Shooting a DV Feature:  Part 3

"Making a Movie On Your Desktop"

Article by Steve Saylor (3/1/2000)

PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 |

 

Got A Real Bad Case Of The DV-Heebie-Jeebies

Picking up where we left off... Writing the script had taken four months.  We shot the movie in 15 half-days over the course of one month.

And now I would Slice And Dice all that footage (20, one-hour, Mini-DV tapes), and "print-out" a final-cut from my computer.

The camera had been borrowed from our local TV station.  My friend there said they'd have a computer for non-linear editing.  Any day now.  He also hinted that -- any day now -- he might be quitting.

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I'd spent $850 during the shoot.  My goal was to make the movie for under a thousand.  As long as I could use that computer...

But he quit.  Plan A on hold.  It would've been tough anyway, driving back and forth, fitting my schedule in with theirs.  There'd be lots of hours involved (little did I know), and working at home would be so much more conveeeenient.

But where to start?  I turned to DV Magazine for guidance.

I'd need the super-computer -- $6,000.  And I'd need my own Mini-DV camcorder to transfer the footage in-and-out of the computer -- $2,000.  Software, microphone, accessories -- $2,000.  Ten thousand for the whole frick'n kaboodle.

Hello, Mr. Bankerman, if you please, gotta have ten g's.  Go ahead, tighten-up your grip on my short ones.  Ouch!

But now I've got my own movie studio.  Ooowww!  Get down!!

I ripped open the box like it was Christmas.  You're familiar with the three little words that go hand-in-hand with those cherished, new toys?  "Needs Some Assembly"!

It was like opening a can of worms.

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I could bitch and moan throughout this article (which I did throughout every step of the editing) about how complicated and difficult some joker had made this process.

However, you might begin to think I'm a rather disagreeable chap.  Downright surly, perhaps.  But I'm not.  Really!  So give me just a minute to piss and whine right now, and we can get that out of the way.

First of all, if you're fixin' to round up billions of bytes, and then herd these humongous video files through a teensie-weensie wire and onto a disk... Well, my friend, you're just askin' for trouble.

And I'll admit to being the cross-eyed stranger on this new frontier.  No web connection, no e-mail.  To our culture's latest addiction, and to what I'd perceived as a zombie-ridden netherworld filled with useless information and inconsequential chit-chat, I had tried to JUST SAY NO.

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But now the Other Side beckoned.  No, it demanded my presence at Binary Boot Camp.  Then it was off to Re-Boot Camp.  And Reboot again.

Slowly... I began to... chaaaange.  I was becoming one of them.  Language shifted and twisted.  Words lost their meanings.  Took on new ones.

Getting BAK-UP my valley with our BUS SYSTEM used to be a HARD DRIVE.

Sometimes I'd ride with my buddies, MAC and URL.  Or with my PAL, the KERNEL, in his Dodge RAM, and he'd point out his PROPERTIES in this picturesque DOMAIN.

My MEMORY of those days was a blur.  In order to think clearly again, I'd have to UPGRADE.  Oh yes, they had me now.  I was hooked.

Not only was the monkey on my back, but he'd inserted a FIREWIRE into the base of my skull and was busy UPLOADING my HISTORY to the almighty CONTROLLER.

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Still, I did not go willingly.  Daily, I would seek Help, Support.

"What seems to be the problem?" the technician calmly inquired.

"Oh, geez..." I shuddered, my voice shaky, "this computer... just don't seem... to work right!"

"You, again.  Okay, we configured your BIOS, then partitioned your dedicated drive to NTFS..."

"Wait a minute, try to understand, I'm not like you.  I'm just a simple country boy... y'know, cakes on the griddle and all that..."

"Let's specify an IRQ for your serial port and increase the buffer for incoming data..."

"No, really, you don't understand.  I'm not 'of your world'.  You see, I was born on a mountain top... and raised by a herd of elk..."

Then the line would go dead, and I'd silently contemplate my place in this parallel universe alongside Box o' Brains.  My superior sidekick.  The Komputer Kid.

And I would envision the inevitable showdown with Brainiac, a final confrontation of sheer will and utter determination, where I would most-certainly emerge victorious.  Because I would have the sledgehammer!

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You get the idea.  There was a down-side.  And I had to at least... mention it, or I figure there's a good chance you might come lookin' for me.

But please don't let me scare away any aspiring nonlinear desktoppers.  It won't be nearly as hard for you.  You've surfed the web.  You have e-mail. You've downloaded and de-fragged and refreshed.  Hell, you're halfway cyber-fied already.

And remember, this was two years ago.  The PC Pusher-man has now become relatively friendly to the user.  Double-doses of Raid have rendered many of the bugs terminal if not extinct.

Prices have come down.  My $6,000 computer?  These days you can get one that's twice as powerful, efficient, and reliable for half that price.  So now let's get to the good part.

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When you finally get all these components configured, and transfer some footage into the computer, and see it playing on your monitor window... Well, it's like ... how shall I put this... totally bitchin'!

You touch the Arrow Key (left or right), move along frame-by-frame.  Forward or backward.  Scrub through those video and audio tracks.  Freeze your actors with goofy expressions.  Make them sound like Klingons.  What a kick in the butt!  I'd never had so much fun fully-clothed.

