Independent Film edited in Vegas...

xjerx wrote on 2/8/2010, 8:16 AM

Shot this through 2009 with my church and old high school. (my mom's the principal).

I wrote, DP'd, directed, produced, edited...and pretty much everything else. All the actors were volunteer and none had ever acted before. We had a budget of...oh yeah...we didn't. :o)

Was shot on my RED. Edited R3D files natively on the timeline. Worked pretty flawlessly. My computer is a 5 year or so old BOXX with dual 3.2 Xeons...2 GB RAM. I was only able to view it in real time in preview mode, which was a SD resolution. Overall I was happy with the RED+VEGAS experience. There's obviously some tweaking to be done, but even so it allowed me to get my job done. Thanks Vegas! (now lets work on some redrocket support!)

Check out the trailer. (Although, its not really a trailer in the normal since but its close enough. ....Also, also, its a faith based film, so if you have problems with Jesus watch at your own risk.)

http://masqueradethemovie.com/MEDIA.html

Thanks

Jeremiah

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Comments

Jay Gladwell wrote on 2/8/2010, 11:52 AM

"It implied that Tiger's religion was at the root of the problem"

No, that is not what his statement implied. In fact, he was very specific, when he said, "I don't think that faith [Buddhism] offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith."

That is a true statement. There are no references in Buddhism to the kind of "forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith." That is a true and accurate statment.

EDIT:

As requested by the Admin, I will not attempt any further clarifications to the above posts.

musicvid10 wrote on 2/8/2010, 12:02 PM

"Folks, please keep religious opinions and/or judgments out of the discussion, or we will be forced to remove this thread. Thank you for your cooperation."

I think you should remove it.

xjerx wrote on 2/8/2010, 1:29 PM

It's incredible how fast a thread can go off topic...

xjerx wrote on 2/8/2010, 1:45 PM

...but seriously...lets keep all comments from here on out focused on the video world and not the religious world...i don't want my thread deleted :o)

thanks

jeremiah

farss wrote on 2/8/2010, 4:42 PM

It certainly ticks all the boxes for me both vision and sound. Bravo, excellent effort especially for a no budget production. I take my hat off to the director for getting the performances he did from the talent.
I found the scene where the crowd rushes onto the court a tad overdone but not enough to make me cringe. It's obviously hard not to have a large bunch of extras not ham it up a bit and getting them to do a zillion takes until they get it right is not something I'd contemplate.

I was really impressed with the quality of the audio. I hear a lot of horrors in no budget productions and you had none that I noticed.

Now my only concern and please take this as being said in good faith is your product placement is too blatant. Of course it's hard to judge that from just a trailer. I'd suggest seeing as how you've done so much good work you show it to test audiences from outside and see how they react.

Bob.

TLF wrote on 2/9/2010, 12:07 AM

[Cattle prod mode ON]

How can a production be no budget?

Who paid for the equipment? Surely it wasn't stolen or pirated? Everything has a price...

[Cattle prod mode OFF]

;-)

xjerx wrote on 2/9/2010, 5:12 AM

:o) All the gear belongs to me..so I just didn't charge myself rental.

I did pay for food here and there...but I don't count that as it doesn't have anything to do with the quality of the film other than happy fed actors.

jeremiah

TLF wrote on 2/9/2010, 5:58 AM

"Nothing's free these days!"

Dach wrote on 2/9/2010, 6:22 AM

Lets not forget that at the end of the day... if the film is for profit...it doesn't matter what NLE was used to cut it. I think its very fair to say Avatar was not grossly succussful because of AVID.

How much of the "wow" factor is actually done by a third party application in any NLE? Most I would predict.

Lets say After Effects never exisited, would Premiere have the same leg up on Vegas?

Congrats on the accomplishment of making your film. All the best in getting it distributed. I am going through the same process with my film as well... and we are having headaches with Final Cut.

Chad

PerroneFord wrote on 2/9/2010, 8:00 AM

It may not be fair to say that Avatar was successful because of Avid, but it might be fair to see that it would never have seen the light of day without it. There is no other NLE on the planet that could have handled its 48TB (finished size) seamlessly, with metadata.

A lot of the processsing came from a dozen VFX houses. There was real film, there was HD, there was all manner of other media to deal with. As the primary editor on Transformers 2 said... "at this level of the game, no one would risk doing it on anything else. The stakes are too high."

farss wrote on 2/9/2010, 8:32 AM

"There was real film"

Not a single frame of it as far as I know. All live action was shot on F950 / Fusion cameras.

One remarkable thing about it from watching the How It Was Made short doco was it was technically edited before it was shot.

Bob.

TLF wrote on 2/9/2010, 8:36 AM

There is no other NLE on the planet that could have handled its 48TB (finished size) seamlessly, with metadata.

How do you know?

Not a dumb question, by the way. Just because a Transformer editor said "no one would risk doing it on anything else" does not mean that no other system could handle it. It just means they knew Avid could handle it.

PerroneFord wrote on 2/9/2010, 8:44 AM

What other editor can:

1. Address that space?
2. Seamlessly integrate the formats on the timeline
3. Play it out reliably
4. Render it

Do all the above repeatably, on time, and on budget? Mind you this edit started in 2007. ProRes had either not been released or was brand new out of the box.

