Tag Archives: editing

Posting Life in Six Strings With Kylie Olsson

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By Oliver Peters

Whether you’re a guitar nerd or just into rock ‘n roll history, learning what makes our music heroes tick is always entertaining. Music journalist and TV presenter Kylie Olsson started a YouTube channel during the pandemic lockdown, teaching herself how to play guitar and reaching out to famous guitarists that she she knew. This became the concept for a TV series called Life in Six Strings With Kylie Olsson that airs on AXS TV. The show is in the style of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee with Olsson exploring the passions behind these guitarists, plus gets a few guitar pointers along the way.

James Tonkin

I spoke with James Tonkin and Leigh Brooks about the post workflow for these episodes. Tonkin is founder of Hangman in London, which handled the post on the eight-part series. He was also the director of photography for the first two episodes and has handled the online edit and color grading for all of the episodes. Leigh Brooks Firebelly Films was the offline (i.e. creative) editor on the series, starting with episode three. Together they have pioneered an offline-to-online post workflow.

Let’s find out more…

James, how did you get started on this project?
James Tonkin: Kylie approached us about shooting a pilot for the series. We filmed that in Nashville with Joe Bonamassa and it formed the creative style for the show. We didn’t want to just fixate on the technical side of the guitar and tone of these players, but their geographical base — we wanted to explore the city a little bit. We had to shoot it very documentary style but wrap it up into a 20-25 minute episode. No pre-lighting, just a tiny team following her around, interacting with these people.

Then we did a second one with Nuno Bettencourt and that solidified the look of the show during those two initial episodes. She eventually got distribution through AXS TV in the States for the eight-part series. I shot the first two episodes, and the rest were shot by a US-based crew, which followed the production workflow that we had set up. Not only the look and retaining the documentary format, but also maintaining the highest production value we could give it in the time and budget that we’re working with.

We chose to shoot anamorphic with a cinematic aspect ratio, because it’s slightly different from the usual off-the-cuff reality TV look. Also whenever possible, record in a raw codec, because we (Hangman) were doing all of the post on it, and me specifically being the colorist.

I always advocate for a raw workflow, especially something in a documentary style. People are walking from daylight into somebody’s house and then down to a basement, basically following them around. And Kylie wants to keep interacting with whomever she’s interviewing without needing to wait for cameras to stop and rebalance. She wants to keep it flowing. So when it comes to posting that, you’ve got a much more robust digital negative to work with [if it was shot as camera raw].

Leigh Brooks

What was the workflow for the shows and were there any challenges?
Leigh Brooks: The series was shot mainly with Red and Canon cameras as 6K anamorphic files. Usually, the drive came to me, and I would transcode the rushes or create proxy files and then send the drive to James. The program is quite straightforward and narrative-based, without much scope for doing crazy things with it.

It’s about the nuts and bolts of guitars and the players that use them. But each episode definitely had its own little flavor and style. Once we locked the show, James took the sequence, got hold of the rushes and then got to work on the grade and the sound.

What Kylie’s pulled off on her own is no small feat. She’s a great producer, knows her stuff and really does the research. She’s so passionate about the music and the people that she’s interviewing and that really comes across. The Steve Vai episode was awesome. He’s very holistic. These people dictate the narrative and tell you where the edit is going to go. Mick Mars was also really good fun. That was the trickiest show to do because the A- and B-side camera set-up wasn’t quite working for us. We had to really get clever in the edit.

Resolve is known for its finishing and color grading tool, but you used it to edit the offline as well. Why?
Tonkin: I’ve been a longtime advocate of working inside of Resolve, not just from a grading perspective, but editorial. As soon as the Edit page started to offer me the feature set that we needed, it became a no-brainer that we should do all of our offline in Resolve whenever possible.

On a show like this, I’ve got about six hours of online time and I want to spend the majority being as creative as I can. So, focusing on color correction, looking at anything I need to stabilize, resize, any tracking, any kind of corrective work — rather than spending two or three hours conforming from one timeline into another.

The offline on this series was done in Resolve, except for the first episode, which was cut in Apple Final Cut Pro X. I’m trying to leave editors open to the choice of the application they like to use. My gentlemen’s agreement with Matt [Cronin], who cut the first pilot, was that he could cut it in whatever he liked, as long as he gave me back a .drp (DaVinci Resolve project) file. He loves Final Cut Pro X because that’s what he’s quickest at. But he also knows the pain that conforms can be. So he handled that on his side and just gave me back a .drp file. So it was quick and easy.

From Episode 3 onwards, I was delighted to know that Leigh was based in Resolve, as well, as his primary workflow. Everything just transfers and translates really quickly. Knowing that we had six more episodes to work through together, I suggested things that would help us a lot, both for picture for me and for audio as well, which was also being done here in our studio. We’re generating the 5.1 mix.

Brooks: I come from an Avid background. I was an engineer initially before ever starting to edit. When I started editing, I moved from Avid to Final Cut Pro 7 and then back to Avid, after which I made the push to go to Resolve. It’s a joy to edit on and does so many things really well. It’s become my absolute workhorse. Avid is fine in a multi-user operation, but now that doesn’t really matter. Resolve does it so well with the cloud management, and I own the two editor keyboards.

You mentioned cloud. Was any of that a factor in the post on Life in Six Strings?
Tonkin: Initially, when Leigh was reversioning the first two episodes for AXS TV, we were using his Blackmagic Cloud account. But for the rest of the episodes, we were just exchanging files. Rushes either came to me or would go straight to Leigh. He makes his offline cut and then the files come to me for finishing, so it was a linear progression.

However, I worked on a pilot for another project where every version was effectively a finished online version. And so we used Blackmagic Cloud for that all the way through. The editor worked offline with proxies in Resolve. We worked from the same cloud project and every time he had finished, I would log in and switch the files from proxy to camera originals with a single click. That was literally all we had to do in terms of an offline-to-online workflow.

Brooks: I’m working on delivering a feature-length documentary for [the band] Nickelback that’s coming out in cinemas later in March. I directed it, cut it in Avid, and then finished in Resolve. My grader is in Portsmouth, and I can sit here and watch that grade being done live, thanks to the cloud management. It definitely has a few snags, but they’re on it. I can phone up Blackmagic and get a voice — an actual person to talk to that really wants to fix my problem.

You’ve both worked with a variety of other nonlinear editing applications. How do you see the industry changing?
Tonkin: Being in post for a couple of decades now and using Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro X and a bit of Premiere Pro throughout the years, I find that the transition from offline to online starts to blur more and more these days. Clients watching their first pass want to get a good sense of what it should look like with a lot of finishing elements in place already. So you’re effectively doing these finishing things right at the beginning.

It’s really advantageous when you’re doing both in Resolve. When you offline in a different NLE, not all of that data is transferred or correctly converted between applications. By both of us working in Resolve, even simple things you wouldn’t think of, like timeline markers, come through. Maybe he’s had some clips that need extra work. He can leave a marker for me and that will translate through. You can fudge your way through one episode using different systems, but if you’re going to do at least six or eight of them — and we’re hopefully looking at a season two this year — then you want to really establish your workflow upfront just to make things more straightforward.

Brooks: Editing has changed so much over the years. When I became an engineer, it was linear and nonlinear, right? I was working on the James Bond film, The World Is Not Enough, around 1998. One side of the room was conventional — Steenbeck’s, bins, numbering machines. The other side was Avid Media Composer. We were viewing 2K rushes on film, because that’s what you can see on the screen. On Avid it was AVR-77. It’s really interesting to see it come full circle. Now with Resolve, you’re seeing what you need to see rather than something that’s subpar.

I’d say there are a lot of editors who are “Resolve curious.” If you’re in Premiere Pro you’re not moving [to a different system], because you’re too tied into the way Adobe’s apps work. If you know Premiere, you know After Effects and are not going to move to Resolve and relearn Fusion. I think more people would move from Avid to Resolve, because simple things in Resolve are very complicated in Avid — the effects tab, the 3D warp and so on.

Editors often have quite strange egos. I find the incessant arguing between platforms is just insane. It’s this playground kind of argument about bloody software! [laugh] After all, these tools are all there to tell stories.

Oliver Peters is an award-winning editor/colorist working in commercials, corporate communications, television shows and films.

Masters of the Air: Directors and DP Talk Shoot, VFX and Grade

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By Iain Blair

World War II drama Masters of the Air is a nine-episode Apple TV+ limited series that follows the men of the 100th Bomb Group as they conduct perilous bombing raids over Nazi Germany and grapple with the frigid conditions, the lack of oxygen and the sheer terror of combat at 25,000 feet in the air. Starring Austin Butler and Barry Keoghan, it’s the latest project from Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, the producing team behind Band of Brothers and The Pacific.

Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck

Ranging in locations from the fields and villages of southeast England to the harsh deprivations of a German POW camp, Masters of the Air is enormous in both scale and scope. It took many years and an army of creatives to bring it to life — such as directors including Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck and DPs including Jac Fitzgerald.

Here, Boden and Fleck (Captain Marvel) talk about the challenges of shooting, editing and posting the ambitious show. In a sidebar, Fitzgerald (True Detective) talks about integrating the extensive VFX and the DI.

After doing Captain Marvel, I guess you guys could handle anything, but this was still a massive project. What were the main challenges?
Anna Boden: We did episodes 5 and 6. I’d say for us, Episode 5 was a big challenge in terms of wrapping our heads around it all. Some of the prep challenges were very big because it’s really a long air battle sequence that takes up almost the entire episode, and we had limited prep and not a ton of time to do previz and work everything out ahead of time. Also, simultaneously, we were prepping Episode 6, which was going to take us on location and to a whole bunch of new spaces that the show had never been to before. Finding those new locations and doing both of those things at once required so much planning, so it was challenging.

How did you handle the big air battle sequence and working with the volume stage?
Boden: You don’t want to show up on the day and wing it. As filmmakers, sometimes it’s really fun to get on-set and block the sequence based on what the actors want to do. But you can’t do that when you’re shooting on a volume stage, where you’re projecting a lot of imagery on the wall around you. You have to plan out so much of what’s going to be there. That was new for us. Even though we’d worked on Captain Marvel and used greenscreen, we’d never used those big-volume LED stages before. It was a really cool learning experience. We learned a lot on the fly and ultimately had fun crafting a pretty exciting sequence.

I assume director Cary Joji Fukunaga and his DP, Adam Arkapaw, set the template in the first four episodes for the look of the whole show, and then you had to carry that across your episodes.
Boden: Yeah. They’d obviously started shooting before us, and so we were studying their dailies and getting a sense of their camera movements and the color palettes and the vibe for the show. It was really helpful. And our DP, Jac Fitzgerald, knows Adam pretty well, so I think that they had a close working relationship. Also, we were able to visit the set while Cary was shooting to get a sense of the vibe. Once we incorporated that, then we were on our own to do our thing. It’s not like we suddenly changed the entire look of the show, but we had the freedom to put our personalities into it.

And one of the great things about the point where we took over is that Episode 5 is its own little capsule episode. We tried to shoot some of the stuff on the base in a similar tone to how they were shooting it. But then, once we got to that monster mission, it became its own thing, and we shot it in our own way. Then, with Episode 6, we were in completely different spaces. It’s a real break from the previous episodes because it’s the midpoint of the season, we’re away from the base, and there’s a big shift in terms of where the story is going. That gave us a little bit of freedom to very consciously shift how we were going to approach the visual language with Jac. It was an organic way to make that change without it feeling like a weird break in the season.

