Mark It.
Firstly, seeking out a photograph of an AC slating the beginning of a shot is much harder than I thought. Google must be in a toying mood this morning, throwing out clip art when I wanted actual human beings and organic life. Typing in “film set Mark” conjured up every person associated with film named Mark. Finally after several rounds of trial and error, I discovered this decent B&W image. Ironically enough, it was linked on a Tumblr blog with the exact same template as mine. Small world. Anyway, I did not post this photograph as an excuse for some ample white whining. Rather, to emphasize a HUGE thought I had yesterday but then became too sidetracked to flesh it out.
Right now, I’m working on a project for Ram Trucks. Details are unnecessary. What you need to know is there is a LOT of footage, shot professionally on a small army of Canon 5D Mark IIs. In my little edit suite, I’ll be constructing the editorial, then shipping it out to Detroit for finishing.
The first step, though, is always sifting through footage. Log and Transfer in Final Cut, encoding the footage to ProRes 422 (HQ) (which is mind-bogglingly HUGE butgorgeous), organizing hundreds of shots into bins and then more bins and then, if you’re thorough enough, more bins and labeling and marking individual shots and “moments” in each take. To make matters more complicated, the production often employed multi-camera shooting. Cameras A, B and C all roll simultaneously, to capture a different angle of the same scene. It’s an efficient way to shoot when the material is documentary or highly stunt- or effects-driven. In our case, documentary.
Which brings us to the explanation for why I chose the above picture. I’m sure we’ve all seen film slated. A crew man, usually an Assistant Cameraman, stands in front of the camera with the clapperboard and yells “Scene 6A, Take 1!” (or whatever number it should be), then claps the two sticks together, runs off frame and repeats this at the beginning of each take. Except when you are working on unprofessional, incredibly indie, rushed, or student projects. The 5D revolution has invited a pack of filmmakers who merely flick the record button and deal with the guess work of what scene it could or would be later. I’ve seen blurry slates, ones where the clap is off camera, where the scenes are labeled wrong, skip numbers, shots not tail slated, etc, etc. It happens, though. This isn’t the point.
All the footage I have been awarded the opportunity to touch has been slated. Thoroughly, extensively, continuously. Even the Broll was slated! The numbers jumped once. If cameras A and C could see the slate but B couldn’t, the AC would yell “Cameras A and C mark”, clap, turn the board to B and say, “Camera B Mark”, then walk off frame. “Tail sticks” was yelled at every instance of tail sticks. If a shot was MOS, it was marked on the slate. There was one time where the DP saw a glare over where the clap happened and asked for a second one! Wow! I thought. This is amazing! It’s making my job so much easier! And then it hit me.
All this effort of slating and calling marks and distinguishing takes was for me. The editor. Because that’s what I am. And the professionalism carried by the film crew is assumed about me.
Do I know everything? No. Have I worked with multi-cam footage before? Never. Am I asking a TON of questions? Of course! But for the first time in my seven months at SapientNitro, I felt like a pro editor, working with other pro filmmakers to create beautiful things. It may not be a feature or a festival-bound short. Hell, it may never be seen by more than a couple thousand people. But I’m here, touching this footage, being relied on by a huge client, supported by a production studio and mentored by legends in the ad world. I’m the editor.
And it’s awesome.
