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Malthus - A Year In Editing.

DigModiFicaTion

DᴉმWoqᴉԷᴉcɑꓕᴉou
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Same here. I've sat down with the littles and tried to watch it. I just don't care for it. Too pop and modern for my taste kind of like Raya was. I went in hoping for something like Coco and Moana that was more cultural and less modern.
 

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Day 17:

Made some notes about the Zion assault plot line. I'll use these to make cuts tomorrow morning.
 

Malthus

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Day 18:

Progress continues on the Matrix edit the time line looks neat and tidy. Might tinker with some colour grading later for a change of pace. Really digging the sequels. Lots to love.

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That One Guy

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:) An editing skill that I wonder if it is not often overlooked by many of us.
As a big fan of "narrative-first" editing, I think that proper planning and note-taking is an often under-done aspect of editing.

It's not always necessary, but if you approach an edit as a "I'm just going with my gut" project you can end up missing plotholes introduced by cutting or moving a scene, e.g. if you remove a scene where the McGuffin is first introduced, you might trim some bad dialogue but now the audience doesn't know what the protagonists are looking for or why it's important. I've come to think that watching the source with an eye to note-taking is a vital part of the planning stage for this reason.
 

Malthus

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Hear hear!

I am often guilty of simply doing a cursory rewatch before cutting. The Matrix is a rich film with multiple narrative threads taking place. Like them or not those threads all add to the overall narrative.

I decided to take notes in stages based on order of significance of various narratives:

Least significant: Zion Arc
Middle: Morpheus's Path
Most Significant: Neo's path

My logic was that I could trim the least significant plot line first while leaving the core structure and hopefully make enough savings to avoid major trims to the other narratives.
 

Silver Screen Samurai

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Howdy, @Malthus !
Just wanted to say, I'm very proud of you for doing this.

Speaking as a professional editor, this is something that sets people with a passion apart from people with a hobby. There are people who "dream" of doing it... and then there are people who actually do it. No one will ever give you permission to start editing films, so you have to give YOURSELF that permission; and you have done that. That can be observed in every single person who does this professionally, without exception. Not at all to claim to know what you ought to do or what your future holds, but considering how much time you're devoting to this? I would say it transcends a hobby for you; it's an active passion.

My one piece of advice (from reading the OP post) is one I give from experience, which helped me to hone my skills: although it may seem obvious, try to see if you can commit your focus to one project at a time. As someone who originally did many at one time, I have observed the difference to be that you can free your mind of "distractions" when trying to work. If you work on multiple projects at once -- which will each have unique, even contradictory needs -- I find that you can risk expending your available energy on so many different tasks, that you're unable to devote your full focus to any single one of them. From focusing on one at a time, I realized that I was also learning more. By trying to simultaneously focus on different projects, with different needs, I was limiting by ability to discern what was ALWAYS needed in my editing process versus what was only needed in certain kinds of films.

I would also say -- again, from experience -- try to focus less on the final scope or big picture, and just focus on little increments. Don't focus on big pledges like "finish the movie by this date" as much as little pledges like "fully edit the rough version of this scene today." That way you only ever focus on one little increment at a time, and you never get overwhelmed; then suddenly, without realizing it, you'll look back one day and go "hey! I've finished a rough cut!" This is how many great editors do it, and this is how I do it...

...and, above all else, if you find neither of these approaches works well for you? That's okay too! Your process should be individualized to YOU and how YOUR brain works; not for anybody else. I don't aim to tell you what to do, just sharing some experience from one editor to another.

HAPPY EDITING! (=

As a big fan of "narrative-first" editing, I think that proper planning and note-taking is an often under-done aspect of editing.
This; this, this, literally this, literally freaking this!! (as a professional editor, it irks me to no end when people don't do this)

I don't know a single editor in my field who doesn't watch all the footage for a scene, write detailed notes on every available take, then design a rough draft of ways to cut the scene in notebook paper... all before actually physically editing the scene. Then, after they have, they take so more notes about problems and ways to fix them; using available footage from the other takes, or shifting around the order of which ones they used, or any other number of potential solutions.

Then, after they've assembled the rough edited scenes into a ROUGH CUT, they do it all over again... only this time, it's a notebook rough draft of how to re-order scenes/re-edit scenes/use different takes or angles in scenes in context of the whole movie; rather than just the context of a single scene.

This update has seriously undermined my faith in this product. so much so that I just started to download Davinci Resolve.
I'm really sorry this happened, that genuinely sucks.
If it's any consolation, you couldn't have picked a better software to start out with than Davinci Resolve; it has literally the best color-correction software out there, has pretty much every major feature/tool of top softwares both visually and audio, and can even do some (basic) CG-VFX.

I would say, don't panic! Learning a new software can always be daunting. But thankfully (as I'm sure you may have figured out by now) Davinci allows you to pick from different existting keyboard shortcuts, in order to limit having to re-learn them from other softwares, upon installing. If you haven't already installed it, and don't know which one to pick, I would say go with Avid shortcuts. It's the most common software, and therefore has the most available tutorials.

Above all else, just learn about Davinci's basic correct export settings for ProRes.
 

Malthus

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Day 19:

The Matrix has me...

Not sure what's real anymore...

Agents are everywhere...

Did you hear that?

I think this line is being traced. I know that I probably shouldn't watch my edit again to day but I need to know if the prophecy is true. If out of all of the Matrix sequel edits available could this really be...

The one?
 

Malthus

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Day 20:

Did some export tests of my Matrix edit and tinkered with a specific cut that saves 45 seconds. I'm torn, I really am. Is the cut better than the extra time? Hard to say.
 
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Malthus

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Day 22:

Tinkered with my Spider-Man edit which had an error after exporting. Another "surprise" from the Lightworks update. Hopefully resolved now, we'll know tomorrow once the export is done.
 

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Day 23:

Well the export test proved two things...

1. That I have successfully fixed the initial error created by the Lightworks upgrade 👍
2. Having fixed the error I now know that there is a second error later in the film that had been masked. So now I need to fix that one too and re-export and test a second time🖕

Back to work...
 

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Day 24:

Just the one job today: Rebuilding the problematic transition in the Spider-Man edit. Exporting now, fingers crossed...
 

Malthus

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Day 25:

Urghhhhhhhh well the Lightworks update is continuing to cause issues with my Spider-Man edit.

Regrettably @spiderbruv, despite your best efforts, the export revealed a further audio issue. Once again I have fixed it and voila all the audio work is sorted. So aside from a few colour correction tweaks and a final rewatch this is done!

In the meantime I've begun working on some new Malthus Fanedits logos. Here's a sneak peak at my soon-to-be-fully-animated Matrix one...

Polish_20220125_140645266.jpg
 
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Bailey

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Looks good, but I agree, to "clean". Some texture would be nice. Another thought, maybe make it a little opaque too, so you can see the code through the M.
 

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Yeah, too clean. Dirty it up. I wonder what a vertical wipe matching the code waterfall to bring your "M" up would look like?
 

Malthus

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Day 26:

Finally sorted all the audio issues with my Infinite Spider-Man edit and locked in the new colour grade.

Before:
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After:
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Before:
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After:
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