Rabiger Directing: Film Techniques & Aesthetics 4ed Earlier technology Page 1

Postproduction: Earlier Technology

Today, fewer learners than ever use film, but for those who use earlier technology, here is
some film technology and analogue sound mixing information from the previous edition
of Directing: Film Techniques and Aesthetics.

FROM CHAPTER 38

SYNC CODING (FILM)

Film coding (also known as edge numbering or Dupont numbering) enables the editor to
keep sound and picture in lip sync during the complicated operations involved in editing.
It happens like this: After the dailies have been viewed (to ensure that they are indeed in
sync), a film laboratory prints consecutive, yellow-ink numbers every foot or half-foot.
Every new roll starts from where the last roll ended. Sync code numbers, printed in
parallel on both sound and picture, function as unique, unambiguous sync marks,
allowing original sync to be restored at any time. Recorded in a log, they also allow
almost any length of anonymous-looking film to be reunited with its parent trims or off-
cuts.

POOR MAN’S SYNC CODING (FILM)

Because edge coding is expensive, subsistence-level filmmakers handwrite numbers on
the workprint dailies, sound and picture, every 3 feet or so. Use a 3-foot loop in the
synchronizer as an interval guide.

TIMECODING AND WINDOW DUB (LINEAR VIDEO)

If you are using tape-to-tape videotape editing, you will need a timecoded camera
original and a window-dubbed copy if you are to later use online (computerized)
postproduction editing. Timecode means frame identification numbers generated at the
time of recording and electronically interwoven with the video signal. When you shoot,
start each new cassette from a unique hour number, rather than always starting from zero.
That way, no two timecodes in your dailies are the same.

Next make a window dub or window burn-in. This is a copy cassette made from its
original tape with the timecode displayed visually at the bottom of the frame in a window
as cassette number, hours, minutes, seconds, and frames (Figure 38–4). Every frame in
your production now has an individual identifying set of numbers. This will be necessary
for online editing.

DIGITAL EDITING FROM FILM DAILIES

It is almost universal to digitize film dailies and edit on NLE software. This requires that
every negative image has its own timecode (called KeyKode™) because the resulting edit
decision list (EDL) will be used to conform, or match-edit, the camera original. There is
no margin for error here, for once the original is physically cut there is no going back.
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There is one tricky aspect. With a system that transfers 24 frames per second (fps) film to
30fps or 60 fields per second of video, you end up with four film frames being
represented by five video frames. The process may further be complicated by PAL and
NTSC equipment running at different frame rates and film cameras running at either 24
fps or 25fps. This is determined when the original material was generated for either
American or other TV systems. If you edit on a phantom frame, it can only be
approximated at the conforming stage. This means that if your sound track has been
completely prepared in the digital mode, a succession of phantom frames over a
succession of cuts may lead to cumulatively gaining or losing time. Put bluntly, your
track may drift out of sync with the conformed film.

Make sure the person coordinating the process is thoroughly aware of the need for clarity
about the ratio of film frames to video frames, known as pull-down mode in digitization,
and knows definitively how to avoid unwanted consequences. There is a good description
of all this in Thomas Ohanian’s Digital Nonlinear Editing, 2nd ed. (Boston and London:
Focal Press, 1998) in the chapter “The Film Transfer Process.” If you think it looks like
video’s resurrection of the “how many angels can dance on the point of a pin” debate,
remember that ignoring the problem will be very, very costly.

LOGGING THE DAILIES

Because scenes will be shot, and therefore logged, out of order, it is a good idea to start
each new sequence on a fresh page so the pages can eventually be re-filed in script order.
If you type your log into a computer database, the computer will do the shuffle for you in
a trice and print in scene order.

In film, every new camera start receives a new clapper-board number (see Chapter 32’s
Shot and Scene Identification section for a fuller explanation of different marking
systems). The clapper exists so the editor can easily synchronize the picture and sound if
they are separately recorded. In the United States the board usually includes a script
scene number, camera setup, and take numbers, while the European system often consists
of just a consecutive setup and take number that must be reconciled with the shooting
script or continuity sheets.

