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This is for all you editors out there, this is a condensed how to succeed in a short time frame in terms of delivering a final product. Directors, you can help out your editors by taking a look through this since alot of it will be you. It's really quite simple: plan ahead. But of course it'd be silly to end a blog at 3 sentences so I'll go into a little more detail about what I mean exactly. Editors cannot plan ahead if they're given sloppy footage with a sloppy script or (god forbid) rough outline of what should be done. Directors, work with your editor ahead of time, if that's not possible work with an editor it doesn't matter who just as long as they're skilled enough to be able to work through what your doing even if they won't be editing it. For those of you who will not be able to work with your editor because he's too expensive or you won't even find him till after the filming as a rule of thumb assume they can't fix it in post. In fact assume they can't even modify it in post because unless they're industry grade or you're using the RED or CRIMSON, it simply won't change in post. There's a lot that can be done in post if you set up your shot right; if you're planning special effects go talk to people on forums about it, send me a message and ask me what you should do. It's usually a pretty simple fix that'll save you and your editor countless hours of frustration. Ok now, editors planning ahead for you means what you do with footage that you're either familiar with or have never seen before. First thing is go through all of it and watch ALL OF IT. I know this is a god awful process but you need to see how it turned out, what went right and what went wrong, what you forgot you had and what you need to make sure you have. This way you can go back and demand reshoots and whatever when there's still time. Now that you have a good feel for what is available put down your clips and make your full movie. Don't add any color correction, any special effects, any audio overlays or modification, just the clips right as they are, cut down to size in a linear (preferrably one layer) progression through your timeline. Watch it through once or twice, make tweaks in the flow of the clips, send it to your team and make it clear to them it's not done. They need to look it over and voice their own opinion about the flow of the clips; if it portrays the action or sadness right, if it's an understandable story line, etc... You might even want to show it to someone who has no idea of the story and get their reactions. Now that you have a rough draft save it as a separate file and store it away for later. Depending on the nature of your special effects and other things you may fair better by flattening and exporting your linear progression into one manageable and unmodifiable single clip. Honestly that's your personal call if you can do that or if you need everything fluid still. On your second rendition of the project import your continuous clip or the fluid version from the old project and do your big, nasty special effects. This is stuff like 3d renders, green screening, particle effects and tracking effects. These are a pain to juggle with minor effects like color correction and matte's so leave those for later. The third rendition is again your call; I generally just continue to modify the 2nd file because it seems like such a hassle to export again and make a 3rd file to deal with, I'm just going to delete the first one anyway. Making another separate file is only useful if you want your color correction to apply to renders equally or if you want to do vignettes or widescreen blocks on animated clips (which are bad as fluid form because they move around and your vignette noticeably moves with it). In the third rendition you do color correction, audio modification, music overlay, big visual mattes and other big picture things. Despite the extra work this might seem like it'll help you a lot in the editing room.
Yes I'm an editor primarily, I guess I'll write a director version tomorrow since that's what most of you are.
