largeblue:
Changing the World with Video
To cope with all this material in such a short space of time, tasks were divided between machines. Thurling says: “We were logging onto one Mac, taking that file over to another Mac, and then batch-capturing on that machine to speed up the workflow. That’s when the Apple gear started performing really well — it was so reliable in terms of copying files across our network and unplugging and replugging Firewire drives into different machines. There were no hitches and no crashes, even when we had two editors working flat out on two different machines.”
The main workhorse for the edit was a dual 2GHz Power Mac G5 with 2GB of main memory. Material was digitised onto an iMac G5, while other loose assemblies — interview clips and rough edits — were created on a second iMac G5.
“Having a robust and flexible editing set-up was absolutely crucial for getting the event film and the electronic press kit ready in time.”
The team cut the film using Final Cut Pro 4.5, though they have since upgraded to version 5 as part of the Final Cut Studio suite. “We were also using DVD Studio Pro to make the DVDs and Compressor for making QuickTime movies for the Web”, adds Thurling. (Following its initial airing at the press launch, the film was posted on the Climate Change College Web site to help get the message across to a wider audience.)
According to Thurling, Final Cut Pro’s interface “has a general intuitiveness about it that allows you to pull in all sorts of file formats without even thinking about it. We were using stuff from all over the place, some of it PAL, some NTSC, Photoshop files, MP3s. Everything’s been thought through and behaves exactly as you’d expect it to behave”.
Final Cut Pro “has a general intuitiveness about it. Everything’s been thought through and behaves exactly as you’d expect it to behave”, says Technical Director Matt Thurling.
Not only was the colour correction and grading completed within Final Cut, but Thurling also used FCP for the sound mix. “Sometimes I take the audio out and mix it in Pro Tools and then import it back in”, he says. “FCP copes well with this process but, when you’re working to tight deadlines, the software’s own audio tools are more than sufficient. I used them for things like EQ corrections on wind noise”.
After working consistently for most of the day and well into the night, the largeblue team completed the event film (plus a ten-minute electronic press kit for broadcasters and the 30 required DVDs) in good time for the launch.
“It was a slick production”, says Thurling, an opinion apparently shared by Jerry Greenfield who described the whole process as an “incredible job”.
“We were under a lot of pressure”, says Thomas, “but the technology was fantastic. It facilitated us rather than getting in our way”.