Give us some sense of how integrating all the post and visual effects worked.
Ryan Fleck: We were using the volume stage, so we did have images, and for the aerial battles, we had stuff for the actors to respond to, but they were not dialed in completely. A lot of that happened after the shooting. In fact, most of it did. (Jac can probably help elaborate on that because she’s still involved with the post process for the whole show.) It wasn’t like Mandalorian levels of dialed-in visual effects, where they were almost finished, and the actors could see. In this show, it was more like the actors were responding to previz, but I think that was hugely helpful.

On Captain Marvel, so often actors are just responding to tennis balls and an AD running around the set for eyelines. In this case, it was nice for the actors to see an actual airplane on fire outside their window for their performances to feel fresh.

Did you do a lot of previz?
Fleck: Yeah, we did a lot for those battle sequences in the air, and we worked closely with visual effects supervisor Stephen Rosenbaum, who was integral in pulling all that stuff together.

What did Jac bring to the mix? You hadn’t worked together before, right?
Fleck: No, and we like her energy. She has experience on big movies and small movies, which we appreciate, and so do we. We like those sensibilities. But I think she just has a nice, calm energy. She likes to have fun when she’s working, and so do we, but she’s also very focused on executing the plan. She’s an organized and creative brain that we really appreciated.

Boden: I think that we had a lot of the same reference points when we first started talking, like The Cold Blue, an amazing documentary with a lot of footage that was taken up in the planes during World War II. Filmmakers actually were shooting up there with the young men who were on missions in these bomber planes. That was a really important reference point for us in terms of determining where the cameras can be mounted inside one of these planes. We tried as much as possible to keep those very real camera positions on the missions so that it felt as reality-based and as visceral as possible and not like a Marvel movie. We used some of the color palette from that documentary as well.

It was also Jac’s working style to go to the set and think about how to block things in the shot list… not that we need to stick to that. Once we get in there and work it through with the actors, we all become very flexible, and she’s very flexible as well. Our work styles are very similar, and we got on really well. We like our sets to be very calm and happy instead of chaotic, and she has a very calm personality on-set. We immediately hired her to shoot our next feature after this show, so we’re big fans.

Was it a really tough shoot?
Boden: Yeah. We started shooting in July and finished in October. That’s pretty long for two episodes, but COVID slowed it all down.

Fleck: I’ve never shot in London or the UK before, but I loved it. I loved the crews; I loved the locations. We got to spend time in Oxford, and I fell in love with the place. I really loved exploring the locations. But yes, there were challenges. I think the most tedious stuff was the aerial sequences because we had mounted cameras, and it was just slow. We like to get momentum and move as quickly as we can when shooting.

Even though this is TV, you guys were involved in post to some degree, yes? 
Ryan Fleck: Yes, we did our director’s cuts, and then Gary kept us involved as the cuts progressed. We were able to get back into the edit room even after we delivered our cuts, and we continued to give our feedback to guide the cuts. Typically, TV directors give over their cuts, and then it’s “Adios.” But because we worked so long on it and we had a good relationship with Gary and the actors, we wanted to see this through to the end. So we stayed involved for much longer than I think is typical for episodic directing.

Typically, on our films, we’re involved in all the other post departments, visual effects and sound, every step of the way. But on this series, we were less involved, although we gave notes. Then Jac did all the grading and the rest of the show. She kind of took over and was very involved. She’ll have a lot of insights into the whole DI process. (See Sidebar)

Anna, I assume you love post, and especially editing, as you edited your first four features.
Boden: I love post because it feels like you’ve made all your compromises, and now all you can do is make it better. Now your only job is to make it the best version of itself. It’s like this puzzle, and you have all the time in the world to do the writing again. I absolutely love editing and the process of putting your writing/editing brain back on. You’re forgetting what happened as a director on-set and rethinking how to shape things.

Give us some idea of how the editing worked. Did you also cut your episodes?
Boden: No, we hired an editor named Spencer Averick, who worked on our director’s cut with us. Every director was able to work on their director’s cut with a specific editor, and then there was Mark Czyzewski, the producer’s editor, who worked on the whole series after that. We worked with him after our director’s cut period. We went back into the room, and he was really awesome. We edited in New York for a couple of weeks on the director’s cut, and then we were editing in LA after that in the Playtone offices in Santa Monica.

What were the big editing challenges for both episodes? Just walk us through it a bit.
Boden: I’d say that one of the biggest challenges, at least in terms of the director’s cut, was finding the rhythm of that Episode 5 mission. When you have a long action sequence like that, the challenge is finding the rhythm so that it has the right pace without feeling like it’s barraging you the whole time. It needs places to breathe and places for emotional and character moments, but it still has to keep moving.

Another challenge is making sure viewers know where they are in every plane and every battle throughout the series. That ends up being a big challenge in the edit. You don’t realize it as much when you’re reading a script, but you realize it a lot when you’re in the edit room.

Then, for Episode 6, it was about connecting the stories because in that episode, we have three main characters — Crosby, Rosenthal and Egan — and they’re in three different places on three very separate journeys, in a way. Egan is in a very dark place, and Rosenthal is in a dark place as well, but he finds himself in this kind of palatial place, trying to have a rest. And then Crosby’s having a much lighter kind of experience with a potential love interest. The intercutting between those stories was challenging, just making sure that the tones were connecting and not colliding with each other, or if they were colliding, colliding in a way that was interesting and intentional.

How hands on were Spielberg and Hanks, or did they let you do your own thing?
Fleck: We mostly interacted with Gary Goetzman, who is Tom Hanks’ partner at Playtone. I think those guys [Spielberg and Hanks] were involved with early days of prep and probably late days of post. But in terms of the day-to-day operations, Gary was really the one that we interacted with the most.

Boden: One of the most wonderful things about working with Gary as a producer — and he really is the producer who oversaw this series — is that he’s worked with so many directors in his career and really loves giving them the freedom and support to do what they do best. He gave us so much trust and support to really make the episodes what we wanted them to be.

Looking back now, how would you sum up the whole experience?
Fleck: All of it was challenging, but I think the biggest challenge for us was shooting during COVID. We kept losing crew members day by day, and it got down to the point where everybody had to test every day and wait for their results. We would have crew members waiting three to four hours before they could join us on-set, so that really cut the amount of shooting time we had every day from 11 hours down to six.

Boden: Some days we’d show up and suddenly find out an hour into the day that we weren’t going to get an actor that we were planning to shoot with, so we’d have to rearrange the day and try to shoot without that actor. That was a big challenge.

Fleck: The great thing for me was how much I learned. Back in history class, you get all the big plot points of World War II, but they don’t tell you about how big these B-17s were, how violent it was up in the air for these guys. You think of the D-Day invasion when you think of the great milestones of World War II, but these aerial battles were unbelievably intense, and they were up there in these tin cans; they were so tight and so cold. I just couldn’t believe that these kids were sent into these situations. It was mind-boggling.

Boden: I also learned a lot through the process of reading the material and the research about the history of these specific people in the stories. But I’d say that one of the things that really sticks with me from the experience was working with this group of actors. That felt very special.

DP Jac Fitzgerald on Shooting Masters of the Air

Jac, integrating all the VFX with visual effects supervisor Stephen Rosenbaum must have been crucial.
Yes. When I started the show, I imagined that the majority of the VFX work would be done on the volume stage. But then I realized that he had a whole World War II airfield to create on location. Obviously, we had the tower structure for the airfield, and we had two planes, one of which was being towed. And it was all so cobbled together from the outside.

Jac Fitzgerald

The planes looked like they were complete, but they weren’t moving by themselves. They didn’t have engines in them or anything. What was interesting to me was the extent of the visual effects that Stephen had to do on the exteriors. We only had two plane bodies, but at any one time when you see the airstrip, there are 12 planes there or more. So there was a huge amount of work for him to do in that exterior world, which was actually as important as the VFX in the volume.

What about the DI? Where did you do all the grading?
It was predominantly in LA at Picture Shop with colorist Steven Bodner, who did the whole show. And because of the enormous amount of VFX, it was obvious early on that things were going to need to be done out of order in the DI.

At first, they thought that my two episodes [5 and 6] would be the first ones to have the DI, as Adam Arkapaw was unavailable to do his episodes [1 through 4] because he was working on another film. At the time they thought they would go in and do my episodes and start prepping and setting the look for episodes 1 through 4 as well. Then it became clear that the DI schedule would have to adjust because of the enormity of the VFX.

Stephen Rosenbaum spent a lot of time making the footage we’d shot and all the VFX worlds collide. I think he had an extraordinary number of people from vendors around the world involved in the project, so there was certainly a lot of cleaning up to do. We all did a lot of work on the look in the DI, trying to make it as seamless as possible. And then again, because episodes 1 through 4 needed so much VFX work, we did my episodes and then we did 7, 8 and 9, and then we went back to 1 through 4. It was certainly a lot of jumping around. I wish that we could have mapped it all from beginning to end, but it wasn’t to be.

Industry insider Iain Blair has been interviewing the biggest directors in Hollywood and around the world for years. He is a regular contributor to Variety and has written for such outlets as Reuters, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.

Life in Tandem: Making an Unexpected Documentary

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Though poignant and beautiful, this wasn’t the documentary the filmmakers originally set out to make. Here we talk with one of the directors, Mia Grimes, about how the film unfolded and the process of making it.

L-R: Chris Multop, Joe Litzinger and Mia Grimes

How did you come up with the idea for the short?
My co-director Joe Litzinger discovered a viral YouTube video of Marc Ornstein performing a canoe dancing routine to “Lady in Red” as well as a video of Stephen Colbert poking fun at it. Intrigued by the sport and the individual in the video, we did some research and reached out to Elaine Mravetz, a pivotal figure within the community. We were immediately struck by her warm and inviting demeanor.

Tragically, just days after our initial conversation, Elaine was killed in a car accident. With the blessing of both the freestyle community and Elaine’s family, we pivoted the documentary to follow her husband, Bob (also a canoeist), on his journey of recovery and grief.

The original concept was to take a Best in Show approach to a unique sport, but it evolved into a heartfelt emotional story about a community rallying around a member facing a tragic and unimaginable life change.

Did you guys fund it on your own?
My co-director funded the short through his production company, Interesting Human Media, using personal funds. While we attempted to raise additional money, the unexpected nature of the life event we were documenting meant we had to adapt and tell the story with the resources available to us while it was happening.

And we received a great many contributions of time, resources and work at reduced rates from friends and co-workers, embodying the essence of this project as a true labor of love and a community coming together for a common purpose.

What was the process of just getting it off the ground?
In early February 2022, cinematographer Jeff Smee and I made our way to film at Bob’s house in Cleveland. This initial three-day filming session with Bob was just the first of many. Over the course of the following year, we were invited to document a series of significant events marking Bob’s journey of recovery. These events offered a lens into his resilience and his gradual return to the activities that once brought him joy.

It was during a trip to Florida in February 2023 that we witnessed Bob return back to the water in his canoe for the first time since his accident — a symbolic act of reclaiming his passion and a step forward in his healing process. This experience provided a natural and powerful conclusion to our film, capturing the essence of human perseverance and the support of a community rallying around one of its own.

Can you talk script?
Because we were following an event, we did not have a script or outline of any kind, as we were not sure how Bob’s recovery would progress. We truly had no idea how the documentary would end pretty much the entire time we were filming.

