Know Your Crew: Pitfalls Directors Should Avoid

“Movies are made in post-production.”

While some producers and cinematographers may take issue with this maxim, Nancy Kirhoffer, an accomplished post-production supervisor whose credits include Memento, 50/50 and Bernie, makes a compelling case: “Movies are three things: picture, sound and music and two of those happen in post-production.”

Last week, Kirhoffer spoke to Film Independent Members about the responsibilities of her position. “I basically take over from the line producer. My job is to get the film through post-production. I oversee the editing, sound, music and I make sure it’s delivered.”

Kirhoffer recommends finding a post-production supervisor in pre-production. After all, they’re the ones responsible for helping the film reach the finish line.

“I’ve worked with so many people whose first movies never get finished.” By bringing in a post-production supervisor early on, filmmakers can know what to expect when they arrive at the editing bay, how long they should take to finish the film, and how much they should expect to spend.

“The truth of the matter is whether you spend $100 million or $100,000, the process is the same,” said Kirhoffer. “In that same vein, if someone is going to pay $15 to see your movie in the theater, they don’t care that you only had $100,000. They only want to make sure it’s worth their $15, and there’s an expectation that the film is going to sound a certain way, and it’s going to look a certain way, and you can’t get over that fact. It has to sound good.”

And good sound isn’t cheap. “There is no world where a sound job costs $20,000. No world where that happens. You’re going to need to spend at least $65,000.”

That’s why it’s key for low-budget filmmakers to bring on a post-production supervisor. They need to know, according to Kirhoffer, “the bare minimum that it’s going to cost to get your movie to where you can distribute it.”

To demonstrate just how tricky navigating post-production can be, Kirhoffer brought along her calendar for post on Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising. A variety of stages stretch and overlap, different tasks to accomplish by different points in post-production, comprising a tightly organized period of about 23 weeks from editor’s assembly to finished film.

Or at least, that’s how things should go.

“I call [the calendar] my work of fiction. It never goes this easy, never this good.”

Often, delays are caused by...[read full article]

Daniel Larios / Film Independent Blogger
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Organize Your Hard Drive

Keeping your assets organized in your NLE is vital, but now you’ve got to organize your hard drive! Here’s a great way to do it.

Keeping your project nice and organized when editing is essential – you never know who you might have to hand the project off to, or if you might have to come back to it much, much later. If it’s not organized, headaches and cursing ensue. Keeping things organized outside of the NLE – on your hard drive or server – is just as vital for passing off a project or archiving it. Here’s a look at one potential project organization setup that I use, plus a free download of the folder structure!

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Approvals

This folder is for non-final versions that are ready for the client to look over (usually .mp4s in my case).

Audio

There are 4 folders inside the Audio folder:

• Mixes – specifically for mastered & mixed .wav or .aif files
• Music - for the raw stock or original music used in the project. Even if you use a master library, I recommend copying the songs in here so they stay with the project.
• SFX
• VO

Documents

I put scripts, interview questions, project briefs, casting notes, etc. in here.

GFX

This folder is for any non-footage elements like logos, images, pre-rendered lower thirds/motion graphics, etc.

Masters

Directly inside the Masters folder is where I put the master .mov files – ProRes 422 HQ typically.

There’s also a subfolder called Deliverables: This folder is specifically for non-archival delivery formats needed, like H.264 for web, ProRes or XD Cam for TV station delivery, .m2v/.ac3 files for DVD, etc.

Media

Some people prefer to keep their media in a different place/drive than their projects. If you like to keep it all together, put it in this Media folder, organized by “Reel X” folders to separate card/shoot days.

Projects

This is for all project files, including Premiere/Avid/FCP/whatever, After Effects, Motion, Cinema 4D, Flash, Audition, Soundtrack Pro, etc.

I also like to add subfolders for each program, like so: PR, AE, FCP, FL, C4D, and so on, plus an XML for any XMLs created for program interchange: FCP -> Premiere/After Effects, Premiere -> Resolve, etc.

VFX

This folder is distinct from the GFX folder – I use this for any footage elements like green screen passes, background plates, or non-mograph output from After Effects or Motion (like speed changes, logo blurs, etc.)

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Hopefully this system helps you easily manage all of the project assets on our drive. You can download a .zip containing an empty version of this folder structure by clicking here.

If you’d a few more organizational tips fro videographers, video editors, and filmmakers, check out the following links from PremiumBeat!

