• Make sure everyone knows where and when the session is, that the session starts on time, including the voiceover talent.
• Make sure everyone has a copy of the script.
• Place the person running the session (writer, creative director, etc.) so that he or she has access to the talkback button and a good acoustical position in the room.
• Provide the studio with your ftp information, or obtain their’s to deliver the final mix file.

Once everything has settled into place, the work can begin. The first thing I do is go over the details of the sound clips with the engineer such as alternate takes or mention that “The client really wants the music up front.” After discussing the mix with the engineer, I step back and let them do their work without interruption until they ask me to listen. I prefer to work directly with the engineer until I feel the mix is ready to present to the client, though this is more of a personal preference. When I was an assistant, I was trained that the editor is considered the buffer between the mixer and the client, meaning, the client expects you to be part of the creative process in the mix. Once you and the engineer are satisfied, then the client is brought into the dialog.

I have preferred to work by this protocol mainly because I am sound oriented and enjoy being part of the mix process, though not every editor feels this way. If you are going into a mix session with an engineer for the first time, I suggest you chat beforehand about how you would prefer to work. If your client wants to take the lead, let them. The engineer can manage on his or her own directly with the client, but be mindful of your time limits. This has never happened to me, but if a client starts directing the mix into a disastrous mess, remember that it is still their nickel. When they finally get their fill, perhaps offer a suggestion or two, but if they want to run the mix into the ground, they will have to answer for it afterward. Generally, however, I consider myself to be the “expert in the room” on behalf of the program (besides the engineer, of course), and expect my client to let me do the job they are paying me to do.

If your session includes recording a voiceover performer, you may need to draw upon some extraordinary skills to manage the session.

Recording voiceover can be pretty straight forward if the talent is good and experienced, and the client knows exactly what they want. But then there are times when the VO recording turns into a nerve wracking affair where clients storm out of the room and people lose their appetite. Your management of the session can sometimes make the difference between smooth sailing and an outright disaster.

The thing that makes recording voiceover so tricky is the combination of client expectations and their subjective judgment of a performance mixed with the talent’s ability to take direction and perform accordingly. For example, a writer and his or her client may differ on what constitutes the proper nuance in a performance to suggest, say, confidence or security, and the debate can get testy. Then there are times when the voiceover talent simply cannot understand the client’s direction, or he understands it but cannot deliver it. Sometimes they simply cannot say the words properly, or quickly enough for the time allotted in the spot. Some voiceover talent will simply refuse to take direction – you get what you get, or you give them a direction and it takes them 3 or 4 takes to work up to it.

Your role in the voiceover session includes the following:

• Take LOTS of notes about EVERY take, including timings if you have a stopwatch.
• Mark sections of the copy with “buy” and “alt” takes so that parts of different takes can be assembled to make the final mix.
• Let the writer direct the voiceover talent (sometimes it’s the creative director). Let him or her go as far as they need to get what they want, but if you see them struggling and you have a suggestion, ALWAYS ask the writer if it is OK for you to offer the VO talent a suggestion, or give the suggestion to the writer. You MUST respect the writer’s position in this regard.
• After everyone is satisfied with the reads, you can ask to have some alternate reads done to have “in the can” in case you anticipate the need for a faster or slower read, or a reading that lends itself to an easier editing point in the VO copy. Sometimes this inspires the writer to try something new too, which earns you some respect.
• If the session seems to be getting bogged down, suggest to the writer or engineer for everyone to take a brief break. This is rare, but sometimes a well-placed bathroom break can set things back on course.
• Sometimes the VO talent will offer to go in a different direction. Let them, but if it isn’t going anywhere, courteously cut it off and get back to where you left off before.
• When the recording session is over, do not let the VO talent leave until a rough assembly of the various buy takes are put together and everyone is happy with what they’ve got. Be sure there aren’t any pops or clicks in the “buy” takes that might make them unusable.
• Go over your notes with the engineer to be sure your take numbers and “buy” takes are the same as their notes, and that the correct takes are designated for each copy section.

I have taken a lot of ribbing for my lack of vocal gift, but I can sometimes communicate a subtlety in the read that will often help to get the VO talent where they need to be. So don’t be shy about piping up yourself about they way you’d like to hear it.

A final note: before you sign off on the final mix, it is a frequent practice to listen to the mix on a set of awful, tiny speakers (what would be a typical bad speaker on a TV set or computer) so that everyone can hear what the mix will sound like under the worst circumstances. Many mixing studios have a “special” set of speakers called Auratones, which everyone refers to as the “Awfultones” for this purpose. Little had the Auratone company known that their product would serve such an important role!