Was this your first time directing? How did you work with your co-director, Joe?
I started out in logistics and scheduling, but my role quickly expanded as I found myself involved in all aspects of the production process. This transition marked the beginning of a learning experience that extended far beyond my initial responsibilities. Joe, who served not only as my boss but also as my co-director, played a pivotal role in this evolution. In an industry where the hierarchical structure is often rigid, Joe’s decision to trust me with the direction of early scenes was indicative of his inclusive leadership style.

This opportunity allowed me to learn directly from Joe and the cinematographer, Chris Multop, about not only the technical aspects of filmmaking and camera operation but the storytelling.

As the project progressed, our partnership evolved into a collaborative co-directing effort. This collaboration was not limited to just Joe and me; Chris, our co-producer, was integral as well. Together, the three of us functioned as a cohesive unit, with each of us bringing our own perspectives, expertise and visions to the table.

How did you decide on the cameras you used?
To capture the sport’s beauty, we needed high-quality, versatile cameras that were also light, portable and affordable. Most of the documentary was shot using Z cameras in 4K, with a mix of ultrawide, stylistic lenses for interviews and 800mm lenses for paddling and cinematic shots. Other cameras we used during production were Sony FX3, multiple drones and a Blackmagic camera.

Was it shot with natural lighting?
While the canoeing scenes benefited from natural lighting, we used artificial lighting for the indoor interviews to enhance the visual quality.

You had multiple DPs?
Chris Multop, our co-producer, served as the director of photography, but it was a collaborative effort, with Joe, Jeff Smee, me and others on-set contributing to the cinematography alongside archival footage from the canoeists.

You edited on Adobe Premiere. What was that process like?
We have edited a variety of projects on a variety of platforms. We decided on Premiere because we liked the ease and capability of sending the project to multiple editors to play around with.

One of the things we did early on was hire an experienced AE, Ken Ren, who organized the drive and synced the footage, so our projects started in a way that gave us a leg up throughout the editing process. With about 8TB of footage, we relied on proxies to keep the editing process smooth.

Who did the actual editing? And what about the audio and color grading?
Editing was a collective effort led by Joe and me, with contributions from Emmy award-winning editors Matt Mercer and Eric Schrader and assistant editing by Jenny Hochberg. We set out to film a feature, so we were managing a large amount of footage, which presented a significant challenge in crafting a short, concise documentary.

You can watch the doc here:

Post Production World Expands: New Conference Pass and AI Training

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Future Media Conferences and NAB Show have expanded the Post Production World (PPW) conference slated for April 12-17. This year the organizers introduced a comprehensive pass that covers an expanded suite of tracks along with AI training and certifications, field workshops and more.

In a move to cater to the broad spectrum of roles in the creative industry, PPW has broadened its scope to include additional past FMC conferences under one ticket item. Attendees can now access a diverse array of tracks with a single ticket, exploring creative AI, cinematography and directors of photography, visual storytelling, remote production and more. This expansion reflects PPW’s dedication to keeping pace with the rapid advancements in technology and creative techniques.

In addition to a dedicated Creative AI track within the PPW conference program, FMC is offering an additional pass for an AI Training & Certifications track, an initiative designed to equip professionals with the skills necessary to navigate the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence in content creation. Pass add-ons include exam vouchers available for purchase with registration or a choice between two live and in-person AI training courses:

  • AI Broadcast TV Training Workshop: Revolutionizing Broadcasting
  • AI VFX & Motion Training Workshop: Crafting Visual Wonders

Besides these new additions, PPW continues to offer field workshops and other certifications that provide hands-on learning experiences and opportunities to gain recognized credentials in various aspects of production and post production.

“By expanding our tracks and introducing AI Training & Certifications, we’re not just responding to the industry’s current trends; we’re anticipating its future directions,” says Ben Kozuch, president and co-founder of Future Media Conferences. “Our goal is to empower content professionals with the knowledge, skills and insights they need to succeed in a rapidly evolving landscape.”

Information on the new pass options, AI Training & Certifications, field workshops and registration can be found here.

Writer/Director Celine Song Talks Post on Oscar-Nominated Past Lives

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By Iain Blair

In her directorial film debut, Past Lives, South Korean-born playwright Celine Song has made a romantic and deceptively simple film that is intensely personal and autobiographical yet universal, with its themes of love, loss and what might have been. Past Lives is broken into three parts spanning countries and decades. First we see Nora as a young girl in South Korea, developing an early bond with her best friend, Hae Sung, before moving with her family to Toronto. Then we see Nora in her early 20s as she reconnects virtually with Hae Sung. Finally, more than a decade later, Hae Sung visits Nora, now a married playwright living in New York. It stars Greta Lee, Teo Yoo and John Magaro.

Celine Song directing Greta Lee

I spoke with Song about the post workflow and making the A24 film, which is Oscar-nominated for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. It also just won Best Director and Best Feature at the Independent Spirit Awards.

How did you prep to direct your first film? Did you talk to other directors?
I talked to some amazing directors, but what they all said is that because only I know the film that I’m making, the way it’s going to be prepped is a process that only I can really know. You need really strong producers and department heads, which I was so lucky to have. I was able to draw on their experience and advice for every step of the way.

You shot in Seoul and New York. Was it the same sort of experience or was it different going back to Seoul?
The filmmaking culture is very different in both places. In New York, there is a very strong union, and in Korea there isn’t one. Also, the way that you secure locations is different. In New York, if you want to shoot somewhere, the mayor’s office knows about it. Korea is still a little bit like guerrilla filmmaking. You show up to a location and try to get it right. You can’t really get permits for things in Korea.

The story takes place over three separate timeframes. Did you shoot chronologically?
No. We shot everything in New York City, and then we had a set built for the Skype section. Then we went to Korea, prepped it for another month and shot there for 10 days.

You and your, DP Shabier Kirchner, shot 35mm. What led you to that decision?
It was my very first movie, so I didn’t know how hard it was going to be. I don’t have experience shooting on digital or film. I don’t know anything. I think part of it was first-timer bravery. I don’t know enough to be afraid. That’s where the fearlessness came from. But it was also informed by the conversations I was having with my DP. We talked about the story and how the philosophy of shooting on film is connected to the philosophy of the movie, which is that the movie is about time made tangible and time made visible. It just made sense for it to be shot on film.

Celine Song on-set

You come from the theater, where there is obviously no post production. Was that a steep learning curve for you?
Yes, but you do have a preview period in theater, when you see it in front of an audience, and you keep editing in that way. But more importantly, I’m a writer. So part of post is that I don’t think of the movie as just what I see on screen and all the sound design and every piece of it. To me, it is a piece of text. So just as I would edit a piece of my own writing, I feel like I was looking at the editing process very much like editing text.

Then of course in film, it’s not just the writing on the page. It’s also sound, color, visuals, timing… So in that way, I really felt that editing was about composing a piece of music. I think of film as a piece of music, with its own rhythm and its own beat that it has to move through. So in that way, I think that that’s also a part of the work that I would do as a playwright in the theater, create a world that works like a piece of music from beginning to end.

With all that in mind, I honestly felt like I was the most equipped to do post. I had an entire world to learn; I had never done it before. But with post, I was in my domain. The other thing I really love about editing and VFX in film is that you can control a lot. Let’s say there’s a pole in the middle of the theater space. You have to accept that pole. But in film, you can just delete the pole with VFX. It’s amazing.

Did editor Keith Fraase, who is based in New York, come on-set at all in Korea, or did you send him dailies?
We sent dailies. He couldn’t come on-set because of COVID.

What were the biggest editing challenges on this?
I think the film’s not so far from the way I had written it, so the bigger editing choices were already scripted. The harder bits were things that are like shoe leather — the scenes that hold the movie together but are not the center of the emotion or the center of the story.

One example is when Nora is traveling to Montauk, where we know that she’s going to eventually meet Arthur (who becomes her husband). We were dealing with how much time is required and how to convey time so that when we meet Arthur, it seems like it is an organic meeting and not such a jarring one. I had scripted all this shoe-leather stuff that we had shot – every beat of her journey to Montauk. We had a subway beat; we had a bus beat. We had so many pieces of her traveling to Montauk because I was nervous about it, feeling it was not long enough. But then, of course, when we actually got into the edit, we realized we only needed a few pieces. You just realize that again, the rhythm of it dictates that you don’t need all of it.

Where did you do all the sound mix?
We did it at all at Goldcrest in New York.

Are you very involved in that?
You have no idea. I think that’s the only place where I needed more time. We went over budget… that’s a nicer way to say it. That’s the only part of the post process where I really was demanding so much. I was so obsessed with it. The sound designer’s nickname for me was Ms. Dog Ears. I know different directors have very different processes around sound, but for me, I was in that room with my sound designer Jacob Ribicoff for 14 hours a day, five days a week, and sometimes overtime, for weeks. I wouldn’t leave.

I would stay there because I just know that sound is one of those things that holds the film together. Also, with this movie, the sound design of the cities and how different they are and how it’s going to play with the compositions — I had such a specific idea of how I wanted those things to move. Because again, I do think of a film as a piece of music. So I was pretty crazy about it. But I don’t want people to notice the sound design. I want people to be able to feel like they’re actually just standing in Madison Square Park. I want them to be fully immersed.

Obviously, it’s not a big effects movie, but you have some. How did that go?
I think it’s a bit of a subjective thing. Actually, looking at it, I’m like, “Well, does that seem good to you?” I’m showing it to my production designer and my DP and I’m like, “This looks OK to me, but I wonder if it can be better. Would you look at it?” So I relied on many eyes.

I give credit to Keith, but also to my assistant editor, Shannon Fitzpatrick, who was a total genius at catching any problems with VFX and having such a detailed eye. I think she’s one of the only people who really noticed things that I didn’t notice in the VFX. I’m like, I think that looks fine, and then she would say point to this one thing in the corner that’s not working. There are people at A24 who’re also amazing at catching sound and visuals because that’s their job. They’ll point out what sounds strange or what looks strange. So you have so many people who are part of the process.

Who was the colorist, and how involved were you with the grading?
It was Tom Poole at Company 3, which is where we edited and did color and everything. I love the process because I showed up after Shabier and Tom had already gone through the whole film and graded it. They did amazing, beautiful work. Then I would come in and give notes about certain scenes and then we’d do them. Of course, while they were grading it, they’d send me stills, and I’d give notes on the stills before going into the suite. Also, Shabier and Tom have worked together a lot, so they already kind of had a rhythm for how they wanted to color the film.

What sort of film did you set out to make?
Since this was the first film I’d directed, I felt like the main goal was to discover the language of my movie. It was beyond just trying to tell the story the best way I could, from the script stage to the post. I think that was the goal throughout. But the truth is that I really wanted the language of the film to be my own language, and I wanted to learn and have a revelation for myself of what my movie is.

I know it is partly autobiographical. How much of you is in Nora?
It really was inspired by a true event of sitting between my childhood sweetheart, who had come to visit me from Korea, and my husband who I live with in New York City. So this is very autobiographical, and the feeling that I had in that very personal moment is the inspiration for the whole film. But then once you turn it into a script, which is an objectification process, and then you turn it into a film with hundreds of people — and especially with the cast members who have to play the characters — by that time it has become very much an object. Then with post, it’s about the chiseling. It’s about putting together an object that is to be shared with the world.

A film is so different from writing a play. Was it a big adjustment for you?
I know theater because I was in it for a decade, probably more, so I knew the very fundamental difference between the way a play is made versus how a film is made. For example, I was taught that in theater, time and space is figurative, while time and space in film is literal. So that means there are different kinds of strengths and weaknesses in both mediums when it comes to telling a story that spans decades and continents. And, in this case, because my joke is always that the villains of the story are 24 years and the Pacific Ocean, it actually needs the time and space to be seen literally… because there needs to be a reason why these two lovers are not together. So the children have to be literally there, and Korea and New York City have to feel tangible and literal.

