Electric Entertainment: Inside Job
Red Camera
After shooting the pilot with Genesis cameras, Electric switched to the Red One camera to shoot the show's 13 episodes. "The Red is a perfect match for Final Cut,” says Devlin. “And if you choose to work within ProRes HQ, it makes it even simpler. Now we can stay in the original format material all the way through. In other words, there is no online. That way everyone in editing and digital effects was always seeing the real shot, and not a proxy. I’m a big fan of ProRes HQ."
Post-production VP Mark Franco explains how Apple ProRes 422 HQ running on a battery of Macs works as a kind of workflow Esperanto at Electric: “Because we’re all working with the same Apple products, the artists and the editors can basically drag and drop materials, all on the Xsan. Visual Effects renders things out in DPX files, converts them to ProRes 422 HQ, then drops them in bins so the editors can instantly grab them and start cutting them into the show.”
Assistant Editor Brian Gonosey, responsible for the internal pipeline that is generally running half a dozen “Leverage” episodes concurrently, identifies Compressor as the reason it moves so well. “Since we are a tapeless facility, we needed an efficient and easy-to-use application to process our dailies from the raw RED format into the HD ProRes Quicktime files we edit and deliver,” he says. “Compressor filled that gap perfectly, allowing us to leverage the processing power of multiple workstations and keep pace with production.”
Electric Entertainment measures the cost savings in the number of billable hours that no longer get billed to outside facilities. “It’s significant in that we're not going out and paying by the hour for stuff that we can do here,” says Franco. “But the number one thing that it allows us to do is to work whenever we feel like we need to. If Dean is the final sign-off guy for stuff and he's shooting, he can't get here until 11, so we just shift our talent guys to later in the day. And if we mix at midnight, it doesn't cost any more than mixing at 9 in the morning.”
HD Editing
To cut the first season of shows for TNT, Electric uses three editors in rotation. "We only have about four weeks to deliver a show once we finish shooting,” says Devlin. “One advantage of shooting in HD is that you seldom cut the camera and you print everything. So you’re dealing with a much larger volume of material. This system allows you to navigate through that very easily."
“Leverage” editor Chris A. Peterson, who’s used Final Cut Pro on many projects, is unfazed by those large volumes of footage. “For me it's always about whatever is going to make things move fast,” says Peterson. “I don't want a system slowing me down. I want to cut as fast as possible, try things out quickly, keep what works, and throw out what doesn’t. Final Cut’s intuitive design allows me to see my ideas as they come.”
But it’s when the editors tap their brakes that some of the key capabilities come clear, says Gonosey. “The obvious advantage off the bat is that we are editing with our online footage, and without ProRes HQ that's not happening.”
For “Leverage” editor Sonny Baskin, cutting in Final Cut Pro for the first time, the experience of high-definition editing was transformative. "ProRes HQ gives me a phenomenal image to work with,” he says. “I love cutting in full HD on a big plasma monitor, and I can't imagine going back to be honest.”
David Siegel, who first used Final Cut Pro this year on "The Librarian: The Curse Of The Judas Chalice," another Electric/TNT Production, another eager convert to HD editing. And he’s as much taken by what he hears on his timeline as by what he sees.
“When editing picture, I am always trying to cut with as finished a sound track as possible,” he says. “Final Cut has allowed me to work with the sound waveforms in a very precise way. We are also using mixing boards with flying faders, and the levels map to the timeline. I like having the ability to slow down or speed up the sound, along with picture.”
Strong Finish
According to Gonosey, the advantages of editing “Leverage” in high-definition set the show up for a strong and relatively easy finish. “Finishing is so seamless in our workflow,” he says. “Since we are editing at full-frame 10-bit HD, there is no need for a costly online re-conform. Once picture is locked in Final Cut, the timeline is sent to Color, and we can begin color correcting in minutes.”
“We've taken ProRes HQ all the way out to delivery, certainly for television,” says Franco. “But the other night we projected “The Librarian 3” at the ArcLight Hollywood Cinema on a 34-foot-wide screen, and it was brilliant. So at any given point, we've got a really beautiful master that we can spit out because we're cutting in our final delivery medium.”
