Chroma-ing: It's easier than you might think

One facet of movies or shows that can be super important is the use of green screens, or other screens to fulfill the same variety. These can be used to add in background animations or scenery shots to add some variety into whatever is being edited. First, to add the chroma key, select the clip that you want to add the chroma into. In the effects panel in the bottom right, click on the folder that says "video effects", and then in that folder click on "keying". There are a few different options, but the most simple option would be to select "Ultra Key". Drag this onto the clip in your sequence, and you will now be able to edit the chroma in the clip panel in the upper left corner. Make sure that the background chroma is on the lower level than the clip you want to add it to, so have the clip with the green screen on track 2 and the thing you want to chroma in on track 1. Then, take the eye dropper tool and click on the green, or whatever color you want to chroma out, and at this point, you should see the background change. It still may not look perfect yet, though, as shadows and different lighting conditions might not create a clean chroma. Took fix this, in the same panel as the eye dropper, there should be a few options, like "matte cleanup" with different sliders altering shadows and choke. Once fiddling around with these, your overall shot should be done and looking nice. A good chroma can end up improving shots and adding much needed variety.

Binception: The Post Production Struggle.

I am a very organized person. My room is impeccable, my backpack is laboriously and strategically packed to optimize convenience, my calendar is color-coded, and I always know what is on my schedule for at least the next few days in advance. This organization carries over into my post production work, which is one of the reasons I think I initially gravitated towards the post process. 

I edit out of Premiere, which allows for an immense amount of organization as well as customization. You can arrange the window panels in any conceivable way, customizing the size and location of every window and tool imaginable. and don't even get me started on the bins. I LOVE bins. I have bins for everything. I have bins for my clips. I have bins for my sequences. I have bins for my bins. My Premiere projects are complete Binception.

So far, I have only found use for my obsessive organization within the post production process, however, in this class I am trying to push myself and  be involved more with the pre prodoction and production aspects of our projects. At first I wasn't sure if I could find a role that suited my organizational skill set, however, on Monday we watched a short interview that described the Script Supervisor/Continuity position, and I think I found what I've been looking for. Having never been a script supervisor on a project before, I cannot say whether I would actually  like this position, but just from the short clip we watched, I could see a lot of overlap from my post production skills.

Notes from a 'scripty'

Basically, the script supervisor is responsible for keeping the project alive during the production process, which involves a significant amount of work in pre production through script breakdowns, which ensures that the production, which is often filmed out-of-sequence, always makes verbal and visual sense. It also requires an intense attention to detail, making sure that actors motion and wardrobe stay continuous throughout different shots, ensuring nothing will break the moment of the film. The script supervisor gets to work with many different departments on set, making sure each is doing their job correctly and consistently between takes. 


 That being said, I will be working as the Assistant Director during our project for this class, but I still think my organization and attention to detail will certainly come into play, whether it is from script breakdowns,scheduling, or general on set management. Either way, I am excited to take a step out of the dark editing room and into the light during the production process.

Life, sleep deprivation, and the pursuit of editing

There are many jobs on a crew that are not valued enough—script supervisor and assistant editor being two significant ones. Script supervisor keeps a written track of which takes were best, along with a description of what went on, while assistant editor goes through all of the footage and describes what’s going on in the frame, type of shot, etcetera.

Blank sample of script supervisor's daily log.

Blank sample of editor's log.

This summer I did just that—I spent a great deal of time logging footage for a professor’s reality-esque TV show. While doing so, I came to understand something truly important: there is no insignificant role when it comes to production. I went through hours of footage and mark the funny and controversial points between the couples; a very tedious task that took many hours at a time. This job is usually bestowed upon the assistant editor, as they are the ones that do the initial read of the script supervisor’s notes and choose which clips are correct. I also helped to add more detail to the script sup’s notes so my professor could use it to teach in the future.

~me~ most of the time I edit

Going into the process I thought I would like it because I enjoy editing, but I forgot about the many hours that are spent staring at a screen. A certain professor told me that when you start in the real world of post-production, logging is where you initially start. But it truly makes editing so much easier when you have a guide as to what clips are the best.

While it is not my preference, I definitely learned a lot about how to make the process of editing easier. I have great respect for those who regularly script super & log the footage.

Just for funsies, I shall leave you with a related video some of you may have already seen and can relate to:

"The Assistant Editor Song"

Prelude Workflow: Really I Love Bread Eating

A Prelude can be described as, “Something that comes before and leads to something else.” When it comes to naming programs, Adobe seems to have it right. While many are familiar with the editing software, “Adobe Premiere Pro,” just as many are unfamiliar with it’s lesser known brother, “Adobe Prelude.” Designed specifically to work in conjunction with Premiere Pro, Prelude is designed to speed the review, ingest, logging, selection, and export of tapeless media.

 In short, Prelude helps speed up the arduous naming, reviewing, and selection of footage. Furthermore, by transcoding your clips to a more manageable file type you’ll eliminate the headaches when trying to export your film. Specifically, Prelude allows one person to review and capture all footage, build a selects reel, and INSTANTLY export it into Premiere Pro CS6, or Final Cut Pro, so that the editor can begin editing immediately.

Can you imagine? You only have to export your film once. Nothing dropped, no errors, NO MESS! And you thought it could only happen in your dreams.  

All those student editors out there, I have even more good news. If you’re a competent editor and aren’t horrible to be around you’ll probably end up with a job. The cool thing about having a job is that you earn money. This news isn’t so great for producers though.

“Someone using Prelude is not editing, they are collecting and organizing clips, and putting them all into one spot for the editor.” -Larry Jordan, Author of "Edit Smarter"

If you don’t need an editor to use Prelude, then why pay someone $40 an hour when you could pay a Production Assistant $7.64 to go through the Prelude process and save some bucks where you can. Now I have some bad news for you student editors out there. I just lost us some easy money. Now the production assistants are going to take our jobs. Sorry about that. 

