podcasts in GBH’s Studio B, the Production Group is excited about what comes next. They recently shot the first two episodes of the second season of NOVA’s “Particles of Thought,” and are preparing to host outside clients in the Studio going forward.
Beyond that, the newly launched FRONTLINE FEATURES promises to bring in a number of important documentaries. The return of AMERICAN EXPERIENCE is another exciting development, says Mangini.
Ever gregarious, Mangini’s pride in his team and enthusiasm for their work is effusive. “I really have the best job in the world. I work with the best people in the world. I get to meet outstanding producers and directors and work on incredible projects that also advance the mission of GBH and public media. It fills me up every day.”
—
Explore the GBH Production Group’s full array of services, read about the full team, and stay tuned for more work to come out of our studios and post-production suites.
