… Laura Sempel (American Intern 2010)
Today was my fi rst day in an episodic television editing room. I managed to arrive on a very good day! The editor had fi nished his editor’s cut the day before, so he was making changes according to the notes the direc- tor had given him. The show is still missing a few scenes, so we will still be receiving dailies in the next few days. They will only have one day to cut in the last scene before the picture needs to be locked! It’s amazing how quickly the world of television moves compared to features, and I think it’s fair to assume that the end of the week may be extremely hectic.
The wonderful thing about being on this show during this week is that the assistant is leaving the show, and so he spent all day today giving the new assistant the rundown of the editorial process. So essentially it was as if he were training me as well to be the new assistant.
Going into this I knew hardly anything about TV, so some of the things I learned today may seem a little simple, but they were new to me. This show is broken up into fi ve acts that are separated by commercials. The assistant separates the time lines by acts, so anything he needs to fi nd or change is easily accessible. He puts the editor’s cut into a new bin, and so the acts that are left in the project are relabeled as director’s cut because that is what they are currently working on.
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Make the Cut: A Guide to Becoming a Successful Assistant Editor in Film and TV
The assistant gave the new assistant and me a tour of all of the project bins. He explained what was in each one of them, how he labels them, and why he does it that way. He showed me the forms that come with the dailies, such as the progress report, the sound report, as well as the camera report. It looks like all of these reports are emailed to him and are kept in fi les on his computer as opposed to a binder.
In terms of music and temp tracks, it appears that the editor likes to cut in his own temp track, and so the assistant just needs to keep the bins organized and accessible for him. The assistant also went over the way the show is delivered. He printed out a sheet that goes over everything that needs to be delivered along with the fi nal cut. This includes paperwork as well as all of the elements and what format they need to be deliv- ered in. He also printed me out a fi nal continuity, a format sheet, a recap sheet, and an ADR list. Needless to say, all of these elements will be extremely helpful to refer to as templates when I have to make my own set of forms as an assistant!
I did manage to get a look at the continuity used for the editors cut. The concept of what it was made so much more sense when I was able to hold one in my hands and look it over.
Because the show is shot in New York and the visual effects are done out of house, they use a private Internet exchange program called D3. This way they can post QuickTimes of the episode, or just of specifi c scenes, for either the director or the producer to see. This makes it easier for someone to see the changes after they have given the editor their notes.
There was a break from the all the technical stuff, though, so don’t think that I was just trapped in a room furiously writing down strange words like VAM and CTM all day! The editor wanted us to take a look at his editor’s cut, so we watched it after lunch. Afterwards he came in and sat with the three of us and asked us what we thought about it. I, of course, remembered all the warnings and said very positive things about the episode. The editor seemed a little distracted, though, because there are a few story problems that he is aware of, and I’m afraid there isn’t a whole lot that can be done about it. It’s nothing major, and I think we were aware of it only because we were being asked about it.
The editor gave me a copy of the script for the episode to read tonight so I’ll understand what’s going on in the scenes where the footage is missing. Tomorrow is time for dailies! The assistant showed me how they pro- cess their dailies. Because the show is shot in New York, all of the dailies are digitized there and sent to Los Angeles on a FireWire drive. At the facility here, all of their media is stored on the Avid Unity system. This includes fi les for special effects, renders, media fi les, as well as all of the Avid project folders.
When a FireWire drive containing dailies is received, it contains fi ve things: MX fi les of media, wave fi les of sound, a FLEX fi le, an ALE, and an Avid bin. The FLEX and ALE are delivered from telecine and allow the assistant to have a record of all of the footage that should be on the drive. The paperwork that comes with the drives is kept on the assistant’s computer, except for the line script and the notes from the script supervi- sor. These forms are printed out and placed in the editor’s binder so he has access to them as he is cutting the scene together.
Only one scene was received today, and it contained only three setups. It was a scene with two characters walk- ing down a hallway having a conversation. I was extremely glad to see the dailies be processed because I realize
Chapter 9: First Day Observations in the Editing Room
how thorough an assistant needs to be while processing dailies. The assistant has a saying that he explained to me as “ garbage in, garbage out. ” This means that if media is ingested into the system incorrectly, then it will be incorrect when it needs to be exported. He had a copy of the script supervisor’s notes in front of him as he watched the dailies, and he checked each take off with a red pen to ensure that each take was, in fact, delivered. When the assistant made sure that all of the takes were on the drive, he organized the clips by scene in a bin for the editor. This way all of the takes for scene 40 are in one row, below that are all the takes for scene 40A, and below that are all the takes for 40B, and so on. The assistant jokes about being extremely anal about all of his paperwork and starts a lot of sentences with, “ It’s probably not necessary, but I like to … ” . He keeps a database in FileMaker Pro of all the scenes in an episode that have been received, how long they are, how many takes there are, and what the script supervisor estimates the scene time should be.
Prior to arriving on this show I did not realize that the script supervisor keeps an estimate of how long each scene should be; when added up it gives an estimate of how long the show should be. At the moment with all of the scenes they’ve received, the estimated TRT for their show is seven minutes longer than what the editor has actually cut. The editor came into the assistant’s room to ask him about the measurement of the episode, and when he informed him how short the show was running, the assistant asked, “ So what does this mean? ” The editor looked at him and simply said, “ Trouble. ”