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Digital editing 35mm

I am making a film with 35mm which I was planning to telecine/datacine so that I could edit a high quality (perhaps HDTV) version online and also make a cut list which could be used by a professional outfit to produce a cinema quality edit in the future. There is also some colour correction to do.

This would be my first film made at this quality, so I would just like to confirm exactly what cinema quality is?

I have read that the resolution of 35mm when converted to pixels was around 4096 x 2987 (for academy aperture). I also thought that this was refered to as 4K.

2K therefore is half this at around 2048 x 1493. I have been told, on another forum, that films are edited at 2K is this correct?

If so the I have been told that the European classification of HDTV is 1920 x 1080, which I would think was not to far off 2K.

Any guidance would be helpful (and don't worry about making me look stupid, I can take it).
StevenUK
 
My advice is to transfer to HD, make DVCam dubs of the HD footage with time code and window burns. Edit on your home off-line. Then do an on-line using the EDL from your DV off-line. Then that could be scanned back to film at either 2K or 4K resolution. This saves you tons of money because you won't have to have giant hard drives for HD resolution at home and if you for some reason run out of money, you still have a finished version of your project which you can use to help raise money to do the HD on-line and film scan back.

The other option is only tranfser to DVCam, do an off-line and then take your cut list to a negative cutter who conforms your negative for your final print. I'd talk to a neg cutter before I started this because they can guild you through the process.

Scott
 
Thanks to everyone for there responses,
I am planning on 'kitting up' for this project. So this is what I may do.

- Shoot in 35mm, develop etc.
- Telecine/Datacine to HDTV quality and consult a professional outfit about their requirements for producing a theatrical print.
- Buy Final Cut Pro and a nice new big fat Mac, which will also allow me to Edit online and produce a cut list for offline editing at the same time, to be used if I need a theatrical print producing.

I will then have a high quality version of the film suitable for all but theatrical release. I will also have a cut list to produce a theatrical quality version in the future.

I am thinking of Final Cut Pro, because
- it's cheaper than Avid
- I'm a Mac user
- it should be able to handle the colour corrections
- the BBC are converting to it, so it can't be bad

What do you think? Have I completely miss understood?

Steven
 
StevenUK said:
Thanks to everyone for there responses,
I am planning on 'kitting up' for this project. So this is what I may do.

- Shoot in 35mm, develop etc.
- Telecine/Datacine to HDTV quality and consult a professional outfit about their requirements for producing a theatrical print.
-
No need for HD quailty in the offline edit if you are matching back to film.
 
I was about to ask you this,

I am planning to shoot two shorts on 16 soon, one for a client and one for me.

What intrigues me is the bono labs approach with an HD telecine to a blackmagic uncompressed 108024p file, actually doing the online edit at home and then having it laser printed for a big fest. I won't gain much in resolution having it projected in anything less than HDcam so I could have it transferred to that if a fest was able to project it, or I can simply print my own DVD for smaller fests.

Scott, indie, do you guys know anything about this method? I know it is a brand new way of looking at transferring and editing film, so your thoughts are welcome. But the benefit is, instead of paying the costs to do the method of conforming, you can actually do your own DI. This also would be totally beneficial to me as I only have access to a nonsynch camera which I could synch in post with minidv/boom captured audio.
 
Hello all. Ozarks Producer has found the group!

StevenUK, I am new here and noticed you talking about using FCP to do your editing on. You will
love Final Cut Pro. Make sure you go ahead and get FCP HD / Version 4.5. It's just what the doctor ordered. Purchase Apple's Production Suite. It has the works. I've used it for years with completely
happy clients.

Now, I must learn how to get around in here.

Best

Ozarks Producer
 
Ozarks Producer said:
Now, I must learn how to get around in here.

Hey there, Mr Ozarks!

:welcome:

The boards have a lot of specific sub-forums, yes, but they are not too difficult to get around. If in doubt, there are General sections above them all where all kinds of chit-chat happens.

Is good to have another boardmember with 35mm experience here, to learn some tips from. :yes:
 
- Shoot in 35mm, develop etc.
- Telecine/Datacine to HDTV quality and consult a professional outfit about their requirements for producing a theatrical print.
- Buy Final Cut Pro and a nice new big fat Mac, which will also allow me to Edit online and produce a cut list for offline editing at the same time, to be used if I need a theatrical print producing.

I will then have a high quality version of the film suitable for all but theatrical release. I will also have a cut list to produce a theatrical quality version in the future.

I think you might want to do some more research before commiting to this plan. The part I don't understand is why you are doing the telecine to HD. This is really going to pump up your costs because you'll need to hire a HD deck to digitise in. This is going to cost you about £500 plus VAT a day. To digitise in the footage from your feature is going to take anything up to two weeks and if you discover that there is something that you've missed whilst digitising in half way through your cut, it's going to cost you £500 plus VAT just to fix that.
Wouldn't it make more sense to telecine to DigiBeta where there are loads of available decks to hire or blag. DigiBeta is a great format for transfering images and then you'd end up with a standard def master that would give your neg cutter the info they needed, but would also provide you with a TV standard def version of your film.

Anyhow, before you make any decisons I suggest you talk to the guys at VET


They are a professional editing and training facility in London and they are very, very knowledgable. Tell them what you're trying to achieve and they'll find the saniest route through for you.