I assume you can’t wait to direct again?
Oh, I can’t wait. I want to wake up and just go to set tomorrow. That’s how I feel. I’m trying to shoot another movie as soon as I can.

Industry insider Iain Blair has been interviewing the biggest directors in Hollywood and around the world for years. He is a regular contributor to Variety and has written for such outlets as Reuters, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.

Hedge DropOff: New Web-Based File-Sharing App for Creatives

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Hedge has launched DropOff, a new web-based app that takes the complexity out of sharing files with external creative collaborators.

Sending and receiving large files within creative workflows comes with challenges: storage, security and speed. Add the need for simplicity and seamless integration with secure storage solutions like LucidLink, and things get even trickier, according to Hedge. It can be a delicate balancing act to rapidly share files and media with external collaborators while also keeping them out of a secure Filespace. 

Whether sending files from a desktop, external drive, LucidLink Filespace or another S3 bucket, DropOff handles the heavy lifting seamlessly and securely, all via a simple, shareable download link. Files get delivered directly to the chosen location in a LucidLink Filespace or via a sharable DropOff link that anyone on the outside can access from any device without being able to get to the internal Filespace. This setup makes it easy for both sides of the equation to collaborate and share without complexity.

DropOff’s dashboard has the same design as all of Hedge’s products, providing an uncluttered overview of all relevant information. The dashboard shows all active DropOff links, with separate views for sending and receiving, the current number of gigabytes available to share and quick access to settings to ensure the bridge between DropOff and the Filespace is working as it should.

DropOff works on a pay-per-gigabyte-shared model. There are no standing monthly fees or hidden charges. Data doesn’t expire, so creatives can simply use it when they need to, and when it’s time to add more gigabyte credits, they can top off right from the home page. Hedge is currently offering a free trial that comes preloaded with 20GB of credits.

 

 

 

Poor Things‘ Oscar-Nominated Cinematographer and Editor

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By Iain Blair

Lavish, audacious and visually stunning, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things tells the fantastical story of Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), a young woman brought back to life by the brilliant, daring scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). The film just won five BAFTAs and scored an impressive 11 Oscar nominations, including nods for cinematographer Robbie Ryan, BSC, ISC, and editor Yorgos Mavropsaridis, ACE, who were both previously nominated for their work on Lanthimos’ The Favourite.

I spoke with Ryan and Mavropsaridis (aka “Blackfish”) about making the film and collaborating with Lanthimos, who also got an Oscar nom.

Robbie Ryan

You’ve both worked with Yorgos Lanthimos before. Was this process very different, or was it pretty much the same way he always works?
Robbie Ryan: It was my second time working with Yorgos, and I felt like the approach was similar. But I was a bit more tuned in to his thinking process, which is quite loose from a filming perspective. He likes to get the things he needs in place and then elaborate or experiment, maybe search for something new. We’re not too set or stringent in our approach. It’s pretty loose.

What about you, Blackfish?
Yorgos “Blackfish” Mavropsaridis: We have been working together for almost 25 years. I know his approach, and I know that during the assembly I need to put things in order according to the script. That’s not the main work… it’s just for me to understand the material. Then, when he comes back, we start looking at the sequences and trying things.

Yorgos “Blackfish” Mavropsaridis

I’d say it was an easier process for Poor Things in the sense that I know him so well. And we had to focus on a specific character, which gave us the path to follow. Of course, having said that, films are not easy in that sense. We always try to deconstruct the script to take it off the paper and make it more interesting. We also involve the viewer in different ways than a classical Hollywood film does.

Robbie, is it true you shot this whole thing in a studio in Budapest?
Ryan: Yes, that’s correct. We shot 35mm celluloid and used a bunch of stocks. We shot some old VistaVision as well, which is a lovely format, and black-and-white and Ektachrome.

What were the main challenges of shooting a film like this, where nearly everything was constructed? I assume you were quite involved with set design and the like, which is unusual?
Ryan: Yes, we basically did 12 weeks of prep on this film. That was so we could build the sets and watch their design. The production designers, Shona Heath and James Price, built five or six big sets and used Unreal Engine to create them in 3D. Yorgos [Lanthimos] and I would look at what they were building in a 3D world. It was amazing to walk onto that set a few weeks later and see it for real. It looked exactly like those sets built in 3D. That was the world we prepared, and it was amazing.

So you were able to previz it all like that?
Ryan: Exactly, as Unreal Engine is previz in a way. It’s a 3D program that lets you look around at every angle. For instance, for the ship, you could really look at every corner, and if one corridor on the ship was a little bit too skinny, we could make it a bit bigger so we could fit a dolly on it. There was lots of that sort of preparation, and it helped a lot.

How did that affect your lighting approach?
Ryan: It took a little bit more work from a lighting perspective. I had to light it a bit more because we were indoors and in studios. We took the same approach that we did on The Favourite, which was not to use lights on the set. We lit the studio sets with a sky outside all the buildings, and that gave me confidence that I was going in the right direction because that is the way Yorgos [Lanthimos] likes to work. We just had to create something that resembled a real environment in an interior space.

Blackfish, were you on the set at all?
Blackfish: No, I was in Athens from the beginning. The only time I went on-set was for The Lobster, and it wasn’t a pleasant experience for me. I prefer to see it objectively as it comes in rather than go to the set and get influenced by the atmosphere, the actors and all these things. So I stayed home in Athens, and they sent me dailies. I’d get the negatives and black-and-white the next day, but the Ektachrome took a couple of days more since it had to go to Andec, a lab in Berlin, and then to Athens. But it was a really fast process. Yorgos and I don’t talk at all when he’s on-set, or very rarely.

Robbie, I know you’ve worked with colorist Greg Fisher at Company 3 before. How early on did you start working with him on LUTs and the look for this?
Ryan: We didn’t do that actually, and that was a bit of a mistake. We had a dailies grader in Budapest, which was driving Yorgos [Lanthimos] a bit mad. Film doesn’t need so much grading now. But Greg did a lot of work with us from the very beginning, helping us out with early tests about nine months before we shot. But then, when we went to Hungary, we used a Hungarian lab and a Berlin lab. They were doing the dailies for us there, and it wasn’t quite what Yorgos [Lanthimos] was expecting, so he got a little bit frustrated by it.

The bottom line is that we should have done a show list, but we didn’t know that’s what was meant to be done, so we kind of learned the hard way. The film still looked nice in the rushes, but it just wasn’t quite what we thought it would be. When we went into the final grade with Greg at the beginning of last year, we spent three weeks grading the film. He’s got quite a thorough process. We went through every sequence one by one and didn’t review the whole film until we got through all the sequences. We spent a week and a half going through everything, then we watched the whole film back, and then we went deeper again. Yorgos likes to go quite deep into the color grading. Just recently, we made a 35mm print of the film. That was an interesting coda to the whole grade process, and it was quite a lot of work as well.

Robbie, how long was the shoot, and what was the most difficult scene to shoot and why?
Ryan: We shot for about 50 days. The scene when Bella comes out of the hotel and walks around Lisbon was pretty difficult because it was a big lighting kind of environment. The set was great, and it was amazing to walk around, but it was difficult to photograph, so I think we struggled a bit on that.

Blackfish, walk us through the editing process when you sit down together with Yorgos.
Blackfish: Two weeks after shooting finished, I had an assembly ready, but it was so long there was no point watching it as a whole. We just went through sequences and then refined the scenes exactly as they are in the script order. We took care of the actors’ performances — which one Yorgos liked best and how the emotions were interpreted in each scene. When we have a good assembly or first cut, then we start experimenting, somehow deconstructing what we have done, discussing, “What if we start with this scene, not the other one, and then what does that give us for the next scene?”

Then there are points where the exposition takes many scenes to develop. For example, there’s a dinner scene with Max, Godwin and Bella. In the assembly, the scenes appear in linear order in the continuity of time and space, so we found ways in the edit to go to previous scenes and then cut them in, or go to later scenes to create a sequence. We developed this method of intermixing scenes and making them a sequence on Dogtooth and have been using it ever since — and very interesting ideas arise. For example, you can say the same thing in the scene — or say it even more forcefully with a thought — if it’s combined with dialogue from another scene. Of course, that’s quite difficult.

Sometimes you have to go through a lot of edits to find it, to refine it, but in the end, we get it to where we want it. We try to get around problem areas and keep the phrases or the moments that we need and then cut them with other things to pick up the pace. That editing technique also creates internal combustion. It provides momentum so the viewer doesn’t get ahead of us. We sometimes need to surprise viewers, and it has to do with how we think or how we want the viewer to feel or think at that moment. So it’s a whole procedure.

How long was the edit in the end?
Blackfish: It took about eight months.

What was the most difficult scene for you to get just right?
Blackfish: Technically, it was the dinner-and-dance scene. The actors had done a lot of movements. The camera was moving all the time, and there were also some static shots. The difficulty was to keep the eyeline correct in the 180-degree space so as not to lose the audience. It was difficult to find the best performance moments. All the other things, of course they’re difficult, but it’s different to edit a difficult scene like a dance. It’s also more fun and more satisfying.

Did you use a lot of temp sound?
Blackfish: Not at all. The music was done much earlier than the filming, and composer Jerskin Fendrix had written the theme of the film. Of course, it was not the final music, but we had the same thing played differently or with a single instrument or with a big orchestra, and we had a lot of options to try. We could cut the music if we wanted to speed it up, or at other times we could edit the film according to the music. So having the music gives you a lot of good opportunities. As for the sound design, my assistant always uses external sounds. We need to have that for me and Yorgos to see how it works, to make sure there are no gaps or anything. We cut on Avids with Nexis storage, and we had about 12 terabytes.

Robbie, I assume you had to coordinate with visual effects on-set, as there’s quite a lot of VFX.
Ryan: Yes, we had an on-set supervisor from Union Effects who did all the VFX [and picked up a BAFTA for their work], and he would let us do what we wanted. For instance, Yorgos [Lanthimos] didn’t want to use greenscreen, so when we were filming the hybrid animals, even though the VFX guy liked the idea of using greenscreen, we didn’t do it because we could just rotoscope it. We shot it twice, one animal first, second animal second, and then that was comped in together.

Yorgos was trying to do it with older cinema technology, like backdrops and moving-image backdrops, and we had LED walls as a backdrop and painted backdrops. I think that was really a nice way to do it because the actors felt like they were a little bit more immersed and didn’t have to worry about getting it right for VFX, which sometimes happens.

That was a really nice atmosphere to work in. Yorgos has such a knowledge of cinematography and what you can do VFX-wise; he was confident that he would get it in post, and they did, indeed, get it in post. They went through quite a long process of trying to perfect all that, there were quite a few incarnations, and it was a very VFX-heavy job, but they got there in the end. Union did a great job.

How would you each sum up the experience?
Ryan: It’s been a long journey, and it was never in any way boring. It’s always been fun. Yorgos likes a fun film set to work in. He doesn’t like to have any sort of tension at all, so we have a crew around us that are very relaxed, and I really enjoyed it. We worked hard, and sometimes it didn’t go right, but we always found a way, and it was a really exciting film to work on.

Blackfish: It’s new all the time and interesting working with Yorgos. We’ve almost finished editing the last film he and Robbie shot in New Orleans, and I guess he’s planning the next one in May. So I’m going to continue the experience.

