Feature Film Scarlet Workflow Help

[Rob Sholty]

Hey guys,
I am gearing up to shoot a feature in March and I was looking for some advice on the post workflow for FCP 7. I'm estimating that we will shoot around 80 to 100 hours and I will be shooting at RED 4k 8:1. I was wondering what hard drives would be the best to use on something like this and the workflow with FCP 7. I was looking at the G Speed eS Series and I was looking at getting two 12TB and an 8TB for offline. I was going to transcode to Apple Pro Res LT for my offline then bring it back into Davinci for color. I'm just not sure if this is the best workflow or the hardware for this situation. My budget for drives is low only $5,000. I do not own a Red Rocket card but I might be able to save up some cash to rent one out if need be.

Right now I am running FCP 7 on a Mac Pro Quad Core 2.6GHZ 2009. I have 12GB of RAM and an ATI 5870 1GB Graphics Card. I would upgrade but I am awaiting the new Mac Pros that are supposedly dropping this year.

Any help on this would be awesome. Thank you guys so much.




-Rob

 

[Marc Wielage]

Yes, that will work. A lot depends on your final delivery -- I would find out from your distributor what their specific requirements are in terms of files, aspect ratios, frame rates, audio, and so on. There may also be a need for 4x3 versions for foreign, 16x9 full-frame for syndication, and native aspect ratio (theatrical) for Blu-ray.

Don't forget to get lots of extra drives for backups. The G-Tech drives are first rate and used by quite a few indie producers I know. The Mac Pro 2.6GHz machine should be more than capable of handling this, even at ProRes 422.