If your mix in the FCP timeline is acceptable as final, then skip this and go to the Build the Master section. If your budget can afford it, an audio mix session at a studio provides many benefits, even though you will be tempted to do it all yourself. A mixing studio can give you:

• The creative results that only an audio mix specialist can provide.
• Access to extensive sound effects and music libraries.
• Overall program loudness level control with sophisticated tools.
• A high quality microphone and recording booth that most editors cannot afford.
• Better sound editing software compared to editing systems.
• Better room and speaker engineering.
• A great creative experience for you and your client.

If you are working with a mixing studio, you will need to provide them with an OMF file that contains your audio clips and the sound level automation. Go through your audio clips and arrange them on your audio tracks according to the following guide:

• Dialog clips should be single track mono, and checkerboarded alternatingly on tracks 1 & 2
• Sound FX should be stereo, and placed on 3 & 4
• Music should be stereo, and placed on 5 & 6
• If you need to checkerboard SFX and Music, do so on adjacent pairs of tracks, such as music on 5 & 6/7 & 8
• Try to contain everything in 8 tracks if you can. It will make your mix engineer happy.

A note on dialog audio: a well-recorded production will usually include dual mono dialog audio on adjacent tracks. Sometimes track 1 is lavalier audio, and track 2 is boom microphone, or it will be the same microphone source recorded on both tracks. Presumably, you had made the decision to use one track or the other for your edit based on which was a better quality recording, but if you had been working with both tracks simultaneously, you should decide now which is the one to use, or use both if there are unusual problems. For recordings where the same microphone source is recorded on both tracks, one of the tracks is probably set to a lower recording level on purpose in case the other track’s recording peaks over zero and distorts. In this case, the lower level recording will still be good. If you do not encounter this problem, always go with the track that was recorded higher.

At this point, you need only to export an OMF file with embedded media according to the specs provided to you by the recording studio. Most facilities use OMF 2.0, but always check first. The end result of this process will be an audio-only OMF file that will import into the mix engineer’s software console precisely the way you created it in your edit. If the mixing studio asks for it, be prepared to export an MPEG4 with the rough mix to use for reference. ProTools systems can accept an MPEG4/h.264 at 640 x 480, 29.97fps, but check with them for exact specifications. Otherwise, output the rough cut to a scrap tape for them to digitize.

Another note on Final Cut Pro’s OMF export function: prior to FCP 6.x, the OMF file included the audio media, but not the mix levels or “rubber bands” of your mix automation. The only way to include this critical data prior to FCP 6.x is to use the Automatic Duck Pro Export FCP plugin ($500) which is capable of including both the media and the automation. Be sure to let your engineer know if your OMF does NOT include automation, and listen to them groan.

Once you’ve finished the OMF export, gather the OMF file and the reference video, burn them to a disc or upload to ftp. Save these files in your archive collection for the project as well.

Video Demo: Making the sequence and exporting an OMF for an audio mix session

• After every scene has been corrected, check off the scene on your list.
• When all the scenes are completed and have been recorded to tape (and if you are truly paranoid), shuttle through the tape and check off all the scenes again. Each scene should be recorded “flash to flash,” meaning from the camera start white flash prior to the scene, to the camera stop flash after the scene. Make sure there are at least 10 seconds of pre- and post-roll adjacent to each scene.
• Now for the “idiot check”: go through the *rough cut* scene by scene and check off all the scenes on your list AGAIN.

Why so damn many times checking scenes off? Because telecine is really really really expensive. You don’t want to wrap your session, ship the negative, go home, then find out the next day you forgot a scene. I have done this. My bosses have done this. It happens to the best in the business. What’s worse, if you do end up forgetting a scene, you might not be able to get into the same studio with the same colorist in time to get the scene you need done for your online. Try not to put yourself in a position of simultaneously begging for forgiveness and begging for studio time to fix your oversight. It’s a really bad feeling. Oh God, just thinking about it makes me sweat…

At some point during the session, there may be a suggestion to do several alternate passes on a particular scene. Unfortunately, you cannot have the same scene recorded several times with the same timecode. It will drive your editing system crazy trying to find the correct clip. Instead, your colorist will offer to lay down the alternate passes with a “timecode offset”. This means that, if the primary pass on the scene is recorded at its native timecode, the alternate pass would be recorded with 10 or 20 minutes added to the native timecode number. For example, native timecode pass for a scene might start at 1:04:32:00. The same scene with an alternate pass would be recorded with 10 minutes added to make it 1:14:32:00. You will need to make a note of it for your online re-digitizing session so that you digitize this clip manually. And why, you ask, a 10 minute offset? Because each 35mm lab roll is about 10 to 12 minutes long, and by giving a clip a 10 minute offset, there is a high probability that the alternate pass’s timecode will not be duplicating already existing timecode from either your dailies or your rough cut. If this is happens to be the case, use a 15 or 20 minute offset.

