Central NY eh? Give me shout if you do shoot around these parts. To answer the other questions - It depends on what format(s) you want and that the post production people can work with. For what I am doing right now, for example, they sent me all the mini-dv camera originals. They kepy 1:1 copies at the production office. *however* the original plan was that they sent me a system with all the material on it. What happened, or what I found out rather, was that the director had not digitized everything. Thusly I got the tapes sent out to me.

As for what they are getting back. I dump out roughs to mini-dv and send them out. The effects are being done in After Effects and they are pulling the edited material off the mini-dv and adding effects, rendering uncompressed, burning to CD and sending them out to me for cutting back into the film. When the film is locked I will be rendering out the entire film to start cutting audio. They will get a mini-dv of the locked picture to start doing color correction on.

When audio is locked it will be mixed. The mixe(s) will be rendered out and more than likely also dumped onto mini-dv. *everything* will be acrchived on a hard drive and that hard drive will also be sent out to them. At that point they will be adding a film look. These needs may be different than yours however, I need to do a full mix as well as a seperate foreign mix for example. Along the line I also need to keep individual mixes for each element. The same could be said for color correction.

Color correction wise I can say right now it would be best to have the colorist work off of orginal elments whih would mean going from the editing timeline vs. a rendered version. It can be done from 'rendered' picture but might be harder/take longer. But workflow is something that will vary. Billy Boy is a good place to start with this question I think. Rate wise, like everyhting else, would be set based on the film - not so much the running time. Most colorists I have ever delt with charge hourly and if the clent wants to sit in that price goes up.

As for what you may not be thinking of - well think about everything you can think of, even if it sounds silly. I mentioned foreign mixes - most indy people don't think of that. At that least you need to end up with a full composite mix and a seperate M&E mix. You also should plan on having a dialog list made up of the final version. Allow for a day of two of pick up shots once the editing has started as well - this could be months after the fact. The film I have been cutting just had pick up shots done a week ago - one year after principal ended. No matter what is on paper that isn't what will end up on film so don't be too offended if the editor/producer/director start moving things around to see what works better. Overall it is better to plan too much than plan too little. Audio - always try and get the best audio you can on the set becasue you may not have access to the actors after the fact, and even if you do they may charge more than you have. (What we used to do is just figure a certian amount of days for ADR in the contract price of the main actors and put that into the cotract.) As easy as it is to say "Don't worry about that we can fix it in post" you should remember that it may cost more to ADR or color correct that scene in post that the few hours it would have taken to shoot it right from the start. (In other words - when you are looking at locations I would also pay to *listen* to them as well)