I remember back when I interviewed to get into the Film School, I said I was interested in writing and directing because that’s where the story is shaped. The head interviewer added the editor to that list, though in a condescending way (I’d later learn that the guy is indeed a prick, and fortunately is gone).
But, he was right, and lately this has been coming back to mind, mainly during the editing of my thesis (my Gossip Girl-esque hyper-real one, not the documentary).
During the first cut screening the beginning was fantastic and exactly what I wanted (going back to why it’s important to see the end film in your head), while the end was a disaster. It just didn’t work. Partly this was due to some acting by a tough-to-cast mom role, but ultimately it’s my film and my doing. Going back to knowing what you want, the beginning was very clear in my head while the end was not, and thus, this happens.
Back in the edit room, we did what now makes perfect sense - match the tone of the two halves. What was once a lame, melodramatic torture scene is now an exaggerated awesomeness-taken-to-an-11 torture scene.
In a perfect film set world (real world), you shoot for the day, send the film to the lab that night to be processed, return the next day, shoot some more, and then during lunch (or beginning/end of the day), you watch what you shot the previous day. These are called dailies, because you do it everyday.
If you didn’t catch my tone, there’s an element of the Film School’s system that bothers me. There are many reasons to watch your footage everyday - to make sure it looks like you want, the film was processed successfully, equipment isn’t ruining shots, you’re getting all the coverage. It’s common sense to check what you’re shooting instead of being in the dark, especially when millions of dollars are riding on it. The idea is that if some thing’s wrong, it’s a lot easier and cheaper to re-shoot it when you’re on location with an entire crew instead of bringing everyone back.
However, at the Film School, things are a little different. First off, dailies aren’t possible, and I understand that. The film has to be shipped off to Miami and it’s usually sent in batches at the end of a show (instead of the end of each day), so there’s no way to check what you’ve shot until long after you’ve wrapped. About a week later, once the film has returned and the Assistant Editor has synced picture and sound, everyone that worked on that movie goes to the Film School theater and watches the ‘dailies’ - about an hour of raw, unedited footage.
Having everyone watch dailies isn’t normal practice, but from a a learning perspective, it’s useful to connect how the set was lit to how that comes out on film. It’s also handy to see how the editor assembles the footage.
So I’m understanding that we can’t see what we shot each day. What I don’t understand is why such extreme measures are taken to ensure we don’t see the footage before the official ‘dailies’ screening.
We’ve always been warned about not watching footage before the dailies screening (though never given a reason), but when it’s your film or you shot it, there’s a great personal investment involved and a lot of anxiety, wondering if those elaborate shots worked or if the film even exposed (of course it did).
The footage from the thesis I was cinematographer on returned. I went to the post-hallway to pull it up, but to my un-enjoyment the folder was locked. In fact, all the folders from the films that just returned were locked. This was never done before. I would very much like to know if the 91 set-ups look good, and that I didn’t sacrifice quality for quantity.
The official dailies screening is this Friday, about two weeks after we shot it. Like the title says, it’s dailies, not weeklies. Kind of ridiculous, right?
If you need an example of a talking head doc, this is it. For an HBO film1, I was kind of let down, but later it made sense.
The Blacklist is a series of interviews of some of the most�influential�African Americans - Toni Morrison, Chris Rock, Colin Powell, et al. Because these are such fascinating people, you can get away with just having them talk, though if you took the audio and put it on NPR you’d probably get about 95% of the movie.
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, the director, is primarily a photographer, doing 8×10 portraits (that’s 8″x10″ negatives for huge, highly detailed prints). So knowing that, and realizing that he’s capturing a moving portrait, I let the talking heads slide a little. “Take what I do as a photographer…and make that work in film. It’s all about the person.” In editing, they had to cut down an hour interview into a five minute vignette that has an arc. I think they were successful.
To prevent the usual jump cutting you get when you shoot a talking head and don’t vary the shot, the filmmakers used a nice little audio trick to smooth things over. They would hold on the subject after they finished talking and start the audio for the next clip before cutting to it. Pretty cool.
This will probably be one of the easiest docs to see, as it will be on HBO Aug 25. There will also be a book.
When you major in film, you sort of become the official video guy for the family, like editing stills and video your grandfather shot in Israel.
The good thing about an A/V clueless family is the most minor tasks, like making a cut, amazes them, so they’re pretty easy customers. Until they give you weird video files from their still camera.
It all started off well. I brought my grandfather’s photos and videos into Adobe Premiere, and began editing under his supervision. He used to do old-school 8mm editing, so an entire production package in a laptop blew him away.
The footage played back fine, though when I rendered it, it would play back a little choppy. I thought this was the computer being funny (real funny), so I continued editing. Yes, this is the point to shake your head.
Lesson: If the shit doesn’t work on a small scale, making it bigger and investing more time isn’t going to fix it.
You know where this is going. I finished the 20 minute long video, went to export, and guess what? Yeah, it was choppy.
I’ve finally fixed it. Five days later.
If you want all the technical juice, the video was some sort of MPEG Premiere didn’t like. I tried converting the original footage and relinking it to the stuff I edited, but no go. Just to see if something else would take it and I could re-edit it, I tried Final Cut and iMovie, but nothing. I’m kind of happy that didn’t work.
My solution? Export the video as Filmstrip. When I bring this back into Premiere, it still plays choppy. But when I render, boom. Smooth playing video. Export the audio, re-sync them, and yes, boom.
The final product. But I warn you, you will probably want those 20 minutes back.
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If you need an example of a