Industry insider Iain Blair has been interviewing the biggest directors in Hollywood and around the world for years. He is a regular contributor to Variety and has written for such outlets as Reuters, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.

New Atlux λ Plugin for Lighting, Cinematics, Rendering in Unreal 

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Indie software company Vinzi has released Atlux λ, a plugin for Unreal Engine that helps 3D artists produce hyperrealistic images and animations with ease. Formerly known as MetaShoot, Atlux λ has been reimagined with an array of features designed to simplify lighting and rendering workflows and achieve real-time results.

Built on Epic Games robust Unreal Engine platform, Atlux λ serves as a digital-twin photo studio with highly realistic lighting assets, camera animation presets and a one-click render interface. The plugin’s intuitive design and simplified workflow make it an ideal entry point for 3D artists seeking to harness Unreal Engine’s real-time capabilities without being encumbered by technical intricacies.

Early adopters of Atlux include Hashbane Interactive, Sentient Arts, FD Design and R3plica.

“Atlux λ is a labor of love based on my years of experience working in the 3D industry as an artist and engineer,” says Vinzi founder Jorge “Valle” Hurtado. “The goal is to make lighting and visualization in Unreal Engine as creative and fast as possible. We have customers using Atlux λ for games, architecture, character development, product viz and even automotive.

“Atlux λ is not just a rebrand of MetaShoot; it’s a fully rewritten and optimized plugin that now introduces light painting, a sequence tab for animation and even an AI-based studio randomizer. There’s a lot there! With Atlux λ, 3D artists can create showcase animations from camera motion presets without the complexity of the Unreal render queue or sequencer modules.”

Early adopters of Atlux have quickly incorporated the tool into their workflow. According to Anthony Carmona, founder of 3D production studio Sentient Art, “MetaShoot, and now Atlux, blows away all our expectations. Having access to assets and instant lighting results speeds up our ability to produce amazing work for our clients. It’s perfect for rendering our highly detailed models and material work — from concepts to flawless portfolios.”

What’s New in Atlux λ:

  • AI Studio Randomizer: New studio randomizer builds unlimited photo studio setups in seconds.
  • Light Painting: A new interactive way to place lights based on visual feedback, cursor placement and keyboard shortcuts.
  • Sequence Tab: A new sequence tab with assets and Rig Rail presets to quickly build animations. Includes a NeRF maker and automatic level sequence creation.
  • New lighting and Photo Studio presets.
  • Keyboard shortcuts: easy camera selection and toggling between targets and lights.
  • Optimized render settings and UI.

Atlux λ Features:

  • 12 Photo Studio presets with lighting setups, cyclorama backdrops.
  • 14 realistic assets, including studio lighting with rigs and rail systems.
  • 360-degree turntable for product and model animations and visualization.
  • One-click render workflow with simplified interface.
  • 360-degree camera for HDRI creation.
  • Light painting, batch rendering, shortcuts and more workflow efficiencies.
  • Support for Engine versions 5.1 to 5.3 on Windows. (Mac version coming soon.)

Atlux λ is available as a one-time purchase for $349.50 at atlux.ai. The rental option is $29.50 per month.

Behind the Title: London Alley Editor Luis Caraza Peimbert

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Luis Caraza Peimbert is an editor at London Alley, a creative production studio with music and entrepreneurial creativity at its core. Based in Los Angeles, the studio helps brands engage with consumers and make content that resonates, often enlisting the help of the world’s most well-known celebrities and brands. Some of London Alley’s notable artist collaborations include Ariana Grande, Doja Cat, The Weeknd, Bad Bunny, Post Malone, Kendrick Lamar, Tiesto, Nicki Minaj, SZA and Lil Nas X.

Caraza Peimbert sees himself as a sort of detective, “finding clues between the script, the storyboard, a call with the director and the 36th second of the fourth take” in order to weave a story together, whether it’s for a music video or a brand project.

Let’s find out more…

What does being an editor entail?
My role evolves from project to project and becomes more focused or general depending on the needs of the final product, but it all boils down to receiving footage and weaving a story through the material you’re given. You are a detective, finding clues between the script, the storyboard, a call with the director and the 36th second of the fourth take. There are dozens of permutations of what you can do with that information: cut to the beat for a music video, build a character arc for a branded piece, show off an exciting new product or flip the script and subvert these expectations. Sometimes we start with an idea in mind; sometimes we “find it” in the edit. It’s an extremely dynamic role that never stops being new and challenging.

What would surprise people about what falls under that title?
Starting out (or when budget is limiting), there was the usual synchronizing, color correcting, basic motion graphics, the odd rotoscoping, necessary rewriting, etc. You’re (hopefully) trying to make the best possible piece, so if you have a skill that the team is missing, then it’s your responsibility to use it. But probably more surprising than that, editing is likely the most social of the crafts, outside of producing and directing.

Your first role should be customer service — making the client, director or whoever is sitting in the edit bay with you feel heard and understood. You can be the best editor ever, but if you’re rude, boring, a loud chewer or just have an awful-looking floral chair in the edit bay, then people might think twice about coming back. You’re creating an experience that isn’t just inside of the client monitor; it’s framed by everything around it.

What’s your favorite part of the job?
My unfiltered thought was “the snacks,” but it really speaks to the larger feeling of comfort I get from being in the edit bay. It’s a dimly lit, temperature-controlled refuge against the monotony and time war you’re waging, because the worst thing an editor can do is turn in something that is both boring and late. So you’re always in comfort and always entertained in there — or at least finding ways to be entertained so whoever’s watching rough cuts later can enjoy as well. What’s not to like? And there are always varying degrees of pressure, which I find are completely necessary to stay engaged. Diamonds and pressure and whatnot.

What’s your least favorite?
Apathy, wherever it may come from.

What is your most productive time of day and why?
My brain is good at doing quick, mechanical tasks early in the morning — replying to emails, letting people know you received their notes, shooting out a quick export. Edits that are in their late stages get the most attention, as I’m just swapping one take for another or trying out a different track. Then at around 4pm or 5pm, I start feeling the rush of the EOD, and the creative juices start their proverbial flow. I do my first passes around this time, as by then I’ve been consciously or subconsciously thinking about how I’m going to cut them, and I feel enough pressure to keep me hyperfocused on the same project for four, eight or 12 hours.

If you didn’t have this job, what would you be doing instead?
I grew up acting, and I feel the need to perform for others (you can argue that editing does that for me, with extra steps). I think I would’ve really enjoyed being in theater.

How early did you know this would be your path?
Around my second year of college, I had been on enough sets to know that I didn’t like it. I fell into cutting a couple of my older friends’ shorts and found I was kinda good at it, and I enjoyed it a ton. Then this was cemented by some amazing editing professors, who showed me it could be an incredibly rewarding career. Shoutout to Don Howard and Chris Roldan at the University of Texas.

Can you name some recent jobs?
It was music video world for a bit this year. We had Barbie World with the amazing Ice Spice and Nicki Minaj and Agora Hills from Doja Cat, both directed by the fabulous Hannah Lux Davis. We dipped our toes into K-pop — which is an immense universe of its own — with Chasing that Feeling by TxT, directed by Christian Breslauer. We have a lot of insane commercials coming down the pipeline that I’m really excited about. They’re keeping me busy.

Do you put on a different hat when cutting for a specific genre? Can you elaborate?
I don’t feel the genres as much as I feel different directors. They all have different workflows and styles that I need to hit a switch in my brain to get aligned with. Once you find that groove, you can create really powerful relationships. The most anxiety-inducing feeling is when you’re working with a new client or director and need to start from scratch, but proper communication and research can go a long way.

How did COVID change the way you work? The good and the bad?
I was fortunate enough to find a lot of good in the pandemic. We had a lot of footage at London Alley we needed to repurpose and re-edit. For a long time at the beginning, we didn’t know how long the lockdown was going to last and when we’d be able to go back to shooting.

So a lot of work fell on my desk: sizzles, tiny commercials shot by actors who were shipped camera kits, commercials shot with drones, more sizzles. Eventually I got the trust to get on bigger and bigger projects and built some great relationships with our directors at London Alley. We worked via Zoom and avoided the edit bay. Nowadays, I’m really grateful that remote sessions aren’t as stigmatized as they were before because sometimes it is the only way to get a job done, and it does bring people together from around the world in a way they never would’ve been able to.

What system do you edit on?
We have a beefed-up Mac Studio with an M1 Ultra, three monitors, a giant client monitor and a stereo system in the office, but I keep falling back to my laptop. It’s a 2021 M1 Max MacBook Pro that does everything I need it to do as long as I’m working with proxies.

Do you have a favorite plugin or tool within that editing system that you call on a lot?
I try to have a healthy rotation of tools, so I don’t overuse them, and I keep my stash fresh. Recently a director showed me RSMB, which tracks pixel motion in your shot to create realistic-looking motion blur. Shoutout to Evan Hammerman.

But I use the usual: Red Giant Universe, Acidbite, Film Impact. We have an Artlist account, which I use to abuse its music and sound effect library, and I use Motion Array whenever I need some stock footage. I ask ChatGPT to summarize an interview into a 60-second paper edit that Adobe Premiere automatically edits into a cut. I use Runway to animate a boardomatic or Photoshop’s generative fill to do a quick set extension whenever the camera is static. Adobe just released an AI-powered rotoscoping tool for After Effects, which I’m really excited about. It’s all changing constantly, and if you stop learning, your work gets dated quickly.

What are three pieces of technology you can’t live without?
My laptop, my Steam Deck loaded up with Baldur’s Gate 3 and a pair of $9.99 candy red Ecko Unltd. headphones I bought in a Korean music store hidden between BlackPink fridge magnets and full-size cardboard cutouts of the members of BTS. You need to sound-design for the lowest common denominator when it comes to how people are listening, and I’d be surprised if someone found shittier headphones than mine — but I do love the color. I don’t think Ecko even makes headphones anymore.

What do you do to de-stress from it all?
I love a good late-night gaming session. I find it also helps me stay savvy with the technology since these are some of the most intensive tasks a computer can run, so you need to constantly upgrade to stay current. My parents are moving right now, and I found my old Guitar Hero, so if you find me in my apartment at 7pm on a Tuesday night, I might be clicking away to “Through the Fire and Flames.”

Sunday Ticket

Creating Sounds for NFL Sunday Ticket Super Bowl Spot

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Recreating what a flying football player might sound like as a bird when it lets loose with a caw isn’t your usual Super Bowl spot brief… but that was the heart of what Alt_Mix had to do when coming up with the sound design for Migration, the NFL Sunday Ticket ad that ran right before kickoff of Super Bowl LVIII.

Conceived by YouTube Creative Studio and produced by MJZ, the spot shows what happens when football players take to the skies in their annual, end of season migration. YouTube Creative Studio turned to Alt_Mix , a New York-based audio post studio founded by veteran mixer Cory Melious, for the second year in a row to provide complete audio mixing and sound design services for their Super Bowl commercial.

Sunday TicketMigration opens with a birder watcher raising binoculars to his eyes. “Beautiful, isn’t it,” he says softly as an orchestral score from music studio Walker rises in the background and we hear the far-off cawing of the flying gridsters. “Each year they must follow the path of migration, but never fear, they’ll be back,” he says as we see the players swooping in to grab a fish from a lake or alighting gently just outside a cabin.

Alt_Mix handled all aspects of the spot’s final audio, including sound design from the ground up, voiceover recording and mix.

