Post-production: Managing Data
Update: The bane of the indie filmmaker’s existence in the digital age is file management and managing large amounts of data.
We always begin with the following disclaimer: It is impossible for you to know less about filmmaking than what we knew when we began the Salted Christmas journey. This series of articles is not designed to teach anyone in the industry anything. The series is simply intended to share with our friends some of what we’ve learned about the art, the skill, and the business of filmmaking.
Video files start out huge, unless the video in question was shot on a Red camera in 5k raw. Then the file is monstrous! So far, the Salted Christmas project consumes about 16 terabytes of data. Admittedly, this includes backups; but backups or no, managing 16 terabytes challenges both the computer and the operator.
This week, the project at hand consisted of preparing the files necessary to begin sound design and coloring. In order to commence these two parts of the project, the film must transfer from Adobe Premier Pro into Davinci Resolve for coloring and Avid Pro Tools for sound, the softwares of choice for our vendors. The transfer process gave us zits!
To move the film from Premier Pro into Davinci, after experimenting with several different workflows and handing over hours of our lives, we ended up bring the film across scene by scene into one master Davinci file that could be adjusted for coloring and exported for sound. Even with a workflow built for accuracy over speed, numerous problems arose in the Davinci file, corrections requiring 3 or 4 hours of extra work. The file now seems clean but we won’t really know until the vendors begin their work!
At this point, December 1 is holding steady for an initial completion date. This date is important to us because it would allow us to submit to the Christian Worldview Film Festival in San Antonio, which has a final deadline of 12/2.
On a separate note, the first version of the website is live!! Check it out here: Manifest Pictures Huge thanks go out to Rick Tuttle for his assistance with this project!
Verse of the week: Romans 12:12 Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.
