Yesterday I got a locked off picture from the film Editor, and could start work proper on sound editorial for the SB Feature Film. Picture Lock Off was scheduled for Monday gone, so we are 5 days behind already at this stage. I knew there was a chance that this would happen though.
We had a spotting session scheduled for Wednesday night with the Director, Editor and Composer for the session. It ended up taking a little longer than anticipated (around 6 hours for a 1 hour 45 min film), but there was some good discussion that came out of it, and some edit change suggestions that will ultimately make for a better film despite pushing back timelines a little.
There has been plenty to get on with anyway. Over the past week I have moved my set-up in to the Digi Room at Infidel Studios. I’m using my own Mac Pro and Focal CMS 5.1 speakers with the studios lovely Prism Orpheus interface, running Pro Tools HD Native. In the last day or two I have been organising my audio files from the shoot, mainly with regards to any room tone, backgrounds and wild sounds recorded during production. I have also taken the time to set up a good Pro Tools template for the sound editorial team to work with, to help keep things organised how I like.
As soon as I got the film from the Editor yesterday, I started transcoding the video file into a format more suitable for us with Pro Tools. The supplied file is a HD ProRes QuickTime movie weighing in at 140GB. I used MPEG Streamclip to transcode into a slightly more manageable 31GB file based on the Avid DNxHD codec which is what is recommended for use in Pro Tools. I stuck with full HD resolution for now. I am also currently transcoding into a more compressed file, suitable to carry around on my iPad, so that I can use it as a guide for wild and location foley/field recording over the next few weeks.
The plan for today is to:
- get the Master Pro Tools session set up, and mark it up with markers and clip groups for organisation;
- check any areas identified during the spotting session as potential problem or ADR spots; and,
- complete a sound design plan for providing to the Director and Sound Editorial team.