The greatest challenge was figuring out what a football playing “birdman” should sound like. “There was a lot of testing and experimentation in coming up with just the right sound to their calls,” says Melious, who’s something of an amateur birder himself. “The creative team had a really good idea of what they wanted us to achieve, and it was our job to help them articulate that with sound. We did lots of variations, and in the end, we mixed humans making bird sounds with actual bird calls to get just the right pitch and tone.”

The spot features a number of players, such as D’Andre Swift, the running back for the Philadelphia Eagles; Baltimore Ravens tight end Mark Andrews; and Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Tyler Lockett. Also appearing at the end of the spot, watching Sunday Ticket in the cabin scene, are the popular YouTube Creators Deestroying, Pierson Wodzynski and Sean Evans.

There was an interesting interplay between the artists doing the edit (Joint), effects and finishing (Blacksmith) and the soundscape his studio created, Melious adds. “They recognized that the sound had to be strong in order to sell the idea of a football player-sized bird that migrates.

For instance, they were editing the Tyler Lockett scene with no sound on him. “But once they laid the soundtrack on, it became a laugh-out-loud moment,” says Melious. “For the story to work, we needed to connect the details seen in the visuals to make them believable, so we worked really hard to bring those tiny movements alive with sound, like when the tree branch snapped after a player landed on it, or the dust and debris kicked up when they landed by the cabin. It’s all about elevating the viewers’ experience.”

 

Post and VFX Houses Team for CrowdStrike Super Bowl Spot

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For the second consecutive year, CrowdStrike is airing a spot during the Super Bowl. This year’s ad features CrowdStrike’s AI-powered cybersecurity heroine Charlotte as she tackles modern cyber adversaries and stops breaches. The Future brings a stylized spin to a classic Western tale to show how CrowdStrike is securing the future of the digital frontier. The ad will broadcast during the two-minute warning in the first half of the game.

Last year’s ad looked back at how the company would have stopped history’s most infamous breach: The battle of Troy. This year’s commercial is set in a futuristic Wild West and tells the story of good versus evil as four notorious nation-state and e-Crime cyber adversaries ride into town looking to cause turmoil and disruption. Armed with the power of the AI-native CrowdStrike Falcon XDR platform, Charlotte rapidly detects the threats and stops them.

The 30-second commercial, shot on the Sony Venice camera, was helmed by director Tarsem Singh of RadicalMedia and produced by CrowdStrike’s newly formed internal creative agency, Redbird, in collaboration with Howdy Sound, Lime Santa Monica, Nice Shoes, RadicalMedia, Union Editorial and Zoic Studios.

“It was great to be reunited with the amazing CrowdStrike team. They come to the table knowing what they want, while giving me room to experiment,” says editor John Bradley of Union Austin, who also cut last year’s Troy. “The offline rough-cut portion of any VFX-driven project requires you to use your imagination, and this was a much more effects-heavy spot than Troy. Every shot had several layers of VFX work to be done.” Bradley cut The Future on Adobe Premiere.

For its part, Zoic used a broad spectrum of software and tools but mainly relied on SideFX Houdini, Autodesk Maya and Foundry Nuke to achieve the majority of the VFX lift.

“We used the practical foreground set buildings and built a full-CG world/environment around them,” says Zoic EP Sabrina Harrison-Gazdik. “Set pieces were enhanced and modified as needed to tie them into the environment. The extensive environment build is implemented into all exterior shots in the spot(s).” The interior saloon shots also required VFX work across the scenes — concepting, building and animating tabletop game holographics, the holographic treatment for the piano player and dancers, the sheriff’s robot arm, the robot bartender — and each shot included one or more VFX elements.

Nothing was captured on a volume or green. Everything was shot on-location. “VFX worked off hero takes and/or clean plates where able to integrate CG into practical locations,” explains Harrison-Gazdik.

“Originally, we were going to grade without the alpha channel mattes for every shot, but as we were grading, there was one particular shot where it was difficult to grade the adversaries and the footage separately,” recalls colorist Gene Curley of Nice Shoes. Curley worked on a FilmLight Baselight and had alpha channel mattes for some shots. “Zoic was able to quickly render these mattes during the color session, and it made the shot much easier to grade.”

When it came to sound design, “The call was for futuristic sci-fi characters in an Old West environment,” says Dusty Albertz of Howdy Sound. “I think we succeeded in crafting a soundscape that is both believable and fun.”

Mixer Zac Fisher of Lime adds, “It was important to find the right blend between the nostalgic undertones of the old-timey sound bed and the futuristic elements of the sound design. CrowdStrike’s collaboration with exceptional composers and sound designers made for an ideal mixing experience. I wanted to make sure I focused on enhancing the comedic elements to capture the audience’s attention. In a spontaneous moment during the final stages of the mix, there was a suggestion to include a whip crack to finish the spot. Everyone in the room ended up loving it, and personally, it was my favorite touch of the project.”

Union Austin EP Vicki Russell says this was one of the smoothest processes she’s ever experienced, “especially in the realm of VFX-heavy Super Bowl spots, where there might be added pressure. It’s been a sheer joy, with all the partners working so well together. CrowdStrike/Redbird consistently provided great feedback and maintained a very inclusive, appreciative vibe.”

You can watch The Future, which features an original score by Douglas Fischer, on YouTube before it airs.

 

 

 

Pixel 8

Bespoke Digital Helps Launch Google’s Mint Pixel 8

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Creative studio Bespoke Digital continues to grow its innovative approach to content production with its latest for tech giant Google and the Pixel 8, marking its third consecutive launch collaboration with the brand.

Bespoke’s team of CG artists, editors and colorists, handled every facet of the project, from inception to post, as well as the final behind-the-scenes film. Because of the scope of the job, the studio worked for months on the execution. Along with Brooklyn-based artist Ricardo Gonzalez, aka It’s A Living, who hails from Durango, Mexico, Bespoke teased the expansion of Google’s color options for its Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro, culminating in a live mural event in SoHo.

Pixel 8The deliverables for this Google Mint Pixel 8 launch included the aforementioned behind-the-scenes film; social media assets; original CG animation for 250 digital-out-of-home electronic kiosks across Manhattan and Brooklyn; an artist-painted static billboard at 389 Canal Street; commercial teasers (including CG elements), editorial; sound; color grading; sourcing and coordinating the artist; production of 100 custom phone cases for a giveaway and 100 custom paint canvases for a painting class at the event; locations and permits; media recording; live-streaming; and the art installation at the Google store.

“Having worked in advertising for a number of years, I find it exciting to witness the evolution beyond conventional commercials, seamlessly transitioning into the realm of experiential marketing,” says Eui-Jip Hwang, Bespoke’s EP on the project. “Our journey has not merely involved crafting traditional CG commercials; rather, we’ve pushed the boundaries, crafting immersive experiences that redefine advertising creation, revolutionizing how it is consumed.”

In terms of tools, Bespoke called on Adobe Photoshop for retouching, Adobe Premiere for editing, Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve for color grading, SideFX Houdini for 3D and Adobe After Effects for animation.
American Fiction

Director and Editor of Oscar-Nominated American Fiction Talk Post

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By Iain Blair

Nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Lead Actor, American Fiction is writer Cord Jefferson’s impressive directorial debut. It’s a dramedy satire that stars Jeffrey Wright as Monk, an erudite and frustrated novelist who’s fed up with the establishment profiting from stereotypical “Black” entertainment that relies on tired and offensive tropes. To prove his point, Monk uses a pen name to write an outlandish “Black” book of his own, which, to his disdain, becomes a huge critical and commercial success.

Cord Jefferson

Jefferson himself earned a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination for American Fiction for his adaptation of Percival Everett’s novel “Erasure.”  I spoke to him about making the film and navigating post. Editor Hilda Rasula (French Exit) joined the conversation.

You’d never directed a film before this one. How did you prep? Did you talk to a lot of other directors?
Cord Jefferson: I talked to other directors, and I did the Martin Scorsese MasterClass. (Laughs) I felt like it would be worthwhile to spend some time listening to him. I read “Making Movies” by Sidney Lumet. I prepared by reading and studying and talking to friends of mine who were directors. But directing is something that you can’t really understand until you do it. It was sort of like trial by fire. It was just kind of getting in there and doing it. So I prepared myself as much as I could, but really what I focused on was just the script. I was like, even if I didn’t know what I was doing with cameras or with lighting that day, and I felt out of my depth with the technical stuff, I knew the script and the characters at a fundamental level. That allowed me to make all the technical decisions I needed to make based on just my pure understanding of the story we were trying to tell.

Hilda Rasula

How early on did you start working with Hilda?
Jefferson: Hilda was onboard before we started shooting in Boston. She wasn’t on-set, unfortunately. Hilda, how far before principal of photography did we start working together?

Hilda Rasula: We started meeting six weeks before shooting started. Then for the shoot, I was here in LA and getting the dailies. There wasn’t a lab in Boston for us to go to, so they were flown to Atlanta every day for processing and then sent to us.

How did the process work? You must have been in constant contact, right?
Jefferson: Hilda would send emails occasionally at night and say, “I looked at the dailies, and here’s what I think we should be shooting for tomorrow’s scenes” and stuff like that. But outside of that, there wasn’t much time to have conversations, unfortunately. It was very run-and-gun.

Rasula: And with the time difference, it was just tough. Also, my dailies were always running a little more than a day behind because of having to go to Atlanta and then to LA. So essentially, the whole editing didn’t start until post.

Cord, how steep a learning curve was post for you? Were you in shock?
Jefferson: (Laughs) Yes, of course. I had two director friends who said, “When you go and watch the editor’s first cut, you are going to feel like, ‘Oh my God, what have I done? This is a nightmare. This is absolutely the worst thing that I’ve ever done, and I’m so ashamed.’” And that’s everybody’s feeling when they see the first cut of the film. You just need to work past that. I think that I was so afraid of that that I didn’t watch the first cut.

American Fiction

In fact, I came in and told Hilda that we weren’t going to watch it all the way through. We were just going to watch what she’d edited. Then we could go through it scene by scene so the scenes wouldn’t all play at once and give me a heart attack. I didn’t think that I could do that, to be honest. So we went through and cut everything together — I think the initial director’s cut was 2 hours and 14 minutes — and then we refined from there. All the color grading and mastering was done by FotoKem, and the colorist was Philip Beckner. I actually loved the whole post process.

Hilda, where did you do the editing and the rest of the post?
Rasula: In the offices of our production company, T-Street, which is Rian Johnson and Ram Bergman’s company. Our post setup was dead-simple. We used Avid Media Composer 2018, and we shared media between my assistant editor, Charmaine Cavan, and me on a Nexis in a neighboring room.

We also had Jump Desktop to keep a bit of a WFH hybrid option open for ourselves, which was useful during dailies. The one unusual aspect of our post setup at the office was that we had a great screening room on-site at T-Street. They have a small screening room that has its own computer with the ability to hook up with Nexis. That computer ran on Avid 2022, so there were occasional translation issues we had to contend with, but generally it was extremely easy to host screenings for producers and for friends and family screenings with relatively little downtime needed to prep the cut. Mandell Winter was our sound supervisor, and we mixed at Signature Post with mixers Alexandra Fehrman and Richard Weingart. We were really happy with the entire sound team.

What were the main editing challenges? Obviously, it has a lot of tonal changes.
Rasula: You put your finger on it. I would say the biggest challenge was the tonal pivots that the movie takes. Being able to go between comedy and drama in the way that it does required some tricky tonal turns, and doing that was a delicate balance. We also spent a lot of time working on pacing and rhythm — sometimes within the scenes beat by beat, getting the comedy timing to be perfect. Other times it was a matter of playing with that teeter-totter of the balance between comedy and drama for the movie to feel really cohesive… so that it didn’t feel like we were going too far into a broader comedy film or a darker drama. We needed to find the perfect balance. And that was kind of like a high wire act at times.