So hopefully by now I’ve convinced you that Prelude could, potentially, increase the efficiency of the editing team. But how does one go about actually using the software? In order to understand Prelude’s workflow, one *must remember the acronym: RILBE.

R: REVIEW clips from camera, card, or hard disk

I: INGEST just the clips, or portions of the clips that you need

L: LOG clips to add comments, and select the good clips

B: BUILD a rough-cut of selected clips to send to the editor

E: EXPORT the rough-cut to Premiere Pro (technically you could also export to Final Cut 7 but that’s not our focus for today)

I came up with a great phrase to remember the acronym: “Really I Love Bread Eating.” This works for me because, well, I really love eating bread. But you all can use it too if you want. Or you can create your own fun way to remember the correct sequence of the Prelude workflow. The ball is in your court. 

Let’s start with the R— Review clips from camera, card or disk.

When you first open Adobe Prelude, you’ll notice that it possesses that classic Adobe aesthetic. 

I feel at home already. Once you create a project, you’ll find that you’ve landed in the INGEST workplace. I know what you’re thinking— “Wait, Erin, the ingest workspace? But Ingest is the SECOND letter in the RILBE acronym.” Good catch! But actually, dear reader, the Ingest workspace is exactly where we need to be. This workspace allows you to review clips before you capture and transfer them to your hard disk from the camera, card, or hard disk where the source masters are stored. While revising the clips are important, I find this particular workspace the best place to label all of my clips.

Let’s move on to the second letter of the Prelude workflow acronym, INGEST. 

When Adobe says “ingest” they really just mean “transcode.” When you ingest an apple you change the composition of the apple. And when your body is done editing out all of the nutritious pieces of the apple, you end up “exporting” something completely different altogether. The benefit of ingesting clips is that you can transform the footage to a myriad of more manageable file types. This will save you the hassle of running into exporting errors later. Would you want to eat an apple without chewing it first? Prelude “chews” the clips before they seriously mess up your editing timeline. But what clips to chew? It’s common knowledge that transcoding large video files can take hours, days, even years to complete. Adobe offers several solutions to this. 

Solution number 1:

Clear your schedule for the week and ingest every damn clip

Solution number 2:

Clear an hour of your schedule and ingest all of the clips you know, or think that you may use in your final edit. 

Solution number 3:

Adobe allows you to pre-select portions of clips to ingest. Technically, you could select all of the in and out points of each clip and only ingest those specific clip bits. I caution you against doing this, however, because not importing the entire clip makes it fairly difficult to change your mind about things like length when they’re exported into the editing timeline.

I’m not going to tell you which solution is the BEST one, but it’s 2. Solution 2 is most likely the one that you’re going to want to go with. Ingesting clips is as simple as clicking the checkbox on the lower right corner of the thumbnail, selecting the format you want said clip transcoded to, and proceeding to push the big Ingest button in the lower right corner of the Ingest Workspace. The formats that are understood by editing softwares best (Apple ProRes, DNxHD, CineForm etc.) all require you to create a custom transcoding preset within Prelude. Once complete, the Adobe Media Composer will pop up and ingesting ensues. 

Here’s a great video on how to create custom presets in Adobe Prelude:

A GREAT VIDEO ON HOW TO CREATE CUSTOM PRESETS IN ADOBE PRELUDE

(thanks Arturo)

Reviewing footage and transcoding files into entirely different formats is not the only things that the ingest page is good for. Prelude is designed so that you can provide a link to the media (for tagging, and searching purposes) and you can copy media/ save your work to an unlimited number of destinations. That means you can save it to ALL of your hard drives. At this point I’m sure that you feel quite overwhelmed with the number of dreams Prelude is making come true for you. 

Now comes the 3rd step in our Prelude workflow— LOGGING

Logging is my favorite RILBE action because it involves the use of colorful markers. Each colored marker indicates something different when used on a clip so it’s very important that you become familiar with each marker’s use. Imagine if Van Gogh didn’t know what the blue marker did? 

“Starry Night you call it? By golly that could be a picture of anything Vanny old chap!” < This quote is fictitious in content as well as inaccurate in terms of culture, time-period, and vernacular. 

Prelude is no Crayola, but it offers six distinctly different types of markers as illustrated here:

While each color marker has its place, the most useful (in my opinion) is the blue “sub clip” marker. You can create sub clips, also known as clips within clips, by selecting in and out points with the blue marker. The sub clips will then be saved and marked (Command+S) when you end up importing the re-furbished footage into Premiere. 

See, even Vincent Van Gogh likes blue best.

Which brings us to the 4th letter in the RILBE Prelude workflow acronym— Building a Rough Cut. 

This step of the Prelude is optional especially if you’re giving the job to production assistants rather than your editor. However, you can create a rough cut by double clicking the rough-cut icon and opening the rough-cut workspace. In a circumstance where the editor is not the person working in Prelude, the stand-in may take on the responsibility of assembling the good takes in one place so the editor wastes less time reviewing each and every take. If you do decide to make a rough-cut in Prelude, be sure to select File > Save before going on to the very last step of RILBE.

EXPORTING:

One of Prelude’s greatest attributes is it’s ability to transfer files to Premiere Pro unbelievably quickly. By selecting, File > Send to Premiere Pro, a  new timeline will appear in Premiere and your clips will be transferred almost instantaneously. (This knowledge makes the transcoding process much more bearable to sit through.)

So that’s the end of this Prelude. Don’t you worry, there will be much, much more to come. Until then, Really I Love Bread Eating. Cheers!