Leaving some Bite marks - Day 2 of Editing Bite In-Production

The search for the most appropriate hashtag continues. For now, #BiteMarks is in the lead. Edit: Or how about #PostBites? Editors should be nodding solemnly in agreement with that one.

Edit Progress:

• The 3 scenes filmed yesterday were edited and shown to director Chad Archibald today. He gave me some minor changes that were then immediately made. Simple.
• Appr. 4 minutes of the final film assembled

After the 30-minute brisk walk to set (I love the walk because any chance to get some exercise is a glorious break from sitting at a desk all day) I arrived to find yesterday's footage transcoded and waiting for me.

For those who care by the way, we are taking the Dragon/Epic 5K clips and converting them to Quicktime ProResLT 1920x1080 clips for the offline edit. Much easier for my comp to digest and to store right on my internal drives.

The production shot 1TB of footage yesterday, which converts to roughly 100GB of proxy files for me. With 16 days of principal photography ahead of us, I've made sure my drives are able to store up to 2TB of proxy footage. Obviously I'll have to check with DIT to see if keep to that daily number or if we start going over.

Those who know me know I CRAVE organization in my project folders as I work. Setting up a neat and tidy folder and naming system for your project at the outset will pay off in spades towards the end of the edit. That image up there is a snapshot of how I generally organize each feature project. It changes depending on the needs of the particular production I'm on, but it's a good base to lay down at the start.

Once any new scenes are finished and ready to show, I throw them onto the iPad and leave it with Chad to watch at his leisure. Or he (or anyone approved to review scenes) can stop by my editing station and request to see a particular scene or shot.

Aside from that, DIT and I discussed storage for the film's raw footage to make sure we are good for disk space throughout production. And I snooped around the set when I had a moment to see what it looked like off-camera. Let me just say for the record that the art department have done an incredible job at building a set that does NOT appear as a set in the scenes. You won't be able to tell which was an actual location and which wasn't.

I also began building a library of temp music and sound effects to use. This film calls for a heavy emphasis on sound design and even though I'm only building rough scenes to look at, I still want them as polished and complete as I can get them. Not all directors or producers can use their imagination so easily when looking at dailies. Picking the right temp music track to set the atmosphere of the scene or a creepy, gurgling creature sound effect can make the scene go the extra mile when first viewing it.

That's all. Sleep now. More tomorrow.

To get more quips from set and updates on how the edit is progressing, follow Merc on Twitter and follow the Merc Facebook page for more pics and stills.

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!

Getting ready to sink my editing teeth into BITE

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This week production begins on a new horror feature from the Black Fawn Films team. The title is Bite and this one is going to get under your skin!

The director has asked for secrecy to be maintained on this one, but I've been given the go-ahead to post the teaser banner (above) and to say that this one will involve a lot of awesome, creepy special effects.

“While on her bachelorette party getaway, Katie, the bride to be, gets a seemingly harmless bite from an unknown insect. After returning home with cold feet, Katie tries to call off her wedding but before she’s able to, she starts exhibiting insect like traits. Between her physical transformation and her wedding anxiety, Katie succumbs to her new instincts and begins creating a hive that not only houses her translucent eggs, but feeds on the flesh of others. As her transformation becomes complete, Katie discovers that everything can change with a single bite.”

Once again I'll be editing on-location, transcoding footage and syncing audio while delivering scenes to the director. While the details of the film must remain hush-hush, I'll be posting regularly here about the editing process. So if you want to see a behind-the-scenes look at editing a feature on-location, then follow Merc on Twitter or Facebook to be notified of posts when they go up.

Even though I come from a visual effects background, I can't tell you how refreshing it is to be working with the BFF clan where they place so much emphasis on achieving their horror effects in production rather than relying on post. The special effects make-up will be done by The Brothers Gore, who were the same twisted gents who brought the monstrous villain to life in The Drownsman.

Let the games begin! See you in post.