The Making Of Insula – Editing Diary(Part 1)

The editing process has finally begun on ‘South – The Making Of Insula’; having uploaded the teaser trailer last week I got a bit side-tracked;

My birthday celebrations turned into a night of carnage and death-defying stunts, NoFx made a dream come true when they played ‘The Decline’ in the Olympia on Saturday night and just as I finally think I’m getting my head around editing, I run headfirst in to completely baffling technical issues. Thankfully, I have a Sla.

The shoot with South was a two-camera setup; using a Canon XHA1 (shooting on miniDV) as the main camera and a Canon HG10 (shooting straight to harddrive) as a secondary camera for pick-ups and cut-to’s. Focussing on the HG10 can be pretty limited, there’s no manual focus so I used the XHA1 for master coverage of takes on each instrument during the recordings. The XHA1 was set up on a tripod whilst I moved around getting cut-to’s on the HG10 using my miniDv steadicam.

Shooting with two cameras by yourself can be tricky, it’s important to keep track of what you’re shooting on each camera and trying to avoid shooting the same things on both (unless of course you want to!?). Having watched all the footage, I’m really happy with the coverage I have.

Last week I transferred all the footage onto my iMac and did some back-ups, it was a bit of a slow process; working with tapes can be a pain in the ass, the handy thing about the HG10 is how quick transferring footage can be.

Having transferred the footage from both cameras; I had my first problem; formatting!? It’s something I get the point of, but just can’t figure out. As I’ve said before; thankfully I have a Sla!

After a couple of days set-back, I’ve finally begun editing today. The first task was going through all of the footage from the XHA1 and separating the shots. For some reason, it doesn’t recognise the cuts. I think it’s something to do with how I logged the footage!? Either way I don’t care, it’s finally all in one project and ready to go.

Tomorrow, I’ll start syncing footage from both cameras and label the set-ups before beginning a rough cut.

I’m also still getting my head around the whole strobist style, I’ve uploaded a new shot to the main page of Oss237.com, it was shot strobist style; 50mm lens, I can’t remember the exact settings as I tested several, SB800 at half-power positioned in the corner of the room using the glow from my iMac, Powerbook G4 and the HG10 as back lighting. CHECK IT OUT!