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Editing A Feature

moonshieldmedia

moonshieldmedia

Well I've done it! It wasn't easy, but I successfully shot my first feature film....

Now I've got a ton of footage and sound files backed up on 2 hard drives, so what's the best way to proceed from here?

I'm too broke to hire anyone to help in post at the moment, so I'll be editing (the first cut at least) myself. I'll be using FCP7.

All of the footage is already in Prores format, what's a good workflow? How do I get organized? Easiest way to sync sound? What exactly is "logging?"

I've edited plenty of 2-4 minute videos, but with a project this big I want to do it right from the start. Any info or experience you have will be helpful.
 
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As long as you have reliable sound and video logs, and you visually and verbally slated each take, manually syncing is not difficult, just tedious. It's been done that way since 1927 and still is when using film. And you have an edge, you (should) have camera sound.

Programs like PluralEyes can partially automate the process for you.
 
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PluralEyes (mentioned) & Dual Eyes for standalone PC will indeed save a lot of time. You can get a free 30-day trial, fully functional. You can get even faster performance by only including the video files you'll actually be using. It's especially useful if you didn't nail the whole record/cut in tandem with the camera and basically have no clue what audio files match up with which pieces of video.

Put scenes in their own bins. Maybe even label the bins in sequence. (FCP might use different term for bin?)

Read up on nested sequences.

Do you have a copy of the shotlist, with notes from the shoot?

.
 
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Read up on nested sequences.
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This.... is.... huge.

This will save you so much heartache and time.

My suggestion is to take a little time off and think of the best way for you to organize and store all your footage in a way that makes sense to you. By now you should be familiar with the software. You really need a system that allows you to find what you need, when you need and let you break the movie down into smaller chunks.

A great starting point that Zensteve said is to put the assets from each sequence in their own bin. I personally also like to have a bin of sequences (scenes). Then nest your sequences into acts, and then into your finished film. This process will help you by letting you make smaller movies (sequences) and then just put them together at the end. (after I've said all this, I hope that FCP has that feature).

Good luck.
 
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As a filmmaker who wears all the hats-write, direct, run camera, edit - I like to organize my bins in Premeire by shooting day. Then again, I cut while we're shooting so that when we wrap I have a rough cut and only need to fine tune it, so this way or organizing works great for that.
 
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Organize your footage according to the scenes of the movie, number and title each scene. If there is one footage used in two different scenes, duplicate the file to both folders.

I like to name my files to their Scene, Shot and Take. Example:
05s12t03 = Scene 5, Shot 12, Take 3. Once all that's done, import the arranged folders into your editing software, then used descriptions for each first take of every shot. This process could take you a week or two, but once you're done, everything will be extremely easy and comfortable to work with.

Syncing also takes a long time, unless you use Plural Eyes, which will do most of the work for you, but you need to keep track of everything it does just to make sure everything isn't becoming a mess. Personally, I love Plural Eyes.
 
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All great advice, thank you.

Could somebody elaborate a little bit on syncing sound? Once I've got my hard drive folders labeled by scene and organized, then all my bins in FCP labeled and sorted by scene, what's next?

It sounds like I'm going to be dragging every single video and audio track into my timeline for syncing, creating a huge mess which would be too cluttered for the actual editing of the film. Should there be separate timelines for syncing and editing? Is there a way to lock the audio/video sync into place once it's been established so I can pull takes from the bins into my editing timeline as one synced file as needed?

All of this assuming I'm NOT using Plural Eyes (I'll look into using it once I have a better understanding of the process).
 
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Well I'm not saying my way, is the right way, but here's what I tend to do.

I will edit the video first, and put all my shots in order of what I want. Let's say actor A speaks, but I want the camera to be on actor B the whole time. A long reaction shot, while someone else's dialogue is over top. I will take the best dialogue takes of the speaking actor, you don't see. I will then put them over the reaction shots, and time how long I need the reaction shots so the sentence can be finished, before cutting back, if I choose to.

So video editing comes first, then time how long the reaction shots have to be to finish sentences, before cutting to the next best take. Then after that, go through all your video takes and see if their is anything cool you missed that could throw in, in between all your cuts so far. Then you can have a locked video edit, and finish with putting the rest of your dialogue and sound effects in. That's how I have been doing it so far, not sure if it's the best way.

Only drag the audio and video takes onto the timeline that you want to use. The rest you can just play back and review in their original folders.
 
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You definitely need to log your footage. If your shooting schedule was ideal, you've already seen all of the footage, while watching dailies. But indie filmmaking is often far less than ideal, so it's at least possible that there's footage you've never actually watched. Watch it. :)

Take notes. Which shots do you like, and for what reasons? Which shots are incomplete, or maybe contain alternate material? If you think something is noteworty, note it. There's really no science to logging, it's pretty much just note-taking, and a very necessary organizational step.

After you've logged your footage, there's really no difference between editing a feature and editing a short, other than length. Edit a scene at a time. Not a scene the way that screenwriters define it, but the way general audiences define it. Break the larger movie into smaller chunks and attack them one at a time.

And definitely keep them as separate sequences, within the same project. You can piece them together into one master sequence, later.

