NEWS
Avid Talks Indie to New York's Post Professionals
by Adam Wisniewski photos courtesy of Matthew Feury/Avid
 Suzy Elmiger |
For three years, Avid has gathered West Coast editors together to discuss post-production technology and techniques through its “Avid Insider” sessions. This past summer, its first New York event, entitled “Avid For Indie Production,” drew more than 100 professionals to the Tribeca Performing Arts Center at Manhattan Community College for a presentation of the company’s latest software-only release of Media Composer and a panel discussion featuring six prominent editors and post-production professionals.
Michael Phillips, Avid’s senior market solutions manager, began the evening with a software demo tailored towards using Media Composer in an independent filmmaking environment. One feature that drew interest from the group included ScriptSync, which unites a typed script to a project’s spoken dialogue, rendering individual takes searchable by keyword. Phillips also spent several minutes describing Avid’s DNxHD 36 codec, which allows high-definition offline editing within recent standard-definition storage parameters, offering up director Jon Favreau’s Iron Man, due next summer, as one of the Hollywood films currently utilizing the codec.
 Carrie Puchkoff |
The ensuing discussion moved quickly into a Q&A after five speakers—editors Craig McKay and Suzy Elmiger, post-production supervisor Jennifer Lane, post-super/associate producer Leslie Jacobowitz, and assistant editor Carrie Puchkoff—provided short personal introductions. Joshua Astrachan, a longtime producer for director Robert Altman, moderated the conversation, which veered from technical questions to general exchanges about how digital editing has affected the panelists’ careers.
McKay responded to a query about the ease of digital editing with a description of some of his work on Warren Beatty’s Reds (1981). “During the two years we edited Reds, Dede Allen and I used a very early system that Ray Lovejoy, Stanley Kubrick’s editor, developed,” he explained. “We made the Moviola into a film train and we shot the dailies off it. We also had another camera that was doing footage count, and we put it on Beta. We had these Beta decks, and every line of dialogue had a footage count on it and a tape, so I could punch up every line.
“I don’t care if I ever touch another piece of film in my life, because I’m having such a great time digitally, and I couldn’t be more grateful that this thing came along,” McKay concluded. “Especially at my age, because there used to be a big physical aspect to editing, and that has totally disappeared.”
 Craig McKay |
Lane explained that the Avid works well in a small, indie environment, but it is vital in the large post facility because it provides content to all areas contributing to a project. “Nothing can get done without its efficiency,” she said. “Every area is getting something out of the Avid, and it all syncs up flawlessly.”
“We all freelance, essentially,” added Puchkoff. “And so far, I’ve worked only Avid jobs––a few with Leslie and one with Jen. So, there are familiar elements, but the one constant is that I’m always working on an Avid project. That familiarity gives me a lot of confidence in the work that I do.”
Lane also stated that the filmmakers present should consider their distribution method before anything else. “You need to ask questions about where you want to end up before you start production,” she explained. “A low-budget project could be output to film or screened in HD, and you can do the HD conform in the Avid yourself.”
A question about audio mixing prompted Astrachan to comment that he often prefers the Avid’s temp mix to a film’s final, produced mix. “It has an intimacy,” he said. “On several pictures, I feel like I’ve lost the intimate nature of the film because the final audio is buffed up. We test screened A Prairie Home Companion (2006) with music right out of the Avid.”
Astrachan also added several anecdotes about working with director Altman, who died in November 2006. Altman moved exclusively to HD to shoot The Company, his 2003 film about ballet dancers. “He wanted to be able to shoot the dancers for long periods of time,” explained Astrachan. “He wanted that same flexibility for similar reasons in A Prairie Home Companion, not just for the musical performances on stage.
“The longest takes in the film are of Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin and
Lindsay Lohan downstairs in the dressing room,” Astrachan continued.
“It looks like the actors don’t know their lines in that scene
because Meryl and Lily were making it up. They had figured that they were
only going to shoot three pages that day—it was day one—so they
only learned three pages. Bob decided to shoot nine pages in 18 minutes on
HD, and it changed the nature of the film.”
Avid plans to host quarterly New York Insider events, with future topics selected
by regional users.
Adam Wisniewski is a freelance writer who covers television and film technology, consumer electronics and video games. He lives in Brooklyn, and can be reached at adam@smob.com.
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