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(Source Article by Aaron Williams)

Adobe Premiere Pro - 2015

Premiere Pro features a new color workspace featuring the Lumetri Color Panel, which allows editors to manipulate color and light in new and innovative ways, at any point in the editing process, without leaving the application. Combining new color technology based on SpeedGrade with familiar Lightroom-style controls, applying simple looks and manipulating parameters to achieve the perfect aesthetic has never been easier, and you’ll see beautiful results in just a click or two. You can take it further with curves and hue/saturation controls, and the new Lumetri 3-way color corrector. And if you want to do more, you can use Direct Link to take your project into SpeedGrade for additional refinements.

Unsightly jump-cuts in talking head interview footage might just be a thing of the past with the addition of Morph Cut, which uses face tracking, frame interpolation, and some Adobe magic to create seamless transitions that previously would have seemed impossible.

The introduction of CC Libraries to Premiere Pro (shown in After Effects in the link) allows you to access and use looks and graphics wherever you are. Use the amazing Project Candy mobile technology to capture the look of a location or picture, jump into Premiere Pro’s Libraries panel and see the look sync’ed via Creative Cloud, and just drag it to a clip to apply. You can easily share looks and graphics from Photoshop and elsewhere between projects, team members, and across other Adobe applications for seamless access and collaboration.

An improved workflow to bring your video projects that you created on your phone from Premiere Clip, Adobe’s editing app for iOS devices, means you’re only two clicks from bringing your project into Premiere Pro to use professional editing tools.

You can now easily toggle between new task-oriented workspaces, optimized for the task at hand (whether it be editing, color work, and more), using the new workspace switcher.

As you’ve come to expect from Premiere Pro, you can work at any resolution without needing to transcode, and a host of newly supported native formats, including new support for Canon XF-AVC, and Panasonic 4K_HS, streamlining your path to getting creative.

And the features don’t stop there. Editors who work with Closed Captions will now be able to burn them into video on export, and a number of editing refinements like the new composite preview during trim, simpler keyboard-based numerical input, Source Settings now showing as Master Clip Effects, and improved AAF exports help you focus on simply making beautiful content. You’ll also find audio routing is easier thanks to improved audio routing UI, and an improved Audition workflow featuring Dynamic Link means moving between Premiere Pro and Audition is easier and faster than ever. Users of Windows-based touch devices will benefit from the first steps being taken towards a more touch-friendly editing experience, allowing editors to perform tasks like moving clips in the timeline and scrubbing the play-head by directly touching the screen. And editors who work with third-party I/O devices will experience significant Mercury Transmit performance enhancements.

One final piece of Adobe magic allows you to alter the duration of an export by up to 10% in either direction while maintaining quality. Time Tuner lets you target the precise duration of your required output without needing to perform time-consuming micro editing, by automatically adding or removing frames in areas of low activity, providing results of the highest possible quality for broadcast and elsewhere.
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(Source Article)

Christian Worldview Film Festival 2015

The full list of 2015 Official Selections is now online!
Guild & Festival // March 10-14

Here are the films I helped with that will be showing this year.

- Polycarp (Camera, Editor, Colorist)
- Bound (Consultant)
- Roses (On-set Editor)
- Wanted (Editor, Colorist)
- Firefly (Consultant)
- Awakened to Truth (Post Production Director)
- Overcoming Opposition (Post Production Director)
- The Egg Project (Post Production Director)
- Who We Are (Director of Photography)
- Set Free (Consultant)

View the full list here!

Also, if you haven't purchased your tickets to the Guild & Festival, be sure to use discount code JOHNCLAYBURNETT to get $25 OFF!

Purchase tickets here!

10 Tips from Editors to Directors

Jonny Elwyn follows-up his popular article on what editors want camera operators to do to help out the process with an equally illuminating piece, this time focusing on the director/editor relationship.

My first article on Redshark News, 11 Things Editors Wish Camera Operators Always Did, seemed to have resonated with quite a few folks, so I thought I'd put down a few more thoughts on the complex creative marriage that occurs when directors are working with editors.

As with any close creative collaboration, personality, experience and personal idiosyncrasies all play a role in shaping how successful the union will be. Sometimes those differences create insurmountable conflict; other times, cinematic magic. But it is the professional editor's role to be what the director needs them to be at any given moment, and although the editor does have the opportunity to shape the final product in momentous ways, his-or-her work should ultimately all be in service of the director’s vision and producing the best possible end result.

With that in mind, here are 10 suggestions for directors on how to get the best from their editors.

1. It's a collaborative effort.
That means I want to bring all that I have to contribute to the project. I want to engage you in lively debate about the best way to shape the project. I want you to be open to trying new ideas and new approaches. I don't want to you to see me as only a button monkey.

2. What you have isn't what you had.
The editor is the one who has to stand in the gap between what the director thinks they have or wishes they had, and what they really have. We can only cut the footage you shot. Our job is to bridge that gap as much as we can.