PerroneFord wrote on 2/9/2010, 8:45 AM

I thought some of the live sequences in New Zealand had been done on film. Maybe I am misremembering.

Jay Gladwell wrote on 2/9/2010, 9:01 AM

"Maybe I am misremembering."

That reminds me of an exchange between the two leadings characters, Pete and Dorinda, in the movie Always.

P: Did I forget your birthday?

D: No, you just remembered it wrong.

TLF wrote on 2/9/2010, 9:37 AM

What other editor can...

I've no idea, Peronne, and I don't think you do either. Unless we know all the other editors available, and have had experience of them, neither of us can answer that question.

I think it highly unlikely that the entire collection of footage was loaded onto the timeline to be edited. I suspect that it was edited scene by scene. I support that statement with this quote: One of the things that's different about the movie is that right there on set is an editor with an entire Avid editing bay--so they were editing as they were shooting. (from http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/diane-mehta/diane/interview-james-cameron)

From the sound of it, there wasn't much need to mix formats on the timeline.

PerroneFord wrote on 2/9/2010, 10:17 AM

I could also link you to the article from the MPEG Editor's article on the movie where this is refuted...

https://www.editorsguild.com/magazine.cfm?ArticleID=805

Jason Gaudio: During production, we had as many as 19 Avid Symphonies and Adrenalines and two Avid Isis systems, one 40 tb and the other 24 tb. Our main editing room was in Malibu, which could accommodate three editors and up to seven assistants. During virtual production, we also maintained a “stage” cutting room with Adrenalines for three editors and as many as nine assistants in Playa del Rey. At our busiest, we had two capture stages and one live-action stage shooting with assistants digitizing and editors cutting in unison. During live-action production, we maintained editing rooms in both New Zealand and Los Angeles. Jim was editing in New Zealand, while John and Steve stayed in LA.

You don't run 19 Symphonies and Adrenalines and 2 Isis systems to cut a scene at a time...

There is also this:

http://techtalkradio.com.au/the-making-of-avatar.php

“Avatar” was cut on Avid Media Composer systems running software version 2.8.4. The editing team did not want to risk upgrading their software in mid-project despite the fact that Media Composers have been able to playback 3D sequences directly from the timeline ever since version 3.5. So when they wanted to view the 48 terabytes of footage on their Avid Isis storage system holding both left and right eye tracks, they had to run both dailies footage and cut sequences through a QuVIS Acuity 3D playback platform. More

The top two tracks on the Avid timeline were for left and right eye. We only monitored the left eye when cutting, while making sure the right eye was in sync.

And this killer quote from Post Magazine:

http://www.postmagazine.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=8F3A7027421841978F18BE895F87F791&tier=4&id=F7FFAE7C5E4147DFBCFF10D3DB94EC6C

"Rivkin leans over and taps the space bar on his Avid system and the play head starts moving. In the timeline all 24 tracks of video and audio are being used. At the top of the timeline the completed film plays back on a giant Panasonic flat screen. “It’s still missing a few effects shots here and there, but it’s mostly done,” he says, explaining that the track directly under what we are seeing is the other eye of the 3D experience. The other tracks of that master, the visual stereo final cut is the history of the project, like rings on a tree or layers in an ice core, every track moves us back in time.
"

Cliff Etzel wrote on 2/9/2010, 10:23 AM

TLF wrote on 2/9/2010, 11:15 AM

I think that if I have 21 suites running Vegas, I might be able to edit a $250M film, too.

Just how many tracks of MIXED FORMAT video was that final system playing? I see only reference to 24 tracks of audio and video, of which two tracks are explicitly referred to as video, and only one of those was actually playing.

I'm sure that if I created video files optimised for use in Vegas I would have good playback results too. ;-)

---------------

Back to the OP - congratulations for making a film using Vegas.

BudWzr wrote on 2/9/2010, 11:17 AM

Fast Company, or any other magazine doesn't give away free advertising. If your company name was shown in such a way that it's bolstered by association, then you PAID a fee.

PerroneFord wrote on 2/9/2010, 11:19 AM

"I'm sure that if I created video files optimised for use in Vegas I would have good playback results too. ;-)"

Well go post how to do that on LarsHD's thread. He's looking for that kind of help trying to get even ONE track to play stutter free.

BTW, which format is optimised for Vegas?

CorTed wrote on 2/9/2010, 11:41 AM

I am no expert here, but I think it is not quite equal to compare an AVID suite with various hardware components to help with acceleration etc. used to put together Avatar to a single instance of Vegas 9.
They are obviously not in the same league.

Regarding this independent film. Congrats on a job very well done within the powers of Vegas.

Ted

PerroneFord wrote on 2/9/2010, 12:04 PM

You're right. There is no comparison to Vegas...

However, I would certainly entertain an NLE to NLE comparison to see how things stack up.

jwcarney wrote on 2/9/2010, 12:26 PM

Getting back on track...
That trailer and scene are far better than anything done so far by the people who made "Facing the Giants" and "Fireproof", though i do wonder how someone afford a Red package and call the movie no budget, even if you own the camera.

At least you have the courage to tackle a subject many in the Christian community are afraid to touch.

BTW, I agree with others, faith based is generic. For one of my upcoming movies I"ve begun using the term 'Chrisian themed". Even if there are seemingly 10,000 different sects anymore.

Congratulations, and don't get the big head, hehhe.