DAY 5 - Working Class Rough Cut

I entered my internship with the expectation that I would spend the entire day working on the Working Class Foodies episode 107 logging/rough cut and I am pleased to say that that is exactly how events unfolded.

Logging has always been a big thing of mine.  Whenever people ask me about it, I stress to no end it's importance.  How are you supposed to be an effective editor if you have no idea what your clips are, what happens in them, where the good points are, etc?  As an editor you should be able to quickly grab anything you need and from there the rest is easy.  At first I felt weary at how long it took me to mark and name the 99 clips in my bin.  Certain portions, such as six minute clips of sausage links being made and tied off, made me nervous but after a quick email to Rebecca Lando regarding how to handle it,  I felt much more at ease.

I find that every time I sit in front of a computer and start to edit for the first time in a while (or do anything that has to do with filmmaking after having done nothing of the sort for a long period of time), important details such as specifying shot names, reading foot candles and lighting effectively escape me.  (The latter two things are irrelevant but the first is very important when logging!) Thank God Rebecca made a mention of it in her email or I would have omitted them from my clip names entirely!  Of course, I then when backwards and renamed all that I could...  Okay, getting a little too technical here.  When all you do in a day is edit, it's hard not to!

I guess my point is that hopefully all this constant exposure to working with editing and various shows in a real environment will help me retain some of these important details from one project to the next.  I should not have the option of shutting my brain off to these things over the course of a summer, as if the details being blocked were dates and names of paintings or mathematic properties.  Specifying shot types when logging footage is important and hopefully next time it won't take an unsuspecting email to remind me!

Throwing together a rough cut is a new thing for me.  My style of editing is very...different.  Before moving on I'm going to explain:

When you edit, standard procedure is to log clips, then create a rough cut to establish the sequence, create an assembly cut to get the flow and then fine tune the crap out of it until you are left with your "Final" cut.  You start with large clips, then trim around the edges.  Perfect cuts and transitions don't happen until after the rough cut.  Transitions in general don't come until after a rough cut.  Audio mixing comes after the final cut and so on and so forth...  I may have a few details jumbled here and there...

When I edit, I skip the rough draft process and dive straight into my surgeonesque fine-tuning.  Rough cuts just don't work for me.  Once I have a vision for how a project will work out, I barrel through, creating that vision as best as possible on the first try.  This is WRONG!  But, I do it anyway.

So, when I was asked to make a rough cut, I took a breath, stepped back from myself and had to suddenly get into the mid set that said "Don't finesse!!"  For a first time, I was incredibly impressed with myself!  At around 1 PM, my last few clips were logged and I started dragging and dropping them into my timeline, following the shot list/recipe that was emailed to me.  Keeping the style of the show in my mind, I paid careful attention to keep clips short, jump cuts abound, maintaining the process of cooking the meal as much as possible.  

Aside: A cooking show in five minutes if VERY DIFFERENT than one that spans a half hour or longer!  The pacing is incredibly fast and after watching previous episodes of the show countless times, the vision of the editing style is something I must become in tune to.  It works because of how well each episode is paced, literally cutting out the excess fat that is usually overdubbed with useless dribble on a standard Food Network cooking show.  For the market they are catering to, this unique shotgun approach keeps it interesting and easy for anyone to sit and watch, while at the same time containing all the information one could possibly need.  (NEED is a key word.)  That said, after watching hours of footage, things are definitely left out of the mix that may be important to the viewer, but that is where the editor comes in.  I find editing for Net-television, more so than any other medium, is like compressing a novel for Sparknotes: keep the bare necessities of the bare necessities.  Anything else can die on the cutting room floor.  I can only begin to imagine how this will affect my editing for longer productions!  Will it be positive or negative?

After that initial drag and drop session, I was left with seven plus minutes of video for what will eventually be a 4-5 minute short!  This was without the intro, outro, etc.  Beads of sweat started forming on my forehead.  "I know rough cuts are generally long, but did I do this right?  I'm not even done yet!" I thought to myself.  I went back, cutting out and down what I could, hoping that that I could shave off at least a minute of my seemingly bloated rough cut!

Enter Erik Beck, "an actor, producer, filmmaker and master of low-budget special effects who co-founded Indy Mogul in 2007".  He came over to check up on me in the wake of my small, hidden internal freak-out.  I explained to him my newness to the concept of rough cut and that I was trying to cut down my seven minutes of footage to something more manageable for Rebecca.  "Actually," he said (and I'm paraphrasing a little), "seven minutes is really good!  Most of the rough cuts we get are at least twice what the intended length of the show is.  So, if you're only 20% over, I don't see that being a problem."

What?!  Seriously?!  I was overjoyed!  Ecstatic!  I don't suck at my job!  Alight with compliments and confidence, I was rearing to forge on, adding the visit to the marketplace clips to the beginning (though the footage was lacking), threw an intro in and logged two seconds of what ended up being an interview that could have really helped me from the start!  I accomplished all this easily within ten minutes and could have done more were I not expected to drop the drive off uptown and, oh yeah, actually return to campus that day.  No more did I feel burdened with my previous caution and I'm all the more glad for it!
Brittany the Editor was back!

Sidenote:  Justin, the man who commissioned me to make Hungry Nation promos, came over and complimented my use of markers.  When editing the interviews, I noted parts I thought might make interesting 15 second stories but marking them in FCP.  He said that was a really good decision and showed I knew what I was doing.  Score!

What did I learn today?  My attention to detail and over-anal personality are both things I should embrace when editing and logging.  Don't be scared to bring up small things you may be concerned about (I almost never told Erik about my rough cut woes) because if you express problems to the right people, they usually result in constructive criticism (or compliments in my case).  Communication is key to this medium and having questions is in the job description for an intern!  Sure, a stupid inquiry may come up, but at least an answer will prevent me from yielding stupid results.  I can be stupid at so many other times in life and not have it affect my job prospects!

After getting a feel for my first WCF rough cut, I think I have more confidence to do another, this time having the experience of one under my belt and addressing anything I thought I was doing wrong the first time.  Don't shamelessly cut out due to length, that's what assembly cuts are for!!!  Don't not go with your gut and don't get overwhelmed; I did a little bit of both and it hurt me.  I'm not expected to do everything perfect the first time.  When I just captured the WCF "vision" and moved with it, everything worked out fine.

(I just hope Rebecca thinks so too!)