In video, because picture and sound are usually recorded alongside each other on the
same tape, no syncing up is necessary and a simpler marking system can be employed.
Scene numbers (and clapper boards) are not even strictly necessary because videotape-
editing methods do not permit working materials to be physically dismantled. While film
beginnings and ends are defined by edge or KeyCodeTM numbers, video is defined by
timecode. Logging by timecode permits you to trace any piece of action back to its parent
take.

The film-editing log may have to facilitate easy access to perhaps thousands of small rolls
of film.

The filing system and log format will depend on the editing equipment in use. If an
upright Moviola—still the fearsome workhorse in the occasional cutting room—is used,
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the workprint will be broken down into individual takes and filed numerically in cans or
drawers. If a table editor such as Steenbeck, Kem, or flatbed Moviola is used, the editor is
more likely to withdraw selected sections from large rolls, each containing materials for a
single scene. Even then, practice will depend on the work preferences of the editor. If
large rolls are used, film logs may be organized like videocassette logs to reflect what is
to be found cumulatively in that particular dailies roll.

Film, using separate sound and picture in the cutting room, requires that you log
photographic edge numbers and the inked-on sync code numbers (or hand-applied sync
code numbers) for the beginning and end of each take. Figure 38–5 is a typical film log
entry for script scene 29. A log like this is a mine of useful information. We can see how
many takes were attempted, how long (and therefore complete) each scene and each take
were, where to find particular takes in camera original rolls if you need to make reprints,
and even at what points the camera magazine was changed and which magazines were in
use at the start of a new day.

The video-editing log is a set of cumulative timecode numbers that allow the editor to
quickly locate the right piece of action in a cassette that may hold from 20 to 120 minutes
of action. It gives the starting point for each new scene and take. Descriptions should be
brief and serve only to remind someone who knows the material what to expect. Note that
the log (Figure 38–6) records function, not quality; there is no attempt to add the
qualitative notes from the dailies book. To do so would overload the page and make it
hard to use.

The figures at the left (see Figure 38–6) are minutes and seconds, but they might be
cumulative numbers from the digital counter on your player deck. When materials are
timecoded, log by the code displayed in the electronic window.

In the log examples there are a number of standard abbreviations for shot terminology
that are listed in the glossary. Make a dividing line between sequences and give the
sequence a heading in bold writing. Because the log exists to help quickly locate material,
any divisions, indexes, or color codes you can devise to assist the eye in making
selections will ultimately save time. This is especially true for a production with many
hours of dailies.

FROM CHAPTER 39

THE PHYSICAL PROCESS FOR FILM MACHINERY

For those unused to handling film, the best type of editing machine is undoubtedly a
flatbed table editor such as the Steenbeck (Figure 39–1). Easy to thread, it keeps sound
and picture in constant sync but allows either to be moved in relation to the other. Sound
and picture are simply spliced into the left side of the film’s passage through the machine.

SOUND TRACK EVOLUTION

Until the fine-cut stage, the sound track is dialogue only and is assembled into a single
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track. This is a compromise, for within a single sequence several mike positions may be
cut together, and the sound may vary in level and acoustical quality. Because the priority
at this stage is to achieve a correct dramatic balance, the simplest assembly method is
used to allow rapid editing changes during the lengthy and experimental business of
achieving a fine cut. Many table editors permit two or more sound tracks, but editorial
changes become slower when you have to adjust more than one sound track every time
you shorten a cut or transpose two sequences.

Once a fine cut is achieved, dialogue tracks are split apart into separate tracks to allow the
appropriate control in the sound mixing stage over each mike position in dialogue. Sound
effects (FX), music, and atmosphere tracks will be laid as appropriate. Some sequences
may need post-synchronizing (also known as looping or automatic dialogue replacement
[ADR]). Original dialogue tracks recorded near an old house next to a noisy expressway,
for instance, may not be very intelligible and will have different amounts of traffic noise
on each camera angle.

