How long would it take you to cut a six-part documentary series?

[Shane Ross]

HIRE AN AE! This is a must. Just FYI, Andrew was an AE at a company that I still work at, and they do a LOT in terms of managing the media, and there is a LOT of it. On a series you are describing, an AE is a must….through the whole process.

Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Tom Vaughan-mountford]

Hi all,

Thanks for all the input, it’s been tremendously helpful.

We’ve put together an estimate for the client which is in the region of a year’s residency in our suites – and we’ve saved the grade and mix for a whole other discussion! Suffice to say, I think they’ll be taking another look at their budget for the ‘days’ of editing before they head off on their search for funding for the series. I wish them the best of luck as I’ve long wanted to break into long-form cutting.

Cheers,

Tom Mountford
Senior Editor
JMS Group Ltd

[Jon Doughtie]

Not only not yet shot, but not yet funded? Holy cow.

Like you, I wish them well. But IMHO, you have dodged a bullet.

System:
Dell Precision T7600 (x2)
Win 7 64-bit
32GB RAM
Adobe CC 2014 (as of 7/2015)
256GB SSD system drive
4 internal media drives RAID 5
Typically cutting short form from HD MP4 and P2 MXF.

[James Strawn]

(I know I’m late to the party, but…)
Excellent reply by Shane up there!

[Duke Sweden]

Me too! I was gonna throw ’em a couple of bucks 😉

[Jon Frost]

This sounds like a pretty serious undertaking from the get go. It would likely become a marriage of sorts, with everyone learning by doing. I would certainly be considering whether the client has the funding for this projected series first and foremost. None of the footage has been shot yet and the client wants to be viewing this series on their home theatre system in 2017??? Good luck with that.

Is there funding for even one part of the series yet?
Is there even a script written for part one? What is the plan for shooting the first part as far as timeline, locations, crewing, feeding and housing the ‘crew’? If you are thinking about doing this series alone for post production, then I would think long and hard… Seems like there are too many unanswered questions even before the project gets off the ground.

I have worked with a number of ‘producers, directors, etc. who had grandiose ideas while having no idea about how much it costs in real hard dollars to house, feed, manage a cast & crew of 25 people for 3 weeks in a remote location.

You might be able to use your workflow in the past on smaller projects and scale things up to a 1 hour long documentary. The workflow will be similar from pre-production, scripting, shooting and posting a smaller project, but things like HDD capacity, rendering, exporting are going to be exponentially larger/longer.

I think you are going to learn very quickly that you will need to leverage the talent and expertise of others during the post-production phase for things like After Effects, graphics, color grading, etc. This level of production/post-production over six 1-hour episodes is not something that I would take on alone. I would figure something like 3-6 months from receipt of the original media for editing, audio sweetening and things like After Effects and color grading for each episode. You have to coordinate with the client on a regular basis and if they are located across the country, there is a whole other level of logistics to keep everyone in the loop and obtain client approval at regular stages during post.

Jon Frost
Easthampton MA

[Joaquin Elizondo]

I just interviewed for an editing gig on an eight episode, 47 minute docu series. Their schedule is one week to watch all footage, no cuts. Then 5 weeks for rough cut. One editor and story producer per episode. There are two AEs. Didn’t go into the schedule to address notes and deliver.