(I am making an assumption here that re-transfer sessions as I have described above are such a rarity with 16mm film that the concept of the 10-20 minutes timecode offset is technically not an issue. 16mm lab roll assemblies can create video transfer timecode hours that go much longer than 20 minutes.)

So what else should you do in a telecine session? In all likelihood, you will be attending the session with one or more of the following: the director, DP, producer, art director, creative director, client, and who knows how many underlings. You are NOT in charge of how the colorist does his or her work creatively (although you could be given that responsibility, it is not the norm). The colorist will be working directly with the creative team, who is under the supervision of the producer. Remember, the producer is in charge of managing his or her creative team, the schedule, and the budget. The producer controls how long the session can last.

Your role in this situation includes the following:

• Make sure everyone knows where and when the session is, that the session starts on time, and that everything is available to begin.
• Be alert to answer every question about the footage, meaning, if someone is groping around looking for something, offer assistance.
• Make sure that the person(s) whose job it is to actually guide the colorist is paying attention (more on this in a second).
• SUPER IMPORTANT: Watch the clock!!! Be mindful of the pacing of the work as it gets about 1/4 or 1/3 through the list to estimate if you will finish on time. Remember to include the time it will take to take film reels on and off the machine and to record the scenes to tape, not just the creative time.
• Be sure the colorists are following the list and laying off all the scenes to tape properly.

Your partner in this session is the producer. He or she needs to hear from you that the session needs to pick up its pace so that he/she can crack the whip on the creatives to keep moving. Always be discreet about this. Make sure that the producer knows that you are on his or her side to protect the budget, while making sure all the work gets done as well as it can be done.

Last, the first one or two scenes will ALWAYS take longer than the rest since they are usually the ones where the style is established. The rest of the scenes will be mostly a variation of the established style. Do the math in your head to account for this when you estimate the pacing of the session.

When the session is over, you may be asked what to do with the materials. The negative should probably stay there until the master is shipped, just in case something changes. The reference tape can be chucked, or you can take it and re-use it. The OCN Transfer Master tape, or disk drive, is a matter of your own discretion. My policy is to always take the tape myself and personally return it to the editing studio. No matter what happens, that tape is my responsibility, whether it is lost or destroyed by the telecine facility or by my own handling.

Shooting film is a rarity these days compared to the pre-DV days, say, 1998. Still, there are enough projects out there to keep these film-to-tape transfer places in business, so I suppose some of you might actually need to prepare a selects list for a telecine session one day. For background, here is the workflow of a film-based project with a video master, from start to finish.

Film-based project workflow:

• The production company shoots 35mm film.
• The film negative is assembled into roughly 1000 foot “lab rolls” and assigned a timecode hour. A hole is punched on the first frame of film after the leader. This frame represents the first frame of the assigned timecode hour.
• The lab rolls are then one-by-one mounted onto a film-to-tape (telecine) device to transfer it to videotape, but only with a rough color correction setting. The punch-holed frame is aligned onscreen and the timecode generator is set to “00:00:00″ of the assigned timecode hour, i.e. the lab roll assigned timecode hour 1 will start at 1:00:00:00 at the frame with the punch hole.
• Lab rolls contain about 10 to 12 minutes of footage allowing for several lab rolls to be assembled to a 60 minute videotape, each with their own unique timecode hour. These tapes are then put to the side for post sync with the sound elements if any.
• The end result is a collection of videotapes whose timecode relates to specific lab rolls/timecode hours. These tapes are called “dailies,” “one-lights,” or “rushes”.
• You use these tapes to digitize into your editing system, absorbing the timecode information in the process.
• You arrive at your final approved edit, where you need to extract a list of the scenes you actually used in the cut, based on timecode. Then you re-transfer only those scenes from the original negative with final color correction, recorded in timecode order to a digital broadcast quality tape, and retaining the original timecode in the process.
• This tape, sometimes referred to as an OCN (Original Camera Negative) Color Corrected Xfer Master, is then used as a source for re-digitizing the final scenes in your approved cut exactly as you had assembled them in your rough cut. This process is called a conform, or online session.

