Editing The Perfect Date…

The editing of "The Perfect Date" took a different path to previous films from Hanover Pictures. Where as before films had been on-lined on one system, this time the film would be cut on two separate systems, taking advantage of Avid's integration within it's various software. Using a J30 Digi beta deck, the dailies were captured to an Avid Xpress Pro system where the film was cut in just over 30 hours of editing time. Rough temp music tracks, titles and sound effects were added to see how the film would play out and what else if anything was required. It was from here that a Quicktime export was given to composer Brian Madigan for him to start work on the music tracks.

The on-line Avid
Media Composer timeline

From this rough off-line assembly, it was also obvious that a few minor pick ups were required to help tell the story better. Sometimes things that work just fine on paper can not be so clear once cut together and this off-line time was a good time to see what was needed to be added. So, a insert of a card message with some flowers was needed in a scene where the family visit the grave of their mother and an establishing shot of the restaurant where the couple go for their first date. This shot helped with pacing and also just to open the film up slightly as sometimes having a film mostly indoors can create a claustrophobic feeling. In addition, various bits of ADR (automated dialogue replacement) was required in the opening breakfast scene to fill some quiet holes in the sound track.

Being a co-production with the ITV West Television Workshop, permission was given to cut the on-line of the film in their Avid suites using Avid Media Composer. The project file and the bins from the off-line edit from the Xpress Pro system, was saved and opened up in a new project within the Media Composer suite and from there the Avid asks for the required shots to be re-digitised at 1:1 resolution. Depending on hard drive space and how many changes are needed, Avid asks whether you wish to re-digitise all the contents of the bins, ie, every take and angle first captured or just the shots required to make up the final sequence in the timeline. The decision was made to capture the contents of the bins in case further changes were needed. Once all re-digitised the sequence in the timeline now resembles the off-line with the completed film in front of you to complete.

Avid Media Composer is the big brother of Xpress Pro with the layout almost completely the same. The difference being Media Composer has a few more features to help with finishing.

The final stage of production can be seen by reading about THE SOUND MIXING OF THE PERFECT DATE

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