Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was one of the most anticipated films of 2012. It broke new technological boundaries and presented many creative challenges to its editor. After working as a television editor, Jabez Olssen started his own odyssey with Jackson in 2000 as an assistant editor and operator on The Lord of the Rings trilogy. After assisting again on King Kong, he next cut Jackson’s Lovely Bones as the first feature film on which he was the sole editor. The director tapped Olssen again for The Hobbit trilogy, where unlike the Rings trilogy, he will be the sole editor on all three films.
Much like the Rings films, all production for the three Hobbit films was shoot in a single eighteen month stretch. Jackson employed as many as 60 RED Digital Cinema EPIC cameras rigged for stereoscopic acquisition at 48fps – double the standard rate of traditional feature photography. Olssen was editing the first film in parallel with the principal photography phase. He had a very tight schedule that only allowed about five months after the production wrapped to lock the cut and get the film ready for release.
To get The Hobbit out on such an aggressive schedule, Olssen leaned hard on a post production infrastructure built around Avid’s technology, including 13 Media Composers (10 with Nitris DX hardware) and an ISIS 7000 with 128TB of storage. Peter Jackson’s production facilities are located in Wellington, New Zealand, where active fibre channel connections tie Stone Street Studio, Weta Digital, Park Road Post Production and the cutting rooms to the Avid ISIS storage. The three films combined, total 2200 hours (1100 x two eyes) of footage, which is the equivalent of 24 million feet of film. In addition, an Apace active backup solution with 72TB of storage was also installed, which could immediately switch over if ISIS failed.
The editorial team – headed up by first assistant editor Dan Best – consisted of eight assistant editors, including three visual effects editors. According to Olssen, “We mimicked a similar pipeline to a film project. Think of the RED camera .r3d media files as a digital negative. Peter’s facility, Park Road Post Production, functioned as the digital lab. They took the RED media from the set and generated one-light, color-corrected dailies for the editors. 24fps 2D DNxHD36 files were created by dropping every second frame from the files of one ‘eye’ of a stereo recording. For example, we used 24fps timecode with the difference between the 48fps frames being a period instead of a colon. Frame A would be 11.22.21.13 and frame B would be 11:22:21:13. This was a very natural solution for editing and a lot like working with single-field media files on interlaced television projects. The DNxHD files were then delivered to the assistant editors, who synced, subclipped and organized clips into the Avid projects. Since we were all on ISIS shared storage, once they were done, I could access the bins and the footage was ready to edit, even if I were on set. For me, working with RED files was no different than a standard film production.”
Olssen continued, “A big change for the team since the Rings movies is that the Avid systems have become more portable. Plus the fibre channel connection to ISIS allows us to run much longer distances. This enabled me to have a mobile cart on the set with a portable Media Composer system connected to the ISIS storage in the main editing building. In addition, we also had a camper van outfitted as a more comfortable mobile editing room with its own Media Composer; we called it the EMC – ‘Editorial Mobile Command’. So, I could cut on set while Peter was shooting, using the cart and, as needed, use the EMC for some quick screening of edits during a break in production. I was also on location around New Zealand for three months and during that time I cut on a laptop with mirrored media on external drives.”
The main editing room was set up with a full-blown Nitris DX system connected to a 103” plasma screen for Jackson. The original plan was to cut in 2D and then periodically consolidate scenes to conform a stereo version for screening in the Media Composer suite. Instead they took a different approach. Olssen explained, “We didn’t have enough storage to have all three films’ worth of footage loaded as stereo media, but Peter was comfortable cutting the film in 2D. This was equally important, since more theaters displayed this version of the film. Every few weeks, Park Road Post Production would conform a 48fps stereo version so we could screen the cut. They used an SGO Mistika system for the DI, because it could handle the frame rate and had very good stereo adjustment tools. Although you often have to tweak the cuts after you see the film in a stereo screening, I found we had to do far less of that than I’d expected. We were cognizant of stereo-related concerns during editing. It also helped that we could judge a cut straight from the Avid on the 103” plasma, instead of relying on a small TV screen.”
