Trying to plan for edit workflow

[bulldog2k]

Hi all,

Forgive my newbie questions - not that I'm ever afraid to ask!

I'm trying to plan for the editing process before I start shooting my micro-budget feature. I'm increasingly thinking other people have very different definitions of micro-budget than I do. Perhaps it might be helpful to think of 'nano-budget' films with regards to me.

I'm still not sure yet what camera it'll be shot on, but it'll more than likely be either an HV40, or a Sony HDR-XR520VE.

Now - here's the thing. Number one - is Premiere Pro capable of editing the film from start to finish? Number two - should I be looking, immediately after finishing primary photography, to be taking it to some editing house, and getting them to import it, and giving me the lower quality copies to be doing the off-line edit with? Or have I got this hopelessly wrong?

Feature is bound for DVD, not really theatrical release. Does that have any bearing on anything?

Cheers all

Ian

 

[themattcastro]

I'm guessing you're using Premiere Pro to edit your own movie?

And if so, why are you going to take your miniDV tapes to an editing house if you're going to be editing it on your own computer?

I don't really understand your question. Could you rephrase it please?

 

[Zensteve]

I'm increasingly thinking other people have very different definitions of micro-budget than I do. Perhaps it might be helpful to think of 'nano-budget' films with regards to me.

Nope. It will be more helpful if you actually state your budget. $200? $1500? $9500?

is Premiere Pro capable of editing the film from start to finish?

Yes.

taking it to some editing house, and getting them to import it, and giving me the lower quality copies to be doing the off-line edit with? Or have I got this hopelessly wrong?

You don't need to offline-edit if you're using an HV40.

You'll just need a large external harddrive for your project. They are cheap enough, these days. Just make sure the RPM is 7200 (or more), so you can import your footage without dropping frames.

Each hour of HDV footage will take up about 43 gigs of space, so plan accordingly.

Ideally, you should keep a shotlist as you are shooting - marking which takes you want to keep. That will be useful when it's time to import footage. Instead of importing the entire tape, you'll be able to save a lot of space by just importing what you'll actually be using.

Feature is bound for DVD, not really theatrical release. Does that have any bearing on anything?

As far as your editing etc, not really.

As far as "extras", then yes. Still-photo galleries, behind-the-scenes footage, director interviews, actor interviews, producer interviews, audio tracks for "commentary" audio tracks, *anything* that can be used to add value to your DVD. One of the first questions a distributor asked us, was what extras we had available. The more the merrier.



Good luck with your film


.

 

[bulldog2k]

Nope. It will be more helpful if you actually state your budget. $200? $1500? $9500?

Around $5000, I guess.

You don't need to offline-edit if you're using an HV40.

Really? Why's that? Because the camera resolution is not large enough to necessitate it?

You'll just need a large external harddrive for your project. They are cheap enough, these days. Just make sure the RPM is 7200 (or more), so you can import your footage without dropping frames.

Presumably, an internal drive of 320GB is going to be ok, as long as the RPM is high enough (though I think it will be)? And the buss speed is going to be fine, as compared to an external connection like Firewire or USB2?

Ideally, you should keep a shotlist as you are shooting - marking which takes you want to keep. That will be useful when it's time to import footage. Instead of importing the entire tape, you'll be able to save a lot of space by just importing what you'll actually be using.

I have a 1st AD who I'm planning to delegate that administrative task to! However, the Sony records to hard drive. I don't know what implications that has. Does that mean the file gets transferred as a digital file - that is, you copy folder to folder, as in windows, and therefore can't drop frames? I don't know.

As far as "extras", then yes. Still-photo galleries, behind-the-scenes footage, director interviews, actor interviews, producer interviews, audio tracks for "commentary" audio tracks, *anything* that can be used to add value to your DVD. One of the first questions a distributor asked us, was what extras we had available. The more the merrier.

That's really helpful - thank you.

I'm thinking at this stage, I might actually put some in charge of this as a department in its own right, so that it's set up for that right from the start. Brilliant. Thanks - really informative and useful reply.

 

[Alcove Audio]

No surprise coming from me, but you should be planning on your sound as well, starting with preproduction. You may want to read my blogs here on IndieTalk.

BTW, it is not unusual for me as a sound editor/designer to come close to filling up 500 gigs just on the sound editing of an indie feature (I work at 24bit/96kHz). Just for fun, the audio post of "Avatar" used about 25,000 gigs.

 

[bulldog2k]

Ah, believe me, Alcove, I'm on it - in fact most of my planning is based around your advice to me in other threads. Am going to be shooting visual tests in the next couple of weeks, and audio tests a couple of weeks after that (when the juicedlink comes!)

I have every bit as much priority put on the sound as on the visuals.

Will be shooting at 16/48 - I'm not sure my ears are good enough to notice the difference!

 

[Thom 98]

You'll just need a large external harddrive for your project. They are cheap enough, these days. Just make sure the RPM is 7200 (or more), so you can import your footage without dropping frames.

Can't really second the external HDD. I used to edit from external drives on both USB 2.0 and Firewire 400. It's lame as hell. Make sure to get an internal SATA drive, it's just so much faster and also quite cheap!

Other than that, just capture all you footage with HDVSplit http://strony.aster.pl/paviko/hdvsplit.htm and then import the Takes you need into Premiere Pro. If your space is limited, only capture the Takes you really need, however, I always just get a 1TB drive and capture everything. It's good if you later want to add Outtakes or whatever.
If you're working with Preimiere CS4, it's always a good idea to add as much MetaData as you can to your takes. CS4 makes it really easy to do so.

For DVD Production, you'll need Adobe Ancore DVD since Premiere Pro can not create DVDs. I suggest getting EncoreDVD because it works very well with Premiere and other Adobe Software; you can even add entiere Premiere Projects without rendering them before the final DVD-Export.

 

[sonnyboo]

Number one - is Premiere Pro capable of editing the film from start to finish? Number two - should I be looking, immediately after finishing primary photography, to be taking it to some editing house, and getting them to import it, and giving me the lower quality copies to be doing the off-line edit with? Or have I got this hopelessly wrong?

Adobe Premiere Pro from versions 1.5 to CS4 are all capable of editing the HD footage from the HV40 and the Sony camcorders in HDV.

You will use a decent amount of harddrive space, but it is do-able if you computer is within the last 2-3 years and not a Pentium III or something that old.

I do recommend spending the money you would be giving to the editing house on buying a codec plug in for Premiere like Cineform's PROSPECT HD codec, as it will make your editing much smoother and retain an decent amount of quality.