Preparing for Post

AUDIO FOR FILM, PART 2

ASSEMBLY

Now that the dailies have been viewed and some decisions have been made about which takes are best, etc, the rough edit or assembly can be started. Following the screening of the dailies, the selected takes are sent to the edited team, who create the first rough or ‘workprint’ picture edits. Typically many film editors use a film editing bay such as a KEM or Steinbeck.

Picture below, a flatbed is loaded up, and ready for editing. Notice the 3 tape paths, to be divided between picture and sound. Also notice that the picture viewer is pretty small. The audio representation is also quite poor.

A & B Roll Picture

The lengths of film on the flatbed are put on reels in what is known as A & B rolls, so that as one scene plays on reel / roll A, followed by the next scene on reel / roll B.

In the example below, the A roll, along the left side, has 3 frames of picture, followed by 3 frames of mag (as filler). Along the right side the B roll starts with 3 rolls of mag, followed by 3 frames of picture.

The picture continues to be cut section by section, each scene of the film being opposed with an equal length of mag on the other reel. Once again edgecode numbers are used align both picture and audio.

A & B Roll Audio

The audio is also cut with an editing block, except the audio is cut along a 45 degree angle. In the example below, the audio is also split into 2 reels. Unused (garbage) picture is often used as filler.

The vertical film cut vs. the 45 degree audio cut.

ROUGH CUT

During rough editing, a dub of the film is cut with an editing block, which is more or less like a razor blade, using vertical cuts. Each edit is then put aside, with a length of leader describing or numbering the scene.

Picture below is a flatbed being used to rough cut the Lord of the Rings. You can see it buried behind lengths of film.

Below, watching the roughcut on a Steinbeck.