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Tips needed from anyone doing post on episodic 1 hour shows
Thanks in advance for any help-
Looks like my company may be getting into a documentary series. While we have done plenty of long form as well as commercial work, none of the long form stuff has been for broadcast. My main questions are as follows:
1) What is the typical post schedule for a 1 hour documentary? I know this is a broad question, depending on many things, but I’m just looking for a general idea.
2) Do multiple editors usually offline these projects at the same time, and if so, in what way? What I mean is, would a given editor work on a particular scene and then put all the pieces together at the end, or what?
3) Depending on the answer to question #2, is there any effort to build the show in a linear fashion, or is it customary to work on certain scenes in whatever order seems appropriate?
Thanks
Chris Tomberlin
Editor/Compositor/Owner
OutPost Pictures -
3 Replies
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Hi Chris – I’m an editor at a PBS Member Station.
Answering your questions:
1.) Schedule: 3 months of post – includes everything from tweeking archive images in photoshop to creating the promos and intro/credit animations… everything.
2.) Usually, doc producers hate multiple editors in the offline, unless there are very separate segments. However, it’s not unusual to have different editors offline and online.
3.) Despite the nonlinear editing world, most producers still come to me with workloads that have been created in a very linear fashion. It’s probably a peace-of-mind thing on their part.With all that said, the best thing to do (that I’ve seen, anyway) with our more national series-based docs is to create a template for the series. Make a skeleton, then plug content into the holes. This way, regardless of your content, all shows feel like they’re delivered by the same entity.
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\`(=)`/…Pixel Monkey
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Here’s the link to the “Red Book” – a resource PBS offers to producers who wish to submit content. You don’t have to follow it note for note, but it’s a good start.
https://www.pbs.org/producers/redbook/Cheers!
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\`(=)`/…Pixel Monkey
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Hey,
Thanks for the info. Apparently I forgot to check the email notification for this thread…I was wondering why I was getting no response! Your observations in the first post match up with what I have found so far. The trouble with the multiple offline editor thing is that the short film stuff we have done before with this particular director is very stylized, and takes more time than a straight forward edit. It makes it easier to meet the deadline if the offline can be split up, but he doesn’t seem to like it much. I was hoping I could tell him that everybody does it that way… oh well.
Thanks again for the info. If you think of anything else that might help, I would appreciate it.
Chris Tomberlin
Editor/Compositor/Owner
OutPost Pictures
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