A mix chart is made of all tracks laid, especially because the sound editor will probably
have laid extra tracks to allow for experimental alternatives. Editor, chart, and tracks then
go to a sound studio where specialists make the final mix under the director’s and editor’s
guidance. The final mix, which does so much to condition where spectators direct their
imagination, determines much of the film’s force with an audience.

MINIMIZING GENERATIONAL LOSSES

Copying Limitations: In analog sound, repeated copies and premixes in analog recording
(that is, non-digital audio and video) led to deterioration from generation to generation
that was audible as an increased hiss level and diminished fidelity. Likewise, between
generations of analog picture, losses were also disturbingly evident as increasing picture
noise (picture break-up particularly in the color red), color shift (in which red in
particular moves across the screen, like bad newspaper printing), and an overall
deterioration in color fidelity and acuity (sharpness of detail). Anyone who has ever
copied a VHS tape knows this kind of image degradation intimately.

Digital copying, however, can run to 30 or 40 generations before any discernible

deterioration shows. This is because waveform information is recorded as a stream of
on/off or binary pulses that are very robust compared with the fine gradations of voltage
that determine analog recording. With re-recording, these quickly lose their integrity,
while the same waveform made up in graph fashion by the binary zeroes and ones of
digital recording is very enduring.

Digital Copying: In practice, most consumer and prosumer (high-end consumer)

camcorders now employ Firewire technology. This ingeniously uses a single cable, called
an i.LINK 1394 DV in/out cable, to link together camcorders, recorders, or computers,
much as USB cables do with computer peripherals and MIDI cables do with
computerized music. A Firewire link not only sends picture, sound, and timecode
information in either direction, it can also transmit deck control information from your
computer to your camcorder or record/replay deck. The ability to copy back and forth,
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virtually free of generational loss, is a quantum leap for digital technology.

Compression: All is not roses, however, because digital recording usually involves
different types and degrees of compression, which involves discarding some original
data. This is done by a timebase that compares each new frame, be it picture or sound,
and records the difference rather than all the information in the whole frame all over
again, as analog recording does. Compression is accomplished by using one of the
industry-determined compression algorithms called codecs. Those that involve more loss
than others are called lossy codecs. Lossless recording and re-recording is (like most
things in the electronic world) just around the corner and promises ever better quality,
provided the computer industry can produce ever faster and more capacious computers at
a price mere mortals can afford. Under optimal conditions, projected HDTV is difficult to
distinguish from 35mm projection and will obviously just keep getting better.

LINEAR ONLINE AND OFFLINE EDITING

The window dub is a copy of the camera original with its timecode burned in as a
window (see Chapter 38, Figure 38–4). The window dub is edited in place of the precious
camera original to preserve it from undue handling. The timecode window copies through
to subsequent editing generations and is sometimes the last recognizable detail. Most
importantly, it lets you dub from one generation to another, knowing that when cutting is
complete you can transcribe an edit decision list (EDL) from the screen and then use it to
drive a computerized (online) editing setup to reconstruct a pristine copy from the camera
original tapes.

PICTURE EVOLUTION
The final-cut workprint picture will eventually go to a conformer, who very carefully cuts
the camera original negative to exactly match what is by now a very tired and beaten up
workprint.

The conformed negative sections are joined by cement splices, each of which requires an
overlap. While the workprint was simply cut and butt-spliced with an adhesive tape
splicer, cement splicers need a portion of overlap and therefore lose part of the next frame
of camera original wherever a splice is made. And so, when editing film workprint, you
must never use adjacent sections of film without dropping out three frames between them.
These unused workprint frames will ensure that an allowance of frames exists in the
camera original to effect cement splices with their overlap requirements. Keep the three
frames from the workprint (in a “cutlet” can) in case during editing you later decide to
reconstitute the two workprint shots back into one.