3. Don't tell me when to cut.
No clicks, claps, points, taps or shouts please.

4. Leave me alone.
I need time to get on with things without you in the room. To get organized, watch through the footage, find the takes I like, try things my way, try crazy things that just might work but probably won't and to have the freedom to take a crack at things without wasting your time.

5. Be available.
If you're on the phone all the time, it's hard to collaborate. I'll need some quality time with you, at the right time, to help get your feedback, thoughts and collaborative energies in a focused way. You're the director after all - it's your project.

6. Be specifically general.
When working with actors it is common practice not to tell them you hated it when they said this word in that way. You'd say "once more with feeling." With an editor, if you say "the scene feels like it lacks energy," then I can go away and do things to amp it up a bit. If you say shave 5 frames off this shot and cut in here rather than there, things tend not to work out so well. Let me fix the note in the spirit of the note.

7. Be generally specific.
Towards the end of a project, it's OK to get more specific and granular with the details of your feedback. We want to make sure you get what you want and sometimes it's easier just to sit with you and give you that, especially if either option is a viable one.

8. Do not touch the screen.

9. Share Your Wisdom.
As an editor I've learnt much of what I know about filmmaking, narrative structure and creative ju-jitsu from the directors I've worked with. Your patient sharing of hard-won wisdom is gratefully received.

10. We sometimes get things wrong.
Usually spelling. I also think my most frequent fault as an editor, when collaborating with a director, is to dismiss an idea as one that "I've already tried and it didn't work…" Instead, I would be wiser to walk through the director's version of the idea once again – either to put to rest that it really won't work, or to be pleasantly surprised that it does.
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(Article Source)

How to Make Your Editor Happier

11 things video editors wish they could say to camera operators and DOPs

RedShark welcomes editor and blogger Jonny Elwyn to its growing ranks of writers. He responds with this handy list for shooters and camera ops, of ways to keep their editors happy.

As any experienced editor will tell you, after years of sifting through hours and hours of footage (some of it good, some of it bad, some of it very ugly), there are a few key things that anyone working behind the camera can do that make our lives much easier, the project far better, and the final result something we can all be proud of. 

Of course, it's very easy for editors to turn into armchair critics. They didn't get up at 5 am to make the sunrise or drag heavy gear half way up a mountain, battling the elements just to get the perfect shot. But we do have the benefit of the perspective gained by leisurely skimming through the results of your hard graft. So here are 11 suggestions for things every editor wishes every camera operator always did, and hopefully they'll improve what you get in the can, and improve the life of editors everywhere. 

The first and last suggestions are probably the most important!

1. Shoot for the edit  - Think in terms of sequences and storytelling. Make sure you've got an establishing wide, an interesting reveal, close ups, movement etc. If an interviewee mentioned a specific location, item, or view, try to grab that if you can. Also think in terms of triplets. Three shots most often make for a nice sequence of cutaways - two, not so much.
2. Always roll  - It's the 'bad bits' that we often use - re-focuses, lens whacking, snippets of background audio for filling in silences, etc. - so please don't wave your hand in front of the camera to say that it's no good. We might have a use for it anyway.
3. Don't always roll  - Editors don't love it when they have to copy, ingest, transcode and organise lots of footage that then turns out to be someone's feet, the inside of a car door, lens caps or other random things. Obviously, this isn't intentional, but if you know it's happened, please weed out the clip if you can. 
4. Metadata matters  - Make sure that the reel names and timecode on your camera are set correctly and that they increment with each new card, tape or disc. The more information you can supply us the better. If you're keeping logging sheets or camera reports, please know we do actually look at them!
5. Fix it in Camera  - Ensuring your white balance and colour temperature are set correctly is extremely helpful. Not only is this a pretty basic element for a professional cameraman to get right, it can be sometimes very difficult to fix in the grade later on (if the project is lucky enough to have a grade), especially under more exotic lighting conditions, for example inside a factory or under-ground parking garage. And if you want to really go wild, actually shoot a colour chart.

...(Read More)

Useful Tools for Editors

By Scott Simmons | March 13, 2014

If you read my Notes From the 2014 Editors Retreat post then you might have seen the mention of a session called Gearheads. This was a fun session where attendees were asked to submit some piece of gear they like or find useful. This could be hardware, software, an app, anything really. I though the Gearheads submissions would make for a great Useful Tools for Editors entry. Here’s some that I made note of.

Read the full article here!

I highly recommend checking out this list, I've used several of the suggestions myself!

Koh Yao Noi

FULL BLOG POST with everything you need to know here!! gopb.co/koh

Shoot Like an Editor

I believe that both directors and camera operators would  benefit from learning to be great editors. If you don't know how it will fit together in the end, then how will you know what to film when you're under the daily pressure on set?

Here is a short video I ran across that shares a few tips!

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