The editorial team was working with what amounted to 24fps high-definition proxy files for stereo 48fps RED .r3d camera masters. Edit decision lists were shared with Weta Digital and Park Road Post Production for visual effects, conform and digital intermediate color correction/finishing at a 2K resolution. Based on these EDLs, each unit would retrieve the specific footage needed from the camera masters, which had been archived onto LTO data tape.
The Hobbit trilogy is a heavy visual effects production, which had Olssen tapping into the Media Composer toolkit. Olssen said, “We started with a lot of low resolution, pre-visualization animations as placeholders for the effects shots. As the real effects started coming in, we would replace the pre-vis footage with the correct effects shots. With the Gollum scenes we were lucky enough to have Andy Serkis in the actual live action footage from set, so they were easy to visualize how the scene would look. But other CG characters, like Azog, were captured separately on a Performance Capture stage. That meant we had to layer separately-shot material into a single shot. We were cutting vertically in the timeline, as well as horizontally. In the early stages, many of the scenes were a patchwork of live action and pre-vis, so I used PIP effects to overlay elements to determine the scene timing. Naturally, I had to do a lot of temp green-screen composites. The dwarves are full-size actors and for many of the scenes, we had to scale them down and reposition them in the shot so we could see how the shots were coming together.”
As with most feature film editors, Jabez Olssen likes to fill out his cut with temporary sound effects and music, so that in-progress screenings feel like a complete film. He continued, “We were lucky to use some of Howard Shore’s music from the Rings films for character themes that tie The Hobbit back into The Lord of the Rings. He wrote some nice ‘Hobbity’ music for those. We couldn’t use too much of it, though, because it was so familiar to us! The sound department at Park Road Post Production uses Avid Pro Tools systems. They also have a Media Composer connected to the same ISIS storage, which enabled the sound editors to screen the cut there. From it, they generated QuickTime files for picture reference and audio files so the sound editors could work locally on their own Pro Tools workstations.”
Audiences are looking forward to the next two films in the series, which means the adventure continues for Jabez Olssen. On such a long term production many editors would be reluctant to update software, but not this time. Olssen concluded, “I actually like to upgrade, because I look forward to the new features. Although, I usually wait a few weeks until everyone knows it’s safe. We ended up on version 6.0 at the end of the first film and are on 6.5 now. Other nonlinear editing software packages are more designed for one-man bands, but Media Composer is really the only software that works for a huge visual effects film. You can’t underestimate how valuable it is to have all of the assistant editors be able to open the same projects and bins. The stability and reliability is the best. It means that we can deliver challenging films like The Hobbit trilogy on a tight post production schedule and know the system won’t let us down.”
Originally written for Avid Technology, Inc.
©2013 Oliver Peters
The most direct comparison between the last video finishing steps and commercial music mastering is how filters are applied in order to properly compress the audio track and to bring video levels within legal broadcast specs. When I edit projects in Apple Final Cut Pro 7 and do my own mixes, I frequently use Soundtrack Pro as the place to polish the audio. My STP mixing strategy employs tracks that route into one or more subgroup buses and then a master output bus. Four to eight tracks of content in FCP might become twenty tracks in STP. Voice-over, sync-sound, SFX and music elements get spread over more tracks and routed to appropriate subgroups. These subgroups then flow into the master bus. This gives me the flexibility to apply specific filters to a track and have fine control over the audio.
The video equivalent is the broadcast safe limiting filter. Most NLEs have one, including Avid Media Composer and both old and new versions of Final Cut. This should normally be the last filter in the chain of effects. It’s often best to apply it to a self-contained file in FCP 7, a higher track in Media Composer or a compound clip in FCP X. Broadcast specs will vary with the network or station receiving your files or tapes, so check first. It’s worth noting that many popular effects, like glow dissolves, violate these parameters. You want the maximum luminance levels (white peaks) to be limited to 100 IRE and chrominance to not exceed 110, 115 or 120, depending on the specs of the broadcaster to whom you are delivering. In short, the chroma should stay within the outer ring of a vectorscope. I usually turn off any RGB limiting to avoid artifacts.
