'Day One' Editorial Update

Alex and I are about half-way through the Director's Cut period, and we are both having a blast. Alex (Graves, the Director) is just so much fun to work with: his enthusiasm for film is infectious. He is a true film geek. He sees everything and remembers every shot, every beat from every great film. Alex actually has the ability to make me feel guilty for not spending every free moment catching up or re-watching great movies.

As for 'DO,' this has been one of the most awesome editing experiences I've had. There are about 8 major VFX scenes, and since the FX artists need time to make their magic, and I'm told some of the complicated 3D simulations have rendering times of up to twelve hours per frame, Alex and I have had to spend the first two weeks of his cut focusing on, and locking picture on, these big scenes. Alex has spent months preparing for and choreographing these scenes, and after carefully going through every frame dozens of times, we have finally put together some of the most exciting footage I've every had the privilege to cut.

The way it works is this: Alex and I spend a day or so on each sequence fine tuning each frame until we are both happy. Then we show the sequence to Jesse Alexander, the Executive Producer and Writer of the show to get his blessing on 'locked' picture. After we discuss the sequence and address his comments, we show the sequence to the Visual FZ Supervisor and Producer using a program called CineSync, which Alex uses to draw illustrations on key frames of the action, pointing out where a Visual FX element enters frame, for instance, while the Producers take notes Alexs' comments about the 'look' and textural mood that he envisions for each scene.

Then off they go, sending the raw video footage and these CineSync notes to individual VFX artists all over the US. I'm told at least one artists works from his home in Kansas City. As of Friday, we have sent out about 260 shots to VFX. For a big-budget movie this is not an especially impressive figure, for a Television show this is an astounding number of VFX. Hopefully all goes as planned and we should start seeing these shots in various stages of completion start to trickle in over the next 2 weeks. The 'Final' VFX aren't due until August, but we should have representations for everything in the show when we screen it for the Studio in about 3 weeks.

Meanwhile, Alex and I have fully internalized the visualization of every shot, we can almost see in our minds eye the completed sequences, rather than just green screen and half-sets. I watched the first five acts the other evening, and I was literally falling off the couch in excitement and genuine glee. This show is so much fun!

Also, on Wednesday night Jim, my assistant came into the cutting room very excited. Two things: Jim is never excited. He is very good at his job because he is extremely precise and demands that language used in his office used to describe what needs to get done be precise also. Jim is also an old-school film geek. Not in an Alex high-technique-push-the-envelope way, but more in a thoughtful, full appreciation for the whole scope of cinematic progression way. Jim is a conservative when it comes to film. Flashy cuts don't impress him that much, which is a little weird in this day in age, especially for an editor.

Anyway, what got Jim's attention while he was deconstructing sequences in prep for send out to VFX, was that Alex and I have been designing hand-held camera moves in the editing room. In one major sequence that covers action over four scenes in two acts, he was prevented from shooting high wide shots in hand held fashion due to the cost of building scaffolding over the set for the operator to stand on. So he got the shots from a crane on a locked-off camera, with the intention of adding hand-held 'shake' in post (me). This he believed at the time to be not-optimal, but I think he is wrong.

For one, since the shots are 'locked,' that is, they don't move at all, it means that we can treat each actor that is isolated as their own element. Meaning, sometimes the actors actions weren't precisely choreographed to what we decided we ultimately wanted, so we found the bits that we liked of each isolated actor and combined them in layers to create exactly the shot with exactly the actor choreography we need.

This is a technique that I first learned-of from George Lucas on one of the 'Star Wars' commentary disks. Ever since, whenever I get a locked off shot of any kind, I always have in the back of my mind that I have the power to change practically any element by simply sliding an element of the frame over itself to create the perfect shot!

Once we got the scene into shape there were many shots, almost half, where the camera either wasn't moving at all or not enough for our tastes. Enter Tracker. Starting with hand-held shots that we already had from production and now progressing to the point where we are creating shots on a pocket video camera in the editing room by putting tape on the wall and just standing there and shaking the camera, we use a tracking plugin in the Avid to record the camera movement to a file. Then we can drop this file on top of any shot we like, and viola, instant hand-held shot with customized shake.

This is what got Jim's attention. What was at first an uneven looking action sequence, with some moving and some static shots, is now a uber-exciting cinematic force, and Jim is impressed. Folks, if Jim is impressed by what we are doing, I think Sci-Fi fans and Post-Apoc fans will be too. NBC desperately needs a hit to get it back to it's glory days, and I personally think Day One will deliver. But I'm a very biased observer/participant.