West Post Digital Press
How to Prepare for your Offline Edit
Prepare for your offline edit and you'll save money down the line and add years to your life. Well, that last part might not be true, but planning is smart. This article will take you through some of the basics of offline prep. Later on we'll run with a more technical article about how to prep for your online. Let's get started.
As Yogi Berra once said, when you know where you're going, you might just get there.
Having an action plan for your edit means that you'll be breezing through the assembly of your sequences and have more time to devote to being creative. You'll have a better time and a better product at the end of the session. Sound good? It gets better.
If you set clear goals, cultivate focus and find a balance between your ability level and the challenge of doing something well, you have a shot at entering what is called a state of flow.
"Flow" is a nice place. Your project becomes rewarding to do just because you are doing it. You can use your skills to the utmost. But to get into the flow you first need a sense of personal control. In an edit, that means taking these action steps before you walk into the edit room. If you're using tape masters:
Have a tape numbering system. That way when you call for a tape, you can refer to a specific number instead if ,"Um, I think it's the second tape we shot on the third day." Some producers like to go sequential with numbering, as in tape 101, 102, 103, while others like to adopt a modified date system if they need to track when footage was shot. One way to do this is to label a tape 060110-01, to show that it was shot June (06) first (01) 2010 (10) and was the first (01) tape of the day. It doesn't really matter what system you adopt, as long as you stick to it and remain consistent.
Log your tapes before the session begins. Amazing how not everyone takes this step, but once you do, you can walk into your session with a detailed script or solid shot list. This will allow your editor to grasp your material quickly. Key to logging is looking at the timecode on each tape. The timecode is a steady count of hours, minutes, seconds and frames (or sometimes the time of day) that is a digital part of the recording. You can have your master tapes dubbed with a visible timecode window to help choose your best ins and outs. If that's too old school for you, ask for low-resolution versions of your digitized materials with slaved timecode, meaning that the timecode on the low-resolution version will be the same as your masters.
Time your script. Classic screenplay format usually runs about a minute a page and it's roughly the same for the half-page television format. But if you're wondering, why not read a page aloud, including all narration and soundbites, to get a rough idea of your running time? That way if you're going into a session ready to cut a two-minute spot and your script reads out at eight minutes, you know you'll need to make cuts.
If you're all digital, recording to cards in production instead of tape, the advice is the same: know your footage, have a script or shot list, and time it. Since you can't really number cards, here's a tip: Try using a slate or "clapper" to mark takes. Then you have a visual cue to help you when you're sorting through footage.
Follow these steps and watch your edit become more fun, leaving you more time to do some creative cutting.
Image Credit: Remcovandermeer via Creative Commons License.