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July 2007 Issue
http://www.markeemag.com/mmfeatures.html
The Workflow –
Cutting a feature in HD
By Christine Bunish
When David Dodson was asked to edit Outlander,
a mixed-genre Vikings-sci fi
feature which The Weinstein Company will release next March, it didn't take
long for him to say yes. “How many chances do you get to edit a Viking movie?”
he asks. “This was The Vikings meets Predator.”
The new film, produced by Chris Roberts and John Schimmel (Lucky Number Slevin)
and written and directed by Howard McCain with Dirk Blackman co-writer, stars
James Caviezel, John Hurt, Ron Perlman and Sophia
Myles. “It's a $50 million movie that looks like a $100 million movie,” says
Dodson. Outlander was shot on 3-perf S35mm and full-aperture 4-perf in
Halifax, Nova Scotia which doubles for Norway. Some 500 VFX shots enhance the
Viking landscape and give life to the fully-CG creature.
With an effects-heavy edit and limited funds
available for film outs, Dodson opted to establish an HD workflow for the
picture which he began cutting in a seaside house in Nova Scotia. All dailies
were transferred to HDCAM by Deluxe Toronto; then the drives were digitized
into a Mac-based Avid Adrenaline v. 2.6.7 with the DNxHD
115 codec so Dodson could cut in 1920x1080 HD. Eventually, the entire film will
be scanned out to 2K for theatrical release.
“With 500 VFX shots and the pace of production I
felt it was essential to have the most information possible in the off-line,”
he explains. VFX house Spin, in Toronto and Vancouver, “would send us QuickTimes of VFX shots in progress. We couldn't afford to
film them out and evaluate them on a daily basis, and it was pretty clear that
SD would slow us to a crawl: There was no way to really understand what we were
seeing. So I petitioned to off-line in HD. Not a lot of people were doing that
before DNxHD 115 was available. I got demo codecs from Pivotal Post in North Hollywood, and they were
stunning -- it was HD in an SD bandwidth. I was sold!”
Dodson cites a number of benefits to editing in HD.
“When you're dealing with a lot of very emotional moments with great actors
being able to see them better and read the subtleties of their performance
gives me an advantage in any scene I'm cutting,” he reports. “I'll never go
back to cutting off-line in SD.”
The HD off-line also offers easy integration of
pick-up shots. “We'll be getting an underwater sequence soon that was shot with
Sony's F950 CineAlta HD camera,” says Dodson. “It
will marry perfectly with 35mm. I'm not the least bit concerned about it.”
Dodson moved back home to LA after Christmas where
he has continued to cut on Avids from Pivotal Post, a
company which has been pioneering all-HD workflows for editorial, he says.
Dodson is using Facilis's Terrablock
fiber-channel shared storage and has a full-resolution HD projector for screen
outs direct from the Avid.
Dodson has worked extensively with Apple's Final
Cut Pro HD too and says Final Cut and Avid each has its own advantages and
disadvantages. “This movie had thousands of feet of film, seven cameras, two
units and masses of dailies. Avid media management is legendary, and I needed
the best for tracking multitudes of elements.”
Dodson was creatively challenged by the two genres inherent
in Outlander. “Historical action and sci fi is not a natural marriage,” he points out. “I tried to
balance one with the other and keep a coherent whole.”
He also endeavored to “keep a peaceful workflow
when you have hundreds of elements going back and forth between the VFX house
and the edit room and need interaction between two cooperative but very
different departments.”
Avid's previous editing model was to work in low
resolution and save drive space, Dodson notes. “But now with improved storage,
faster processing and better algorithms for compression, there's no reason to
be stuck looking at fuzzy images,” he says. “In the future there will be no
intermediate step: You'll cut and your file will be the film's release
element.”
MAIN - IN THE PRESS - CAST - CREW - SHOOTING LOCATIONS
- PHOTO GALLERIES
- REPORTS FROM THE
SET - MEDIA - CONCEPT ART - LINKS - DISCUSS