Karuna came over tonight and we sat around reviewing footage for her music video, Sagar. It’s a great project and I’m thrilled to be a part of it.
As you can read on her production blog, Karuna basically heard this song at some point and was hit with the epiphany that she was destined to make the music video for this song. So, she secured the rights from the Indian rock star, arranged permits and insurance to film on the sand dunes of a National Park, and found an entire crew and set of equipment to film her dream.
I heard Karuna’s pitch at ScaryCow, was seduced by the ambitious production elements, and signed up as the editor. I’m a very fast and efficient editor; if not forbidden from my jumpy editing style I can slap together a rough cut in about twice the running time of the finished work, plus about half a day. So, less than a day. All I require is a shot log with the list of the “keeper” takes, and a storyboard.
As it turned out, the production was a shade too ambitious. The principal photography ran over and there was no way to get all the footage. Karuna ended up editing a “making of” work for submission for Round 3. We’re now in the next round, and I’m the new editor of the finished work again! Woot!
So here we are, and I’m learning some of the downsides of DV HD. It uses the same compression as DVD, so when you rewind, it gets all boxy. Also, if you are changing light conditions slowly, you can actually see digital artifacts… Ironically, I might stick to miniDV for this exact reason, perhaps with a mini35 stuck on the front!
Due to the mayhem during the shoot, we don’t have a log of the good takes, and where they are on which tapes. D’oh! Don’t do that. You aren’t saving time by not writing down the good takes!
Due to our lack of our own HD deck, we are seeing some of this footage for the first time. Rent a deck and schedule your editing sessions!
You know what would be great at this point? I mean besides the shot log? The storyboard. Need the storyboard. Those little pictures really help.