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Advice on a rough assembly


GeorgeSelinsky

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Hi everyone,

 

I used to have a horrible habit - I'd often do a rough cut of my work right

away, without ever bothering to do a proper rough assembly first. I don't think

that's very healthy because it sort of forces you into a cutting pattern

right away.

 

I would like to do it properly this time, do a rough assembly of my footage

and then proceed cutting away. I'm cutting digitally on Premiere, a feature

length film with about 12 hours of total footage (the end result probably

will be 2 hours long or so). I am right now finishing the process of

breaking down each one of my ten minute window dub video files (transfers

from telecine) into individual shots, logging them, and placing them in 95

different bins. I have temp sound that is synced to picture (I shot this

whole thing using a loud Arri IIc, so the sound is a temp for dubbing).

 

Being that I never did a rough assembly before, what actually goes into one?

I have a lot of takes where I might want to use part of one take and part of

another, where one take is longer than the other, etc. I also have overlap,

i.e. I did five lines of dialog in a master, two lines each in a crosscut,

one line in a closeup. How do I "assemble" this? From what I understand in a

rough assembly you're not supposed to break up a shot into two, right? Or am

I wrong? Should I do crosscuts or just wait for the master to play, then

play the crosscut shots, then the CU's? Should I put in multiple takes with

the understanding that I may choose one over another?

 

Any help is very appreciated in advance,

 

- George.

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I tell people to always start by simply stringing their masters one after the other, to simply get a sense of how the story is playing out. This can give you a general indication of where one section of the film may be lagging or another may need stretching out. There are multiple pacings that need to be paid attention to, and far too often people only think about the pacing within a scene without thinking about the pacing of a series of scenes together or a movie in its entirety. A scene that appears properly paced out and edited on its own can appear interminably dull and slow when positioned in its place within the whole movie. Start thinking large, about how you want the whole movie, then general sections, then specific sequences to flow. This will be a far more accurate guide towards leading you to what's important.

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Thanks Mitch, you've made a very good observation there.

 

I still caught myself doing edit points when I began a rough assembly. I have to bite my hand (kind of like Peter Sellers in Dr Strangelove) in order to keep myself from doing that. Digital editing makes it so simple too, just drag the slider around and pop - it's there.

 

Unfortunately I don't have masters of everything, so I figured I'd justtake the takes I'm sure to use and string them sort of together in some order, leaving out the cutaways of course.

 

The thing I'm most afraid of is my usual tendency. I start putting it together and then I just get ideas and begin tinkering, tinkering, without moving forward! That's ho w it always is with me and editing, unfortunately. Before you know it I'm playing with the trimming window and even doing fades in/out, instead of moving to the next scene.

 

- G.

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I think the essence of Mitch's suggestion is a great point - try to see the entire story as early as possible.

 

However, the concept of "assembly" and such that you are talking about in your original post is really ingrained more in the days of flatbeds than of digital assembly. i don't know if you've ever edited by moviola or flatbed - but it is sort of like the difference of loading film into a mag with a black bag on location verses throwing a dv tape into the camera. There were a lot of thing which have become antiquated.

 

Here's my thought on an approach. Don't ever fight your instinct to cut something together if you see it and it's there - that's your gutt telling you something and you should listen to it. Now, if you end up doing nothing but that or have to search for elements - then forget it at the beginning and move on.

 

The first thing I'd get done is all the assistant work - get all the scenes into bins or projects and organized into where each sub bin contains all the takes at the micro level and whatever other organizational format works with your footage. Once that's done, I would watch everything and see what your golden footage is - the moments that are perfect - because you're going to want to keep those in. Then I would build each scene making sure it includes the golden moments and then making sure that the rest includes the entire scene. Cut the script first - don't shorten anything yet. But do this quick and get through all the scenes until you can see the whole movie. Remember - you are going to go back later - you need to watch you whole movie.

 

Since you're not splicing and retaping the film, you can cut as much as you want with no problem - so you don't have to limit yourself just to masters. But - you do want to see what your movie is as early as possible. So you'll have now and excessively long cut and you watch this a few times start to finish. Then you identify what the problem areas are for the entire film. Until those are figured out, all your detailed editing is moot because it will likely have to be cut out or changed later becaue people don't understand that the guy in the blue suit handed the letter to the girl in the red dress etc.

 

have fun.

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Thanks Mark, you've also made s ome helpful points.

 

Yeah, I've had the displeasure of cutting on a steenbeck. Not a task for the light of heart. Half of the bitch was dealing with the mag sound, which I can't see myself ever going back to (I mean, now if I need a sound all I gotta do is digitize the audio, versus booking mag transfer time!)The system of editing was superior to linear by far (thank God that's RIP pretty much these days), but having just cut and logged 2900 shots, I am certainly glad NLE's exist.

 

Concerning the instinctive cut, I am glad you mentioned that. If I see something then it shouldn't be ignored - you're right. I thought for a while that a rough assembly has to have darn near everything in there. I'm also a bit hesitant to decide on a take at this point. Sometimes one take may be good, sometimes another. I was tempted to string along multiple takes but I think that will get in the way of watching the entire movie. I guess the assembly is sitting somewhere between having organized dailies on one end and a first rough cut on the other.

 

Any more thoughts always welcome. Thanks again,

 

- George.

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There's always the Oliver Stone method. He likes the editors to string together EVERY circle take, even if there may only be a few seconds of interesting material. His first "assembly" is something like 15 hours long! Then he'll sit there with his editors in a screening room, slowly plowwing through everything to remind himself and inform them what he liked or disliked about each moment, recalling his visceral reaction from the set. It's a fairly epic step, but at least for him it helps to reaquaint him with the material and get a sense of what's really on the film instead of what he thinks was captured.

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