DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK phần 4 potx

CHAPTER 7NON-LINEAR EDITING SOFTWARE Audio Plug-In Formats Though there are a number of audio plug-in formats including TDM, Sound- Designer, and AudioSuite, it’s best to look for editing packages that support Pre- miere’s format. Mixing No editing system is complete without the ability to set the audio levels on each individual piece of sound in your sequence, a process called mixing. Look for software that has a mixing interface with gain sliders and dB markings. Some editing packages offer real-time mixing, which allows you to adjust audio levels while your sequence plays. This can be a timesaving way to get a rough mix that you can later fine-tune (Figure 7.17). 147 Audio EQ and mixing interface in Speed Razor. FIGURE 7.17 Finally, your editing software needs to be capable of outputting your final product, whatever that may be. Outputting can be very complicated, and we’ve dedicated an entire chapter to it at the end of this book, but here are some guidelines for ensuring an editing package can create the output you need. Videotape Masters Be aware that videotape output involves both your hardware and your soft- ware—your editing software may claim that it can perform a certain kind of output, but your hardware may not be up to the job. If you’re using an all-digital Firewire or SDI-based system, then output quality is not a concern. But, if you’re using an analog video I/O system such as Media 100 or Targa, then you need to make sure your software is capable of playing back your entire project as full-motion and full-screen video. Some sys- tems may have a hard time playing a 90-minute feature in its entirety, requir- ing you to break it up into smaller sections to do your video output. We’ll cover how to output to tape in more detail later. If you think you might be needing to lay off your feature in segments (which is a good work- around if you don’t have enough disk space to hold all your footage), then make sure your software is capable of frame accurate device control and edit- ing to tape. Be aware that these capabilities are dependent on having the right kind of video deck. (Video hardware is covered in Chapter 11.) Exporting Files If your video is destined for the Web, DVD, or CD-ROM, you’ll need to ex- port your video in whatever format—usually QuickTime files—you need to author your project. Depending on the requirements of your target media, you may need to compress your files with a special CODEC. We’ll discuss multi- media and Web output in more detail in Chapter 18. EDLS As we discussed earlier, you may need to generate an edit decision list if you plan on finishing your project in an on-line editing suite. When you’re done editing your project, you output an EDL to a special for- mat disk that you can take to your post-production facility. You need to know what sort of editing system they’ll be using so that you save your EDL in the The Final Product DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 148 CHAPTER 7NON-LINEAR EDITING SOFTWARE proper format. If you haven’t selected an on-line house yet, you should be aware that the default format for EDLs is called CMX format. If you think you may need an EDL, be sure that your software at least supports CMX format EDLs. As you can see in Figure 7.18, there are a lot of variables to choose from when you create your EDL. Always talk to your post facility and check their EDL specifications—doing so can save you hundreds of dollars. 149 A. EDL options dialogue box B. Partial CMX-format EDL Avid Media Composer comes with the Avid EDL Manager utility for creating custom EDLs. FIGURE 7.18 Based on the criteria just discussed, we’ll quickly run through the most popu- lar NLE software for Macintosh and Windows to give you an idea of the pros and cons of each. For system requirements, availability, and other details, check out www.dvhandbook.com/nles. Adobe Premiere 5.1c. The original QuickTime editing program, Premiere recently went through a complete re-write to bring it to version 5. With a re-worked interface and improved audio/video sync, Premiere is finally a respectable system for long-form projects. Though weak on the audio editing and compositing side, Premiere’s editing tools are NLEs Compared DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 150 Film Editing and Cut Lists Projects shot and finished on film but edited on videotape have a different workflow than projects shot on video or finished on video After film is shot and sent to the lab for processing, the film is transferred to video through a process called telecine. Each frame of the film negative has a number on it, called the keycode. These keycode numbers are recorded onto the videotape image along with the picture itself. Since the frame rate of film is 24 frames per second and NTSC video is 29.97 fps, the telecine machine uses a process called 3:2 pulldown as it transfers the film to videotape. (See Chapter 4 for a technical description of how 3:2 pulldown works.) The video worktapes that result from the telecine transfer are then edited on a film non-linear editing system that can handle the frame