Free Film School: HD Workflow

It's finally time to get your hands on a camera. Here's Bryan Singer with his. Since this is Free Film School we're not going to have access to the Panavision Genesis HD camera that Bryan prefers, but neither will we waste your time with the silent movie nonsense that USC starts you out with. We're going to look at an affordable HD workflow that will allow you to easily publish to the web. I mean, 86 million people watched Evolution of Dance. That's 47 million more than the number of people that went to see "Superman Returns".

You've probably heard me say there's no money in web video, but the web is the best way to get immediate feedback on your work. At this stage in your career you need as much audience exposure as possible. Using an HD workflow and distributing your results online will give you both useful skills and a chance to see how your work resonates with bored teenagers the world over.

We'll first look at how workflows evolved over time so that we can come up with the most optimal HD workflow.

The initial workflow for talking pictures was:

Capture image and sound elements separately
Transfer image and sound elements to edit department
Sync image elements with sound elements
Edit image and sound elements
Conform master resources to edit decision list

I cannot even begin to describe what a hassle it was to carry around an enormous reel of mag film separate from the picture element and then run them both through a sync block just to view the footage the director shot that day. With the advent of special effects, filmmakers started to do nutty things like run the undeveloped negative over to the FX department and have them layer on effects by re-exposing that day's footage. After enough footage was lost on that workflow the optical printer came into vogue. The optical printer used two or more interpos prints (i.e. "positive" prints that came from camera negative) and as a result FX started to appear in the film workflow after the "capture image" step:

Capture image and sound elements separately
Transfer image elements to FX (compositing occurs)
Transfer image and sound elements to edit department
Sync image elements with sound elements
Edit image and sound elements
Conform master resources to edit decision list

You'll notice that filmmakers didn't bend over backward to accomodate this new "effects" business. They just added a step into the process. Finally some genius (I think it was George Lucas) realized that everything would be easier if the assets were all digitized and thus the modern workflow was born:

Capture image and sound elements separately
Transfer image elements to central location as HD RGB 4:4:4, the new master
Transfer sound elements to central location
Copies of assets go to FX
Copies of assets go to edit, edit down-converts for offline editing
Edit assets
Conform master resources to edit decision list

You'll notice that this workflow is not all that optimized, either. Sound and video assets are still separate. Assets go all over the place (which means you need an asset management system that all departments have access to). Compositing can happen anywhere. There is still a conform step. I think it's fair to say that there are still many artifacts from the talking picture days that have yet to be worked out of the modern production workflow. Hopefully this situation will improve by the time you've graduated from Free Film School. To help get you there we will follow a simplified HD workflow:

Capture image and sound together in HDV format
Copy HDV assets to edit environment
Composite video layers, composite audio layers, edit (all in the same environment)
Render final movie from edit environment

This will cut out the concept of a master that is separate from the offline version (which, trust me, will someday seem archaic). Losing the 4:4:4 master will make your assets easier to manage and will open your production up to a whole world of affordable camera gear. This low-end gear will still be able to create content with a data rate of 25 Mbit/s, which is more than adequate for web and DVD distribution.

In my next post I will go over the tools that are employed in this affordable HD workflow.