Cutting Indies: today's new wave of video formats makes editors extra careful not to wipe out

Post, June, 2004 by Christine Bunish

Many of today's most engaging and entertaining feature films come from independent sources. Their editors--sometimes the filmmakers themselves--play key roles in shaping the films into audience-pleasing and audience-moving motion pictures of every budget and genre.

AN ORDINARY KILLER IN HIGH DEF

When Anthony Hornus brought the true crime story, An Ordinary Killer, to Lansing, Ml's Collective Development, Inc. (www.cdifilms.com), it had just gotten an ending. The cold case abduction, rape and murder of Hornus's high-school classmate in Owosso, Ml, in 1973 had recently been solved.

Co-owner Jeff Kennedy directed with Hornus while co-owner DJ Perry produced with Curtis Hall. Perry also played the key role of one of the detectives who supplied the movie's narration. The feature also stars Charlie Matthau, Terry Jernigan, Dennis Haskins, Dan Haggerty and Terence Knox.

An Ordinary Killer was shot in 24p HD, with equipment from Mid America Cine Support at many of the actual locations related to the crime. "It was our first HD picture," says Perry. "We've shot every format except 70mm, and we're very happy with HD. I believe it's the direction we're headed in from now on."

Editor John McGraw, who has cut on Media 100 systems for the past decade, had edited three previous CDI features. "This was the first time I'd done an HD movie," he says. "Forest Post downconverted the footage to Beta SP, I imported it into Media 100, and from there it was a normal edit."

A normal edit maybe, but thanks to the luxury of time the movie was continually refined in the course of eight different cuts. McGraw's first challenge was to get the picture's running time down from about three hours (the final RT is one hour 52 minutes). Then "the script went out the window," Perry reports. "We thought it would be more interesting if the audience took part in the investigation and we slowly revealed the killer instead of having a linear Columbo-style story."

McGraw's 30-frame EDL was given to editor Scott Bakkila at Forest Post Productions in Farmington Hills, MI, a full-service HD facility. "We converted it to a 24-frame EDL with a proprietary program designed by our engineer Jim Leggett," he explains. "It's important to get your post facility involved early on to avoid certain [pitfalls]. For instance, when you edit from a downconverted 30-frame source, you are essentially editing from some timecode numbers that don't really exist. If you don't bear that in mind while you're editing, some of your edits can be up to two frames off when converted back to 24p."

Bakkila used Avid|DS HD to conform the movie and add visual effects, including a distinctive and dramatic look to a dream sequence. He tapped Digital Vision's Valhall for extensive online realtime HD color correction. "I color corrected every single shot because a lot of the footage was run-'n'-gun with different lighting scenarios within a scene," he explains. "HD gives you a lot of leeway to be able to boost that and correct it."

Forest Post also did the HD MPEG-2 encoding and surround mix for digital projection. An Ordinary Killer, which premiered at the Owosso Theater last November, is hitting the film festival circuit. A domestic distribution deal is expected later this year.

A HUMOROUS LAST REQUEST

In Montclair, NJ, West End Media (www.mediawestend.com) is making HD movies. Committed to making HD features in the up to $3 million range, West End has completed a $1.5 million comedy of tragic proportions, The Last Request, written and directed by John Debellis and starring Danny Aiello, Joe Piscopo and Barbara Feldon. Shot largely in New Jersey with West End's two Sony CineAlta 24p cameras, the movie tells the story of a son's struggle to fulfill his dying father's wish for a grandson.

"HD saves 30 to 35 percent for independent features," declares West End partner John Granata, who served as a producer and supervising producer on the movie. "With HD, what you see [on the set] is what you get, and it's a far more flexible medium than film. Whether you have a $200,000 budget or a $2 million budget, with HD you can put a lot more toward the things that matter."

But HD is still "a tricky format," Granata concedes. "You need to start by thinking about post production and then back up because a lot of production decisions depend on post. The whole cycle of decision making should be in place by day one."

West End's technical palette for The Last Request consisted of "the standard tools of film, but used in a different way," Granata says. While much of the finishing process was familiar to filmmakers, some elements were not.

"A lot of people misunderstand HD audio," for example. "People typically record on set to DAT as your primary sound recording, but it's better to record four channels into the HD camera" with the DAT as back-up, Granata says. "But then you have to be careful: I have seen some post houses only see two of the four channels when they take it off the SDI output from the VTR."