rate issues in- volved in film editing—Avid’s Film Composer, for example. Once the film is edited and “locked,” a cut list is generated by the editing system to give to the negative cutter. A cut list is the film equivalent of an edit decision list (EDL) and lists each edit by film roll and keycode numbers. The process of generating the cut list is called film matchback. If the film was edited on a video non-linear editing system, like those discussed in this chapter, film matchback software such as Filmlogic or Slingshot is used to generate a cut list. The negative cutter (yes, this is a person) then takes the computer-gen- erated cut list and conforms the negative to match the final edit created on the non-linear editing system. Unfortunately, film matchback is a compli- cated process and highly prone to errors. Many film labs actually charge extra if the cut list is computer generated. CHAPTER 7NON-LINEAR EDITING SOFTWARE powerful and robust. Premiere’s capturing utility is weak, but plug-ins like Pipeline’s ProVTR can bring it up to snuff. Apple Final Cut Pro 1.2. Apple’s editing/compositing combo, Final Cut is a very complete, high-end, professional editing system. Packing a full collection of high-end editing tools wrapped up in an interface with excellent mouse and keyboard support, Final Cut also includes a fully keyframable compositing module integrated directly into the program. Though no substitute for a compositing package like Adobe After Ef- fects, Final Cut’s compositing tools provide plenty of power for most users. Final Cut is weak when it comes to audio editing and rendering is a tad slow when compared to other systems. Also, the program is plagued with some video artifact troubles, though these can easily be avoided. Apple iMovie. At the time of this writing, iMovie is only bundled with the iMac DV (which, incidentally, is an excellent choice for a DV work- station). Though incredibly simple, iMovie provides most of what you’ll need for editing a feature. Though it lacks robust editing con- trols, a lot of great movies have been made using far less editing power. If you’re looking for fine editing controls as well as audio EQ, special effects, waveform monitors, and other utilities, look elsewhere. But, if you wouldn’t use such features even if you had them, iMovie’s small RAM footprint and simple interface might serve you well. In:sync SpeedRazor is a popular Windows-based editing package that of- fers real-time dual stream playback and, when combined with the right hardware, uncompressed D1 NTSC or PAL video in the Video for Windows AVI format. Speed Razor offers a full-range of professional tools including RS-422 deck control, SMPTE timecode support, low and high resolutions, and EDLs. Speed Razor has all the editing tools you need: multiple levels of Undo, keyboard shortcuts, storyboard editing, up to 20 tracks of realtime audio mixing, and field-rendering for effects and transitions. When packaged with Newtec’s Video Toaster and Lightwave, Speed Razor rounds out a top of the line 3D system. EditDV is a great Mac or Windows standalone editing package for DV- based projects. If you plan on doing all your post-production work within EditDV, you’ll find it easy to use yet sophisticated. Now a part of the Media 100 family along with Media Cleaner Pro, look for ex- cellent multimedia authoring integration. However, if you need to in- 151 tegrate with other software applications, EditDV is not for you. Be- cause video in EditDV is kept in a YUV color space (which is a good thing, as far as image quality is concerned), EditDV is not compatible with any of the major plug-in architectures. Media 100 has always been ahead of the competition in terms of ease of in- tegration with QuickTime-based applications. With Media Cleaner Pro and EditDV added to the Media 100 family of products, look for Web-oriented features in the future, including streaming media tools. The dual stream video option offers real-time effects and excellent image quality, although the editing software interface is a bit clumsy compared to packages with Avid-like interfaces (EditDV, Final Cut Pro, and of course, all the Avid products). Ulead Media Studio Pro is a Windows-based editing system that is actu- ally a group of applications: Video Editor, Audio Editor, Capture, CG Infinity, and Video Paint. This makes Ulead Media Studio Pro very easy to use for the novice non-linear editor. Ulead Video Editor offers a robust selection of editing tools but the Audio Editor, with its sim- plistic waveform-style editing, and Capture, which offers only the out- of-date VISCA and V-LAN device control protocols, will leave a little to be desired for those used to professional systems. Avid Xpress & Xpress DV are turnkey systems from Avid that offer a scaled-down version of the Avid Media Composer interface. At the time of this writing, Xpress DV for NT is still in beta testing but Avid Xpress for Macintosh is full-featured and easy to use. The software dif- fers from its high-end cousin by cutting out professional features like multicamera editing, and stripping down the customizability of the in- terface. That said, the keyboard is