Discover how RAVEN was created entirely on home computers!
Part 5: Making Sense Out of Soup
The editor is the movies' unsung hero - for it is at the editing stage of production that the jumble of images and rolls of film begin to resemble an actual movie, and a story begins to take shape.
Traditionally, editing used to involve a splicer and long strips of film. The editor would sift through all of the available footage searching for particular shots (announced by the arrival of the slate-clap at the head of the shot), and cut and tape portions of them together to form a series of connected events. More and more of these connected shots form scenes . . . and more and more connected scenes equals a finished film.
With the arrival of digital technology, the editor's workshop changed considerably. Rolls of film from the shoot are digitized into Avid computers, and assembled within. This is called non-linear editing, since the editor is able to access any shot at any time, simply with the click of a mouse, without manually rolling through feet of unwanted footage looking for the perfect take.
For RAVEN, we're using a low-budget adaptation of the computerized workstation. Since we don't have the out-of-sequence production of a live-action shoot to hinder us, we're able to pretty much put the movie together as we go - creating shots by day and assembling them at night.
This is Adobe Premiere, the software editor that we're using to put RAVEN together.
In the Construction Window on the left, the video and audio tracks can be assembled and arranged as desired on a timeline, which is represented by a ruler of STMPE timecode marks running along the top of the window. The uppermost greenish tracks represent video segments, and the lower bluesish tracks represent audio files. Each of those audio bits contain individual sound effects, vocals or music. For instance, in the picture above, we have an arrangements of kicks, punches and grunts, with a continuous music track running beneath it all.
In the Project Window on the right, we can see all of the video and audio clips being used in this segment displayed. Each is stored with a thumbnail image and information relating to the length and file size of the clip.
After all the tracks are laid down in the appropriate order, the movie must be "complied" by the program to form an .AVI or Quicktime video for playback. This can take several hours. The end result is a video file that can be output to an external video recorder through the use of a special hardware compression card (in this case, the now-defunct Iomega Buz Multimedia Producer).
Here we see Creative Lab's WaveStudio, a simple audio editor that ships with SoundBlaster audio cards.
While simple, WaveStudio is still a powerful tool, allowing the recording and manipulation of sounds and voices. For RAVEN, the actors come into my office/studio and speak their lines directly into a microphone attached to the computer. The resulting stereo wave file (seen above) can then be manipulated for use in the movie. This manipulation may involve adding or removing room ambience, increasing or decreasing the playback volume, shortening or lengthening pauses, or rearranging the sequence of the spoken lines to create a smoother dialogue flow.
Mixing of seperate audio tracks (say dialogue, sound effects and music) can be accomplished either in WaveStudio or in Premiere, although Premiere is preferred because it keeps the files seperate on the timeline for tweaking and minor adjustments (WaveStudio mixes the tracks together to form one solid sound file).
And, the place where it all starts, MetaCreations' Poser.
Generally, my screen layout is not as cramped as what is displayed here, but for the purpose of capturing these images I had to shrink my screen resolution down considerably.
For all intents and purposes though, you can see the default tools that Poser allows you to work with. The display area in the middle shows a scene that I'm working on in the Library. The toolbars running down the left side of the screen control light and camera positions within the scene, while the dials on the right allow the user to manipulate individual parts of the on-screen models and objects.
       |
