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MillimeterSmooth HD Feature Workflow
Oct 28, 2008 10:08 AM, By Michael Goldman
It appears the concept of editing in HD is rapidly gaining acceptance in Hollywood, even in the few months since millimeter wrote about one of the first projects to incorporate Avid’s DNxHD 36 codec into its workflow—Iron Man.
The upcoming January feature film from director Gary Winick—Bride Wars—exemplifies the trend. The movie, a romantic comedy shot entirely in the Super 35mm 3-perf (1:85) film format by cinematographer Frederick Elmes, was cut by editor Susan Littenberg on Avid Adrenaline systems using an HD workflow. (Some of the early cutting work was done on Littenberg’s home Media Composer software-based system, and the rest of it was cut on Adrenalines at Post Factory, New York, but all selects were digitized at DNxHD 36, and then media bins were copied via FireWire drives into Littenberg’s home system as needed.)
Assistant editor Debra Tennant says that, even though most of the editorial team was cutting in HD for the first time, and the process “took some getting used to” in certain workflow areas—it was, overall, a straightforward transition for the team.
“It was the way the studio wanted to do it from the beginning—they had new HD Adrenalines and felt DNxHD was standard enough for everyone to use it,” says Tennant. “It was a little bit different of a workflow for the assistants—there is no more digitizing on our part. The HD decks are so expensive, they have a facility (in this case, Laser Pacific, Hollywood) digitize it all for us, and we carry the media to the cutting room on a FireWire drive and copy it over to our Unity system. So one change is, for assistants, the days of digitizing are pretty much gone.
“On the other end, outputs are a little bit more complicated if you are doing a lot of HD outputs because it requires HD decks. In our case, we did a lot of DVD outputs, which are pretty cut and dry. But when you output to tape, like DVCAM or Digi Beta, you have to transcode, which can take time and make it a longer process. Other things might require a little extra work—you also have to render everything when you output to HD, including mattes and titles, for instance. So you have to get used to it—some things are quicker, and some can take a little more time.
“But the other great thing is, you don‘t have to do onlines working this way—you can just output from the Avid. We did a little color correction [on dailies] because we noticed that standard def outputs from the Avid [HD] looked a little darker. So we did a little basic color correction and then screened everything right from the Avid. And the stuff looks really great. For cutting, the creative difference is you can see more detail, especially when you have wider shots—and anything you screen with an HD output will look much better.”
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.
