USC’s Advanced Editing

I’ve started to add our Total Running Times to the links on the Continuity page.  For your information:

V199 — 1:51:27:14

V299 - 1:43:45:05

There is a revised continuity which may or may not reflect what we’re doing. For now, it reflects my notes to you, but doesn’t incorporate anything that you may want to do. It’s on the Continuities page, accessed from above.

Note that Scene 57 (Jesse’s timer zeroes out) was shot this weekend.

Also, I’m bringing in a CD which has a number of things which may be helpful to us. First, there’s a bunch of audio:

Mogli book on tape reading
Telemarketer call for end bed scene
Discovery channel narration

Then there is also a Main Title card, and a bunch of cards for the Main Titles which can be imported and used. I’d like to use the Main Title card for now, but it isn’t necessary to use the full bunch of cards in this cut.

Click here for a printout of v199 Final Notes from Norman

First of all, this was a fantastic first cut. You should all be really proud of yourselves. As I said in class, the studio execs always then follow up by saying “But we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

So… we’ve got a lot of work to do. But we’re starting out in good shape, with a film that’s not too long to work with.

We talked a lot in class about what worked (the characters — especially Oona — and the humor — though I still think we’re a ways from nailing it) and what didn’t. I’m going to put out some of my thoughts and notes here.

A reminder — the assignment for this coming week is to make the changes (both mine and yours), to experiment more with music, and to drop your cuts (properly named) in the Outputs bin in your workspaces by 4pm on Wednesday, so Coyote can put them together for Thursday morning. The cuts will be labelled v299. We will start, once again, promptly at 9am with our post production meeting, and hope to get going on the cut by 9:10.

A note for everyone — (note this was added on Sunday morning, for those of you who’ve already read these — read this again). I’ve intentionally tried to make these notes both detailed and universal. There are things that apply to everyone in here — discussions of music and sound design, explanations of why I’ve suggested cuts, et al — that everyone should read. So please try and read everything, not just your own sections.

Onward and upward!!

I’m going to put up a PDF of the notes that I’ll update as I go along, so you can more easily print them out if you want. You can reach it by clicking on this link right here. There are a lot of notes. A lot. But, fear not, this is the last time that I’m going to be this detailed on the notes. This is just a sense of how much we have to critique our own work, and the start of training you to do so.

After this, it’s much more on you.

General Comments

I think that Oona’s story is pretty well arced. I’m understanding what she wants and I’m liking her quite a bit. This is, in no small part, due to Steph’s emergence as a strong, friendly presence.

I also think that the integration of Soledad and Luz into the story is working reasonably well as a counterpoint to Oona’s family. I like how the family, who have obviously given Soledad a TiMER, has many second thoughts when it is Jesse who turns out to be her “one.” That helps our story.

The areas that aren’t working very well are Jesse and Marion. She comes across as way too shrill and one-note — a cartoon caricature of a concerned and meddling Mom, and that hurts her reconciliation after Rick (I don’t mind Rick as much as some of you do, though I think he could be shorter). I think we should look into making her as happy for her kids as possible, without her complete pushiness.

The issue of what the TiMER does and how the meeting of your true love works with the device is not worked out yet. SOme of this will be a little better when we get the new inserts but I think we need to look at making it clearer as well.

There are also areas where things get slow — in particular around the section where Jesse gets his timer (this begins with the Discovery Channel and goes through the second supermarket scene) as well as the section where Oona visits Marion and they talk about Mikey running through the Rick scene.

I’m also not involved during Oona and Mikey’s love montage area, and then I have a big bump when she falls out of love with him. I’m really not tracking her reasons for the up and down quite as well as we need to.

Anyway — onto the notes.

Keep reading →

I’ll put my own notes up here tomorrow or Sunday, but for now, this will be a good container to put all of your comments into.

Some of the notes are already in the post Looking At A First Cut. I’ll try and transfer over here, but I might not be able to do that and preserve the author, so I’m linking to them here as well.

Class Notes 3/06/08

Please post comments on the Blog and continue the discussion

First Reactions:

• More entertained then expected
• Cared about the characters
• Some funny moments hit
• Missing Jesse’s Timer zeroing out – don’t understand what is going on in the hallway at school
  • Have to think about dropping the Hallway scene
  • Norm: recommend dropping Scene 59: Jesse in hallway

Overall Thoughts:

