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Dylan's Pipeline

Dec 1, 2005 12:00 PM, By Michael Goldman

Martin Scorsese's recent documentary No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, was “one of the more challenging multi-format jobs we have ever dealt with,” says Ben Murray, the online editor on the project for PostWorks, New York.

The 3.5-hour documentary covering Dylan in the early 1960s features clips culled from almost every conceivable film and early video format, as well as hundreds of still photos — all of which had to be cleaned up and organized for editing and finishing. Editor David Tedeschi cut the documentary into three versions — the broadcast version that aired on PBS in the fall, the DVD version, and an HD theatrical version — with PostWorks handling the job of transferring clips and onlining the piece.

PostWorks jumped into the fray about three years ago to help line producer Jessica Cohen organize the archival material collected for the project. Tedeschi started editing in early 2004 on an Avid-based workflow built around Xpress Pro that could link seamlessly with the online workflow as it evolved.

According to PostWorks officials, Xpress Pro was used as an organizational tool as footage flowed into a pipeline that also included Tedeschi's primary editing tool — Avid Adrenaline (versions 1.5.1 and 2.0.4) — and DS Nitris (v. 7.6), which Murray utilized for the final conform.

“At the time we started, Avid had just come out with Xpress Pro and had not yet released Adrenaline,” says Billy Baldwin, president at PostWorks. “Jessica Cohen had the idea of using the lower-cost Xpress Pro system to organize everything. So we began scanning and importing footage directly into Xpress Pro and organizing bins according to the overall Avid organizational structure, knowing we would be ready to go later, when we moved into other Avid platforms.”

At production company Grey Water Park Productions, the scanned clips were loaded onto a 1.8TB Avid Ultra 320 SCSI RAID, built and installed by PostWorks. Later, that entire setup was physically moved to Scorsese's offices at his company, Sikelia Productions, when Tedeschi commenced the offline.

Due to the project's compact schedule, Tedeschi found himself routinely offlining particular portions of the documentary while Murray was simultaneously onlining other portions. Because of the wide range of different formats involved, a key part of Murray's job during the conform process was to run all clips through a Teranex Xantis (v. 4.3.12) format converter — all done in realtime with no rendering.

“We had 1in. video at one point, we had PAL, 3/4in., Super 16mm, 16mm, you name it,” says Murray. “All the film elements were transferred to D5 [on a Spirit Datacine at PostWorks], but video elements were thrown at me in different formats. The first thing I did was run it all through the Teranex to standardize the format and frame rate to 1080 24p for Nitris to deal with. We set it up so that we did not have to cross-convert everything until the conform process itself. A lot of facilities want to transfer everything to HD and then downconvert it all for offline, while using the HD master for the online. But we didn't want to tell the client to transfer all their reams of archival material to HD up front, so we left it to the back end of the process, and then I dealt with it using the Teranex box instead. It was best to leave it to me, the online editor, to drive the Teranex and decide on a shot-by-shot basis what I needed to do with each clip to make it seamless.”

As they located, transferred, and cleaned up footage, Cohen and assistant editors labored hard to make sure rare musical performance clips ended up with synched audio and picture for Tedeschi to deal with. For particular scenes, such as old clips from Dylan's 1966 concert tour, this took a lot of work.

“Sound from most concert footage in the documentary came directly from the audio board, and a few years ago, it would have been difficult to synch it up so quickly,” says Tedeschi. “Now, with digital technology, we can cut and synch it in [Adrenaline] and use a version of ProTools to time-shift material without much pitch shifting. But some of the live performance footage we used did not include audio recorded with a synched Nagra or anything. It was recorded separately to a 1/4in. machine many years ago. So, there, we did have to time-shift to synch it up. We used Adrenaline's built-in Audio Suite plug-ins to roughly synch stuff up during the offline, and that assured us the clip would work for our purposes. It's interesting that so much of this work can now be done directly in Adrenaline. Later, of course, our music editors basically went nuts and further synched it all up with great precision.”

Murray, meanwhile, credits DS Nitris for allowing him to efficiently convert frame rates while conforming.

“I could work with different frame rate media on the same timeline,” he says. “These sources went through so many different format transfers prior to coming here that some had drop-frame timecode or other standards that could not be cleanly transferred immediately to 24p. Film material that had been transferred to 1080i could be loaded at 1080i to ensure accuracy, while the Nitris did the frame-rate conversion by removing the 3:2 pulldown. This way, I could spend most of my time working closely with [Tedeschi] to finesse shots to achieve Marty's vision, rather than spending most of my time doing conversions.”

After the conform, PostWorks' colorist Scott Olive color-corrected the documentary using a Pandora Pogle Evolution system and the True Light color management system to make sure all three versions — broadcast, DVD, theatrical — stayed within SMPTE 709 color space. The whole thing was finished to D5.

Baldwin feels this methodology for using Xpress Pro as an organizational tool or an assistant station has great promise.

“Many different types of projects could be handled this way,” he suggests. “There is an overall cost benefit to using Xpress Pro to organize media. It has most of the functionality of higher-end Avid products, and you can plug it directly into your existing pipeline, as well as your Unity storage network to share with Adrenaline or Nitris.”

Murray adds that he even has an Xpress Pro station in his online room, and used it extensively while conforming No Direction Home.

“I used Xpress Pro a lot for reference to see [Tedeschi's] work and find his locators before the clips were transferred through our network,” says Murray. “On a job like this, if there is any clip management or modifications, I can do them as the equivalent of a temporary offline situation on my Xpress Pro station, which speeds everything up. It's far more functional than relying solely on reference tapes, that's for sure.”

© 2008 Penton Media, Inc.