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Editing ABC Comedy Hank HOLLYWOOD, CA (Editors Guild Magazine) – On Hank, the writers, production staff, producers, and editing staff are under one roof at Building 19 on the Warner Brothers lot. “A lot of shows have multiple systems and multiple editors,” says Hank editor Ron Volk, A.C.E. “We have one system that we share. My assistant comes in at seven when I leave and works all night. When I come back at seven in the morning, we high five each other and off he goes. During the day I’m editing. Since I don’t have an assistant during the day, I do the dubs as well.” Volk uses an Avid Adrenaline 2.8.3, set up in a traditional configuration for offline editing. There’s no shared space or Unity, only a 1-TB G-Technology G-Speed RAID that's expected to hold all 13 shows. More... |
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Editing ABC Comedy Cougar Town HOLLYWOOD, CA (Editors Guild Magazine) 9/25/2009 – In 2003, Scrubs became a beta test site for Apple, working with Final Cut Pro version 4. Cougar Town uses Final Cut Pro version 7, editing in high definition at 720p. “We’re in a bungalow with the Scrubs editors, so there are four editing teams,” says Cougar Town editor Roger Bondelli A.C.E. “Next door are the post-production offices. I’m really enjoying the camaraderie. I'm still getting used to having two shows in the room at once. You’re doing changes on one story line while cutting dailies on another.” More... |
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Editing NBC Comedy Community HOLLYWOOD, CA (Editors Guild Magazine) 9/23/2009 – It's one of the first TV shows to incorporate the Sony XDCAM workflow on Avid. The Sony XDCAM format uses a 23GB Blu-ray disk in a cassette. It stores movie files similar to how flash-based consumer cameras work. “We’re making it in the streamlined production flow that you’d typically see on a student movie, but making it for broadcast,” says editor Peter B. Ellis. “We don’t have to go through the lab anymore to get dailies. We cut in 1080. There’s no online assembly. It’s unnecessary.” More... |
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Editing the CW Thriller The Vampire Diaries HOLLYWOOD, CA (Editors Guild Magazine) 9/15/2009 – The Vampire Diaries uses five Avid Adrenalines running the latest version, 3.5, on a Unity so the assistant editors have their own machines. “Studio executives like to see what the show will ultimately look like, as opposed to the washy flat dailies that will give the colorist the most leeway in creating a look after the fact,” says The Vampire Diaries editor Joshua Butler. “We’re getting these dailies already as Avid files. We copy the MXF files off and we’re good to go. The word ‘digitize’ has become an antiquated term because we’re getting digital media created for us by the telecine house. More... |
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Linux powers The Spiderwick Chronicles SEATTLE, WA (Linux Journal) 11/14/07 —Linux software on Macintosh desktops with Linux renderfarms creates Paramount movie. A Linux-based production pipeline is a perfect choice for a major motion picture like The Spiderwick Chronicles, with it's many goblins and magical creatures. Hollywood has been the realm of Linux since 1997, when the movie Titanic proved that Linux can do big computer graphics jobs like rendering a sinking ocean liner. With an industry tradition of using UNIX-based operating systems for high computation jobs, and due to the better, faster, cheaper, nature of Linux, every major effects or animation movie today is produced using Linux. More in print... |
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British Sells at American Film Market SANTA MONICA, CA (British Weekly) 11/08/07 — "This is a very efficient way for us to meet clients from all over the world", says British sales agent Igor Sekulic with the UK Film Export Office at the American Film Market (AFM). "For me it's been a good year. There's Surveillance. That was in Berlin and has Sean Brosnan, the son of Pierce Brosnan. It's about the society of surveillance after 911 and what happens when a gay teacher has affair." More... |
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Writers Tell Producers Include Us...Later HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 11/05/07 — "Does anyone have a bag of peanuts?" asks writer Howard A. Rodman, "because there's an elephant in the room." That elephant, of course, is the WGA writers strike that came on the same day that the WGA had a previously scheduled panel presentation at the American Film Market. Ironically, that panel is entitled "Keeping Writers Onboard: The Business Case". Panel moderator Rodman and five other writers, all WGA members, discussed how producers and directors could better utilize writers during production. After the panel, Rodman said he would be heading to a WGA picket line at Sunset-Gower Studios. More... |
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Ugly Betty Showrunner Silvio Horta HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 10/25/07 — Ugly Betty creator-showrunner Silvio Horta, of Cuban heritage, brings a fresh interpretation to a classic Cinderella story. The show demonstrates the successful approach to American television in the new century: ethnicity and universality. The ABC hour-long dramedy is set in two worlds: the absurdly chic New York office of the fashion magazine where Betty works and Betty's simple home life in Queens with her widowed father, outspoken sister and young nephew. In reality, the show is shot on the lot at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood and has downtown Los Angeles doubling for cosmopolitan scenes of New York. More in print... |
