I’m back in Michigan writing my second feature and relaxing after a long quarter. There are a few topics from this quarter that I would like to address on the blog, and this is definitely one of them.
UCLA is, as far as I know, the last film school in America to have students not only shoot on film, but edit film on flatbeds as well. It’s an amazing, difficult process, one that I think makes us better editors and filmmakers. There are a few steps to doing this though.
- All footage is screened from the two-minute shoots. Each person received one four hundred foot roll of 16mm film on which to shoot their two minute films. This translates to about 10.5 minutes altogether.
- Students receive their footage.
- Transfer digital sound (Sound Devices 402) to 16mm sound mag.
- Create Leaders. Leaders are pieces of white blank 16mm plastic that you write your info on. You also create hole punches that allow you to find where your film and sound are in sync. Here’s an example:
- Film and Sound are synced together. This means going through the film and sound and marking every time a slate hits on both. You then cut out the extra mag so it matches the picture. If you were so unfortunate as to have shots without slates in them, you sync to sharp sounds (doors slamming, in my case an object hitting water) or to spoken plosives (a consonant that is produced by stopping the airflow using the lips, teeth, or palate, followed by a sudden release of air, i.e. t, k or p). If you accidentally remove a frame, or if the machine goes out of sync, you will have to resync.
- Edgecoding. The edgecoding machine is a big, stinky, archaic looking beast that prints little matching numbers on your film and sound. This is very important because after you start making small edits, your film and sound will no longer be identifiable by slates etc.
- Viewing your film/Paper Edit. At this stage you view your footage over and over again to see which takes you want to use. The paper edit is pretty straightforward; you write down which shots you want to use, and where you think those shots will start and end. This can come before edgecoding. Marking your film is done with a white grease pencil, marking sound is done with a red sharpie.
- Splitting the film into shots. Next you cut the film and matching sound mag into shots, which you label and hang on your trim bin. A trim bin is a big metal bin with hooks on it to hang your individually numbered shots. Many of the trim bins at UCLA are labelled “Jim Morrison’s Trim Bin.” It’s a mystery which one actually is.
A Student Splicing Film
- Make a rough cut. Put all your shots in order. In order to do this you need your splicer:
The blade cuts the film and the little wedge sticks the tape (clear for picture, white for sound) into place. - Screen your rought cut and get feedback from Tim Good, our excellent editing professor this year, and the class.
- Decide which feedback you like and don’t like then make changes.
- Lock your picture.
- Create academy leaders and footers. Academy leader is probably familiar to you, just not in this form. It looks like this:
Academy leader lets the projectionist know when picture and sound are locked, so they screen it properly. An important aspect of this is having a “two pop” on the sound at the exact right place. - Moviola your picture and sound. The moviola will convert your (by now probably scratched) film to digital.
- Take your digital sound and match it with your moviola track on Final Cut Pro.
- Do sound design and ADR (automatic dialogue replacement, where actors rerecord their lines in front of the picture) if necessary.
- Get feedback on your sound design.
- Lock sound.
- Transfer your sound to mag.
- Sync your picture and sound.
- Screen your film at Bridges theatre with 21 other students in front of faculty and fellow students.
- Be calm while being critiqued.
That’s roughly how the second half of the fall quarter went for us. It’s one hell of a process editing on film, and one that would probably become irksome if we were editing a longer film.
One thing to know is that students are not required to finish their two minute films, and many don’t. If you want to telecine (convert to digital format to edit digitally), you will need to go to a post house. A supervised telecine session (with a colorist who will make your film beautiful) costs anywhere from 200-400 dollars if you output to HD. Standard definition transfers cost less.
