We’ve fed footage from our 3D green screen shoot into post, where we’ve promptly encountered our first editing glitch. We’re running a trial version of Cineform Neo3D software to see if it will work for editing our first 3D documentary.
The reason we’re trying this program is that it allows for dual steam, which means each eye is at full res and in real time, so we can do convergence, colour correction and other editing in real time rather than having to render whenever we make an adjustment.
Cineform also works with Final Cut Pro, the editing software we normally use to cut 2D HD there’s no way to edit 3D in FC without a 3rd party programs, as far as we know.
Great for picture, but there’s a problem with audio.
The 3D files that Cineform creates will only have two audio tracks.
To capture ambient noise as well as a conversation between two subjects, we have to capture at least three channels (a boom mic and two lavs), sometimes four (camera mic).
And since Blowdown – the explosive demolition series we’ll be filming – is event-based, there’s no opportunity for ADR, and you can’t recreate most of the ambient sound in post.
The workaround here is syncing up every clip where we may need more than two channels of audio in FC and then adding the extra audio recorded in the field with that particular footage manually.
To give you an idea of how tedious this would be, we work with a ratio about of 100:1 – very high by documentary standards (which generally range from 20:1 for a tight show and 40:1 for a higher-end production).
The reason we shoot so much is because we’re not sure what story points with be crucial until after the Blowdown is over, and we don’t want to miss anything key.
The prep work for these implosions (this time a condemned sports stadium in Salvador, Brazil) also takes weeks, so we’re capturing all of the lead-up.
In a post-production world with only two channels of audio to work with in real time, this amount of footage would mean days of extra labour to deal with the sound.
But the Cineform software seems to be the only high-end, real-time game in town, so our editor, Brian Mann, is in conversation with the developers to see if we can figure out a way that we can still use Cineform and not lose our audio.
