Grading (A Resolve Set Up)

Been a while since my last post but I'm just getting towards the end of the edit of my fourth feature film as editor, Tamla Rose. Its been an interesting job because whilst principal photography ended several months back and I have been working on the film on and off since then, the team only shot the final day of pickups a couple of weeks back and we are already trying to get the film locked. I also got a nice surprise when I was asked to grade the film as well. I wasn't expecting this as the last film I did for this company was sent down to a Colourist in London. This is going to be my third feature as Colourist (after Born of Hope which has now had 11million views and The Turing Enigma) so I made a couple of big decisions. Firstly, I wanted to do it in DaVinci Resolve (which I have recently spent a lot time learning so that I could teach it at the media school I work at) and secondly I wanted to have at least some kind of proper video monitoring and a colour control surface.

VS

So the first decision was easy. Whilst I love Apple Color (which I used on the previous two features and several shorts) it's a dead application (thanks Apple) so continuing to hone my skill on it seemed kind of pointless. Resolve is the industry standard and now its cheap (or free for the Lite version which "only" goes up to HD resolution) it's becoming incredibly commonplace.

The second decision was more difficult because it would mean a lot of research on my part into getting the "right" setup and it would involve not only spending all the money I was getting for grading the film, but also getting a loan to pay for the rest. But I think any career in such a competitive industry as TV & Film needs to be full of bold moves that you hope pay off. When I quit doing temp work in an office I had no idea if I could support myself with just film work and teaching, but it paid off and 4 years later I'm still paying the rent, so you have to have a little faith. But how much to spend? That was the big question. I priced up my ideal suite at between £8-10k. It would have looked something like this;

Now if that doesn't make you drool then what the hell are you doing reading my blog? But £8-10k is a LOT of money to be dropping unless you have several well paid jobs definitely lined up. Which I don't. I have some pretty nice potential jobs and few definite jobs on the horizon but in the end I thought that spending this money would be a mistake because it would essentially be taking several steps at once. I would be moving up from my MacbookPro, to a tower with additional GPU processing, adding external monitoring of my video signal and getting a broadcast quality OLED monitor.

So I downsized my budget (several times) and ended up with a figure of £4k, which meant I could get pretty small personal loan that if worst came to worst it would still be pretty easy to pay back on a minimum wage job. So instead my setup looks like this;

I replaced the MacPro (which are a dier need of a revamp by Apple anyway) with a top spec iMac. I replaced Black Magic card with the cheapest Black Magic thunderbolt box (the Intensity Extreme). I kept the colour control surface and the 42" high end consumer plasma screen but lost the OLED monitor. Whilst the setup (I'm looking at it right now) doesn't make me drool quite as much as I had in mind it is still a major step up for me (and I still feel a little giddy about it). I believe I was stretching my Macbook as far as it would go and that is the moment that you should upgrade. So that's what I did. Now I can edit and grade in HD whilst monitoring the actual video signal on a faithful(ish) monitor that at least attempts to emulate the scale of watching a cinema screen and I can grade at least 4 times as quickly (and I'm not even practiced yet) with the control surface. Once I have pushed this gear as far as it will go then I can upgrade to the suite above and this setup will become my offline suite. Until then, I'm happy with this.

My Career So Far

These past couple of months have been pretty chaotic for me. I have been very busy with The Zombie King which we locked picture on last week, The Turing Enigma has made its way into the world via Amazon and Distrify, I started a new feature called Tamla Rose and edited a good portion of the rushes during its first 3 week shoot and I recently put the finishing touches to the first feature I edited, First Time Loser, which has at last come out of the other side of its audio post and grade. All in all I'm feeling pretty reflective about my career so far and also thinking about what the future will hold. So far I have edited 3 feature films (First Time Loser, The Turing Enigma and The Zombie King) and going into my 4th I think I have learnt alot from all of them. I try to keep away from discussion of technology on this blog as much as possible, not because I don't find it interesting, but because there are so many other blogs which talk about the software and hardware side of editing. That mostly means I'm talking about editing techniques or the philosophies behind editing but today I'd like to share my experiences in the general post-production flow of the films I have worked on so far, what I have learnt from them and how I applied that knowledge when taking on the job of Editor for my next feature, Tamla Rose.

Let me first point out that all of the films I have worked on so far have had low budgets (and should probably be classed as no budget films). Whilst there was money spent on them all (in amounts that would make a lot of indie filmmakers drool), they are all at a level where most of the cash will dissapear into things like food, accomodation, camera and light rental and the general administrative process of getting a feature film made. What this basically means is that on all the films the majority of the cast and crew's payment was either partially or competely deferred. Working for free or a fraction of what you should be getting paid is a difficult game when you still have to pay rent/bills, but its really the only way you are going to get a foot on the ladder in a business as competitive as this one. Its a raw deal, but whining about it gets you nowhere. So if your interested, I'll describe my first 3 films in detail after the jump...

The First Cut

My favourite part of the job I do is doing the first rough cut of a dialogue scene. It doesn't have to be a dialogue scene, I'm quite happy with an action scene or music video or a simple montage, but dialogue is my forte. But that moment when I have a bin full of footage ready to go and a completely blank timeline is the most exciting moment in filmmaking for me. Truly, I believe it's the moment when the filmmaking actually begins. Production is exciting and I wouldn't dream of demeaning the input of the various roles involved, but a lot of the skills which go into it are not unique to filming. Photography, lighting, acting, art direction, they all have there roots in other art forms, but editing is the thing that sets cinema apart from everything that preceded it. Up until the moment you start trying to seamlessly combine the various performance and camera angles together to create a new little universe that no longer contains cameras and lights and crew and actors, only the characters that inhabit it, you don't really have a film. You just have footage. And that is why I love being an Editor.

I have in the past had people ask about how much "say" I get into what goes into the final draft of the films I edit. They are usually surprised that, technically, I don't get any. Thankfully, I am usually afforded the opportunity to put together a first cut of the film on my own. But if the director came along and decided that he literally wanted to change everything, he could. And at the end of the day he has that right, because its him that will get the credit if its great (i.e. it sells) and the stick if its rubbish (i.e. it flops). But putting money on this happening would be a foolish way to waste money, because it underestimates the power of the first cut. There is something special about seeing the footage cut together for the first time, and although there is always going to be a lot of work done after that, the first cut (if done well) will always leave an imprint on the finished project. So even, if I encounter a director who doesn't know the meaning of the world collaborate, I'm pretty sure I will always get my fair share of "say".

To finish off this post, I'm going to put my money where my mouth is and give you  a complete dialogue scene that I did for The Turing Enigma, my second feature as Editor. It's one of my favourite scenes that I've had the pleasure of working on.

Prying Open Your 3rd Eye

One of the most important skills a good editor needs to develop is the ability to understand and manipulate the gaze of the audience member. The quality of every cut you make depends on your ability to determine where the audience will be looking before the cut and control where they look too after the cut. Many factors go into this including the emotional content of the scene, the composition, lighting and focus of the shot and the movement of objects within the frame. A lot of the time, this decision is made instinctually and you can usually feel if a cut is smooth or jarring (both have their place), but there are several things you can do to improve your cutting ability. One resource which has only recently developed is technology which can detect where your audience members are looking on the screen and log that information as data. The following video comes from a small audience watching a scene from There Will Be Blood. The circles on the screen represent where in the frame each audience member is looking. If someone maintains there gaze on one spot then the circle grows in size. I hope you find this as interesting and useful as I did.