Troubleshooting "Milk" Spot With a One-Week Turnaround

When the potential for inclement weather pushed production for this idyllic location spot touting U.K. chain Tesco’s farm-fresh milk up by a day, editor Steve Gandolfi found himself working without the usual video playback system. In a pinch, they worked up a system: 35mm footage was loaded into the Avid via MiniDV, and extensive handwritten notes were made to keep track of timecode. The shoot wrapped late Sunday and aired the following Saturday. We asked Gandolfi via email for details on the seat-of-your-pants shoot.

Watch the video, below, then read the Q&A with Steve Gandolfi.

Why couldn’t you use your typical on-set playback system, and what did you do instead?

The shoot was a bank holiday weekend – a two-day shoot – but due to bad weather predicted for the Sunday, we shot on the Friday afternoon. With most of the crew already at the location this wasn't a problem. However, there was no playback on set yet. We captured the first day’s shoot with a battery powered MiniDV clamshell (a handy part of our on-set kit) direct from the camera. Saturday and Sunday we captured shots direct into the Avid and built the cut as we went.

Anything shot on any given day was sent to the labs, transferred to tape overnight, and the tapes were returned to us the following morning. We then loaded into the Avid and pasted over the playback picture we have been capturing live on set. Due to the fast turnaround and bank holiday weekend, there was no time to get the negative transferred before the coloring session. It was therefore integral that we loaded every single shot that was filmed and made sure every shot was boarded correctly. This was the only way to know which shot was which. Essentially this meant we had no timecodes in the Avid, only picture reference. On Tuesday, the first day after the holiday, we telecined all the shots for the cut and then laid them off onto DigiBeta with time-code. We then pasted the telecined shots over the finished cut in the avid, enabling us to produce an EDL for the conform.

Wasn't that a huge media-management challenge?

Absolutely. Each shot had to be labelled exactly as it was boarded, without exception. Some shouting at the clapper loader was needed! It was also important to know the order the slates were shot on each day to help us further keep track of our rushes. With all the material on the Avid Xpress laptop it was possible to take this along to the telecine to cross-reference shots and help the operator find the correct shots on the negative.

What was your shooting and post schedule like?

The schedule was really as tight as it possibly could be – certainly the fastest turnaround we've ever heard of. The shoot wrapped late Sunday night, we carried on editing into the earlier hours, we worked Monday morning with the director on the cut, had agency in at 11 a.m. and approval by lunchtime. On Tuesday morning we telecined all day and had the telecined shots pasted into the avid by the evening to start the conform. We dubbed the sound Wednesday morning and the commercial was clocked by lunchtime on Thursday and aired Saturday!

What was the most difficult aspect of the production, and how did you address that problem?

Not having the one light rushes was the most problematic aspect of the job. Not having timecode is one thing, but without seeing the better-quality images from the negative transfer it’s more difficult to make sure we have the best shots selected in the edit. To speed up the time taken to produce the EDL, we found the best way was to layoff shots halfway into the telecine session and send them back to the cutting room and start pasting the edit while the telecine continued. Simultaneously at Cut + Run we had another suite laying up the sync sound. We had two suites running continuously for two days on the Tuesday and Wednesday.

Creatively, what's the biggest challenge of cutting a funny spot?

Timing and making people laugh.