NEWS
Post Sundance
New Editing Technology Proved an Unofficial Theme at this Year's Festival
by Norman Hollyn
 Main Street and beyond on the opening day of the 2007 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster |
There seem to be three Sundance Film Festivals in Park City, Utah every January. One is the Sundance of the deal––the Weinsteins and the Fox Searchlights who come looking for next year’s Art House Wonder. The second is the world of the committed film nuts––those who try to see all of the nearly 200 films that are programmed across eight different theatres in two cities (you meet them on the shuttle buses, chatting about how this year’s Crispin Glover film doesn’t measure up to the last one). And then there’s the third group––the people who actually make films and are interested in how other people are creating them. I was among the latter group.
Typically, the writers and directors are at the forefront of the festival. But there are also a sizable number of post-production professionals in evidence, contributing their knowledge and experience––in panels, workshops, Q&A sessions and the restaurants and bars spread throughout the small town, which expands to the point of bursting during the festival every mid-winter.
If there was a theme among directors, producers and post-production professionals at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival––and there wasn’t––it would have been how filmmakers, both big and small, are using increasingly new technology to extend editing schedules, allowing changes to be made later and with more detail than ever. Though a mixed blessing, these tools enable editors and their collaborators to deepen and extend the creative process.
It is almost a cliché, at this point, to say that the new digital tools are making filmmaking available at a higher level and lower budget than ever before. But with the explosion of cheaper visual effects, more sophisticated and less expensive sound and picture editing software, the acceptance of HD and HDV in the production process, and increasingly varied methods of distribution, it is becoming apparent that films can be created in ways that would have been both unthinkable and horrific just two years ago.
No better example of this was a program called Film2Music, which ran in the mini-mall basement affectionately called “New Frontier Theatre on Main,” the location of booths and seminars for companies like Adobe, Avid, Kodak, Panasonic and Sony. While those tech and media groups showed the products they manufacture (with an emphasis on the independent films, of course), Film2Music took a more unique approach. Twelve filmmakers, who had been narrowed down from 94 entrants, contributed one short film apiece to the Film2Music program. Each film was inspired by (and synchronized to) a variety of tracks from independent composer Kubilay Under’s album, Cinematic.
Complementing Under’s New Agey, trippy songs, most of the filmmakers took off into flights of dissolving abstract imagery, which used many of the tricks in their nonlinear editing effects palettes. Only one or two of them developed concrete stories. Tellingly, the competition winners were the ones with the clearest stories––and all of them play better on the internet (www.cinematiccd.com/ films/indexwinners.html) than they do on the big screen. But the message was clear––with filmmakers leaving the chemical laboratory behind, it is now within the power of even the most abstract or nonlinear filmmaker to quickly, easily and inexpensively make movies that can be viewed by a wider audience than ever before.
 Editor Andy Keir. |
On the other hand, Andy Keir’s editing on the film Dedication uses technology sparingly to delve into its main character’s thought processes––and succeeds. Keir describes Justin Theroux’s directorial debut as a film about an OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) children’s book writer (Billy Crudup), who struggles to adapt when he is forced to accept a new illustrating partner (Mandy Moore) for the sequel to his successful book about a beaver. The film, which was shot and finished in 35mm, and edited on an Avid, used speed changes and flash frames to show Henry’s mood disorder.
“There may have been one or two times when we had to create a flash frame that didn’t exist in camera,” Keir says in an interview with Editors Guild Magazine. “We would just steal a flash from a similar-looking frame.” But most of the time, according to Keir, they used the film just as it came out of the camera. “When I read the script and talked to Justin about the effects, I said, ‘Don’t leave the flash frames to me; do it in the cameras; turn the camera on and off.’ They’re just much more beautiful. The fact is that the camera is going to show more frames of that transition from on to off…the flash can be more beautiful and you can do more with it.”
 A scene from Dedication. Courtesy of Plum Pictures |
Theroux and Keir utilized lower-budget technology in much more valuable ways to prepare for the shoot. “Justin would take photos in the locations where he was actually going to shoot,” explains Keir. “He shot video; he actually shot footage with stand-ins on a little digital camera. When I went to see him, we sat down and had a long meeting; he showed me visual references and played music for me. He was incredibly prepared and had a really strong vision of what he wanted the film to be.”
Likewise, David Michael Maurer, who edited the Sundance award winner (for its lead actress, Tamara Podemski) Four Sheets to the Wind, directed by Sterlin Harjo, is also a fan of planning ahead. He used the preparation period on the film, shot and finished on HD, to help simplify the special effects he needed to help tell the story. The editor, who cut his teeth on reality television like The Apprentice and American Idol, found that his background in the fast-paced, quick-decision world of those shows helped him to create a smooth post-production pro-cess.