Click on the Razor Tool, then on the precise frame where you want to cut.  Wow. Could it be any easier?  And can you imagine, after seeing this in action, cutting and pasting film strips?  A horse and buggy come to mind.  And the word, obsolete.

Now don't get all huffy, you film purists.  You can always transfer your final cut to 35mm.  For about $50,000.

Might be better to give it a film-look right here on video.  Shop it around.  If you've managed to cook up something that whets the commercial palette, and a distributor smells profit, they'll fork over the fee for a transfer.

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I've been working with a PC, but it's pretty much the same thing on a Mac.  No big advantages with this video editing, really.  Unless, of course, you're posing that question to a loyal aficianado from either camp.  You might hit different keys for some of the commands, but that's about it.

Either way, your computer has to have certain components to handle video.  At least a 300 Processor.  64 MB of RAM (128 is recommended).

A/V-rated Hard Drives.  The SCSI drives used to be the only choice (10,000 rpm).  Now everyone's using the Ultra DMA drives (7,000 rpm).  These spin around fast enough to do the job.  At half the price.

A fast video/GRAPHICS card (32 MB).  This sends the picture to your computer monitor.

A video/CAPTURE card.  This transfers your clips from camcorder (or DV deck) to the computer.  When you've finished editing, it transfers the footage back out.  Some of these cards handle the digital signal.  Others work with analog.  Some do both.

Windows 98 or NT.  They both work.  NT works a little better.

Install your editing software ("Adobe Premiere", for instance), and the software that comes along with the Capture Card.  Cross your fingers.  And fire it up!

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The "firewire" is just a little cable that plugs into your camera, then into that "capture card" on the back of your computer.  It keeps the signal in the digital format.

You can also connect two of these cameras together with a firewire, and do some rough editing that way.  That's what I did while waiting for my computer to arrive.  I cut those twenty hours of footage down to nine.

Some of it was pretty darn good, if I do say so myself.  But I had a few problems.  Some shots were way too dark.

In one scene, the actress was wearing a purple dress.  But in the last half of that scene, shot on a different day, the dress looked blue.  My fault.  Hadn't done my job with the White-Balance setting.

When I began working with Premiere and trying out some of the filters, I was heard to cry out, Hallelujah!  The Brightness and Contrast controls worked miracles.  And the Color Balance adjustments made it possible to turn that dress purple again.

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These Mini-Dv camcorders zoom in-and-out just like your basic home-camcorders.  Push that lever gently for a slow zoom.  Push it harder, faster zoom.

However, the slow zoom isn't slow enough for certain shots.  And if you tried to "close-in" very slowly by using a dolly, then you'd have to "pull focus", which is also difficult with these cameras.

Premiere has an Image Pan filter where you can accomplish a slow zoom.  You select an area of your shot for the first frame, another area for the last, and the software lets you pan or close-in accordingly.  Best to use this filter (as with the Crop Filter) for small adjustments.  They may "blur" the image to a degree.

To keep the screen uncluttered, I'd often work with just one monitor window and the Timeline.  But you can have two monitors in that window, just like the conventional editing bay.

One plays back your program from the Timeline.  The other can be used to view your source footage independently.  Set your in-and-out points.  Insert the clip into your program wherever you specify.  At the precise frame.

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"Sound" problems can drive you a little cuckoo in the wee hours of the morning.  One actor's dialogue may have a low-drone in the background from an airplane.

That means you have to find a few seconds of that "room-tone" when the actor is not speaking, make copies of it with the software, and place those copies in an audio track over the other actors dialogue.

Sure, you intended to avoid these problems, to wait until airplanes were out of range.  But when you're battling the clock, and the actors have to get to their real jobs...

So you painstakingly match the hums and drones, then add sound effects on other audio tracks, pray that the system's memory doesn't overload and crash.  (Be sure to save your work every five minutes, and make bak-up projects!)

Add music to your soundtrack.  Nice to have all these audio tracks.  Ninety-nine of 'em.  I never used more than seven or eight.

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I'd put a scene or two into the computer at a time (10 minutes or so).  Work 'em over.  Move them back out to tape (where all my footage was stored).  Delete the clips from the hard drive.  Bring in another 10 minutes.

With a 9 Gig hard drive for video storage -- approximately 30 minutes of footage -- I was always amazed at how fast that space would fill up.

One time I was compiling a scene -- just a few seconds from the end -- when the computer stopped to inform that it was nearly full.  Should it continue or abort?  I was so close... Go for it!

Snap!  Crackle!  Pop and fizzle!  Worst crash ever.  I tried to fix things.  Made them worse.  Four days to get going again.  Had to run a low-level format on the big drive (nine hours), then set-up NT, re-install all the programs.

However, by this point, I seemed to be handling it okay.  A friend with computer-experience had imparted to me this Pearl of Wisdom:  "When dealing with these contraptions, one has to learn to live with a certain level of frustration."

My pulse was steady.  I was coping.  In fact, I was numbing-up quite nicely.  I felt as if I now shared some common ground with one of the characters in my movie.  The guy in the coma.

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Six months passed by.  I had my first rough cut.  Three hours!  God help me!

Another six months came and went.  Under two hours.  Time to try out this "film-look" stuff.  Could the "Cinelook" program really deliver that warm, flickering feeling?  That comforting celluloid simulation?

In Part 4, The Final Chapter (I promise), I'll talk a little more about the editing process, including the different ways people attempt to simulate that Film-Look.

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