nonetheless filled with commands for fast and intuitive editing. Full EDL support, multiple resolution MJPEG codecs, component analog video inputs, solid audio editing tools and support for Quicktime importing and exporting make Avid Xpress a great solution for those who don’t want to build their own sys- tem and don’t need Firewire compatibility. Avid Media Composer offers all the features discussed in this chapter and then some. Designed for multiple users and large project management, Avid Media Composer sticks to the high-end market with optional support for SDI I/O but no support for Firewire. Avid offers products for Macintosh and NT that differ significantly. Unfortunately, this DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 152 CHAPTER 7NON-LINEAR EDITING SOFTWARE professional tool comes with a professional price tag. Despite recent price cuts, a turnkey Avid costs upwards of $30,000, not to mention a hefty annual fee for minor upgrades and technical support. A complete rental system, including office space, storage, video decks, other hard- ware and technical support usually runs $2,000–$2,500 a week. DPS Velocity is a Windows-based Pentium III turnkey editing system ca- pable of capturing and outputting uncompressed, D1 quality video. Velocity offers realtime, dualstream playback and effects in the Video for Windows AVI format. The editing interface is similar to Media 100 and has everything you need to edit long-format, complex pro- jects: unlimited video and audio tracks, full-featured audio equaliza- tion and mixing, and multiple levels of Undo. Velocity’s true strength lies in its professional palette of realtime and rendered effects, includ- ing realtime color balancing adjustment through a waveform monitor and vectorscope. Add to that the full array of digital and analog input and output formats on the optional breakout box and the responsive- ness of the system and you’ve got a great solution for projects that need lots of effects. You can also purchase a non-turnkey DPS Reality board and Velocity software to install yourself. TIP Keeping up with the Joneses The list of available editing products changes constantly. Go to www.dvhand- book.com/NLEs for comparison charts and up-to-the minute product de- tails. OTHER SOFTWARE Finally, don’t expect your NLE package to do everything. Depending on the nature of your production, you’ll probably need to buy some additional pack- ages. Logging applications like The Executive Producer, capture utilities like Pipeline’s ProVTR, and software waveform monitors and vectorscopes like Videoscope will help you get ready to edit; compression apps like Media- Cleaner Pro, and film matchback software like FilmLogic will help with your output. Finally, if you’re serious about special effects and image enhancement, you’ll likely need packages like Adobe After Effects, Ultimatte, and Puffin Design’s Commotion. We’ll discuss these products in later chapters. 153 Your editing system is the hub of your production. Everything you record will go into it and come out of it in some way or another. While it’s important to get the features you need, don’t get too hung up with “NLE-envy.” In the end, if you can get the results you need from your package, then it’s probably the right package for you. Summary DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 154 CHAPTER 8 Lighting and Art Directing 155 IN THIS CHAPTER • Lighting Basics • Types of Light • The Art of Lighting • Tutorial • Interior Lighting • Exterior Lighting • Special Lighting Situations • Art Directing • Rolling . . . Although it’s important to choose a good camera for your shoot, the one thing that will have the greatest impact on the quality of your image has nothing to do with your camera. Lighting your scene will have more to do with the qual- ity of your image than any other factor (well, any other factor that you can control, that is). Lighting conveys mood and atmosphere, and is also the key to a successful video-to-film transfer. In this chapter, we will discuss tips for film-style lighting, basic lighting set-ups, lighting for different exterior and in- terior situations, and lighting for special situations, such as blue-screen pho- tography. Because lighting is intrinsically tied to the set location itself, we’ll also discuss set dressing and art direction. FILM-STYLE LIGHTING If you’ve done any research on using video to shoot features, you’ve probably encountered this piece of advice: “If you want your video to look like film, you need to light it like film.” So what’s so different about lighting for film? Traditionally, shooting on film has been technically more challenging than shooting video because film stocks need to be exposed properly, and proper film exposure requires lots of light. Film lighting specialists, known as cine- matographers or directors of photography (D.P.s), have taken advantage of the limitations of film and turned them into ways of precisely controlling the final image. Cinematographers do more than use lots of lights, they use special equipment to control the path of the light, the quality of the lights, the bright- ness of the lights, and the color of the lights. The amount of light coming from every light source is meticulously measured with a light meter in order to Lighting Basics DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 156 [...]