Jefferson: People have asked, how did you manage the tonal balance? And we found that in post. I tried to find it in the script, and sometimes on-set I’d realize that I hadn’t found it in the script. And then a lot of really great stuff ended up being cut out of the movie – great comedy and also really dramatic scenes that make you cry every time you see it. But we realized that despite the greatness of those scenes, they just weren’t the film that we were making. The thing that I told everybody at the outset — and Hilda and I had to stick to our guns on it — was that we wanted to make a movie that was satirical but never farcical.

American Fiction

Rasula: Often, I think when you’re making a comedy-drama, there is an instinct on everybody’s part to say, keep making it funnier. And I do think this is an incredibly funny movie, but being really disciplined with ourselves about holding that line, and also making sure that the drama didn’t get too sentimental, was what we had to carve out in post.

What was the most difficult scene to cut and why?
Rasula: We probably spent the most time talking about and worrying about the multiple endings, trying to figure out what was too confusing for the audience and needing to make adjustments there. Balancing that out was a tricky thing. And ultimately finding the right ending for Monk, what feels right for the character, and what feels satisfying for an audience.

Did you do a lot of test screenings?
Rasula: We did just one official test screening.

Jefferson: But we probably did 15 to 20 friends and family screenings throughout post. That was also incredibly helpful. The biggest problem besides the ending was the very beginning. We kept getting this similar feedback from friends and family: “The movie starts off a little slow. We don’t fully understand that it’s supposed to be funny and that we’re supposed to be laughing at the very outset.” We were beating ourselves over the head with, “How are we going to fix this?” And then one day we all came in and Hilda had spent the night before reorganizing the first 25 to 30 minutes of the film, and a light bulb went off. It was truly like, you found what we needed to do. And correct me if I’m wrong, Hilda, but a lot of the impetus came from friends and family feedback.

Rasula: Absolutely. Feedback from people is so crucial because you’re making a movie for an audience. Basically, everything we do is for the audience, and it’s only through showing it to people that you can really start to get that sense of how it is working and what information is not hitting their brains in the right order at the right time… or their hearts. Those screenings were invaluable since it was very late in the process that we did that restructure, and it’s really only because of things that people were saying that then triggered a lot of discussions.

Did you use a lot of sound temps?
Rasula: This is a very talky movie, so it’s not like an action movie where it required crazy sound design. But we did all of our temp music cutting; we didn’t have the budget to have a music editor or anybody else working on sound through most of the process, so we had to do it ourselves. My assistant editor Charmaine Cavan took care of all the temp sound design while I was doing the temp music editing and much of the temp music supervision in the offline.

Cord, you have few visual effects courtesy of Outpost, Papaya and We Shoot Lasers. Did you take to it quickly?
Jefferson: I took to it pretty quickly because fortunately T Street has a really good relationship with some great VFX people – Rian’s movies tend to be way more VFX-heavy. Our VFX supervisor, Giles Harding, is someone that they work with regularly. Giles was incredibly helpful, and it was easy to get him on the phone and talk about what we needed.

(SORT OF SPOILER ALERT!)
The final scene of Monk getting shot was the most VFX-laden thing that we had, and it was just kind of just trial and error. We saw five to six different versions, and every version was good. It was just kind of refining what was already there. For example, let’s move this bullet hole a little to the left. Let’s move this sort of blood spatter a little to the right, but nothing too major. I felt it was pretty easy overall.

Rasula: In the end, we had a lot of VFX, some of which were invisible visual effects that you would never know existed, but those were easy enough to deal with. Split screens and that sort of thing.

Cord, I assume you want to direct again?
Jefferson: Absolutely. I will keep making movies for as long as they’ll let me make movies. And I’ve told Hilda that I want her to work on everything with me now, so hopefully she’ll be there as well.

Hilda, would you work with him again?
Rasula: (Laughs) Of course. Cord has the most amazing voice and such clarity in his writing. And I think as a storyteller and now as a director, he has a reason to make movies. He has a reason to tell stories. He just doesn’t do it without a sense of purpose. That’s all I ever want from my director.

Industry insider Iain Blair has been interviewing the biggest directors in Hollywood and around the world for years. He is a regular contributor to Variety and has written for such outlets as Reuters, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.

 

Pro Version Astra2

Review: Logickeyboard Avid Media Composer – Pro Version Astra2

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By Jonathan Moser

I have a confession, one that could get me thrown out of the editor’s union (if I still belonged to it). I’m embarrassed to say it… totally ashamed… but here goes: I love color-coded and mapped keyboards! There, I said it, and I feel better for it.

I’ve been editing a very long time, using CMX, Grass Valley, ISC, Calloway and others, all the way to Avid Media Composer.  I know, I know… you younger editors laugh in the face of these keyboards. Many of you love your plain-vanilla, sometimes even blank keyboards. You don’t need graphics on your keys because your muscle memory lands you right on the correct key every time. But I’m older. My memory has no muscles left… and I like the bright colors and symbols. They help cue my fingers where to go and find the right command, and my brain doesn’t have to work so hard. That’s why Logickeyboard products have always been my go-to. I’m happy to say the company has a new offering, and it’s great.

Remember all those buried shortcuts in Media Composer that could take you to secret places in your editing system that you might not have known even existed? (Things like creation settings or your calculator or timeline settings with a press of your control or shift key, no mousing around?) Well, while most keyboards let you see these hidden shortcuts on their keys, usually it was just one level deep. This new Pro version  lets you see three levels deep, getting you to workflow heaven with faster speed in fewer steps.

Besides the solid keystroke action of the Logickeyboard brand and the bright, backlit keys with their vivid colors (fun fact: Logickeyboard was the first to bring back the Liftman icon after years of his mysterious disappearance.), the keyboard follows standard Avid keyboard shortcut architecture and displays these hidden shortcuts in a vibrant and eye-catching way. The keys’ graphics are split, clearly displaying what the shortcut is. One half of the key’s display is the standard alphanumeric letter and overall key function (mark in, mark out, place marker, insert, etc.) as on most of today’s keyboards, but the upper half of the key shows you where the shift, control and alt key functions to the shortcuts go. They do this with colored dots (purple, violet, red and blue) indicating what function they perform. Sound confusing? It’s really not, and it becomes intuitive quickly.

Pro Version Astra2I’ve been on the keyboard for a while and have discovered this arrangement does indeed speed me up — maybe not by light speed, but enough to make the workflow go a bit smoother. And since I was never a big shortcut guy in the first place, I’ve learned over the past few weeks to indeed become more efficient, finding those speedy secrets that stop all the mousing I’m used to doing. I’m sure younger, less stodgy editors will have a field day with this keyboard.

I don’t really know the effect the keyboard will have on us kinda-stuck-in-our-ways editors, but I imagine for those rookies brave enough to start on Media Composer, it can really ease their learning curve and allow them to rely on memory and use the visual cues this gives them.

You can see over 135 shortcuts on these keys, up from 62 in the previous iterations of Logickeyboard’s product line — a 135% increase.

The solid feel of the keyboard, with its quiet push action, has great tactile feedback and smooth travel without requiring a lot of effort, and the sculptured keys make touch location precise and easy.  The keyboard’s durable scissor switch mechanism will provide a lifetime of durability (my Logickeyboard has lasted over five years so far). The mechanism has been beefed up from the previous Astra builds.

In addition, there is now a more robust USB 3 SuperSpeed port offering enough power to drive peripherals like SSD drives or keyboard lights and other accessories. The impressive, heavy-duty, color-coded (and long) cabling from the keyboard (which ends in two USB A connectors — one to power the keyboard and lighting and the second to power the previously mentioned USB 3.0 port) is durable and can weather a lot of abuse. You can actuate five levels of brightness with the press of a button on the numeric keypad, which can also control audio volume.

As for keyboard height and angle, the Pro is the same as the previous Astra2. It has a fixed, low-profile design at an 8-degree tilt.

Pro Version Astra2Final Thoughts
Is it worth upgrading your older keyboard to the Pro? If you’re a seasoned veteran, perhaps. It’s an attractive replacement if it’s time to update. If you’re an editor who wants to up your performance level, take in new methodology and speed up your game and your workflow, it’s definitely worth it.

Logickeyboard has taken a lot of time to create something both highly functional and attractive — a lot of thought went into efficiency and the needs of editors. It’s a beautiful and ultimately useful addition to an editor’s toolkit, especially with the lights out.

Summary of Highlights:

    • New split key design offers 135 shortcuts, up from the original 62.
    • Shortcuts are Avid default; no remapping needed.
    • Color-coded modifiers delineate easily defined shortcuts in an innovative, easily readable dot legend.
    • Strong build using the time-tested Astra2 keyboard assembly.
    • Powerful USB 3 port can handle SSDs, webcams, most any peripheral.
    • Dimensions 17.6” X 6.0” X 1.2,” weight 2.1lbs
    • Available for both PC and Mac.
    • MSRP $149.90

_________________________________________________________________
Jonathan Moser is a six-time Emmy winning editor/producer working in NY. He can be reached for work at flashcutter@gmail.com. His website is www.remoteediting.tv.

ACE Eddie Awards

Editing: ACE Eddie Award Nominees Announced

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The American Cinema Editors (ACE) have announced the nominations for its 74th Annual ACE Eddie Awards, recognizing outstanding editing in 14 categories of film, television and documentaries. The winners will be announced live during the ACE Eddie Awards on March 3.

As previously announced, filmmaker John Waters will receive the ACE Golden Eddie Filmmaker of the Year Award, recognizing a filmmaker who exemplifies distinguished achievement in the art and business of film. Also previously announced, film editors Kate Amend, ACE and Walter Murch, ACE will receive Career Achievement Awards for their outstanding contributions to film editing. Stephen Lovejoy, ACE, will receive the Heritage Award for his unwavering commitment to ACE.

