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MillimeterCross-Platform Plan
Jul 1, 2003 12:00 PM, By Michael Goldman
 DP Dan Coplan (left) and Director Brian Ging (right) review a steadicam shot with actor Nick Tagas. |
As he entered the editing phase for his independent film about school violence, American Yearbook, writer/director Brian Ging was still learning how to get the most out of his collection of affordable, fresh-off-the-shelf, mixed-platform tools. Guided by DP Dan Coplan, Ging shot the film with two new Panasonic AG-DVX100 MiniDV cameras. At press time, they were embarking on a plan to edit the piece on a new Avid Xpress DV system and up-res and convert those images to HD through Final Cut Pro, rendering it out to HD tape with help from the Final Cut Pro system's CineWave card.
“Dan [Coplan] had been doing some work at eMotion Studios [Sausalito, Calif.], and coincidentally, they recently installed a new system built around Final Cut Pro to do HD work, so they generously agreed to help us do both tests and eventually the film's up-res and HD finish using that system,” says Ging. “They wanted to put it through its paces on a long-form project. That's why we decided to cross platforms — editing in Avid and finishing in Final Cut Pro.”
Although he used the 24fps-capable Panasonic camera, the process also taught Ging that he would still have to perform a 3:2 pulldown on the images.
“We were still learning the camera, which we got less than two weeks before the shoot started, and we decided to shoot in ‘standard’ mode,” says Ging. “We assumed we could still pull 24 frames and edit in a 24fps timeline. Since we figured we would probably not have a theatrical release on a little independent film like this, we felt there was no harm in shooting in the standard video mode [30fps]. Looking at the images on set, we felt they looked better for our purposes viewing them at 30fps. We didn't fully take into account that we were outputting to HD, though, and in trying to edit in a 24fps timeline, there would be a little clunkiness in going to HD because of how the system separates the frames. Therefore, we might not have taken ultimate advantage of the Panasonic camera's ability to shoot at 24fps. Fortunately, we have this opportunity to go to eMotion and up-res the movie to its hard drives, where we can then perform a traditional 3:2 pulldown and blow it up to HD.”
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.