On Star Trek Into Darkness I had the opportunity to break out of my usual Assistant Editor responsibilities and tackle a new experiment in temp sound editing. This is one of the tricks I learned about cleaning up dialogue, thanks to sound mixer Will Files.
All posts tagged Workflow
Thoughts from NAB 2012
I spent a day and a half on the floor of NAB 2012 (and a fun night at Media Motion Ball!). Here are some of the thoughts I had and things I’m excited about after visiting the exhibition floor.
Automate VFX Sequence Titles
This tip comes by way of George McCarthy, who was our VFX Editor extraordinaire on Mission: Impossible 4. I also created an online EDL to SubCap Converter you can use in lieu of the more manual way described below. If you’re on a show that has to turnover a sequence to a VFX house, you’ll …
EDL to SubCap Converter
When turning over VFX sequences it's useful to put titles over all VFX shots that display their shot IDs. This tool helps you use an EDL with shot locators as the source for Avid's SubCap effect
Keeping Mobile Avid Media Updated
On most of the films that I’ve worked on, I’ve needed to keep at least two Avid systems up to date. This could be because an editor wants to be able to cut from home, or the Director wants the ability to cut on set. To handle this I wrote a Terminal (bash) script that searches for any new MXF or OMF media on specified volumes since the last time the script was run.
Mission: Impossible 4 Formats and Aspect Ratios
In terms of workflow, planning for MI4 was certainly a challenge. We had six camera formats including 35mm; 65mm; and RED, as well as three release formats for normal theaters, IMAX Digital, and IMAX Film. Keeping all of that together took a little bit of effort.
Matte Maker
This online tool creates a custom matte (16:9, 1.85 or 2.40) in PNG format that you can stick on your top video layer in FCP.
Experimenting with Streaming on a CDN
Hosting your own Quicktimes, FLVs and MP4s is often great for small, short files. When you need to stream a whole movie worldwide, you need a Content Delivery Network (CDN). I tried out Amazon S3 and Cloudfront in order to stream a copy of my film to a producer overseas.
Use a Droplet to Prep Audio for FCP
This tip explains using a Compressor Droplet to automatically convert audio into AIF/WAV format and copy it to a specified destination folder for import into FCP. It’s basically the poor man’s Loader.
Organizing a Project’s Reels and Versions
The determination of how to organize all of the sequences you’ll create during the course of your project is extremely important, but unfortunately it is also nearly impossible to standardize. Here’s the system I use for features, in case it can be of use to someone.