It’s often a good idea to reduce the overall video levels by about five percent prior to the application of a broadcast safe filter, simply so you don’t clip too harshly. That’s the same principle as I’ve applied to the audio mix. For example, I will often first apply a color correction filter to slightly lower the luminance level and reduce chroma. In addition, I’ll frequently use a desaturate highlights or lows filter. As you raise midrange or highlight levels and crush shadows during color correction, the chroma is also driven higher and/or lower accordingly. Red, blues and yellows are most susceptible, so it’s a good idea to tone down chroma saturation above 90 IRE and below 20 IRE. Most of these filters let you feather the transition range and the percentage of desaturation, so play with the settings to get the most subtle result. This keeps the overall image vibrant, but still legal.
Editors work in a multi-standard world. I frequently cut HD spots that run as downconverted SD content for broadcast, as well as at a higher HD resolution for the internet. The best production and post “lingua franca” format today is 1080p/23.976. This format fits a sweet spot for the internet, Blu-ray, DVD and modern LCD and plasma displays. It’s also readily available in just about every camera at any price range. Even if your product is only intended to be displayed as standard definition today, it’s a good idea to future-proof it by working in HD.
Archiving is “The $64,000 Question” for today’s digital media shops. File-based mastering and archiving introduces dilemmas that didn’t exist with videotape. I recommend always exporting a final mixed master file along with a split-track, textless submaster. QuickTime files support multi-channel audio configurations, so building such a file with separate stereo stems for dialogue, sound effects and music is very easy in just about any NLE. Self-contained QuickTime movies with discrete audio channels can be exported from both FCP 7 and FCP X (using Roles).
Whichever format you standardize on, make multiple copies. LTO data tape is considered the best storage medium, but for small files, like edited TV commercial masters, DVD-ROM, Blu-ray and XDCAM media are likely the most robust. This is especially true in the case of water damage.
A properly polished production with audio and video levels that conform to standards is an essential aspect of delivering a professional product. Developing effective mastering and archiving procedures will protect the investment your clients have made in a production. Even better, a reliable archive routine will bring you repeat business, because it’s easy to return to the project in the future.
Video captured through Avid’s i/o hardware is mapped to this 16-235 range. Video imported from the computer, like stills and animation can have either a full range of 0-255 (so called “full swing”) or a digital video range of 16-235 (so called “studio swing”) values. Prior to AMA (Avid Media Access), Avid editors would determine these import values in the Media Composer settings, by selecting to import files with RGB values or 601/709 values. You can “cheat” the system by importing digital camera files with an expanded range (spreading the levels to “full swing” of 0-255). Doing so may appear to offer greater color grading latitude, but it introduces two issues. First, all clips have to be color corrected to adjust the levels for proper output values (legal for broadcast). Second, some filters, like the BCC effects, clip rendered files at 16 and 235, thus defeating the original purpose.
It has now become a lot more complex in the file-based world. The files you import are no longer just stills and animation, but also camera and master files from a variety of sources, including other NLEs, like FCP – or HDLSRs, like the Canon 5D. Thanks to AMA in Media Composer 5, this is now automatically taken care of. AMA will properly import files at the right levels based on the format. A digital graphic, like a 0-255 color bar test pattern, is imported at the full range without rescaling the color values from 0-255 to 16-235. A digital video movie from a Canon 5D will be imported with values fitting into the 16-235 range.
The YUV processing issues are also affected by the 8-bit, versus “high-precision” rendering options. When you elect to process all video as 8-bit, excursions above 100% and below 0% caused by color correction will be clipped. 
One way to fully protect “full swing” 0-255 levels is to work in RGB processing. A 0-255 color bar pattern will be correctly displayed, but unfortunately all video is spread to the full range, as well. This would mean that all clips would have to be color corrected to adjust for proper video levels. The only way that I’ve found for FCP to display both a 0-255 and a 16-235 clip on the same timeline and maintain correct levels is to apply a color correction filter to adjust the levels on one of these clips.
