Who will do the final mix/color correction and where? Will there be any studio recording?
Even though FCP and Soundtrack Pro have good tools for doing sound mixing, there some situations where a “real” recording studio and a talented mixer is needed. Recording studios can run as high as $500/hour, but there are ways to work with some mixers for around $500/day. But you get what you pay for – not necessarily in terms of talent, but in services and equipment. If your project is intended to be finished in the same chair as the edit, you should know about it ahead of time. Sound studios have expensive mics, speakers, and sound proof rooms that most editing rooms can’t come close to in terms of accuracy. So if your client is OK with mixing in the edit room environment, they should be prepared to accept a mix that might sound great on your system, but not necessarily as well on another playback setup. That is what mixing studios are for.
The same applies for video color correction. Who will be doing it, on what machine/software, and where? Color correction work is time consuming and highly subjective. Sometimes it is considered an afterthought. But then later on, it can turn into a monster that makes the edit come to a standstill. It’s like trimming hedges or using a chainsaw – once you start, you find it hard to stop.
Color correction is a highly specialized skill that requires a sharp eye and a strong sense of aesthetics to create the right “look”. And often times clients and directors don’t have the ability to communicate exactly how to guide the colorist to achieve a satisfactory result. In other words, it is not as simple as saying “make it bigger” or “move it up and to the right”. Someone can know what they want, but have difficulty expressing it in terms of the color correction jargon, such as “less green in the midtones”. Nor is it easy for a non-colorist to look at an example and to try to match the exact look.
If the director, DP, client or anyone else intends to color correct every scene, you should find out if that means that they think you are doing it or someone else is doing it in a special studio. FCP includes excellent on-board color correction tools, and now includes Color for more advanced techniques. Synthetic Aperture makes a plugin for FCP and Adobe AfterEffects that has many of the tools used in full-blown color correction suites. If you are comfortable with doing color correction, then do it. If not, don’t fake it. It’s not easy.
Second, although editing systems are becoming much better at doing color correction, they are not as capable as specialized systems such as the DaVinci (which costs millions). In a true professional color correction suite, you will find a great deal of time and expense has gone into equipment and lighting control so that the video is accurate. This includes TV monitors that cost over $45,000, multi-million dollar consoles and calibrated ambient light engineering. And accurate projection systems can be equally expensive.
Most if not all typical edit suites cannot compare to the controls of a true color correction suite. Although a decent broadcast quality monitor and decent lighting control can do a job well enough, it is still not the same as the real thing. The bottom line is that great results can be created with either setup, though one is clearly designed for better results above all. This should be expressed at the outset of any discussion so that the client has the ability to decide how much they are willing to spend and still be satisfied with the results. (Typical color correction suites, by the way, can cost upwards of $1200/hr. Chances are you will be doing a lot of the work yourself, so bone up!).