Even though your workflow will be governed by your format, due to the amount of variety available in the technical post-production of films there is still a huge choice in the systems and processes that workflows can consist of and often several different ways of getting from start to finish.
When choosing a workflow, it is important that you try and find one that is right for the needs of your film. Choosing the right workflow and sticking to it will enable you to complete your film smoothly and efficiently.
Potential workflows for your film will generally be governed by two factors, budget and quality.
Figure 44. Diagram of common digital workflows.
QUALITY PRESERVATION
The golden rule of following a workflow process is quality preservation. Within reason you should never lose anything other than a reasonable margin of quality through your workflow, unless it is absolutely unavoidable.
Most workflows result in several transfers taking place and this is where a potential for quality loss occurs along the way. Whether you need to transfer DV footage from a camera to a computer for editing, or footage on a hard drive between computers, you need to make sure that the transfer itself and the systems you are transferring to will maintain the resolution of your initial footage.
Workflows are only as strong as their weakest link. Quality lost at any stage will be passed along and affect the final quality of your film. So you need to plan a workflow that will preserve the initial resolution that you started with.
BUDGET
It’s vital that you treat the decisions over workflow realistically in terms of your budget. When initially choosing a format to shoot on, you need to not only evaluate the quality and cost of that format, but also the type of workflow it entails. This may seem straightforward enough, but the higher the quality of your post-production workflow the higher the expenses involved will generally be.
25. EDITING
In the process of shooting your script, you will have broken down scenes into individual shots and those shots into takes, resulting in footage that should cover all the material you needed, but probably not in an order resembling the script. The first step of editing is to reassemble your footage into the structure and sequence of the original story. This will provide you with a basis to begin giving your film pace and form. Editing can be an extremely creative process that gives you the chance to revise your initial story and how it’s told, as well as create nuances and details that can define how the audience perceives what is occurring.
Whether you straightforwardly recreate the composition of your script, or drastically edit it into a different form, your options and decisions will be governed by the amount of coverage you shot. It’s often said that you learn filmmaking in the edit, for no matter how well you have planned and choreographed your shoot, you will often find yourself wishing you had shot a bit more. Coverage really is the most vital contingent for editing; having close ups, wide shots and general coverage of action from different angles will multiply the possibilities that you have during editing and will allow you to create a finished version that is both visually dynamic and well-balanced.
Just like any other area of short filmmaking, there are no rules as to how you should edit a short; it’s up to you to rely on instinct and creativity to resolve how the material is best portrayed.
NON-LINEAR (NLE)
Non-linear refers to the way in which most contemporary editing is performed.
It’s a process that allows you to create an edit by accessing the source material at any given point and the possibility to start putting it together from any point. By giving you a virtual timeline, clips can be dragged and dropped onto it at any point and shifted around indefinitely. This means you don’t need to build your edit by beginning at the start and working your way through to the end. Linear editing necessitates working through from the first shot to the last, but non-linear gives you the freedom to, for instance, start building your film from the middle outwards.
All contemporary editing systems are non-linear; they are digitally-based, allowing the footage to be stored on hard drives and retrieved quickly and efficiently. Based largely on the same principles of organisation and assembly as those developed by editors working directly with real film negatives, modern editing software allows you to work fluidly and precisely.
Time code
Non-linear editing was partially made possible by the invention of time code. Time code consists of data information that relates directly to the footage you are working with, consisting of hour, minute, second and frame references, allowing the footage to be identified and synchronised within an editing system or other post-production processes. It is often generated or added to the video footage during the actual recording and then provides a universal reference throughout the post-production of the film. There are many different forms of time code; the most common and widely used within filmmaking is SMPTE. This SMPTE time code can be read by the editing system and used as a reference for anyone from the editor to the soundtrack composer.
CHOOSING AN EDITING SYSTEM
There are several considerations when it comes to choosing a digital editing system.
If using editing software that can be used on a domestic computer, you need to ensure that the software can work with the footage at the desired resolution and that the computer can store and process that amount of digital information.
Both Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere are available in versions that can process both standard-definition and high-definition resolutions. This means that you can perform extremely high-quality editing with them, whether this is online or offline. Most high-end home computers will have enough processing power and external storage solutions to be able to work with lower-resolution compressed formats, allowing you to perform an online edit without any trouble, and this is by far the best solution for most lower-resolution projects.