Here is the full list of nominees for the 74th Annual ACE Eddie Awards:

BEST EDITED FEATURE FILM (Drama, Theatrical):

Anatomy of a Fall
Laurent Sénéchal

Killers of the Flower Moon
Thelma Schoonmaker, ACE

Maestro
Michelle Tesoro, ACE

Oppenheimer
Jennifer Lame, ACE

Past Lives
Keith Fraase

BEST EDITED FEATURE FILM (Comedy, Theatrical):

Air
William Goldenberg, ACE

American Fiction
Hilda Rasula, ACE

Barbie
Nick Houy, ACE

The Holdovers
Kevin Tent, ACE

Poor Things
Yorgos Mavropsaridis, ACE

BEST EDITED ANIMATED FEATURE FILM:

Elemental
Stephen Schaffer, ACE

Nimona
Randy Trager, ACE
Erin Crackel

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Michael Andrews, ACE

The Super Mario Bros. Movie
Eric Osmond

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
Greg Levitan, ACE

BEST EDITED DOCUMENTARY (Theatrical):

20 Days in Mariupol
Michelle Mizner

American Symphony
Sammy Dane
Matthew Heineman
Jim Hession
Fernando Villegas

Joan Baez I Am a Noise
Maeve O’Boyle

Little Richard: I Am Everything
Nyneve Minnear
Jake Hostetter

Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie
Michael Harte, ACE

BEST EDITED DOCUMENTARY (Non-Theatrical):

100 Foot Wave: “Jaws”
Alex Bayer
Alex Keipper
Quin O’Brien

Albert Brooks: Defending My Life
Bob Joyce

Beckham: “The Kick”
Michael Harte, ACE

Being Mary Tyler Moore
Mariah Rehmet

Escaping Twin Flames: “Up in Flames”
Martin Biehn
Kevin Hibbard
Inbal B. Lessner, ACE
Troy Takaki, ACE
Mimi Wilcox

BEST EDITED MULTI-CAMERA COMEDY SERIES:

Frasier: “Blind Date”
Joseph Fulton

How I Met Your Father: “Daddy”
Russell Griffin, ACE

The Upshaws: “Off Beat”
Angel Gamboa Bryant

BEST EDITED SINGLE CAMERA COMEDY SERIES:

Barry: “Wow”
Ali Greer, ACE
Franky Guttman, ACE

The Bear: “Fishes”
Joanna Naugle, ACE

The Bear: “Forks”
Adam Epstein, ACE

Only Murders in the Building: “Sitzprobe”
Shelly Westerman, ACE
Payton Koch

Ted Lasso: “So Long, Farewell”
Melissa McCoy, ACE

BEST EDITED DRAMA SERIES:

Ahsoka: “Fallen Jedi”
Dana E. Glauberman, ACE

The Last of Us: “Long, Long Time”
Timothy A. Good, ACE

Slow Horses: “Strange Games”
Sam Williams

Succession: “Conner’s Wedding”
Bill Henry, ACE

Succession: “With Open Eyes”
Ken Eluto, ACE

BEST EDITED FEATURE FILM (NON-THEATRICAL):

Black Mirror: Beyond the Sea
Jon Harris

Flamin’ Hot
Kayla M. Emter
Liza D. Espinas

Reality
Jennifer Vecchiarello
Ron Dulin

BEST EDITED LIMITED SERIES:

Beef: “The Birds Don’t Sing, They Screech in Pain”
Harry Yoon, ACE
Laura Zempel, ACE

Beef: “The Great Fabricator”
Nat Fuller

Fargo: “The Paradox of Intermediate Transactions”
Christopher Nelson, ACE

Fargo: “The Tragedy of the Commons”
Regis Kimble

Lessons in Chemistry: “Introduction to Chemistry”
Géraud Brisson, ACE
Daniel Martens

BEST EDITED NON-SCRIPTED SERIES:

Couples Therapy: “Episode 310”
Delaney Lynch
Helen Kearns, ACE
Katrina Taylor

Dancing with the Stars: “S32.E5”
Laurens Van Charante
Ben Bulatao, ACE
Fernanda Cardoso
Jessie Sock
Jon Oliver
Neal Acosta
Raiko Siems
Joe Headrick
Mike Bennaton

Deadliest Catch: “Pain Level Ten”
Rob Butler, ACE
Isaiah Camp, ACE
Alexander Rubinow, ACE
Josh Stockero

BEST EDITED VARIETY TALK/SKETCH SHOW OR SPECIAL EVENT:

A Black Lady Sketch Show: “My Love Language is Words of Defamation”
Stephanie Filo, ACE
Malinda Zehner Guerra
Taylor Joy Mason, ACE

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: “Dollar Stores”
Anthony Miale, ACE

Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour
Dom Whitworth
Guy Harding
Hamish Lyons
Rupa Rathod
Ben Wainwright-Pearce
Reg Wrench

BEST EDITED ANIMATED SERIES:

Blue Eye Samurai: “The Tale of the Ronin and The Bride”
Yuksa Shirasuna

Bob’s Burgers: “Amelia”
Jeremy Reuben, ACE
Stephanie Earley

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off: “Ramona Rents a Video”
Keisuke Yanagi

ANNE V. COATES AWARD FOR STUDENT EDITING:

Isaiah Clarke – Spanish Springs High School
Jamie Diaz – California State University Los Angeles
Ariel Emma Martin – Chapman University

Andrew Haigh

Director Andrew Haigh on All of Us Strangers‘ Editing and Post

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By Iain Blair

All of Us Strangers is the latest film from British filmmaker Andrew Haigh. Part time-traveling, supernatural ghost story and part meditation on loneliness, loss and love, the film recently swept the British Indie Film Awards with seven wins, including Best Director and Best Screenplay for Haigh; Best Film; Best Cinematography for Jamie D. Ramsay, SASC; and Best Editing for Jonathan Alberts, ACE.

Andrew Haigh

Andrew Haigh

The story starts one night in a near-empty tower block in London, when depressed screenwriter Adam (Andrew Scott) meets mysterious neighbor Harry (Paul Mescal). As a relationship develops between them, Adam is preoccupied with memories of the past and finds himself drawn back to his childhood home where his parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) appear to be living, just as they were on the day they died in a car crash, 30 years before, when Adam was just 12 years old.

I spoke with Haigh — who has also written and directed Lean on Pete, 45 Years and Weekend — about making the Searchlight film and his love of post and editing.

I heard you had to build Adam’s apartment onstage and that you used LED screens for all the exterior views.
Yes, and it was quite complicated. We tried to shoot in a real location, but it’s almost impossible to light when you’re on the 20th floor of a tower block. So we found an apartment we liked and shot plates out the windows of the landscapes, and then we used those plates with huge LED walls that surrounded the windows of the set.

Andrew Haigh

It was basically a lower-budget version of how they do the Star Wars films — I wanted to see all the light changing outside and not have to blow all the windows out and have to use greenscreen. It was tricky to get it right, and I’d never used that technology before, but it worked really well.

You must have done a lot of tests?
That’s correct. We also decided to shoot 35mm, not digital, and that complicates it all because the LED walls are digital, so there was stuff to work out. I wanted to shoot on film because so much of the film, part of which is set in the ‘80s, is about the analog experience, such as photographs and vinyl records. So it would have felt weird to shoot digital. I felt film added to the period texture and that sense of the past bleeding into the present.

How tough was the shoot?
They’re always tough, but we had a decent schedule of six weeks and a big enough budget to get everything we needed, like all the extras for the club scenes. We shot all that over two days on-location at the iconic Vauxhall Tavern in London with 150 extras.

Andrew Haigh

Jonathan Alberts, who cut HBO’s Looking and BBC’s The North Water for you, edited this. How did you work together?
He began working on it while we were shooting. He was close to the locations and then in the studio for those shoots, and he had an edit suite set up so that during lunch, I could look at scenes and discuss them. That’s a very important part of the editing process, even while you’re shooting, so you can understand what’s working and if you’re getting the right emotional tone. Are you pushing it too far? Or being too subtle? When you’re trying to find that balance, you need to see footage and know it’s working.

We did most of the editing at Vivid in London, and then we moved to LA for a month or so to finish up. We had a decent amount of time, and you need that in the edit so you can experiment and try different things. When you’re with a bigger studio like Searchlight, you have all the preview screenings and so on, so the whole post schedule gets extended. That was quite different from what I was used to in post on my other lower-budget films.

I trust my editor completely, but I’m there in the edit every day, which probably drives him crazy. But we discuss everything, and after several films together, we have a good understanding of exactly what we’re trying to do in the edit.

What were the main editing challenges?
The main one was all about calibrating the emotion. When do you release it, hide it or build it up? That all took some time to get right. The other big one was all the transitions between the modern story in London and the parents’ story in the ‘80s. How do we make them work seamlessly and feel like they’re all melding together and becoming entwined? We played around with that a lot.

When we shot it, there were a few more genre elements, and we either toned them down or cut them, which helped keep the film in an emotionally real place. The final 20 minutes were the hardest to cut and get right, and we also spent a lot of time working on the beginning. The start of the film is quite simple, but we had so many versions of those first 15 minutes as he goes to meet his parents, and your instinct is always to get there quicker. But I knew we couldn’t get there too quickly. You need to know why he feels he has to go back into his past.

Do you like the post process?
I was an assistant editor for a long time, and I love post, but it’s a stressful process. When you watch the first assembly, it’s like, “Does this even work? I don’t know.” Then I feel that as you get closer to the finish line, you’re happier with what you’ve done in post. But you are also more nervous because the world is about to see it, which is scary.

Talk about the importance of music and sound.
It’s so crucial. I worked very closely with our sound designer, Joakim Sundstrom, whom I’ve done a few projects with, and Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, our composer. I bring them on early in my director’s cut so we can discuss what the sound needs to be, and my editor also spends a lot of time getting the sound right and playing around with the soundscape. Same with the music. We start with temps then add Emilie’s score and all the song tracks, like Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Pet Shop Boys, which really define the era. We did all the re-recording at Halo Post and then the final mix at Shepperton.

All period films need VFX, and there are quite a few. Who did them, and what was entailed?
I like working with VFX, and I love that so many are invisible in this, although there are a lot. Apart from all the usual cleanup and removing stuff, we added cranes to the shots outside the windows and did a lot of work with reflections, altering them and changing them.

We shot a lot of stuff that we then adapted with VFX in post to give them a slightly odd look and feel, like the scene in the elevator, where we made the reflections all a bit unreal. Then at the end there are some more obvious VFX shots. We used Union, Goldcrest and Cheap Shot, and our VFX team did a great job.

What about the DI? Who was the colorist? And how closely did you work with them and the DP, Jamie D. Ramsay?
The colorist was Joe Bicknell at Company 3 in New York. The DP was off on location somewhere in America, and I was in London, so we did it all remotely. I felt the film was shot so beautifully that the DI was more about pushing and tweaking certain elements. So we changed some colors, boosted others, increased the contrast in some scenes and did a lot of shaping. All films change in post, but I’m really happy with the way it turned out.

Director Andrew Haigh and DP Jamie Ramsay

You adapted this from the novel Strangers by Taichi Yamada. Adapting a beloved novel for the screen can be notoriously tricky. How tough was it?
It’s always tough, but it helped a lot that I knew it was going to be a loose adaptation, so that gave me a lot of freedom. The novel is very different from the film, but the central idea is the same. Adapting the book was a long process but also a fascinating one. It was nice to have this idea that I really loved and then turn it into my own thing. I wanted to pick away at my own past as Adam does in the film. I was interested in exploring the complexities of both familial and romantic love, but also the distinct experience of a specific generation of gay people growing up in the ‘80s. I wanted to move away from the traditional ghost story genre and make it more psychological, almost metaphysical and supernatural.

It seems like a perfect fit for your sensibility.
Yes, you’re right. You’re always trying to find something that speaks to you, that works for you on a personal level and interests you. I definitely have to respond to the material, and this seemed like a very good way to explore various ideas I’m interested in about love and loss. And I loved the novel’s central conceit: What if you could meet your parents again long after they were gone, and now they’re the same age as you? It seemed such a great, emotional way to explore the nature of family, and that became my starting point.

Andrew Haigh and Andrew Scott

The film has all these different elements, including time-travel fantasy, romance, drama and the enduring power of love.
It’s interesting because people have asked me, “What other films did you want it to feel like? What were your influences?” And I really can’t think of any. To me, it feels like it exists in the cracks of lots of different genres. So, it’s a ghost story, but not really. It doesn’t follow the logic of any ghost story. And it doesn’t feel like it belongs to fantasy. It feels grounded, but it’s also slightly surreal. It’s sort of balanced between all these genres, but to me the important thing was always the emotional arc of the story, the emotional journey. Everything else had to be in service to that, and the emotion was more important than logic. I wanted it to be a manifestation of Adam’s sexuality and his longing.

Industry insider Iain Blair has been interviewing the biggest directors in Hollywood and around the world for years. He is a regular contributor to Variety and has written for such outlets as Reuters, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.