Appendix 1

267 Pages·2007·10.83 MB·English

The Filmmaker’s Guide to
Final Cut Pro Workflow
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The Filmmaker’s Guide to
Final Cut Pro Workflow
Dale Angell
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Angell, Dale.
The fi lmmaker’s guide to Final cut pro workfl ow / Dale Angell.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-240-80986-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Motion pictures—Editing—Data processing.
2. Final cut (Electronic resource) I. Title.
TR899.A584 2008
778.5′350285—dc22
2007024309
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-0-240-80986-1
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Contents
A Letter from the Author vii
Introduction ix
The Kodak 35 mm Project xv
1 When Shooting on Film 1
2 When Shooting Digital Video 23
3 Initial Audio Workfl ow, Importing Production Audio, and Syncing 35
4 Editing Picture to Lock 51
5 Finishing on Film 57
6 Finishing on Digital Video, the Online Edit 81
7 Sound Edit Workfl ows 93
8 Titles for Digital Video and Film 119
9 Color Timing and Color Grading 133
10 After the Film Is Finished: Distribution 143
v
The Filmmaker’s Guide to Final Cut Pro Workfl ow
Appendix 1 Understanding the NTSC Video Format and Digital Video 151
Appendix 2 Understanding the PAL Video Format 163
Jaime Estrada-Torres
Appendix 3 Current Video Formats 167
Appendix 4 Current Film Formats 177
Appendix 5 Understanding Time Code 181
Appendix 6 Aspect Ratios, Anamorphic Image, and Wide-screen 183
Appendix 7 Understanding File Architecture 189
Appendix 8 Conforming Negative 197
Appendix 9 Deconstructing Several Films’ Workfl ows 209
Appendix 10 Example Workfl ows 225
Index 241
vi
A Letter from the Author
I edited my fi rst fi lm in 1974 on rewinds and a viewer. I also had a mag reader that could interlock
three tracks of sound. My focus shifted to sound editing and mixing, but for the next ten years I
continued editing on fi lm using Steenbeck, Movieolla, and Kem fl atbed editors. The vast majority
of my editing was done on the ubiquitous Movieolla upright, rewinds, and several good fi lm bins. I
still bear the physical scars from runaway reels and inattentive use of my cherished Revis splicers.
To this day, I thrill when entering an old editing room that still has the smell of a “real” editing room,
that wondrous mix of acetate, acetone, and stale coffee.
But time marches on. In the eighties, I was back editing picture and sound, only now on nonlinear
Sony video systems. Mine was a glorious system: linear time code, A-B playback with digital effects
switcher, with GPI trigger and interlock to an eight-track audio system. But just when I thought it
couldn’t get any better, along came Avid.
I learned nonlinear editing on the Avid Media Composer Express. It was a bare bones, stripped-down
system with composite video input from a U-Matic, three-quarter-inch video deck. The price, not
including the video recorder, was $35,000. Keep in mind that this was at a time when you could buy
a small house for $50,000.
But it was awesome. It could do anything the nonlinear system could do. Plus, I could make any
complicated effect or edit, change anything whenever I wanted to, and I could do all of it with the
click of a mouse. The interface was easy to understand and the learning curve rather fl at.
It had some serious limitations, though. It still only had eight audio tracks. It was expandable to
more, but this was part of an expensive upgrade. It only had 20 Gig of video storage, so I was always
out of space. It could only use Avid media drives, so I couldn’t simply plug in a couple of extra
drives. And everything from Avid was wickedly expensive.
The best part was I didn’t pay for it. While I always thought of any editing system I was using as
mine, I had never owned any editing system. I could design the layout and suggest what equipment
I wanted to use, but my employer always bought it; I simply used it.
vii
The Filmmaker’s Guide to Final Cut Pro Workfl ow
Then, in the late nineties, I decided I needed my own editing system. Much of the work I was doing
at the time was my own work and this was becoming a problem at work. I had also bought a home
out in the desert and wanted to edit right there, in the middle of nowhere, amid the scorpions and
jackrabbits. What I wanted was a simple Avid capable of capturing DV from fi rewire-component
video and serial digital interface (SDI) with serial deck control. I needed to be able to edit fi lm and
video and I wanted a good Pro Tools 32-channel system with an 8-channel audio interface. I was
also very interested in DVD authoring and burning, and I was hoping to be able to add this as well.
Add high-speed Internet access and I would be all set to edit to my heart’s content right there in the
literal middle of nowhere.