To work with uncompressed high-definition footage, however, you will need an extremely powerful computer and serious storage capacity to perform online edits and this is where you will probably need to use a post-production facility for editing and conforming.
All the major digital software programmes work on the same concept. They allow you to capture and log your source footage, which can be broken down into clips and organised and stored in bins, from where they can be arranged into sequences on a virtual timeline. As long as the software can technically perform what you are asking of it, then the one you find most comfortable to work with is the best for you.
Editing is a time-consuming process, so hiring gear or time at post-production facilities becomes very expensive. The ideal is to find a system that gives you as much time to work with as possible and know well enough to work easily with.
One of the most important breakthroughs in filmmaking is workflows that are self-contained on one system. The process of making films used to require transfers, multiple processes, systems and locations to get the film to a completed stage. All of which was time-consuming, labour-intensive and expensive. This has all changed. With most digital formats it is now possible to use one or several programmes on a single computer that you can perform nearly your entire workflow on. Most NLE computer-editing packages will allow you to edit both image and sound, create titles and credits, add transition effects and perform colour correction, all within the one programme. If your project requires that elements be worked on in other programmes, such as soundtrack composition or visual effects, then the most important consideration is whether the programmes are compatible and the format of files you are working on can be shared between the programmes easily.
Figure 45. Final Cut Pro editing program.
Intuitive editing
Software editing programmes are designed to be versatile; they have been developed for all kinds of projects and the demands that go with them. The result is programmes that let you work in a very simple fashion if the project requires it, or in a very complex technical way if that’s what is req
uired. Simple commands such as splicing a clip or creating a dissolve can be done in a variety of ways, so there is often no single way or right way to do most tasks.
Most programmes offer about six different ways to do everything, but you don’t have to learn all of them, it’s simply a case of finding which one is most straightforward and practical for you.
Methodical editing
The amount of footage that you shoot for any project, compared to how much actually makes it into the final edit can be vast. Depending on your shooting ratio, you will often be dealing with hours of rushes from which you will create a film that might only be a few minutes long. Dealing with this amount of material has the potential for chaos; spending hours trawling through your footage looking for a few seconds of material that you want to use is not uncommon. The key to avoiding this type of scenario really comes down to taking an organised and methodical approach when capturing, logging and naming your footage. Taking the time to break down your footage into individual takes, with names and numbers, often seems like a painstaking process when what you really want to do is get straight into editing it, but in the long term it allows you to work much faster and more efficiently.
Working with an editor
Figure 46. Selection of transition effects on Adobe Premiere.
Editing used to be a process that was carried out in suites at post-production facilities. Individual editing systems required highly-skilled operators to use them. Traditionally, feature film directors hardly ever edit their films and often only work alongside professional editors. With the advent of increasingly powerful and sophisticated software systems that can be used on home computers, however, there is now a vast amount of amateur filmmakers who shoot and edit their own films. But, choosing to work with someone who is either a professional or experienced amateur editor has several benefits. The first is that you can rely on their technical expertise to operate the software. The second and most important is that you benefit from their experience and talent. Even if you end up making the majority of the editorial choices, having another set of eyes, and someone skilled enough to present you with different possibilities, can only make your film better.
CUTS AND TRANSITIONS
The basic processes of editing are choosing the length of the individual clips and judging the precise moment at which one finishes and the next begins. This cutting point or junction between two clips can be handled in a variety of ways. Cuts between clips can be subtle, whereby the passage of time within a scene is maintained, and cuts or edit points become almost subliminal for the viewer. By maintaining the passage of time through a scene the filmmaker is often able to guide the viewer through a scene without them really being aware of the edit points. This is achieved not only by maintaining a natural timeline but also by choice of shots. Again, coverage is crucial for this style of editing, as its subtlety is often achieved by moving in and out of the scene incrementally. So for example, cutting from a wide to a medium shot and then to a close up will often be less of a noticeable edit than cutting straight from a wide shot to a close up, or vice versa; having a variety of angles and types of shot allows the editor more options in shifting the viewpoint in small unnoticeable steps rather than leaps. The other technique used to achieve seamless editing is cutting on the action. Using a movement within a scene as an edit point is ideal for convincing editing. Two different shots that contain the same action can be aligned on different video tracks and then a point within the action chosen to cut between them. An ubiquitous use of this technique within film is a character opening a door: a shot of a character from behind opening a door is cut with a reverse angle shot from the other side of the door where we see the character emerging. If you aligned these two shots and cut from the moment before the door was actually opened to the reverse angle with the door being opened, the result would be an edit that followed the series of events in real time, but may appear abrupt. However, if you chose a point at which the door was already partially open and then cut to the reverse at the moment the door was at the same angle, the momentum of the action would create a very subtle edit. This use of action and reaction is often the basis of smooth and dynamic editing. However, the timing and abruptness of a cut can also be used to great effect. A specific sequence or scene might benefit from this type of editing, to jolt the audience from one shot to another, such as a wide shot straight to an extreme close up. The passage of time can also be manipulated; cutting away the middle portion of a shot will create a jump cut, which can be used to emphasise the unreal quality of film time. Transitions such as dissolves and fades are also often employed to create the illusion of time passing and create a softer shift from scene to scene.