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Viva...LA Femme Film Festival HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 10/17/07 — "LA Femme is a fantastic film festival", says Rosanna Arquette ("Desperately Seeking Susan"). "It's important that we're celebrating the wonderful work of women filmmakers. There should be more press here, not only Hollywood Today." Lea Thompson (Caroline in the City) has four independent movies waiting for release. "It is still very tough to be any kind of filmmaker in Hollywood" says Lea Thompson. "But, women have the unique ability to persevere and multi-task, which are precisely the qualities that you need to survive in this business." More... |
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The Redford Factor at Skywalker Sound "I'm fascinated by what I call the 'Redford factor'," says Lions for Lambs supervising sound editor Richard Hymns. "When I first see the film, it's not there. But sometime during the post process this evocative, sad, sense of loss comes into the film. With each film I try to pinpoint where it comes in and why, but I'm still baffled. This is the fifth Robert Redford film for me." More... |
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The Editor of ‘Lions for Lambs’ "Selecting the best take of a scene is a visceral choice", says Lions for Lambs picture editor Joe Hutshing. "What's the most believable take? Which take makes you forget you're looking at an actor in a film? Does this take connect you with the character? Is this the funniest reading? Is this the look that gives you a lump in your throat?" More... |
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The Assistant Editor of ‘Lions for Lambs’ One of the biggest challenges for assistant editor David Bilow––Joe Hutshing’s right-hand man––in the post-production work on Lions for Lambs was the film’s structure. “There were three different, seemingly unrelated, storylines throughout this movie,” says Bilow. “I don’t think we’ve ever been on a movie where you could pretty much put any scene in any location and one could argue that it worked.” More... |
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Balls of Fury...Ping-Pong Visual Effects “The whole story is based on these characters playing champion level Ping-Pong”, says Mr. X president and visual effects supervisor Dennis Berardi. “It’s a very fast, extreme sport with spectacular coordination. All the Ping-Pong is digital. Based on our tests we had a high level of confidence we could do it.” More... |
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The Editors of The Office You don’t find too many editors who work “office jobs.” David Rogers and Dean Holland do, however. Only their “office” is The Office, the award-winning NBC comedy series depicting the day-to-day lives of office employees at a Pennsylvania paper company. More... |
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Michael Bay on Editing Transformers fx guide July 9, 2007 by Robin Rowe The furious cutting in the first few minutes of the film, from the huge alien robot attack on an American base in Qatar to Sam’s everyday life in suburbia, keeps the story pumping. Unlike Spider-Man 3, there’s no slowing down to have a Peter Parker character moping over breaking up with Mary Jane. Transformers is constant trills. The rapid MTV-style of cutting is just what everyone expects from a movie directed by Michael Bay. More... |
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Interview: Transformers director Michael Bay MovieEditor Magazine July 2007 Cover Story by Robin Rowe This summer’s next big action movie, Transformers, directed by Michael Bay and produced by Steven Spielberg, hits theaters on July 2nd. Back in 1995, after directing MTV videos and commercials, Michael Bay directed his first feature film, the action comedy hit Bad Boys produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. Bay followed that with other Bruckheimer features including The Rock, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, Bad Boys II, and The Island. Critics ravaged Pearl Harbor, but the movie grossed $450 million, and it became one of the top-selling DVDs of all time. Bay became one of the youngest directors ever to reach the billion-dollar box office mark. More... |
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Transformers...Look! Robots! MovieEditor Magazine July 2007 by Robin Rowe Transformers is the big summer action movie for 2007. If you thought Spider-man 3 was fun, but just too damn long and the same old story, you need to see this movie. In fact, if you wouldn’t dream of going to see Spider-man 3, you still want to see this movie. Transformers accomplishes something that few high-testosterone movies ever do. Appeal to chicks. My girlfriend sat open mouthed, grabbing my arm to whisper, "Look! Look!", during the whole movie. But, that’s jumping ahead… More... |