CAUTION: Forgetting this means certain disaster. When cutting workprint, never
use adjacent footage without a minimum of three frames separation. This allows a
conformer to overlap-splice the camera original to match the butt- spliced
workprint. Nothing else will work.

In the lab, the negative is conformed to the workprint not as a single strand of spliced
negative, but as two checkerboard rolls, each containing every other shot, with black
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spacing between shots that produces a checkerboard appearance in the synchronizer. The
procedure, also called the A/B roll printing process, uses at least two rolls called Roll A
and Roll B, with possibly a C Roll if titles or other matter are to be superimposed.
Checkerboarding allows:

• Resetting the printer light and color filtering during the black spacing ready for the next
shot instead of these changes taking place during the first frames of the shot
• Black spacing that hides the unsightly overlap portion of 16mm cement splices, which
once used to appear in the first frame of every new shot
• Picture overlaps so that cross fades, or dissolves, can be made during printing

A photographic sound negative is prepared from the magnetic master mix, ready to
combine with the picture. Next, the A and B rolls of negative are timed or graded (color-
and exposure-graded), then passed through a contact printer where negative and positive
stock are passed under a light during emulsion-to-emulsion contact with each other to
make a contact positive print. Occasionally there will be additional picture rolls, should
titling or subtitling require it. The A/B roll printing process allows a print with no splice
marks showing and low-cost dissolves and fades. In fact, the print stock always passes at
least three times through the contact printer as follows:

First pass: Roll A picture

Second pass: Roll B picture (alternate shots printed in Roll A’s spaces left by its black
spacing)
Third pass: Sound negative (sound photographically printed on the edge of the film).

During the multiple passes, the machine can be programmed to make fade-ins and fade-
outs. In the overlap portion one pass fades out, then at the next pass the other scene fades
in, producing an inexpensive and reliable cross fade, otherwise known as a dissolve.

COMPOSITE PRINTS
The resulting composite print (sound and action married together on one print) shows the
result of adjustments made for inequities in color or exposure of the original negative.
This initial print is called the answer print because it demonstrates the viability of these
changes. If perfectly acceptable, it becomes the first release print. Usually further changes
are required, and these are incorporated in the next trial or answer print. The first
acceptable print is called a release print.

FROM CHAPTER 43

TRADITIONAL MIX CHART

For traditional film mixes, you will need to fill in a mix chart blank (Figure 43–2), which
reads from top to bottom, unlike a computer timeline, which reads horizontally from left
to right. In the completed sample (Figure 43–3), each column represents an individual
track. By reading down the chart you see that:
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• Individual tracks play against each other, like instruments in a vertically organized
music score.
• The sync pip or “BEEP” at 00:30 is a single frame of tone on all tracks to serve as an
aural sync check when the tracks begin running.
• Segment starts and finishes may be marked with footages or cumulative timings.
• A straight line at the start or finish represents a sound cut (as at 04:09 and
04:27).
• An opening chevron represents a fade in (Track 4 at 04:10).
• A closing chevron represents a fade out (Track 2 at 02:09).
• Timings at fades refer to the beginning of a fade in or the end of a fade out.
• A dissolve is two overlapping chevrons (as at 02:04 to 02:09). There is a fade out on
Track 4 overlapping a fade in for the cassette machine. This is called a cross fade or
sound dissolve.
• Timings indicate length of cross fade (sound dissolve), ours being a 5-second cross
fade.
• It is always prudent to lay both tracks longer in case you decide during the mix session
that you would like a longer dissolve.
• You can lay up alternative approaches to a sound treatment, then choose the most
successful by audition during the mix.

Vertical space on the mix chart is seldom a linear representation of time. You might have
7 minutes of talk with a very simple chart, then 30 seconds of railroad station montage
with a profusion of individual tracks for each shot. To avoid unwieldy or overcrowded
mix charts, use no more vertical space than is necessary for clarity to the eye. To help the
sound mix engineer, who works under great pressure in the half-dark, shade the track
boxes with a highlight marker.

