This guy is always an editor's BFF on set - Day 3 of Editing Bite

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All of that may look like gobbledy-guk to you but to an editor it is a mystical map leading the way to buried treasure (aka an awesomely edited film). In film terminology it is called a continuity log sheet.

But speaking about pirate analogies...did you know that there exists a music genre called Pirate Metal?! Because nobody told me before today. Somebody started cranking this at the start of the day and my life has been better ever since.

Back to continuity log sheets for a second...

There are many roles on a film set that most people are familiar with, unfortunately the script supervisor is not one of them. And on indie sets it is usually a job that goes unfilled because it's just not as important as a DoP or Boom Operator. Those who think that are wrong. So very, very wrong. The script supervisor is tasked with logging important details for each take of each scene. This serves two main purposes:

• Helps maintain continuity in the final film (Is James Bond wearing the same suit when he arrives at the casino that we saw him wear earlier? Does Rick Grimes have the same amount of blood on his shirt in this scene from his zombie fight in the previous scene?)
• Tells the editor the correct takes to use

If the director yells "Cut! Beautiful performance, Meryl! That was perfect!" the script supervisor labels that a "circle take" to indicate that the director loved it. If the shot was ruined or the director just didn't like it for any reason, then it gets labelled as "NG" or "No Good".

A lot of other information is included as well, like camera information and shot details, which help the editor know which footage is the best to work from and which to set aside.

This is why the script supervisor on this set gets a hug from me. Every. Day.

It takes a bit more time to go over these log sheets first before editing, but in the long-run it speeds up my work tremendously. Each of the clips in the FCP7 project file gets this meta information attached to it so I can quickly find the best takes as I work.

EDIT PROGRESS

• Scenes cut: 7
• Film duration: 10:35
• Each of the scenes were uploaded privately to producers in Toronto so they can monitor progress

So it begins - Day 1 of Editing Bite

Ready. Set. Transcode.

Yesterday marked the first day of shooting Bite, as well as my first day editing it.

Once I was on set I saw many familiar faces. The Black Fawn gang is a family of crew so you see many of the same people from production-to-production. And many of us are on a hugging basis now.

Not much work to be done right away except load the day's footage into RCX and hit transcode. Using much of the same setting used on the previous Black Fawn films production, Antisocial 2. We're using the RED Dragon as Camera A and a RED Epic as Camera B this time around and filming in 5K. The addition of the powerful Dragon meant tweaking some of the proxy settings a bit.

The footage will be ready by morning and I can begin the lovely task of syncing audio and cutting scenes together.

More to come!

Feeling The Thrill of the Edit - Day 3 of Antisocial 2

An avalanche of footage landed on my desk in the form of a hard drive containing the last two days of filming. All of that prep work has paid itself off. Immediately I felt the thrill of the edit session as I finally gazed upon what the crew has been capturing so far for Antisocial 2.

First step was transcoding the footage through REDCine-X. As much as I will always have a soft spot for Final Cut, my first editing love, the tedious extra step of transcoding footage before anything will forever leave a bitter taste in my mouth.

Transcoding is an often necessary step at the start of post-production where the raw footage from the cameras is processed into a smaller package. This is done so that the computer doesn't have to work so hard to handle the LARGE video files while editing, therefore allowing the editor to work faster. However it sucks having to wait for it to finish. 

Even with the beastly RED Rocket Card equipped, it took 8 hours to transcode all of the clips to ProRes LT. 

Meanwhile the gents and I took a break and shared some stories from the day. After all, 1am may be the start of my work day but it is the end of theirs. One of the benefits I enjoy most about editing on-site is that I actually feel more like part of the crew. Since I've been away from set this whole time, this is a part of the day I look forward to a lot.

DMT, Producer, Editor and Sound for Antisocial 2.

But there is still MUCH work to be done and it's time to punch it into overdrive to catch up. Start a pot of coffee and slap the headphones on. Before waiting for every clip to finish transcoding, there is still work I can do in the meantime. I take the clips from both cameras and lay them on a timeline labelled SYNC. This is where I sync up the audio. "But Nick, can't you use PluralEyes to sync up the audio automatically?" I hate PluralEyes. Always have. Always will. We've never gotten along, although I understand it works well for some editors out there. All the power to ya!

My days of editing broadcast videos for OMAFRA on an AVID machine has gotten me very comfortable using the keyboard hotkeys to quickly navigate through an NLE. Ever since those days, syncing up audio in FCP has been a breeze. It may sound funny but I kind of enjoy doing it. It's a very satisfying task for me. And with my fingers flying across the keyboard, it's the closest thing to playing piano that I'll ever get.

Plus it forces me to watch a bit of each clip, which is what an editor should do first and foremost anyways. There isn't always a shotlist with notes on each take for the editor to use (there isn't one on this production anyways) so watching through the footage is important to see all that was captured. Get familiar with each take because that's how you sort them into golden takes, scraps and bloopers.

The clock reads 9:30am. Transcoding has finished, all clips have been synced to audio, and the first scene is roughly edited. Time to say good night, high five the crew as they wake up and head to set, and grab some shut-eye. Not a bad start so far.