... costs around $40 a day to rent and includes something like the following: 2 650-watt lights (with fresnel lenses) 2 single scrims 2 half single scrims 2 double scrims 2 half double scrims 2 sets of barn doors 1 1K or 650W softlight 1 egg crate (used to make the softlight more directional) 3 gel frames 3 light stands DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 162 A Soft key light B Hard key light F IGURE 8 .4 The choice... Duvetine is a black light-blocking fabric that can be used to cover windows A cheaper alternative is to 173 DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 1 74 • • • • • • Exterior Lighting cover them with black plastic garbage bags If the windows are in the shot, you can use ND gels (see the Lighting Gels tip on page 1 64) to tone down the light coming through the windows Turn off lights, especially overhead fixtures If your... nose, the key light is usually placed about 30 45 degrees off-center from the person’s face This position gives definition to the features of the face and allows the shadow from the nose to fall to the side without becoming huge or distorted The diagram back in Figure 8.6 shows a typical three-point lighting set-up Once you’re happy with 167 DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 168 the angle, play with the focus... gels until you’re satisfied with the fill light Figure 8.9 shows the actor F IGURE 8.9 The same actor lit with a fill light only 169 DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 170 illuminated with a soft 1K fill light only, and Figure 8.7c shows a subject lit with key, back, and fill S TEP 4 Now that you have your three lights set up, it’s time to look at the overall scene Are colored areas washing out too white? Are... 8.5) We’ll talk more about how to use these items as we cover traditional interior and exterior lighting F IGURE 8.5 A soundstage with lots of flags on C-stands to control the light 163 DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 1 64 Lighting Gels Gels are an indispensable tool if you’re serious about lighting Rosco and Lee make swatch books like the one in Color Plate 2 that contain samples of the different gels they... conventional indoor light bulb tends to look orange or yellow, whereas the light outside at mid-day tends to appear more white or blue Your camera probably has a setting that lets you choose a light 157 DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 158 bulb icon (for tungsten) or a sun icon (for daylight) By informing your camera whether you are in daylight or tungsten light, you are letting it know the overall color-cast of the... cameras also have f-stop marks on their lenses, or in their viewfinder displays Because of how they relate to exposure in film, f-stops are often used in video to describe increments of light DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 160 to mimic the sun and to light night exteriors have as much as 20,000 watts, whereas a typical household light has a mere 60 watts The professional lights best-suited for use with... image, take a look at Color Plate 7 and Figure 12.10 for an example of clipped white levels.) The effect of clipped whites or blacks is especially distracting when a filmed image is projected 171 DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 172 Interior Lighting Lighting an interior scene can present all sorts of challenges, not the least of which is choosing a location that can facilitate your lights Ideally, you would... than lighting an object—the human face has a lot of angles and it’s easy for bright lights to cast strange and unflattering shadows In addition, bright lights can magnify every little flaw on DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 166 A Key light only B Key light and back light C Key light, back light, and fill light F IGURE 8.7 In this example of three-point lighting, the actor is first lit with a diffuse key... foam core below your subject and off to one side, so that the light of the sun bounces off the white foam core and up into the shadows on your subject’s face This is a variation of three- 175 DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 176 • • • • T IP point lighting—think of the sun as your key light, and the bounced light as your fill Use a C-stand to secure the foam core Use flags, black screens, and diffusion to . editing system they’ll be using so that you save your EDL in the The Final Product DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 148 CHAPTER 7NON-LINEAR EDITING SOFTWARE proper format. If you haven’t selected an. you need from your package, then it’s probably the right package for you. Summary DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 1 54 CHAPTER 8 Lighting and Art Directing 155 IN THIS CHAPTER • Lighting Basics • Types. light (Figure 8.7c). The idea is not necessarily to get rid of The Art of Lighting DIGITAL FILMMAKING HANDBOOK 1 64 Lighting Gels Gels are an indispensable tool if you’re serious about lighting.