Nina Staum
Forum Replies Created
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I agree with Mark. When I was an assistant (not that long ago) I remember being frustrated at my low-wage coffee-girl status because of all the skills required… you had to be smart enough to tackle the routers, 3 different platfoms, archiving and restoring projects, and crazy multitask dubbing – yet you still had to fetch glasses of water for the senior editors and get yelled at by the production manager for labelling commercial dubs 1×0:30 instead of 1x:30. The trade-off for me was observing the workflow in a super-high-end company, plus cool co-workers and clients who hooked me up with all the freelance editing gigs I could handle.
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I think either one would be good to learn on. The important thing is to get used to dealing with clips and media, and they’re similar enough that you can take the same concepts from one to the other.
One slightly pro-Avid bias… a lot of people find Avid has a steeper learning curve than FCP, so it seems to be harder for people to go from FCP to Avid than vice versa (wouldn’t know, started on Avid myself.) I don’t know if I’d factor that into designing a program though. If you’re going to be an editor hopefully you’re the kind of person who wouldn’t mind tackling the FCP-to-Avid learning curve on your own.
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Problem with digital VU’s is that there doesn’t seem to be the same agreed-upon standards as there are with analog, so correct levels are a bit subjective. I have always gone with average peak at -15, never ever anything over -10. That’s how I was taught to dub stuff for air as a master op, and that’s how I now master shows as an editor. Never had any complaints from broadcasters and those levels will give you a perfect dub across to Beta SP if you set tone to 0.
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What acronyms? Try me.
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That’s interesting… it’s almost like no training is the industry standard. Guess I was lucky.
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Grinner, I definitely agree that storytelling is something that is felt rather than taught, but I’m starting to think that, for a lot of people, just feeling it isn’t enough. I’ve taught a bunch of editing workshops at the local film co-op, and it seems to me that most people have no trouble finding some sort of flow. But what does it take to convert that feeling into a well-edited piece?
Although my taste hasn’t changed much in the past 5 years, my ability to make work I’m happy with has increased substantially. Part of it is the confidence to question a script and decide what’s needed to make it a good project. Part of it is knowing your gear well enough that you can free your brain up for creative thinking. The tricky part is channeling that “feel” into the Avid, and I’m curious about how people have learned to do that.
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“It comes down to how your client views your services – have they hired you for your knowledge and skill, or simply as a machine operator.”
Ha, this is kind of funny. I feel like they’ve hired me as a machine operator, but expect the result of someone with knowledge and skill. I’m told to let the producer choose all of the shots, yet after the rough cut I’m inevitably asked to replace them. I’m told not to spend time on graphics, but when I sneak them in, I’m praised for my design work. The total creative direction I get is “here’s some tapes,” yet I’m expected to pull a TV show out of a script with no vision whatsoever.
Yesterday, one producer told me that putting a still image over a moving background was “not high-end enough.” Today, my other producer couldn’t understand why I refused to use footage from an oxide tape so old it came in a locking box.
3rd round of changes on first segment. Four more segments facing a scratch recut. Air date looming.
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Bob, makes a lot of sense, but it’s a bit of a different situation. We don’t offline/online, just one editor from beginning to end. I usually keep the same idea as the script, but fix small mistakes like not enough cover, wrong timecode, or poorly-chosen b-roll. If I think we need a major change, I give the heads-up to the producer or my boss, and let somebody else make the call. Most of the time my input is appreciated, even if it doesn’t make the final cut.
On the project I’ve been working on, the schedule was so tight that I cut it almost exactly to script. The producer and I didn’t see eye-to-eye on the structure; I voiced my opinion and was overruled. The feedback we got from his boss and the client seems to agree with me, but he still doesn’t get it. I’m forseeing *many* rounds of changes, and wondering if there was anything I could have done differently. 🙁