The other thing is that if you decide to transfer to HD and master to HD you'll need to do your online in something like Avid Nitris and VET are one of the few companies I know that have cracked getting a FCPHD edl into an avid system.
 
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Hello,
thank again for the advice.

Clive, I have not commited to 'Telecine to HD'. Your comments make a lot of sense as I only need the none 'theatrical release' version to be good enough for a DVD, so perhaps HD is little bit of overkill, epsecially at those prices.

I'll check www.vet.co.uk and also add them to my filmmaker resource site, when it's up, in about a month.

In the meantime I've written a 'short' which I plan to 'knock out' within the year, mainly just to gain a bit more experience.

Ozarks, thanks for the recommendation of Final Cut. I was planning on getting Production Suite. If the BBC are switching to it (word on the street?) it's bound to become an industry standard.

Cheers to every one.
Steven
 
Ozarks, thanks for the recommendation of Final Cut. I was planning on getting Production Suite. If the BBC are switching to it (word on the street?) it's bound to become an industry standard.

The BBC will use FCP, but I think you'll find they're using it for docs and ENG work, not for drama. This will to replace AVID express which they've been using for the last three years.

Avid is the industry standard for drama.
 
hey everyone,

Just wanna know if anybody here has ever used Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premier and what they have to say about their comparison? Which one would they prefer using in the long term?

I am thinking of getting FCP but it is only compatible with Macs. A real downer. So now, I am thinking of just getting the Adode Video bundle but I don't know how it compares to FCP as far as quality and the whole editing experience in general. I just wanna know which one is the best! Help please!
 
Most people Ive talked to feel like FCP is superior to Premiere on a mac. Actually, I use Vegas and am very happy with it, but if I were to buy a mac, Id definitely go with FCP based on all of the positive reviews an success stories. Now I think HD is possible on most platforms so I would definitely go with FCP.

Regarding what this thread was originally about and my first post I have found out some things.

First, it does appear I am going with the 16mm > HDtelecine @ Bono > edit in blackmagic 10bit > Master in D5, dub to HDCam. For a short, the overall cost should be less than $1k or slightly over including my no budget production costs (producer is supplying all props and costumes and actors). But for a feature, there are some serious considerations. At around $750 an hour for transfer of 1 hour of run time, plus the drive rental fee, a 3:1 shooting ratio (which is optimistic) all transferred will mean $3-5k out of pocket AND THERE IS NO GUARANTEES FROM BONO LABS ABOUT HOW CLEAN THE TRANSFER IS. Mr. Bono himself says there is still the high likelyhood that there will be dirt on the film despite cleaning. This works for my retro silent short (Made to look like 20's silent 35mm B&W), but not for a clean HD transfer of a feature. And the cost alone, although I dont have the actual costs yet, I assume for 4-5k I could actually go the old school non DI way of a low res TC, EDL, and conform negative back to 16mm film, apply soundtrack and master on HDCam. If cost is no concern, obviously doing one's own DI is great, but no guarantees vs. working with just the negatives and coming up with a film print is awfully tempting still.

Now as for the costs of doing a real DI in a post house, whether HD, 2k, or 4k, is insanely expensive and really only viable for features with at least a 100k budget, for the 2k or 4k you are talking 200k-1m (Ive heard 4k going at 250k just for the DI). So on the cheap, for a feature, unless you are talking 1:1 (not going to happen) or 2:1 or 3:1 (usually they say plan 5:1 to 7:1), cost for low budget AND the additional risk of dirt on the film makes the HD telecine/DI at this point not viable.

Not to mention, while HD is a good res to scan 16mm, for 35mm HD or even 2k is killing 1/4 - 1/3 of the res. 4k is the only real way to go to pull out the max info on the film. For 2k or 4k though, there is not really a cost effective solution for editing at home either so you're still talking about doing your EDL and then doing the DI in the post house.

In conclusion, for shorts that dont need perfect dirtfree quality, it looks like HDTelecine @ Bono may be a very good choice, even less expensive quite possibly than conforming the neg and you still end up with projectable HDCam tape. But for features until I am informed otherwise, the cost should be around the same price for the old school conforming, you may end up with a slightly nicer graded image and you never leave film and you end up with a 16mm or 35mm print or even HDCam if thats all you want.

If you have a 250-500k+ budget and really desire the added benefits of DI, that may just work for a feature, but you probably at that stage will be better off going into a post production house to do the Di and not your home system.
 
Most people Ive talked to feel like FCP is superior to Premiere on a mac

Most certainly! Especially since Premiere Pro only runs on Windows XP. If I had a mac it would be FCP all the way! Now, if you have a PC and need an NLE without moving to a mac then PPro can offer some nice results. It quite powerful - certainly on par with all the other major editing software on the market. The only real problem lies in its stability. Some people have lots of trouble others don't seem to have any. It's sort of a hit and miss thing. Adobe hasn't been very good about patching these things either (which pisses me off to no end). As Wideshot mentioned, Vegas is a nice NLE. Many think it is the most intuitive program to use if you don't know any editing already. I don't know since I started with Premiere so the interface seems wrong to me but that's entirely due to my previous experience. You might also want to look into Pinnacle Liquid Edition. It's a VERY impressive piece of software.
 
How online is FCP?

if you decide to transfer to HD and master to HD you'll need to do your online in something like Avid Nitris


Could you clarify why it is neccesary to online outside of Final Cut Pro? I am learning am genuinely interested in this.
 
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