'Six Percent'
This summer Ten80 produced the short film 'Six Percent'. It's a 26 minute plot driven thriller… a little bit dark and a little bit twisted, and all in the best European traditions… and it was shot and edited entirely in HDV. Editor Dave Brewis discusses the technical aspects of the edit.
One of the attractions for me in producing a short film in HDV, was that I'd get to see how well Final Cut Pro 5 handled the format.
FCP5 is the first NLE to offer true native HDV editing, and knowing as I do that the HDV format offered a challenge to Apple (and others) due to how it is compressed (MPEG2, long GOP etc), I was keen to see the results of Apple's efforts.
With a super-ambitious post production schedule confined to two weeks, day one in the edit suite felt a little daunting. The screenplay, written by Ezra Lunel, and in which I'd had input, intentionally left a fair amount of room for creativity during the edit, not only in terms of rythym and look, but also in terms of the story itself. In fact as it turned out, we were still debating scene order on the penultimate day of post. So at 9am on the first morning, facing 13 hours of rushes and one enormous log sheet, it was coffee and fingernails for breakfast.
I was of course expecting some issues of an interesting technical nature.
After all I had a new operating system (OSX 10.4.1), a newly installed Final Cut Studio (incorporating Final Cut Pro5), and a relatively new Sony HDR-Z1.
Of course there are large brains out there who've designed and beta-tested these particular components, but how many, I thought, had put them all together and produced something in anger.
The first technical alert I experienced was when opening the log and capture window before logging the first batch; FCP5 had no problem in recognizing the firewire connected Z1, but on performing a test capture I was surprised to see no preview image.
On checking with Apple, I had it confirmed that it's not possible to preview video or audio whilst capturing HDV if you have a PCI graphics card installed. Therefore hooking up your HDV device to a monitor (single dv out port to composite) during capture is imperative if you want to see what you're capturing. And you do.
Two and a half days of logging and capturing ensued, with no major problems to report, other than the odd
The second issue I came up against was that of external monitoring. Due to how HDV is encoded, it is impossible to push HDV out of the firewire and back to the camera/deck in real time. In other words, during editing, you cannot use a HDV camera or deck as a bridge to an external monitor.
Fortunately I was able to use my installed Blackmagic DeckLink HD Pro video card to output HDV via its component outputs instead. But that's an expensive option.
After that particular issue, technically speaking, the edit was fairly uneventful. On the whole I found FCP 5 together with OSX 10.4.1 a very stable environment in which to edit HDV.
I had only one remaining puzzle to solve on completion of the film, that of printing back to tape. I was aware that Final Cut would have to 'conform' the final sequence back to an MPEG2 transport stream before printing it to tape, but it was only after a conversation with someone at Apple that it was made clear that there were one or two things to do before hand…
Firstly, as you'd expect, you have to tell FCP how to export the sequence. Having selected Audio/Video Settings from the Final Cut Pro menu, select the A/V devices tab. Here the Playback Output options can be set to None, as monitoring is impossible as I've mentioned. But the 'Different Output for Edit to Tape/Print to Video' checkbox must be ticked, and the relevant HDV setting from the drop down list chosen… in my case HDV (1440 x 1080) 25fps. Also, crucially, the Mirror on desktop box must be left unchecked, otherwise you'll not be able to print to tape.
After this, printing to tape worked as I'd expected to, with the added wait whilst FCP conforms. Conforming can take around 100% of the length of the show, so plan your coffee break to coincide.
Anyway, I'm off to the festivals to help drum up some enthusiasm for Six Percent.
'Six Percent' was written by Ezra Lunel and Dave Brewis.
Watch this space for release/distribution details.