Making a shoestring work

[liquidigital]

Forgive me, I'm not that technical, trying to catch up on a lot of stuff, so I tryed to distill what I'm trying to accomplish. I have a 15 minute short project coming up, trying to avoid pitfalls.

1. Shoot Super 35mm.

2. Get scanned at HDCAM SR.

3. Edit ONLINE with Final Cut Pro. Color correct. I want an intimate edit with equipment I know.

4. Make DVD for festival submission.

5. If print is required, requested, store on drive, and get it made from ONLINE edit.

-- I know many answers would be, "Shoot RED." I'm waiting for my RED (have a project scheduled before it comes, and am getting a deal on the stock, DP, rental, sound,etc.) That said, is the above a possibility. There isn't going to be compositing and I don't think it warrants the extensive color correcting something like Da Vinci.

Suggestions? Thankyou

 

[donatello b]

if shoestring = budget - i don't see shoestring in 1 & 2

2) what do you mean by scanned ? or do you mean telecined to HDCAM SR ?

 

[Michael Schrengohst]

Don't forget all the audio post that goes with
shooting and transferring film.
And after you have your HDCAM SR tapes
you then have to digitize.
HDCAM SR decks are very expensive to rent.
I would look at renting RED and forgo the whole
film route - unless someone else can pay for
the whole film route......

 

[Frank Mirbach]

That´s what I recommend, too. Go for a Red, if you can get one for your project. Should be cheaper and faster in my opinion.

 

[liquidigital]

Sorry I did mean telecine. Wouldn't consider it shoestring for a full-length feature. This is 15 minutes max. But I think I'm going to rent Red.

 

[Frank Mirbach]

Good choice, I think ! At least if you have that opportunity. Here in Germany, there is no ONE to get right now. Would love to rent one just for a day or two of testing...

 

[liquidigital]

I kind of like the way that film stuff looks though.

 

[roryhinds]

Scan to 2k files and skip the HDCamSR as it cost as much as scanning 2k and would save you hiring the deck.

you could always convert your scans to QT yourself.

 

[Paul Hazlett]

rent Red, that way when yours comes you will already have some expereince with the camera!

 

[liquidigital]

Scan to 2k files and skip the HDCamSR as it cost as much as scanning 2k and would save you hiring the deck.

you could always convert your scans to QT yourself.

Didn't quite think about that. thanks Rory.

 

[GlennChan]

1- Offline/online usually refers to editing in two stages (offline edit, then online edit).

In the offline edit you put together the story.
In the online edit you do all your finishing... have everything digitized at high quality, do any touch ups / compositing / special effects / paint, maybe titles, meet your delivery requirements, etc.

For some workflows offline/online doesn't really apply. But anyways, this is just semantics. The best workflow / way of working comes down to your needs.

2- The argument for not doing online editing / finishing yourself:

a- People who specialize in it tend to be good at what they do. Whereas if you tackle it yourself, you may not be that good at it. e.g. for color grading, a big part of it comes down to talent. You can take a look at various colorist's reels (especially for commercials).

b- You may have particular delivery requirements.
For filmout and digital cinema, there are technical and monitoring issues to watch out for. You're likely better off farming that work out. (Read mmost's posts.)

3- You also need to look at your needs. A 15 minute short is likely a calling-call type of project to get exposure (and experience) for those involved. I don't think there's any business model in trying to sell it for broadcast or digital cinema.

So it might make sense to try to handle all the editing and finishing and color work yourself. However, to do a HD finish yourself, you may need a decent HD monitor and possibly a SDI capture card and RAID array.

 

[GlennChan]

4- I don't know that much about film workflows.

But you might want to look at one of:

a- While you transfer the film, the colorist does scene-by-scene corrections to tape. This is what people do for music videos and student films (to SD tape). But I don't think this will work when you're shooting a short since you want to supervise your sessions, and you can't postphone them after production if you want to see dailies.
b- Get flat transfers. Do the color work yourself. The downside here is that its slower and the person doing the color work may not be as talented. You also need to setup reasonable HD monitoring yourself.
c- Get flat transfers. Do your offline edit, then get the color work done by a professional colorist. see the "indie DI" discussion at
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1410

The signal coming off the telecine usually gets stored onto tape (e.g. HDCAM SR or dbeta). From there the telecine facility may be able to transfer it to a data format for you. (Or they might be able to transfer it directly to a data format.) Check that the data format is compatible with your NLE. You might be dealing with:
a- Some sort of uncompressed data format (still image sequence) or 4:2:2 data format (e.g. blackmagic, aja, apple 4:2:2). The latter may have compatibility issues.
b- A compressed but high-quality format like Cineform or Prores (Cineform 4:4:4 should be slightly higher quality). This will transfer onto firewire drives faster and is easier to deal with. You should be able to master from these formats.
*What formats the facility can do depends on what they have. But if they transfer to SR, you can likely find some facility that will transfer it to your data format of choice.

5- For Mac/FCP, you'd preferably want to work with Prores (unless Cineform/Mac is working in both FCP and Color or whatever your color grading app is).

You can do the online editing / finishing / color work yourself from those files.

6- Grading HD in AE might be too slow to be useful???
If you use Color, there are some workflow issues to watch out for.

 

[liquidigital]

Glenn thankyou so much for your time. This has been very helpful.