Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1488780
64 C I N E M O N T A G E T E C H scheduled to be shot just outside of Boston. The series footage (shot on ARRI ALEXA cameras) is shuttled to the dailies house, Picture Shop Post in Boston. The dailies are processed there and pushed to RPL's catch station using Aspera Faspex. The assistant editors (Amy Pellouchoud, Matthew Caron, and Moe Friday) then copy the dailies to the episode drives and organize and prepare the shots in the Avid for the editors. (Be- sides Neel, the other two editors are Farrel Levy and David Dworetzky.) "Usually, my assistant Amy will have the dailies put together for me by 9 AM and then I can start cutting. Oftentimes, I'll leave one scene for myself to do the next morning in case I want to get up early. That way, Amy has time to get everything put together, a n d s h e's n o t t r y i n g to h u r r y b e ca u s e I'm waiting," said Neel. "Right now, I've finished editing my first episode, and the director and I remotely watched it together this morning on Moxion, with her giving me notes along the way. Once I'm done making those changes, I'll contact her and we'll both get together again to review. This virtual connection is very close to the experience of editing in an office setting, even though the director is 3,000 miles away." One of RPL's more complex projects involved a production shot in a studio in Atlanta, with assistant teams working from offices in Los Angeles and from their homes, and editors located all over North America. This was a 12-camera broadcast-quality shoot that needed to be transferred almost in real-time. RPL sent out 10 Gb-capable lap- top kits to the studio to hook into the servers on-site to handle the automated transfers of the footage into the RPL environment. They sent traditional edit kits to editors that needed them and set up software client kits for those using their own equipment. To meet this production's physical archive requests – getting content onto LTO (Linear Tape-Open) tapes and having the ability to restore the previous season from LTO — RPL sent out a few physical workstations with attached LTO tape drives so that ar- chived material could be restored physically and then automatically pushed into the RPL cloud-based environment. B e a u c h a m p s a i d , " T h i s w a s a f u l l soup-to-nuts type environment where we managed all the incoming record streams and handled the entire turnaround to get the show completely finalized at high broadcast resolution and sent out to their delivery destinations. After we got the right physical components in place, it was a seamless experience for the end users. Even with all the complexities behind it, the editorial team really doesn't feel the burden of all of those moving pieces and parts." CREATIVE COLLABORATION, ANYWHERE Another essential aspect of production is communication. Remote workflows can have production team members dispersed across the globe; content review platforms like Sohonet's ClearView Flex, Moxion (an Autodesk company), and EverCast are what bring them together. There are many op- tions for remote collaboration and RPL can incorporate their client's preferred plat- form into the workflow. "RPL is agnostic as far as software packages and collaborative toolsets. We don't have any limitations. If a client brings us something that we haven't had a chance to test or work through, we build a relationship with the vendor and set up a quick lab test to vet everything. Once we get that signed off and the client is happy with it, we turn it over for production. Our team is open to new workflows and toolsets; they make us, as an organization, more experienced and stronger in what we're doing," said Beauchamp. A s Ne e l s a i d , h e's u s i n g M ox i o n to collaborate with the filmmakers on "Julia." This platform allows Neel to video chat with the production team, play and review the cut, and make simple edits with the team watching. He said, "These remote collab- oration platforms, like Moxion, are very helpful to bring everyone together because all they need is a phone or laptop and a WiFi connection to join in." REALITY OF REMOTE EDITING "Editors are seeing that they can head to the production office for a one-on-one session, and while they're waiting for notes, go back home and handle those notes from there. It's one of the things that editorial teams really like. I think remote editing is here to stay. It's been a major shift and we were forced to jump into remote editorial, but everybody's gotten a taste of it now, and we hope that our platform will give them that 'facility-based workflow from anywhere' kind of experience," said Bass. For Neel, that hybrid approach (editing dailies at home and then coming into a facility to work with producers on the fully edited episode) offers the best of both worlds. He said, "I like the personal connec- tion you get in an office environment. And a lot of producers like to work in person. The advantage to that is that I'm making changes while they're watching." However, when doing the director's cut, Neel prefers editing remotely from home since he's typically communicating with a director on location. He said, "It's more and more difficult for directors to meet editors in person, with so many shows shooting in distant cities. This virtual system puts them back in the editing room once again where they can review and collaborate in real time." Neel concluded, "As a result of COVID, the remote post-production interaction with other members of the team had to be developed and implemented very quickly, and it happened quite successfully, espe- cially given the short learning curve that we all had to go through. I think Remote Picture Labs and their system helped us realize how to effectively work from home." ■ Jennifer Walden is a frequent CineMontage contributor who specializes in covering post- production technology. 'Remote editing is here to stay.'