Since making a telecine transfer list is a destructive (and temporary) process, you should always make a copy of your approved rough cut to work with. The principle goal in this task is to:

• Create a sequence that represents ONLY film originated clips (including alternate takes) sequenced on ONLY ONE video layer. Everything else is deleted.
• Preserve blowup and reposition reference so they can be used to match against the film.
• Create a list of all scenes in ascending timecode order, with highlights on clips that require special attention.
• Provide notes for blowups and repositions, alternate takes, alternate passes, and timecode offsets (described later).
• Provide a tape or digital file that represents the sequence you just created, followed by the actual approved cut in its regular form.

Remember, the reasons for making this sequence are two-fold: First, to generate an EDL for sorting clips by timecode hour, regardless of their position in the actual edit. Second, to create a reference video while working in-session at the telecine studio for the position of the clips according to the EDL and approved edit.

The last item might be a bit confusing so let me put it in context. Your colorist is sitting at their console looking at a piece of paper with timecode numbers and clip names referring to footage they have never seen before. The first clip on the list is from timecode hour 1 at location 1:04:32:00 on the negative. The clipname is innocuously indicated as “Product turn”. The colorist wants to see what the shot looks like before he or she rolls the film down to that spot. By referring to your EDL, he/she notices that the shot is located at 1:00:45:00 on the reference tape. By rolling the tape down to 1:00:45:00, he/she can look at the shot before rolling down the film. There may seem like overkill, but you will see its value later on during the “idiot check”.

Prepare the sequence in FCP as follows:

• Set the default timecode start of the sequence to 00:58:50:00. Use non-drop frame timecode. Set the first frame of the first clip starting at 1:00:00:00, do not cut in bars/tone/slate yet.
• Prepare a scrap tape to output to that is pre-striped with NDF timecode starting at 00:58:40:00.
• Delete all audio, titles or non-film originated material from the approved rough cut. Be sure to unlink your audio from your video clips first (cmd + L) or else you will delete video with audio by accident.
• Any clips that have speed changes or motion effects should be changed to the original state of the clip inclusive of all frames needed to re-create the effect, i.e. reverse speed, fast motion, etc. Speed/motion effects information is meaningless in a transfer session.
• DO NOT delete blowup or position effects since they will be needed later on as a reference for repositioning the film image.
• Move any video footage residing on upper video layers down onto video layer one amidst the other clips associated with that layer (such as, if it is one of several layered images in a composite). Be sure to do this as an Insert Edit so that the subsequent clips ripple down unaffected.
• Include any alternate takes so that they are included in the list. I prefer to keep alt takes next to their “sister” take in the sequence.
• Remove all dissolve/wipe transitions.
• Optional but very nice: any clips with blowup or position changes should have a small title placed over the clip, somewhere on the edge, indicating what should be done in telecine to match the rough cut, such as “reposition north,” “maximum reduce,” “flop/blowup,” “register with scene X,” etc. These visual notes should correspond to the highlighted notes you will make on the EDL printout itself.

The end result will be a sequence of one video track with only the video clips needed for color correction.

• Next, select the sequence icon in the bin and select Export from the pulldown menu, or right-click. Select EDL.
• Select or deselect the various options according to this example, then save to your desktop.
• Then, open the EDL in TextEdit to examine the list. There are better ways to view the EDL using some inexpensive utilities such these.
• Make several copies, then use a highliter to highlite any special clips or notes.

Sometimes you can provide an EDL file to the telecine assistant who can then do the clip sorting in-session as well, but check ahead of time to confirm which format to use i.e. CMX, Sony, Grass Valley, etc.

Finally, once the list has been made and you’ve checked it over (you may have to try a few times to get it clean), cut in bars/tone/slate, and paste in the approved rough cut(s) at the end of the sequence. (By the way, you don’t cut in bars/tone/slate or paste in the rough cut into this sequence until after you make your list so that the rough cut clips are not included in the EDL). Then layoff the whole thing to tape where the record time mark-in is 00:58:50:00, as an Insert Edit. If you are doing this analog, be sure to check your audio levels on the record deck first.

Video Demo: Making the sequence and EDL for telecine prep