Theatrical film workflow

SUBJECT

Exploration of PIPELINE development for 100 minute theatrical release, independent Film

Objectives are to design a solid working end to end system for a very small team on a low/medium budget but very ambitious visual creative  ideas.

Key is identification of any problematic technical areas and possible workarounds

Question. if the pipeline works on the possible concept of all original footage being transcoded into full HD, edited in HD timeline and  outputted in HD from this premiere pro timeline. How would basic, resizing, stabalizing and  colour grading be applied to this footage?

A friend is shooting some episodic tv (1 hour on air, about 44 min film) for CBS. Shooting anamorphic (mostly for flare effect) and cropping to full HD for broadcast ( to there's no letterbox in broadcast). Basically crop the ends of frame to HD.

Roughly 7 days shooting for each episode, 2 DP's so they alternate scouting and prep.

He gets some dailies (mp4) and can make notes to post (editor) re: mostly skin tones.

Director gets 4 days to edit ( every line in script has to be present) and hopefully it's around 44 min.

Then producer edits, and does what they want.

It gets done shooting and goes on air about 3 weeks later, so it's a really fast PIPELINE,

hehe

I have no clue how to encourage you and yet steer you to resources to help you do what you want.

The resources can appear to be overwhelming and complicated, and the nice people here are giving you some good feedback !

and everyone it trying to 'prove' they know something about what you're dealing with. hehe, that part is ( for me personally) as enlightening as anything that can possibly come out of this thread. Cause I love these people !

hehe, great answer !

Many thanks for all the advice ,really appreciated.

If it is appropriate i (i m not sure what forum  eticate is)  would like to continue the development of pipeline in this thread.

for those interested this is the concept piece for the project

Private video on Vimeo

password black 

I was very intrested in Vashi Visuals  posts on the subject.  my main interest is a working system fir 109 minute independent movie. He edited one of the sharknadI films. And provides a lot of insight into his process of getting it done.  I don’t know if I have understood correctly but he seems to be be transcoding all footage red/ Sony 4K/5k whatever into 1920x1080 proRez. And editing and rendering from this(except vfx). Al’ in the same timeline What are people thoughts on this? Perhaps the same concept but with a slightly higher resolution  Say 2k from 4K anamorphic footage,  transcoded and reformatted to 239 aspect ratio.

i'd also do tests with color management. the built in Wraptor DCP creator only accepts srgb 2.2, so if your footage isn't that, then you'll need a lut transform. also, premiere's color management will add another transform from srgb 2.2 to bt1886 in the program window. if your monitor isn't calibrated for bt1886, it will only look correct in monitor calibrated to that same spec.

there's easy DCP creator and lots of others. also, afaik, premiere doesn't support color higher than srgb with luts so if your working in a large gamut like arri-color, the color gamut will clip.

whenever you do a big project, the professionals do a full pipeline test, all the way from test shoots, media wrangling, to renders, to dcp exports and playback in actual theatres before they even start anything.

As Dave has rightly mentioned there is no right or wrong route to take when it comes to long form workflows. There are so many variations its incredible. Each studio has their own tried and tested method that they have worked on to ensure maximum output with minimum downtime. So whether you are on PP, Avid or God forbid FCP there are several rules of thumb I personally follow on long form edits.

1. I break down everything into bite sized amounts and never ever work on a full timeline until the end

2. Proxies are paramount when working with 4-8K footage

3. Visual effects are taking care of by software made for this purpose. I never ever use PP for any effects work

4. I do not use Dynamic link to go between AE & PP as its too RAM costly. The shots that require Vfx are exported out as a DPX sequence and then sent to AE and other software (dependent on what that fx shot needs)

5. If you aren't fortunate enough to have a render farm for the project I would ensure sharing work between multiple machines in small chunks. In essence give portions of it to the 2nd and 3rd editors if they are present (share the edit if the director/budget allows)

6. The biggest hurdle to all is this is when you get to coloring. 1st and 2nd light grades are ok but vy the time you get to 3rd you will be working on full res footage files and this is where software and hardware need to find a common ground. Once again rule f thumb applies. Don't try to color section at a time. Create "rooms" for scenes shot with similar lighting which can then be applied to various shots. PP is good at redistributing effects over various clips as presets so a "room" in PP's case would be a "preset: you create.

7. Which brings us to rendering.... Well all I can say is "Tell the studio you need a 6-12 node farm" lol. Just kidding. When it comes to final output, well, theres no substitute for hardware power. Bigger CPU, more RAM, Stable OS and machine. All these play a role but most importantly ensure your offline edit is free from any sort of frame dropouts, pulldown issues etc. Once you go to final res you need to make sure your offline is 100% or all hell will break loose

All the best with your feature

Mo

That's a huge topic, and not something you could deal with in one forum thread. The pipeline for a theatrical release is usually set by the studio and distributor, as they will have very specific technical expectations and departmental policies (e.g. what cameras are being used, is the grading being handled by an in-house colorist or subbed to an agency, is there a post house working on effects, which tasks are union-controlled, is the deliverable a DCP hard drive for cinema, film stock, rec2020 for broadcast or sRGB for web streaming, how are you making dailies, etc etc). Adobe software might not even be an option if you're using a cinema camera it can't read (e.g. Blackmagic)

Premiere Pro has a lot of tools available, but nobody ever expects you to apply them all at once. Even with a professional workstation you will rapidly run out of RAM and CPU cycles. Same applies if you try to use Adobe's dynamic linking features and pipe a super-complex After Effects composition into an equally complex Premiere timeline. Realtime playback and a responsive scrubby tool are luxuries, don't expect them to last very long.

The normal approach for a long-form project is to split everything down into simple tasks, build them in the most appropriate software, then bring them back together for the final export. Most times an After Effects composition will only handle a couple of seconds of footage, so there can be hundreds of separate 'jobs' being worked on. Something like a very basic chroma key (with good source footage) is possible in Premiere, but that's not the role of an NLE - hence why the tool in After Effects - and the third-party plugins - do a much better job at it. The more you cram into a single project file, the more chance of something going wrong - and it means only one person can work at the same time.