Digital Video - December 2007 - (Page 32) Q& A “I’M SICK TO DEATH OF WATCHING EPK-STYLE ‘TALKING HEAD’ FEATURETTES. ON SUPERMAN RETURNS, I MADE THE DECISION VERY EARLY ON TO ONLY SPEAK WITH PEOPLE WHILE THEY WERE ACTUALLY WORKING.” Take us through your toolkit. Go-to cameras? Post workflow of choice? We need great cameras that are lightweight and sturdy, and can keep shooting after hundreds of hours. Usually, we use one of the big three: Panasonic, Sony or Canon. I’m a big fan of the Panasonic cameras, especially how they handle audio—and while the P2 cards are expensive, I certainly appreciate working with them. We always mount each camera with two Sennheiser mics—a shotgun for dialog and an omni-directional for ambient sound. We only use cameras with balanced XLR inputs. As far as post is concerned, we finish entirely inside the Avid. We cut, mix and output right out of the computer directly to either HDCAM or D5. Sometimes, we may farm out for complex graphic material, but for the most part we do everything inside one system. I seldom have a problem passing quality control. You’re finishing your first Blu-ray title, Shoot ‘Em Up. What change in your process and tools did Blu-ray entail? Well, I was nervous about continuing to finish inside the Avid with full HD. However, after we submitted our first 25-minute piece from the SEU DVD and it passed QC on the first try, I felt pretty good about it. Obviously, the format will eventually allow for tremendous interactivity and utilization of sizeable amounts of material. Even though huge DVDs like the Lord of the Rings extended editions seem to have endless amounts of material, I can assure you there’s 10 times more footage you haven’t seen. The HD formats will allow more of this material to be utilized. DV project’s size and schedules. Some projects, like Valley Girl, have extremely small budgets with entire production schedules not lasting more than four weeks. However, projects like Narnia and Superman Returns both took two years to complete, with budgets reflective of such size and scope. My company specializes in largescale, long-term overseas production. In addition to our normal production costs, we also have to allow for housing, plane tickets, car rentals, insurance, meals and medical care—for months at a time. When submitting these budgets to the DVD divisions of the studios, they always balk at such line items until you say you wouldn’t even be going to Sydney [Australia, as in the case of Superman Returns] unless that’s where the film was being made. However, the biggest budgetary problem on such large scale projects comes from the studio payment schedules. Usually, you receive 50 percent of your budget upfront, with the remainder presented upon delivery. On an eight- or 10-week schedule, this makes perfect sense. On a two-year project, however, this can become extremely problematic. Do you go for a consistent look across all of the DVD work you do, or do you tailor it to each project? I always try to do something different with each disc. For instance, I’m sick to death of watching EPK-style “talking head” featurettes, so, on Superman Returns, I made the decision very early on to only speak with people while they were actually working. Any interviews I conducted were usually done on-set, sometimes even when the cameras were rolling on the feature itself. f o c a l p r e s sbooksk s focal press b o o for creatives, by creatives ISBN: 9781578202393 $27.95 Create compelling motion graphics with real-world production techniques This new edition is a comprehensive guide that covers both the essentials and advanced techniques. • Packed with visual examples • DVD includes more than 180 PDF pages of bonus content • Extensive coverage of the new CS3 features including the Shape and Puppet tools, Brainstorm, per-character 3D text, color management, and more! By Chris and Trish Meyer ISBN: 9780240810102 $64.95 Focal Press books are available where all fine books are sold. To find video samples and pages from these books visit www.focalpress.com learn • master • create ISBN: 9780240810058 $29.95 http://www.focalpress.com http://www.focalpress.com
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