 Sundance Best Actress winner Tamara Podemski in Four Sheets to the Wind. |
First, there was the technical aspect. Knowing the film would shoot and complete in HD, Maurer chose to edit with two Avid Xpress Pro systems while shooting was done in Texas, and during the offline in Los Angeles. He would then use the Avid Symphony Nitris to create transition effects and for color correction. He also researched frame rates ahead of time, which enabled the production to confidently decide to shoot at 23.98 frames per second.
“It was so smooth; I’m so glad we did it,” Maurer told Editors Guild Magazine. “With 23.98, you can skip the sample rate changes and you’re essentially working at a video speed right off the bat. Having everything in a native video speed was really useful, especially for effects. And it made the process of conforming the movie very simple. There were no issues.”
Then there were the aesthetic choices. Maurer, with his background using effects on The Apprentice, was able to easily experiment with complex visual effects. “There was a section early on in the script that was an exposition piece, with a lot of layered moving video inside of frames; lots and lots of layers,” he relates. “I tried it and we were able to decide to cut it out because we found that we didn’t need the exposition at that point in the film.”
Maurer was able to use his experience with the technology to create effects that were necessary to help craft the story. “All of our effects are invisible,” he explains. “For instance, we would take two different performances in two different takes and use the Animatte function to rotoscope out a character and replace him back into the scene so it looks like it’s one take.
 David Michael Maurer at work on Four Sheets to the Wind. |
“To make the edit smoother, we’d also use that same tool to allow characters to cross the frame in the foreground to complete an action––subtle things like that,” he continues. “If we didn’t have those tools, we would have had to move the edit––which would have ruined the tempo of what we were doing.”
There were other events scattered throughout the festival that were designed to raise the awareness of filmmakers to newer ways of telling their stories. For example, Avid showed a new tapeless workflow utilizing Sony XDCam HD, Ikegami’s EditCam or Panasonic P2 cameras. These technologies capture images directly to computer files on small hard drives or disks. Using newer input techniques, Avid applications editor Derek Benton demonstrated how filmmakers on location can literally shoot their scenes, copy the files to their editing machines (such as small laptops) and, while continuing to shoot coverage, have an editor perform a first cut nearly in real time.
Across the hallway at the New Frontier, Rob Legato was one of the speakers at a series of classes run by Adobe that emphasized the company’s integrated Production Suite. Using examples from feature films and commercials, Legato, an Academy Award-winning visual effects supervisor (Titanic) who has been working on major motion pictures for years, gave a demonstration of how he can create effects quickly, cheaply and––contrary to prevailing wisdom––with less planning than one would expect.
Legato described an occasion on last year’s Martin Scorsese film The Departed, when editor Thelma Schoonmaker, ACE, was forced to use an insert shot of a character’s hands holding a photograph in which the angle didn’t quite match the eyeline that was needed. Months passed and, on the day that the film was due for its digital intermediate filmout, Scorsese looked at the shot and pronounced it unusable. With 30 minutes to spare, Legato ran into his garage, shot a pair of hands at the proper angle, used After Effects to drop the necessary photograph into the hands, output the digital files to a FireWire drive, and was able to insert the shot into the HD digital intermediate just in time. “My supervisor wanted to kill me,” Legato admits. “But it enabled us to move quickly to satisfy the needs of the productions that we work on.”
There were also a number of Sundance events at which attention was paid to the newer distribution methods that are influencing how filmmakers post their work as well. Panels across the festival focused on the influence of short film Internet sites, social networking, and how sites like YouTube and iTunes are forcing changes in the traditional major distribution and television network model. Shorter films, with more variable formats, were seen as inevitable, which will surely lead to changes in the way that all post-production professionals work.
All across Sundance 2007, the three varieties of attendees were watching, using and talking about the tools that are available today and those that are coming in the near future. The overwhelming message was that change is not going to slow down––it’s coming faster and faster and it will eventually affect all levels of the industry, as sure as the arrival of sound affected silent motion pictures.
Podcasts from some of the panels and Sundance events can be downloaded at: http://festival.sundance.org/2007/festival/podcasts.aspx.
Norman Hollyn is a Picture Editor and an Associate Professor and head of the Editing Track at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. He is also a partner in the Internet development firm Hollyn Rinsler Consulting, Inc. He can be reached at hollyn@usc.edu.
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