Rough cut
A rough cut is the first basic edit that you produce. This means that you will have captured all your footage and assembled it into the structure of the original script again. Working from your storyboard and script as reference you can begin to place your shots in sequence, choosing the best takes as you go and laying down a basic structure that will give you your first idea of how your film will actually look on the screen. This is generally the best time to test screen the film to other people; constructive feedback from people may well give you insight into which parts of the film are working or need to be worked on.
Offline
Offline editing is the editing of a copy of the master footage on another format (normally lower-resolution) and often on another editing system; it’s a common step in many post-production workflows.
Offlines are copies of your film taken from the master format, whether digital or film. The quality of offlines is not generally as important as the master copy because they are designed for editing only to create the EDL information, so that either a conform edit of the final cut version or a neg cut can then take place. The actual offline material never gets screened and is a dead-end version.
Offline editing is used to both cut the costs of a production and make the editing process faster and easier. For instance, if you have shot your film on S16 or 35mm then you don’t want to actually splice and assemble an edit with the actual negative; this would be painstaking, time-consuming and potentially damage the negative, so a telecined version on a DV format would be produced. This version can be edited on a computer-based editing system much more quickly and efficiently.
Even films that have been shot on a digital format, if they are very high-resolution, will often have lower-resolution offline versions made for editing; the processes and systems that can handle the high-resolution are often extremely expensive to use, and there is simply no need to complete the editing stage at the full resolution of the original version.
Online
Online editing is working with the film at its full resolution. Whether this is the original format or not, this online version is the one that will actually end up producing the screening copy. Online editing can be performed for an entire project; for example shooting a film on MiniDV, loading it on to a computer for editing and then exporting it back to MiniDV would be an entirely online edited version. Or an online edit can also take place after an offline, so for instance a film shot on HD might be edited offline on a domestic computer with a DV version of the footage to produce a rough cut, then the EDL could be used to recreate the edit in an HD editing suite to finetune the project and produce the final edit for exporting back out to an HD format. With projects that have been shot on a lower-resolution format like DV, there is often no need for an offline version, so the entire editing process is online.
CLIPS AND FILES
When working on a digital editing system, your footage will be stored digitally as files. Just like videotape formats there are a huge amount of digital file types, and just like digital tape formats they all involve encoding and compression (see video). These file systems act as containers for portions of encoded media, with many of them capable of containing both visual and audio information. These files use a variety of codecs to encode and store the data, often
giving you the choice of what type of codec you want to use. The reason why there are so many different file types and codecs is because they are all designed for different purposes. Streaming a video over the net requires small files that have to be highly compressed for that amount of data to be transferred fast enough. Correcting a still image in Photoshop will require a large high-resolution file type so that there is the maximum amount of image information to work with.
Many editing programmes will generate their own file types, depending on the type of footage you are importing, but also allow you to import and edit other supported files. Common file types such as QuickTime’s .MOV and Microsoft’s .AVI are widely used for editing and are supported by numerous systems. They allow you to use a choice of codecs for different purposes. So for instance, you could create two QuickTime .MOV versions of your finished film, but one would use a codec for Internet streaming, while another might be for creating a DVD version of your film. The most important aspect of working with files is that you choose a file type that will maintain the resolution of the footage you started with and that is supported by other programmes you might need to use in your workflow.
Edit decision list (EDL)
An EDL is a series of time code numbers that relate to both your master source footage and the times and events that you have created during an edit.
Short Films Page 18