So, like anyone in my situation I headed for NAB. I have long held that both depression and elation
are the result of expectation colliding with reality. There was no Avid that could capture from fi rewire.
You could only confi gure the Avid hardware to capture from SDI or component, but not both. Every
AVR codec for every format cost money. In order to edit fi lm, you needed the Film Composer or the
Film Cutter and the Film Cutter couldn’t edit video. The Avid rep suggested it would be more afford-
able if I bought two Avids, one for fi lm and one for video. The Pro Tools interface was a piece of
cake, but it was not compatible with the Avid AVR video codec so I would need an expensive machine
control setup. Total cost, around $150,000, without any video and audio recorders.
I could add DVD authoring and burning for about another $10,000. The good news was I found I
could get high-speed Internet with a wireless UHF setup shooting to a distant mountain in Arizona
for $39.95 per month. This was more in line with by budget.
So this was depression. I now knew why they held the NAB conference in Las Vegas. I fi gured, if I
took the amount I was planning to spend and put it on a roulette number, I’d be editing if it hit.
Fortunately, instead of heading for the casino, I wandered into the Apple booth. I thought this would
cheer me up because I’ve always been an Apple nerd. I bought my fi rst Mac literally right off of the
delivery truck in 1984. I’d heard about Final Cut Pro but had not actually seen it yet. I convinced
one of the Apple reps to let me take a turn at the controls of one of the Final Cut Pro demo machines
and found it easy to understand and rather Avid-like. It did lack some of the cool tools, but it had a
feature I really loved: I could afford it.
I also found that with second-party software called Film Logic, I could edit fi lm. It could capture
DV from FireWire, and SDI and component video boards were available as well. I could confi gure
it to do anything I wanted to do.
So this was elation. I made the switch to Final Cut Pro and never looked back. It’s taken seven years for
technology and prices to catch up with my desires back then, but I now have that dream system. Film
Logic became Cinema Tools, Avid released the Pro Tools LE software able to play Final Cut Pro’s Quick-
Time video as its reference video, and DVD authoring and burning became simple and affordable.
True, in that same time, Avid has become more affordable and fl exible, but Avid still likes to do only
one thing on each hardware confi guration. It’s a great system when your goal is to simply edit in one
format on one system, be it fi lm, HD video, or DV, and still manages to dominate the fi lm industry,
at least for now. But with Final Cut Pro, I was able to work at home amid the scorpions and jack-
rabbits. This book is about what I learned, although I have left out the information on keeping
scorpions out of the edit room and how to deal with a fl ash fl ood.
viii
Introduction
Overview
There was a time, not long ago when, if someone asked how motion pictures were edited, you could
hand them a book. It was a fairly short and straightforward book explaining the process of work
printing, syncing, editing, and conforming. All fi lms were shot and edited in, more or less, the same
way. The editors all knew what was expected of them, the lab knew what their role was, and the
costs were simply the costs.
Those days are gone with the dinosaurs and the ten-cent cup of coffee. That well-worn path through
the woods is now overgrown with brush, and fi lmmakers can be seen stumbling blindly through the
trees and undergrowth in search of the fastest and cheapest route between here and there. Now and
then, someone shouts that they have found a shortcut, a new and clever way through, only to have
someone else shout them down saying that their way is faster still and cheaper to boot.
The path through postproduction is now called workfl ow, the ordering of the steps that takes the fi lm
from shooting to distribution. The problem is not that there are no good workfl ows, but that there
are so many. And each has options, variations in when to zig and when to zag. An examination of
one-hundred fi lms will likely reveal one-hundred workfl ows.
The starting and ending points are shifting as well. Shooting on digital formats, digital intermediates,
and digital projection all complicate the problem. What worked this year may not work next year
because the technology moved on, or the new and revolutionary thingamajig that you just bought
for half a million dollars may have turned out to be a digital Edsel.
This book is intended to direct motion picture editors through the complicated maze of postproduc-
tion workfl ow using Final Cut Pro Studio with Cinema Tools, Adobe graphics applications, and Pro
Tools. While there are many other paths through this maze, this book focuses on workfl ows using
only these software packages. This is not because this is the most common or simplest way of editing
motion pictures, but precisely because it is not the most common. The advantages of these workfl ows
are cost savings, fl exibility, and freedom. Freedom to edit on a laptop in a cabin at Lake Tahoe or
the red sandstone cliffs of Utah, fl exibility to edit 35 mm fi lm, high-defi nition digital, or digital video
ix