Thursday, August 5, 2010

editing on FCP

The movie was, and still is, edited with Apple’s Final Cut Pro, which is the gold standard for indie filmmaking. FCP is fairly easy to use and once familiar with, can pretty much cut at the speed of thought.
EVERYTHING we shot got ingested, almost two whole terabytes of raw data. The footage was then separated into scenes, set ups, and takes. Proper documenting is the most important element of editing. The time you spend sorting stuff out up front saves WAY more time figuring stuff out later.
Each scene got it own sequence, making it easy to logically jump around the footage. The ‘final cut’ actually ended up being nothing like the original script, so having all these sequenced scenes at your finger tips proved to be very handy.
EVERY zero and one of digital HD footage was looked at. First cut being the ‘string out’, or every scene laid out in it’s entirety in the exact order of the script. String out number one totally SUCKED, causing the director to go on suicide watch. BUT, this is just a starting point, NOT the finished movie, what happens before all the hours, hours, and HOURS of tweaking needed to get everything just right.
Biggest bitch was dealing with continuity, performance was top consideration, mostly trumping continuity in the decision making process. Lighting, great ad-libbing, and sound we’re factored in as well.
All in all it took getting up to version a 5.2 to get to picture lock.

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