Pluraleyes is definitely worth checking out. Last I recall, they offered a free trial, so might as well see if they're for you. You wouldn't use it until after editing your feature though, so save the trial until you're ready to use it. I know a lot of people who swear by it, but I personally don't find it much of a help for narrative work. You might like it, maybe not, doesn't hurt to try.

Also, congrats on wrapping, and good luck in the edit!
 
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Another thing is, don't spend too much time on it. I tried editing a movie from last summer, and I still didn't finish cause I just took too long contimplating different shots, how many frames a shot should last. You should still expirment, but give yourself a goal to work towards. Maybe make it a goal not to take more than 2 hours max on working on a shot. That includes how many frames, and what part of the shot you want to use. Dialogue or video.
 
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I mean an individual shot, if something if you are stuck on something about the shot, and cannot get it right. Two hours for a sequence is normal? If that's true, than I need to really stop being a perfectionist and speed up.
 
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Two hours for one shot is definitely really unusual. I once spent 1.5 hours on one cut (was having bad issues with continuity), but that really tried my patience. On average, I spend about two hours of editing for each minute of completed film (1st rough cut).
 
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Cracker Funk said:
On average, I spend about two hours of editing for each minute of completed film (1st rough cut).
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Is that 2hrs editing/1min rough cut only for video, or does that also include audio?

From the few shorts I've done I find myself spending almost exactly the same time in the entire scope of audio tinkering as I do with the video, 1:1 ratio.
 
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It varies greatly upon the type of scene it is, but I can spend one to six hours of work per linear minute on each audio post category - dialog edit, Foley, sound effects and mix. Obviously an action scene like a chase or a gun battle takes a lot more time than two people sitting at a kitchen table talking. If I get great production sound it's mostly just editing for performance, fixing a mumbled word or phrase, etc. If I get crap production sound it can take forever going through every single take to try to reconstruct the scene with better (usually close-up) dialog, and what seems like endless hours doing noise reduction.

On a current project I spent over 12 hours on the "dialog" edit of a three minute gun battle. I added many more grunts, groans, etc. than was originally there. Almost every line was replaced with an alt or wild line. The movements of each person must be recreated with Foley - footsteps, body falls, clothing (including military gear), crawling on the ground, jumping over vehicles and other objects..... The list goes on. Then each gunshot needs to be synced, plus object impacts (ricochets), bullet whizz-bys and bullet body impacts (gore). There are six different weapons being used, so each needs a distinct discharge sound (I'm not going for authentic on this one). Then during the mix everything needs to be put in the appropriate perspective, panned, EQed, dynamically processed (compressor/limiter) and volume balanced.

I don't know how it is with visual editors, but audio post can sometimes be extremely time consuming.
 
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Different strokes for different folks I guess but two hours on a cut definitely sounds like some serious perfectionism. I'm probably more careless than I should be but if I'm editing all day I want to get 10 minutes done. Editing my last feature I had a scene where continuity was a nightmare because I didn't notice on set that one of the actresses was following the camera, putting herself face on no matter from which angle we were shooting. I consider that the greatest editing nightmare I've had and even then I couldn't bring myself to spend more than a day on the three minute scene.
 
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Getting back to the original quesion of organisation though, here's how I do it. I import all the footage and stick it into bins by day. And for organisation that's it. I find that organising everything strictly by day is a natural way to do it because I have a good memory for the days so to have all the data sit there in the order that it happened is the fastest way for me to locate it. As I'll go along I'll stick what I consider to be useless clips in a junk bin where I can access them easily if I need to but that's as finnicky as I get.

I also do everything in the one timeline. I get what people are saying about editing by scene but I prefer to be able to look at my timeline and see the whole flow of my movie in a glance. It gives me an idea of where the pace is getting laggy even on a rough assembley rather than trying to solve problems once every individual scene has been edited.

It can be a slightly unwieldy way to edit but I find for a first assembly you can just stick the timeline into ripple mode (Vegas and Edius have this. FCX is ripple all the time) and edit away without having to worry about clip collisions. Possibly the fact that I shoot MOS (so only the video track matters at first) has a bit to do with why I think this is a manageble way to work
 
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Dom D said:
Getting back to the original quesion of organisation though, here's how I do it. I import all the footage and stick it into bins by day. And for organisation that's it. I find that organising everything strictly by day is a natural way to do it because I have a good memory for the days so to have all the data sit there in the order that it happened is the fastest way for me to locate it. As I'll go along I'll stick what I consider to be useless clips in a junk bin where I can access them easily if I need to but that's as finnicky as I get.

I also do everything in the one timeline. I get what people are saying about editing by scene but I prefer to be able to look at my timeline and see the whole flow of my movie in a glance. It gives me an idea of where the pace is getting laggy even on a rough assembley rather than trying to solve problems once every individual scene has been edited.

It can be a slightly unwieldy way to edit but I find for a first assembly you can just stick the timeline into ripple mode (Vegas and Edius have this. FCX is ripple all the time) and edit away without having to worry about clip collisions. Possibly the fact that I shoot MOS (so only the video track matters at first) has a bit to do with why I think this is a manageble way to work
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Dude, were you and I separated at birth? I organize and cut the same way, for the same reasons. :clap:
 
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