Reprinted from CinemaEditor Magazine.Not very long ago we all got dailies from the lab, sunk to sound, coded, and assembled cut film into reels. A negative cutter matched our work, spliced the negative, and we color timed a print for release or broadcast.
I’m sorry, but that sucked. The limitations were terrible. But in return for new technology and many ways of slicing the same pie, we’ve walked into the Wild Wild West. And this shows from the latest ACE Equipment Survey or 2010.
The Survey had a record number of participants (145) this year. And the results are interesting, but not surprising.
The major points:
More production and post is file based.
Editing outputs, which now seem to be dominated by Quicktime over DVD and tape, are either slower or our speed expectations keep getting higher. Outputs and rendering times seem to provide the biggest frustrations.
The latest Avid (5) seems less stable, but has excellent features.
Final Cut Pro use is down. Way down.
Editor’s have less choice on their editing system than ever.
3D post production is way up, but much of the 3D is being done in post rather than in production.
And now for some of the results:
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The news here is Final Cut Pro has moved from 20% to 13%. Is this a trend or an anomaly? This survey isn’t scientific, so its impossible to know. But this does support the anecdotal evidence I’ve found. I’ve worked on Warehouse 13 for two seasons. For the third we convinced Universal to change from Final Cut to Avid Media Composer.
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Finishing remains the Wild West of post production. There isn’t any winner workflow yet. It is counter-intuitive that the function that is very common (off line editing) has relatively few significant players (Avid, Apple, Adobe). Yet the specialized function of project finishing has a larger number of players, where no one platform dominates. Can’t we all just get along?
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Film isn’t dead, but its on life support. Digital camera formats are also the Wild West. Remember when we just wondered how many perfs the camera was shooting? Now its frame size, resolution, speed, et al. Variety is good, but with every new camera there are advantages and disadvantages. Sure, you can shoot a feature on a Canon 5D… provided focus isn’t something you care about. The Red shoots a very large frame size and is cheap, but be careful when you shoot flashing lights (the video frames can tear), and the color space won’t be quite as flexible as you might like. And now the flavor of the month is the Alexa. What don’t we know about that camera that’s gonna bite us?
Adding to the Wild West is camera departments (or is that directors) think that any camera that shoots can go into their movie. They forget about frame rate, resolution, and how the heck are we going to conform a broadcast-able show from your SD card?
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Digital Camera Package, or DCP, is a new one on me. When delivering an Imax 3D movie to a screen in China, the final delivery was an electronic package called a DCP. The movie was shot on film (8 perf 35mm), scanned at 6K, and the final conformed and color timed master was encoded into a DCP for delivery to the theater in China.
Unity is the workhorse in post production, but that doesn’t come without problems. Software that works well on local storage can become slow and buggy when attached to Unity. Want to drive yourself crazy? Use Unity with Final Cut. Boy does that barely work.
A continuing sad trend, the editor has less choice than ever. I prefer to choose my tools. It is frustrating when I can’t. But the economics of editing are evening out. When you compare Media Composer against Final Cut, matching the functionality of the tools, the cost are almost the same.
It is remarkable how fast HD has become the norm. And how awful standard definition actually looks now that we’ve something to compare it to.
Some of the members comments:
Biggest frustration:
“Unity drives all failed one morning. Just out of the blue with no warning. We lost everything. It took a week to re-dig all the dailies, all the sound effects, laugh library, element reel, etc. Not to mention all the editing I had done that morning before the failure. In sum, I was brutally reminded that in our present-day digital world what we have, in reality, is nothing. Nothing to hold. Nothing to show. Nothing to match back to. So be very careful friends. Our entire world, all our records, all our work and all our memories could vanish in a nano-second!”
Ow. My condolences. BACKUP!
“MC 5.0.3 is buggy and has many design flaws. Avid rushed it out the door before it was ready, and has been slow to fix it.”
Avid at least seems to be dealing with updates for bug fixes, as they are now up to 5.0.3.7. 5.5 is bound to start that process all over again. The price of progress.
“Lack of involvement in finishing due to having been laid off to save money. I only attended a color timing session and the sound mix ‘on my own time’.”
“John Wells pilot shot entirely in HD and digitized at DNX115, no online. Everything went surprisingly smoothly, with no hiccups. “
“Lately, every show introduces a new system and new technological hurdles. Nothing is stream-lined anymore and I feel cutting rooms often turn into dub-houses when it comes time to turn over to sound/music and the stage. New technology doesn’t mean we actually have more time on our hands. “
“The limitations of FCP for cutting documentaries with large amounts of media. Difficulty of organizing and accessing media and constant crashes.”
“It is very important to have a solid color-pipeline as we are no longer depending on the dailies colorist to set the look of the film until the final. Now the desired look comes directly from the DP on set, and it’s important for that ‘approved’ look to travel to the cutting room, out to VFX vendors, and ultimately, back to the DI as a starting place. Because it’s so subjective, and monitor-to-monitor calibration can be tricky, all this needs to be sorted up front, as well as approved by the editor or director.”
What do you think could technology solve?
“I’d love to see better tools for long-distance collaboration. We’ve set up a system where I can remotely operate our Avid in Taiwan from our cutting room in NY, but there could be better ways to implement this within MC.”
This is becoming a more common scenario, where there is a need for long distant, instant collaboration.
“There should definitely be a faster way to output a cut – either to a Quicktime or even to a DVD. It’s ridiculous that it is still real time or slower.”
Which company is better serving ACE editors?
“Apple is pretty responsive at their beta sights. The guys on Scrubs and Cougertown are happy with Apple.”
“Avid…but I wish Avid would incorporate some features of FCP, particularly ‘paste attributes.’”
“I hesitate to make a choice here. I feel both companies are working hard to update. I feel that Avid’s agressive updating is a direct result of competition from Final Cut and this competition is great for all filmmakers.”
Amen.
“I urge everyone to keep an open mind about software. When we were editing on 35mm I had a preference for the KEM flatbed. However, I was comfortable working on the Steenbeck, the Moviola, or even the Acmade Picsync.”
A note to ACE members:
“Studios are making a strong push for 3D and will continue to. Chances are, you’ll be involved in 3D some way or other. Prepare yourself for many technological changes and know they will continue to change. However no matter how advance technology becomes and how it improves any CG animation or 3D experience, decisions being made should always fall back on story.“
Knowledge is power… and employment.
And finally “I think editors are the nicest people I know. If we ran the world it might make more sense or at least tell a good story.”
Thanks to everyone who participated in this years survey.
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