editing a full lenth film. (for the first time)

[mrhedges]

So i did it shot a full lenth movie. It went well, pulled off alot with very little, felt pretty good about myself and now i'm broke. Not that broke, not in huge debt but I am being a doing medical studies right now (for the next month) so I can have the dough to finish this project. If all goes well I'll have around 8 grand in by july (about half that before) Of course I want to live on this money too so I can't blow it all on gear.
I've never editing a full lenth before, I'ved made about 4 shorts. right now I own a G5 tower and final cut 4.5 HD. It has the stock video card and 1.5 gh ram. one hardrive with all the apps and 80Gs free and another 250 G hard drive that is partitioned into two. I also have a back up external harddrive with all my finished projects on it. Is this enough hard drive space? should I get a better video card? how about more ram?

There are 16 mini DV tapes masters which by tuesday should be duplicated onto mini dv and also VHS I did this by suggestion by my friend who is helping me log tapes her opinion is that VHS would be easier to log since we both have VCRS. I'm alittle worried about timecode matching up on those two sources. Though perhaps if we knew our tapes well enough exact timecode wouldn't matter as much?

I'm thinking about getting a deck a sony GV-D900 because i could also use it as a monitor during shoots. anyone have any exp with this one or its very similar brother the gv-d1000?

Each tape has number and a brief description about what's on the tape. We watched reviewed the tapes after the shoot to double check. everything turned out except one flashback scene where the boom was to far away to be heard the scene isn't that important and will get cut from the movie. Of course the sound needs to be mastered and adjusted by someone who knows what they are doing and ambient sounds need to get added.

I have a sound track in mind and a person willing to work on it http://andrubemis.com/

I have a friend of friend who understands after effects and knows rotoscopy which could look cool for the opening sequence/credit roll and for a couple dream sequences. he works with windows though are they cross compadable?

anyway i'm pretty excited about life right now and just wanted to share it with all you all. any tips and feedback would be greatly appreciated. I'll be posting links to websites and trailers when they begin to exist.

if you would like to see what something I made

 

[knightly]

The 250 Gb drive will be enough for your film if it's not partitioned. To conserve disk space, only capture the footage you need to make the cut (that's what the preview and logging process does for you). 1hr of DV is ~10Gb on disk.

Get final cut on the G5 and log and capture there...I would just put an extra chair or two at the machine and have your editing staff sit through and watch your rushes (or dailies, or what ever you want to call it...we use "reviewing footage"). This allows the editor and the director to collaborate on which shots they think will work best in the edit...the editor with a fresh eye and the director with the knowledge of what they liked on set.

Is there a reason you're making so many copies of the footage? Unless you have multiple people capturing and editing the footage on separate machines...or to make backups that are kept in a separate location than the originals, there's really no reasons to make and distribute copies of the originals. In the film world, wear and tear would make the film degrade over time, so copies were made to preserve the original negatives in pristine condition while the edit was made with answer prints (positive).

VHS prints were/are made to ensure that you can watch footage where ever you go as it was a given that film execs and upper production staff would all have VCR's in their offices. These would have had time code burnt into them as the film will have been shot in 24fps and VHS only worked at 29.97. Time code is the way to go on that front. Most camcorders will let you burn timecode onto its output, you can use this instead of trusting the VCRs to match if you choose to go that route.

 

[mrhedges]

cool advice.

thats good to know about the harddrive i will unpartition it soon.

I want to make a mini-dv back up as insurance if anything goes wrong I don't want my whole project in the can, i guess its alittle excessive but i'm paranoid.

good point about the VHS i think they call it a window dub?

Thanks again!