Well we have finished shooting our pick ups, so I am now preparing for the visual effects of our movie. While I work on the vfx
Michael is starting to work on ADR (automatic dialogue replacement) and Adam is starting work on Foley effects.
I have been thinking about how to construct our workflow. Michael has all the production files on his desktop, but I need to be able to do all my VFX on my laptop, (I know) across town. And being a small start up company, we don’t have any networked storage, so there’s even issues of getting files to Adam in Fresno.
The file transfer was our easiest problem to solve. Adam and I do most of our communicating over Google talk, so he suggested we use its file transfer feature. We just had Michael create a Gmail account and download the Gtalk IM client. Now we can share files online. Very cool, and effective.
The other problem is the final editing, vfx, and ADR/Foley are all being worked on, so we need a way to stay organized, and move updates back and forth between the three of us.
The easiest way of doing the project would be to completely edit the movie and lock it off, and then send it out for effects, and sound. As I finished vfx shots I could send my After Effects comps to Michael. He would then replace the footage in the master timeline with my comps. As he recorded the new dialogue with the actors he could through it into the master timeline and line it up with the footage. And as Adam sends his foley sound clips in, Michael can drop them on top of the temp audio we have from location.
The problem is of course time. We don’t have time to let Michael finish editing. We need the movie to be completely finished in the next four to six weeks. We have finished about half the editing, so those scenes have been locked off, and I am working on them. Michael can still add in my AE comps, but as he finishes new scenes I will copy the updated premier pro project file to my production Hard Drive, overwriting the old one. We will repeat this until finished. As you can see file management becomes extremely important.
Another workflow I considered using, and even walked through it with one scene, is to export out each clip as a Tiff sequence. This approach had to major problems that caused me to ditch it form the former solution. First it required me to set up separate exports for each clip. This meant I had to create all the folder structures first, then set each export in Adobe’s batch renderer, (Software added in CS4, that I both love, and hate) then let it render out all the frames. Basically too much set up, and time. Plus all the effects and color correction are permanently rendered in on export. To make a change I would have to re-render an entire shot. Multiply that by a few times and you’ll countless wasted hours.
The other problem is when I export each shot out of premier I am compressing them again, which causes me to loose color information I want for color correction, and the final color grade.
So I spent half the day going through my first scene creating slap comps for each shot that needs some effects work done. When I say slap comp I am talking about doing as little work as possible on a shot to get a sense of what the final will look like. Then I can go back and fines it until it looks good.
This way I can see the shots inside of premier pro’s timeline. Using this method I can watch the comps in context of the shot. If I thinks a shot is only 80% of the way done and plan of spending my weekend finishing, then see it cut into the movie and realize it is only up there for a very short time and looks fine, then I just saved myself a weekend.
I learned this technique from Garth Edwards. He did this on a project for BBC about Attila the Hun. He then taught a class at fxphd.com
So begins the perilous journey of creating the effects of Vestige. (The new name of our movie) Even as I write this Adobe has found a wrench to throw into my planes. More about that Later.
Posts
