Dylan Reeve
Forum Replies Created
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Well it’s really important that the editors have a very good relationship with the producers/directors (we didn’t usually have separate writers). It’s up to them to make sure they’re finding and painting the stories the producers want in the episode. I found that after a while it was fairly easy to predict what they’d like and want.
Where a list of changes may be a couple of pages when you begin working with a new producer/director it’s often down to just a few notes after a little while together. The reality producers I know go to great lengths to ensure they work with the editors they like (including flying them back to the country for a new show).
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My experience mirrors Mark’s to some extent (working at NZ’s reality TV factory) – the editors were quite often very autonomous. We got transcriptions of the tapes, basically, a simple run down of events and points of interest (usually logged at approximate time-of-day by production assistant on the shoot) and some director’s notes. Then we’d make the story.
Long days were usually the norm – if shift editing the late shift editor often got the raw end of the deal. A good digitiser/assistant is very helpful.
In a practical sense, I used to make a lot of use of Avid’s clip colouring so different cameras, events or character would have clips of a different colour and could be easily identified in the sequence.
The ability to cut down dialogue is absolutely vital and can’t be understated. You need to be able to take some rambling IV grab and turn it into a short and succinct bite. It has to make sense and sound more or less correct. I know editors who build up a bin of small words (and, if, of, we, I etc) from each person so they can grab them to tie bits together.
[Mark Raudonis] “If you’re really giving it your best shot, you’re working six days a week, ten hours a day.”
One series I worked on (where I was pretty much the only editor as the other shift editors kept quitting) I worked 40-something days without a day of. One of those days was a 26-hour shift – I started at 7am, finished at 9am the next day and came back again about 4pm that afternoon and worked to midnight. Surely that was my best work ever.
I say if your friend is willing to give you a go then go for it, but don’t be the only editor there if you’re not experienced. Make sure your working with someone with more experience who can mentor you in the role.
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As a counterpoint, I’d choose Avid Symphony or Media Composer with a Nitris DX.
I find Avid to require much less hand holding than FCP and it is much better suited to offline/online editing.
I’d throw Adobe Creative Suite into the mix (for Photoshop, After Effects and Encore).
As much as possible I’d try to standardise on SDI everywhere, much easier than trying to cater to component and DV.
If you want to go for a Mac Pro you could of course have FCP and Avid on the same system (I’d dual boot to avoid potential driver and software version issues).
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[Bob Zelin] “They just don’t get it – do they?”
Maybe we don’t get it? Time will tell.
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I reckon Jim Jannard and RED have a lot to answer for when it comes to messing up expectations.
I love the RED One camera, I have now worked on set and in post on a number of RED shoots (all destined for no greater than 1080 in the end). It’s a camera for $18,000 (we’ll ignore lenses and accessories) that can shoot 4K!
Every indie filmmaker in the country is now convinced they can cut their opus in 4K in FCP and have it projected at the local Multiplex for less than it costs to sponsor a kid in Africa.
They are very mistaken. Yes, they can shoot RED, in 2K, 3K or even 4K. Yes they can cut it in FCP (or Avid, or Premiere, or whatever if they are game to play around). But the 2K or 4K finish, there’s the rub. FCP can, in theory, work with 2K resolutions. But it’s far from simple at that point, it’s not like video. You can’t just spit it out. There are huge issues to consider about LUTs, delivery, compression, audio mastering.
My advice to anyone thinking they ought to get into 2K on the cheap is, don’t. Wait. Stop. Think about it. FCP and Color and all the rest are good tools, but this isn’t really their strongest area, and chances are it’s not yours either. There are product and people who really know what they are doing and do it well. Those people and products are what you need. Shoot 4K, edit the proxies in FCP or Avid or whatever, but when it comes to the finishing, if you want any bigger than 1080 then it’s time to find a friendly expert. Hire/beg some time on a Scratch or Pablo or Smoke with someone who really knows their stuff. The future nightmares will be reduced and the quality of the end product will be increased.
2K will come to your desktop in time, but wait a while.
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I have no experience with Premiere Pro at all, but if you have an Adrenaline connected that may perhaps be confusing Premiere. I would disconnect the Adrenaline device when using Premiere Pro.
Also, there are ways to improve the workflow between Avid and After Effects, although it obviously won’t be as closely tied as with Premiere Pro.
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I can’t comment on exporting the clips from FCP and retaining accurate timecode, as I haven’t really done a lot of that.
However, what I can tell you is that Avid doesn’t support QT timecode (I don’t know why, it annoys me).
But there is an application that will help, it’s called MetaCheater. It will read the QT timecode from a selection of files, and generate an ALE file for import to Avid. The clips generated from the ALE can then be linked to the source QT files in Avid using the ‘Batch Import’ function.
Metacheater can be found here:
https://www.staticpictures.com/metacheaterThis workflow does work well, and will get clips in Avid from QT with correct timecode data.
However I don’t think you can relink a sequence from EDL against existing media based on timecode and reel in FCP in the way you would in Avid. FCP doesn’t work that way.
So even once you have the clips in Avid with correct timecode and have made a cut, I don’t think you’ll be able to take that EDL to FCP and link to the 10bit material.
Is there any reason you’re not doing the whole lot in either Avid or FCP? It is easy enough to cut in one and redigitise in the other, but having to relink against existing media is going to complicate it.
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I prefer Windows as an operating system generally.
Although I might lean toward a Mac for this as it also opens up the possibility of using Final Cut Pro as well in a dual boot setup perhaps.
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Avid has VTR emulation which does exactly what you want. However I can’t find much information, and I’m not near my Avid manuals at the moment.
I’ve seen some suggestion that you needed a special cable rather than the normal 9-pin one, but I’m not sure on that.
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This sounds very weird. OMF is a multi-channel audio format designed especially for this sort of thing. As far as I know it directly supports two audio containers, AIFF or SD2 and AIFF is the only one still in common use.
Sending a WAV would be a flat file with. FCP does have the option to export AIFFs of your sequence, which will export multiple tracks separately, but an OMF is much better as it can include audio handles and other useful stuff.
Format-wise, AIFF and WAV are basically identical, they are both uncompressed PCM audio files. ProTools has no problem with AIFF files.