• Do we have enough facts about the timers?
  • Clear what the timer is
  • Not clear what happens when it starts to zero out
  • Some of the rules of the timer are not clear
  • Do they get it on a gut feeling level
• Need a sense of urgency throughout the film
• Comedy
  • Look at where and when things are not funny
• Loose Oona at the end of the film—- Around Party scene
  • Think about why
• We don’t know that she is going to zero out on her birthday — no buildup
  • Scene 111 — is this working? We don’t know that when it hits zero that you have 24 hours to see the person
  • Dan and Oona seeing each other at the party is flat
• Why is Oona late to the party? Where has she been? Seem to be focusing on Steph at this point. —- something not working here
  • Lets look at setups earlier in the film and the scenes right before it
• Music
  • Some good places – greenday during the montage and the stuff at the end
  • No consistence
  • Liked music under Steph and Dan in the bar (Tiffany used)
  • Section Three: Steph and the old guy - Music was distracting
  • Try pulling the music out of scenes and make sure that they work without the music
  • What types of music work throughout the film
  • Zach – music with Mikey and Oona in kitchen works well incorporates the ticking of the clock
  • Add new cue when Oona enters party
  • Spotting music
    • Introduction of music is a change in the texture of the film will cause people to lean forward and pay attention — music is about helping the audience lean forward
  • Using hard cut of music and doesn’t seem to be working — taking people out of the film
• News Montage:
  • Exposition
  • Being taken serious – creates sense of urgency
  • Use titles to let us know who the people are
  • Needs music, sound work, green screen background
  • Show the change in peoples attitude about Timer – possible treat interviews to show progression
  • Trim down sequence and add tittles show integration of timer into society

Michael Rabiger, in his excellent book DIRECTING, talks about what happens after you watch the first cut of a film (he calls it an “Assembly”).  Here is an excerpt from that chapter that is appropriate to this week’s screening:

While still in the assembly stage you [the director] and your editor begin asking basic questions:

• Does this film feel dramatically balanced?  If you have a very moving and exciting sequence in the middle of the film, the rest of the film may seem anticlimactic.
• Does the film seem to circle around for a long while before you feel it start to move?
• When is there a definite feeling of a story unfolding, and when not?  Asking this will help you to locate impediments in the film’s development.
• Which part of the film seem to work?
•  Which parts drag, and why?  Some of the acting may be better than others.  Sometimes the problem is that a scene is wrongly placed or repeats the dramatic contours of a previous one.
• Which of the characters held your attention most, and which the least?
• Was there a satisfying alternation of types of material, or was similar material indigestibly clumped together?
• Which were the effective contrast and juxtapositions? Are there more to be made?
• Sometimes a sequence does not work because the ground has not been properly prepared, or because there is insufficient contrast in mood with the previous sequence.  Variety is as important in storytelling as it is in dining.
• What metaphorical allusions did you notice your material making?  Could it make them more strongly?  That your tale caries a metaphorical charge is as important to your audience as a water table is to pasture.

Here is some advice from the Avid-L2 forum about exporting to a DVD from Avid.  I haven’t been discussing this at all, but it’s worth learning it to help the export option if you’re not using a DVD Recorder.

Export Same as Source or a reference thereof - but make sure it’s 720 x 480″DV” pixels (not square - don’t want square). The picture will look “squeezed” just like anamorphic video - and it’s the same thing going out.

Encode that into MPEG-2 - but make sure that you can flag either the encoder or the authoring app to set that track / title / asset as 16:9. You’ll still get a 720 x 480 MPEG-2 file (and that’s exactly what you want), but that flag will let the player know how to treat it during playback.

If things are “choppy”, you might be having bitrate issues. The “auto-DVD” stuff probably cranks out 8mbit MPEG-2 and PCM audio. That’s way higher than I like to go.

If you have a way to crunch the PCM audio into 192kbit Dolby AC3 by all means do so - especially if you can’t whoa back on the MPEG-2 bitrate.

Another poster adds the following:

I’d recommend compressor or squeeze [for your compression] over DVDSP. Target bitrate should be 4-7Mb.

As an aside, I like to use 6Mb, when it makes sense.

I’m not going to be doing comments on everybody and every scene this week. As we discussed in class this week you are using your own powers of observation and ability to self-critque.

However, in an effort to be fair to the group that we didn’t look at this week, I’m going to do some of their scenes. I know these are late so if you can’t get to them for this week, add them in next week. But, remember, this is going to be the only time that you’ll see everything together for the first time.

So — here it goes.

A few notes before our screening this week — please remember to download the latest continuity and print it out for class. We will be taking notes and this will help quite a bit.

Also, remember to name your sequence with your sequence number and version, as well as the date, and put it in a place that Coyote can easily find. He has told you where it should go so follow his instructions to the letter.

Finally, I hope that you are all checking the script supervisor’s notes pages as you are editing and looking for material. There are a lot of notes there on shots that are meant to be cheated into scenes, as well as things like “meant only for dialogue to Marion” etc.

Anyway, now… onto the notes.

Keep reading →

A reminder that this coming Thursday we are having our first cut screening (as per industry practice, we’ll call it the “Editors’ Cut”).

Please make sure that you bring the continuity that i will post later this weekend to class, so we can find all of the continuities on this page.

Here is the page with the two sound tutorials that I mentioned in class today.

Harry B. Miller

There is also a good videocast about the Stabilize effect at Steve Cohen’s Splice Here blog. It’s called How to Use The Avid’s Stabilize Effect.