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Editing Transformers Editors Guild Magazine July 2007 by Robin Rowe Transformers, director Michael Bay’s new film about alien invaders, the rock ’em sock ‘em robots of the 21st century, explodes onto screens this Fourth of July. The story of robots that can metamorphose from ordinary-looking machines into intelligent, mechanical, biped creatures has gone through many transformations itself. Originally a line of toys from Hasbro, Transformers was next a popular television cartoon series running 1984-87. Then came the animated feature Transformers: The Movie in 1986, followed by some two-dozen international TV shows and video games up through June 2007. More... |
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Shrek the Third: Reaching the Green High Definition Magazine July 2007 by Robin Rowe Shrek the Third poses the question, can a bevy of ‘rescue me’ fairy tale princesses transform themselves into Charlie’s Angels to save the lovable ogre Shrek (Mike Myers) from the clutches of evil Prince Charming (Rupert Everett)? How will a pregnant Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz), the clean freak Snow White, the narcoleptic Sleeping Beauty, and the other princesses led by Queen Lillian (Julie Andrews) save Shrek? Why, with reinforcements from Donkey (Eddie Murphy), Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas), Merlin (Eric Idle), and a young King Arthur (Justin Timberlake), of course. At a pre-release screening at the DreamWorks Animation studio in northern California, director Chris Miller introduced a rough cut of the film and talked about how the movie was produced. Some parts required more explanation than others. More... [PDF] |
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Shrek the Third: Linux Feeds an Ogre DreamWorks Animation pushes the limits of CG filmmaking with Linux. All the big film studios primarily use Linux for animation and visual effects. Perhaps no commercial Linux installation is larger than DreamWorks Animation, with more than 1,000 Linux desktops and more than 3,000 server CPUs. "For Shrek 3, we will consume close to 20 million CPU render hours for the making of the film", says DreamWorks Animation CTO Ed Leonard. "Each of our films continues to push the edge of what's possible, requiring more and more compute power." More... |
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Charlotte's Web Spinners Editorial Team Weaves an Anthropomorphic Menagerie. In Charlotte’s Web, the runty pig Wilbur, whose days in the barnyard may be numbered, is befriended by Charlotte, the heroic spider living in the rafters. The book Charlotte’s Web, published by Harper Collins, written by E.B. White and illustrated by Garth Williams, is the best selling children's paperback of all time (45 million copies in 23 languages). While the story may be a folksy one, the technology and post-production magic required to bring this timeless tale to the big screen in the 21st century was a massive undertaking. More... |
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Superman Returns: Avid Does Heavy Lifting Superman was the very first superhero. Before Batman, Spider-Man and even Captain Mar-vel, Superman debuted in Action Comics No. 1 in 1938. The new Warner Bros. epic action-adventure feature film Superman Returns presents some firsts of its own, too. No feature film had ever been shot with digital Panavision Genesis cameras, nor used a daunting dozen Avid systems in post-production.. More... |
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Superman Returns in Super HD "An idea I've always had was telling a 'returns' story," says director Bryan Singer. "I wanted to take it forward, not retell stories." Singer had cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel shoot a screen test with lead actor Brandon Routh, using both 35mm and 70mm. "It woke us up how much more resolution was available in 70mm," says Singer. More... [PDF] |
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Deconstructing Harry's Goblet of Fire Editor Mick Audsley and a Host of Effects Houses Unlock the Chamber of Secrets. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the fourth movie in the Warner Bros. series based on the popular books by J.K. Rowling, features Harry and his Hogwarts friends taking part in a competition with two rival schools of magic. As part of the Triwizard Tournament, Harry must grapple with a giant, fire-breathing Hungarian Horntail dragon and battle underwater demons in the Black Lake. For the underwater sequence, the Britain-based production constructed the deepest underwater filming tank in Europe and the actors learned to scuba dive. More... |
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Editing Frank Miller's Sin City MovieEditor Magazine June 2005 by Robin Rowe Robert Rodriguez left the DGA so he could co-direct SIN CITY with author Frank Miller. SIN CITY, a story of no-holds-barred city noir based on three of Miller's books, was shot with Sony F950 cameras on HDCAM SR format. SIN CITY was edited at Troublemaker Studios in Austin, Texas, by Editors Guild member Rodriguez. "When I read the books, I felt that they were fantastic exactly as they were", says Rodriguez. "I loved that the dialogue didn't sound like movie dialogue, that the visuals didn't look like anything you usually see in movies." More... |
| Created 1999.08.05; Updated 2009.09.26 |