Iain Mitchell, Avid customer and member of the UK Avid user group, has been editing on Avid for over 15 years, with a mixture of film and television work on his resume. He recently took some time out to talk to Avid about his latest film, S.N.U.B.!, which was the first time he had worked on a totally tapeless project.
Avid: What is S.N.U.B.! about?
IM: It’s a horror/thriller about a nuclear attack on London – a group of survivors are trapped in a government bunker cut off from the outside world and they think they’re safe, but it turns out not to be the case….
Avid: How did you get involved in the project?
IM: I had worked with the director, Jonathan Glendening, about eight years ago when I edited his film, Summer Rain, and we kept in touch. When S.N.U.B.! came up he offered me the gig.
It sounded like a real challenge as this was the first film project to use the new Sony EX1 tapeless cameras (shooting HD), and it would certainly be my first all-tapeless film. I was working on a TV project at the time but decided I couldn’t pass up the opportunity, so I took this on in my spare time.
I have to admit that I was a bit skeptical that the EX1 would be able to cope with shooting for a film – it looked like a DV camera no bigger than a PD150! However, as soon as I saw the first pictures on screen I was proved entirely wrong.
The initial shoot was 12 days, using two of the EX1s and recording to DAT as the cameras were hand-held most of the time. They would shoot one card on each camera in the morning then replace them for the afternoon shoot, and in the meantime the rushes were transferred using Sony’s Transfer Tool to a quicktime .mov onto a hard drive – so I would receive a whole day’s rushes on a hard drive that same evening.
Avid: Was it a collaborative editing process with the director?
IM: Since I’d worked with Jonathan before, he knew he could leave me to get on with it. I would be editing during the day on a paid job, come home and import the day’s rushes then start editing until midnight! It was hard to edit after working all day on a TV programme and to switch editing style. Having no producers or directors for the first assemble made editing much quicker as I was able to get more done and to get a feel for the film. In fact the film changed radically because of this; initially the vision was for a slow-burning, tense thriller but once I had the pictures to work with it was clear that we needed to make it much faster and pacier.
Avid: Which editing tool did you use?
IM: Originally the director wanted to use Final Cut Pro as it was low budget , but I hate it. I’ve worked with Avids for over 15 years - I even used to install them, it’s like a second skin for me. I find FCP has too many ‘whistles and bells’ which properly trained, experienced editors shouldn’t need. I also find the media management tools within Avid are far superior.
I’d been using Avid Xpress Pro (previously Avid Xpress) for years at home and I loved having an industry standard! So I started the edit using that, transferring the material onto my Mac G5, and I finished the first cut and a trailer to take to Cannes where we were trying to sell the film.
By the time we returned Avid had released Media Composer 3.0 software and was phasing out Xpress Pro, so I decided I had to let my trusted friend go and install Media Composer. I made a back-up, expecting the transition to be a nightmare, but to my surprise everything worked perfectly! The interfaces are very similar but the little improvements between v2.8 and v3.0 make a lot of difference – for instance, I can move clips tracks individually now rather than two at a time, and generally everything is much more fluid. Also Avid seems to be much better for the OSX Platform than it has been for some years. With OSX 10.5.5 Avid was close behind with updates and more importantly it’s rock solid!
At this time we also started using version 2 of Sony’s Transfer Tool. Using version 1 had been OK but very slow and laborious as Avid didn’t have a codec that would talk to it. When we came to download the footage from an additional five days of shooting using version 2, it was unbelievably fast – almost instantaneous. I could import clips, go to Avid AAF and there they were in Media Composer, ready to go. This saved an enormous amount of time.
Avid: Did you have any problems working with HD resolution?
IM: Not at all – in fact I was able to cut at full resolution without any loss of power or speed, which was amazing. Drive space is so cheap these days, so I had 2Tb storage with everything uncompressed.
The only thing that was weird and slightly unnerving for me was the lack of tapes on my shelf! I was so diligent (or paranoid!) about backing up - that was a fundamental part of the project. It was also strange for me to present the final cut to the grader as a consolidated sequence at DNX185 on a hard drive – I didn’t have to reconform it, he just put it on a Nitris system and played out of the Nitris onto a Baselight system. It was an absolutely seamless process, not one frame out.
It was a similar story for the visual effects work. I just gave the VFX team uncompressed Quicktime sequences, either on iDisk or a DVD, they would do their stuff and give them back as a Quicktime. There were around 100 CG shots including one blowing up London, this wasn’t small stuff – but the transfers were so easy!
Avid: Were there any particular features in Media Composer that you particularly liked?
IM: I love the colour correction tool – if I had the time and patience I’d love to get into more grading. Jordan Cushing (the DoP) did an amazing job with the lighting so I didn’t have that much to do, except for a rudimentary grade on the trailer to crush the blacks and take the brightness down. There was also one major scene in the bunker that needed a red effect to imitate emergency lighting.
Being able to see the film at full res in Media Composer was great because I could really see what needed to be corrected. I have to say that it was shot beautifully, especially considering the Sony EX1 is such a small camera. I thought there would be gain or it would look crushed but the camera coped remarkably well.
Avid: Were you involved in the audio?
IM: I took on the role of post-production supervisor as well as editor, so I did get involved in the audio. Sound guys always want different takes, so recording to DAT meant that we could give them every DAT for the whole film. The files were transferred seamlessly onto a Pro Tools system at The Sound Design Company, a bespoke sound editing studio in Denham Media Park. The effects editor was Steve Felton, dialogue editor was Rick Dunford and Nicolas Le Messurier at Synxspeed was the re-record mixer. At this point I’ll hand over to Steve to tell you more…
Steve Felton: The Avid/Pro Tools integration was really easy, Iain brought his G5 to the studio and we fiddled about with his tracks to get them how we wanted them, then Iain made an AAF and we transferred it across. He also made us a Quicktime of the picture so we could work to his latest edit. Earlier we had copied all the DAT tapes onto a hard drive, which was great – if we needed an alternative delivery of a line we could just go back to the rushes and choose it. The tracklay took three weeks to complete including a day or two of ADR, and the mix took 3 days. Once we had finished we created a .wav of the 5.1 mix, which we gave to Iain to lay back into the main edit.
The version we have now is a temp mix, which is fine for preview purposes. Once the film is sold we’ll go back and add more sound effects, record more ADR and do a tidy-up for a proper feature film version.
The tapeless method worked well for us, we received what we needed quickly which allowed us to get on with the editing without waiting for copies or digitizing video tapes which is very important on fast-turnaround projects – it was all seamless and very easy.
Avid: What was the biggest challenge on this film?
IM: For me, it was just getting my head round being in a tapeless environment, and remembering to back up all the time.
There were no ‘challenges’ or problems as such, I still can’t quite believe how smooth the whole process was. With new technology you expect that there are going to be some issues or problems, but hand on heart we didn’t have any at all.
My biggest dread was that the picture would have slipped after consolidation but not a single picture was out of frame.
We did have one minor puzzle – when we came to consolidate we couldn’t find the OMF. We were confused for about 10 minutes then realised we should be looking for an AAF…. By the way, AAF is the way forward! I always thought OMFs were great but AAFs are fantastic!
It’s been a great learning experience for me. I did miss the technical side of things a bit - the physical handling of tapes and the processes that go with it – getting my hands dirty and solving problems. But this is a fantastic new way to work and I’d certainly do it again.
S.N.U.B.! is in the process of finalising a distribution deal. S.N.U.B. 2 is already in the pipeline!