ANALOG SOUND DEGRADATION

Note that each generation of analog (as opposed to digital) sound transfer introduces
additional noise (system hiss). This is most audible in quiet tracks such as a slow
speaking voice in a silent room or a very spare music track. Analog video sound is the
worst offender because sound on VHS cassettes is in narrow tracks recorded at low tape
speed, which is the worst of all worlds. The order of premixes may thus be influenced by
which tracks should most be protected from repeated re-transfer. Happily, digital sound
copies virtually without degradation.

FILM MIXES AND TV TRANSMISSION

The film medium is sprocketed (has sprocket holes to ensure synchronization) so tracks
or a premix are easily synced up to a start mark in the picture reel leader. The final mix,
whether it is made traditionally or digitally, will be transferred by a film laboratory to a
sprocketed optical (that is, photographic) track and then photographically combined with
the picture to produce a composite projection print. Television used to transmit films from
double-system; that is, picture and the magnetic mix were loaded on a telecine machine
with separate but interlocked sound. The track was taken from the high-quality magnetic
original instead of from the much lower-quality photographic track. Today television
transmission is from the highest quality digital tape cassettes, which are simpler, easier,
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and more reliable in use.

FROM CHAPTER 44
Titles for film: If your film is to compete in festivals, reserve some of the budget to shoot
the best titles you can afford because professional-looking titles signal a high-quality
film. Here is the procedure:

1. Make up title cards ready for shooting. You will need to get adhesive letters and lay
them out scrupulously on black card. This must be done meticulously because even small
inequities of proportion and straightness show up badly and make titles look amateurish.

2. Title cards are best shot on an animation stand with a known field of view.

3. If you shoot your titles using a regular camera:

a. First, do a viewfinder field test using a grid to check that what you see is what you are
putting on film. If titles come up misaligned, suspect your camera’s viewfinder. Judging
alignment through a film viewfinder is hard anyway because the image is so small.
b. Shoot using high-contrast film or else black won’t be true black but gray. Run tests
with standard lighting to determine the best exposure. Light titles on black are easy to
overexpose, leading to a puzzling loss of definition that gives your lettering an out-of-
focus look.

4. A/B roll titling—that is, shooting complete titles on film then fading them in and out
before the film begins—is low-cost and very serviceable. However:
a. If you want lettering conventionally superimposed on an image for background, you
can only superimpose black titles on that image if you use a negative-to-positive printing
process. This is because black lettering produces white lettering on the negative, which
lets through a fully exposing light that prints black on a positive print. Few topics benefit
from black titles unless you specialize in graveyard comedy.
b. If you try to superimpose white titles using the negative-to-positive process, white
lettering renders as black in a clear negative. Light then passes all around the titling,
burning out the image meant to be the background.
c. For white titles on a moving background, the printing elements must first be converted
into positive form, then contact printed to a new negative, which is then cut into the
appropriate place in the film printing negative.
d. If you are making composite prints (one shot superimposed on another) be aware that
registration in 16mm is none too steady, and expect some jiggle between lettering and
background. Do a camera steady test first (shoot a grid, rewind the film, move the camera
slightly and shoot the grid again, then process and project to see how much movement is
apparent between the two passes).
e. Colored or fancy titles probably have to be shot using an optical printer. First-rate
opticals are done in 35mm, at astronomical cost.

For elaborate film titling, you will have to talk with the customer representative at one of
the few surviving film labs to see who specializes in making up and shooting titles. They
may use either the traditional, optical-printer process or one that is computer-generated.
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Because the bulk of such work is for feature films, check prices very carefully, preferably
when sitting down in case you faint. If you go ahead, meet with the person who will be
making them and get all prices and everything else you discuss in writing. Be sure that
any further charges for reshooting are fully defined.

Never leave film titles until late in the process and assume that all will be right on the
night. They are tricky to get right, especially if you are at all ambitious and want fancy
effects. Titles, like troubles, are sent to try us, so give yourself plenty of time in case you
must reshoot.