PRE-PRODUCTION
The most obvious (and what most feel is the most BORING) part of this stage is getting the elements onto your computer. But there is so much more to it than that.
So there you are. You have an awesome idea for a fanedit. You’re gonna make “Miracle on 34[SUP]th[/SUP] Street” a David Lynch style mind game, with a crazy twist ending that Santa Claus is an alien. You can’t WAIT to get started on this bad boy.
Guess what? You’ve already gotten started on it. You’re just eager to get to step 5 and you can’t wait to win Fanedit of the Month, maybe even FANEDIT OF THE YEAR. Slow down little buddy. We’ve got a lot to do here.
Do you know exactly what you’re going to change? Do you even know if you can pull off that sweet alien Santa twist ending? How many times have you watched “Miracle on 34[SUP]th[/SUP] Street”? Do you know what elements you’re going to add to the movie?
For every edit how much time you spend in the Pre-Production will change. (I’m giving some premature examples here, bear with it and keep reading…
Going back to Scream 4, after I had learned some great lessons on L.A. Confidential and Payback I decided to go try my hand again at Scream 4. This time I had found an early version of the screenplay online. I read it and took note of the little differences between the script and the final film. Since it was early draft there were some MAJOR differences that I wouldn’t have been able to do anything about. But the small things I could change. Two death scenes that bothered me in the final film played out differently (and better in my eyes) in the script and I knew I could edit those scenes the way they were written. So now I had a much clearer idea on what exactly to change. Then when I got to the editing it was just a matter of cutting a couple scenes here, adding some deleted scenes and then cutting the major things the way that it was originally written. Had I not read the screenplay I would have continued to edit blindly.
As far as the technical side, there are probably a million different ways you can get that movie onto your computer. There is no one program that takes a DVD/Blu-ray and converts it to an editable source in one shot.
“But Neg,” you’re saying to me, even though I’m not there in front of you, “how do I know what works?”
Research. Trial and error.
There are a lot of threads in the Technical section of the forum here with a lot of suggestions about different methods and programs to use. Read up on what other people have tried and had successes/failures with. BUT DON’T STOP THERE.
Let me show you how.
You have the entirety of the internet at your fingertips. Your search options are endless.
Another part of Pre-Production is understanding certain things. What do frame rates have to do with making “Killer Claus”? What’s a codec? Ad infinitum. Learn up on that stuff. You don’t need to know everything about everything but you need to know a lot of technical things. And you can't just say "Well, I learn how to do that later. I need to get to editing." No, you need to know things BEFORE you edit.
The last thing about Pre-Production is this. Do you know how to edit? Do you know how to use that fancy program you bought? If no, you have two basic things to do.
1) Play around with it. Try things out on a sample project. See what you can do.
2) Find tutorials online. YouTube has a ton of videos on how to use a ton of editing programs. You’re in luck because people nowadays absolutely love recording themselves playing video games and putting those videos on YouTube. Along the way those gamers need to know how to do some cool shit in their videos. So a lot of them will make tutorial videos when they discover something sweet they can do with their editing program. And you can easily find those videos and learn a ton of things, before you even try to edit.
Examples:
Neg –
Staying on L.A. Confidential for a moment here. I didn’t understand dick about the technical side of fanediting when I started editing that one. I was following Boon’s (incomplete) guide to Vegas to the letter without question. In doing so, I made the 5.1 audio 2.0 and edited in 2.0. The DVD had an awesome 5.1 mix on it that I didn’t know how to copy because I didn’t take the time to find out how. I learned from my mistake and learned how to edit to in 5.1.
Now, regarding the creative aspects of Pre-Production. The way I generally work is I make a written cut list of things I want to cut, before I even copy my DVD. I write it all down. FvJ is a good example of this. I have 5 pages of notes that I wrote down while re-watching all the Friday the 13[SUP]th[/SUP] movies, just to get to the point of knowing what I was going to do with my portion of the edit. And I keep taking notes, long after starting editing. My notes are up to 17 pages currently.
Truth be told, in those 17 pages there is a lot of
WHITE
SPACE
because that helps me sort out my thoughts and ramblings.
And no, I’m not saying you need to take extensive notes for every edit to be successful. Who knows, FvJ could be the biggest bomb fanedit.org has ever seen. (More on that concept later…
Non-Neg:
Do you think TMBTM created
War of the Stars II on the fly? Did he just start editing and made shit up as he went? I highly doubt it. And how many times do you think
L8wrtr has watched the prequels? You think
BionicBob has only watched Star Trek TOS once? And did Boon just simply open Vegas, load in
“Dances With Wolves” and start editing without any idea of what he would do? Did Gatos just say “Fuck it, I’m putting these scenes wherever I want” when he did
21 Grams Rebalanced? How many Super 8 digests do you think
Rogue-theX has watched? And how many times—
I think you get the point.
ADDENDUM -
After re-reading this and seeing some of the comments from other editors I realized I may have put too much importance on planning. Like I said at the start, this is how I do it. This isn't THE ONE WAY to do things. Truth be told, there is no one way. So I add this:
Do what works best for you. If you're a meticulous planner, plan meticulously. If you just like having a general idea of what you want to do, go with that.
Pre-Production is much much more than planning what to cut. Pre-Production is preparation for smooth editing.