Post Magazine

December 2012

Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/100015

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 17 of 51

edit this! The Hobbit���s fantastical journey��� W By���DANIEL RESTUCCIO dansweb451@aol.com Jabez Olssen on cutting Peter Jackson���s latest. While shot in stereo at 48fps, the film���s 2D version will be exhibited at 24fps.. 16 ELLINGTON, NZ ��� Warner Bros.��� The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is the first of three movies based on the J. R. R.Tolkien introductory novel to The Lord of the Rings saga that could very well transform the movie-going experience. The new trilogy, directed by Peter Jackson and shot on Red Epic 5K cameras (all three films were shot simultaneously) in 3D, generated an unprecedented 1,100 hours of footage for each eye. The Hobbit will also be the first 3D movie recorded and exhibited digitally at 48 frames ��� to reduce eyes strain, but more on that later ��� and enhanced by the Dolby Atmos sound system. The Hobbit editor Jabez Olssen (The Lovely Bones) says, not surprisingly, that the biggest challenge was, ���the sheer size of the project: the amount of footage, the complexity of it, and the number of the characters that had to be balanced.��� There were production delays ��� the proj- ect evolved from two to three films ��� but the release date for the first film he says, ���never changed.��� Olssen wanted to be a filmmaker from an early age, and after university, attended the South Seas Film and TV School in New Zealand. He believed that films are written three times, as the saying goes, once in the script, again by the director on set, and the third time in the cutting. No one offered him a job in the first two areas, he says with a smile, so he chose editing to ���be around the creative process.��� In 2000, Olssen worked as an assistant editor and VFX editor for Sam Raimi���s Pacific Renaissance Pictures on the TV shows Jack of Post���������December���2012��� All Trades and Cleopatra 2525. The effectsheavy Cleopatra featured 200 to 400 effects shots per episode, says Olssen. There was ���a lot of greenscreens and CG characters to deal with.��� After season 1, Olssen was promoted from assistant editor to main editor. OLSSEN���S JOURNEY When Cleopatra wound down, he wrote letters to New Zealand-based Michael Horton (who edited the first and second LOTR) and Jamie Selkirk (supervising editor on the first two, editor on the third and co-producer on all three LOTR). ���They were needing a new operator for Mike, and I was recommended.��� After meeting with Horton and Selkirk, he was hired to ���drive the Avid��� for Horton on the The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Because the Rings films overlapped quite a bit, he did some work on all three movies. After the second movie he moved to London for year to work on various productions. While VFX editor on Wimbledon, he got a call from Jackson to come back and work with Selkirk on King Kong. Olssen then worked on a number of smaller projects, including previs for The Adventures of Tintin, and editing Crossing The Line, the Red Digital Cinema movie directed by Jackson and Neill Blomkamp. Olssen was on deck to be the main editor on Jackson���s remake of Dambusters, but that got delayed, and he was hired as lead editor on Jackson���s The Lovely Bones in ���09. Later that year, Olssen started previs work for Guillermo Del Toro���s version of The Hobbit, as well as performing the role of additional editor on The Adventures of Tintin. In May of 2010, De Toro left the project and Olssen was tapped by Jackson to come aboard as main editor. ���Peter didn���t take over immediately,��� says Olssen. ���He said, ���Look if I wind up directing The Hobbit, will you cut it?��� I told him I���d be thrilled and honored.��� THE HOBBIT Olssen and Jackson continued the previs process ��� Jackson got local actors and motion captured them as live action performances. The previs team would turn that data into low-res CG characters, and then use ���virtual cameras��� to ���get as many angles and takes as any live-action film.��� That process took them right up until actual shooting www.postmagazine.com began in March 2011. In contrast to editors who often work far from the shoot, for The Hobbit Olssen was on set every day. ���Post begins from day one of the shoot, particularly with the digital cameras. With our schedule and timetable, we had to be editing right from the beginning.��� Post was essentially integrated into production. ���We had a portable Avid (Media Composer V.6) set-up on the soundstage that was wired by fiber optics back to the editing rooms,��� describes Olssen. This gave him full access to all the footage shot previously thanks to Avid ISIS networked storage. Between shooting set-ups, Olssen worked with Jackson ���to do performance selects and select angles. Then I would be able to go off and do my editor assemble of the scene. ���It was good to be there when the scenes were being shot,��� he continues, ���because I could hear Peter talk to the actors and get a greater understanding of how the scene should be, and that helped me do an initial assembly. Without that contact we would have been a lot further behind when the shooting ended.��� When The Hobbit was on location, editorial used Avid software on a laptop system with FireWire hard drives that enabled them to edit even from remote mountaintop locations. The third component of the ���production post system��� was the EMC (Editorial Mobile Command), a truck containing a fullsize Avid Media Composer V.6 with a big plasma screen and a couch for Jackson. ���When we had an hour or two break, we���d go into the truck. It had privacy and was like an actual cutting room environment.��� The EMC was used on soundstages and traveled all over the country as well. Jackson monitored the Red camera 3D output via an on-set system using 3D glasses. He even had a satellite set-up that beamed second unit footage to his main location. However, according to Olssen, the Avid editing was done entirely in 2D at 24fps. Jackson���s Park Road Post would ���digital telecine��� all the original footage into graded Avid DNxHD files at 24fps. ���So the editing room had normal Avid footage just like any other film.��� As needed, Park Road Post would conform scenes in 3D at 48fps and screen them in 2K 3D at 48fps in a full-size digital theater. ���Printing��� single eye lower frame rate ���dailies��� took some of the storage ���stress��� off the Avid 128TB Unity system. After 266 days of

Articles in this issue

Links on this page

Archives of this issue

view archives of Post Magazine - December 2012