Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette and
Speaker 1: I am an editor at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me as he always does, his senior writer,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, Life's like a movie. Write your own ending.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, do you do you have a frog in
Speaker 1: your throat? A little bit? Um. So this is part
Speaker 1: two of our movie making podcast series, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: be doing a few more episodes about making movies in
Speaker 1: the future, although they'll probably be some buffer episodes between
Speaker 1: this and they because we don't want to just turn
Speaker 1: into the movie making podcast. But but it turns out
Speaker 1: there's a lot of tech behind making movies. Yeah, musically enough.
Speaker 1: We we had intended this to be two episodes, one
Speaker 1: about what happens when you're making the movie and then
Speaker 1: what happens afterward, And as it turns out, uh, there's
Speaker 1: probably gonna be enough material to create many more of
Speaker 1: these podcasts. So we're gonna just pick a couple topics
Speaker 1: today and in post production, what happens after the movie
Speaker 1: has been shot, and uh, you know, we'll get through
Speaker 1: what we can get through and the rest of it
Speaker 1: will shelve until later. Right, So future episodes might have
Speaker 1: information such as creating soundtracks, doing special effects, um, and
Speaker 1: actually just getting sound onto a film. We didn't even
Speaker 1: touch that in the last one. We had totally intended to.
Speaker 1: But thirty minutes went by so quickly. So let's look
Speaker 1: at editing films and talk about the process and how
Speaker 1: it started. Okay, so the earliest films were these static
Speaker 1: one shot films, as you know, the essentially the camera
Speaker 1: was was set running and then they captured stuff that
Speaker 1: happened in front of the camera and that's what you
Speaker 1: got to see. And we're talking like these are the
Speaker 1: earliest earliest films back when the medium was brand new,
Speaker 1: the technology was brand new, the industry was being born. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was there was no such thing as a movie
Speaker 1: star at this point, where movie stars were things like
Speaker 1: a train going by that kind of stuff. Because it
Speaker 1: was really a proof of concept at this point. Uh,
Speaker 1: And it took a big leap to get to the
Speaker 1: point where we started to edit film. And by leap,
Speaker 1: I don't mean just technology, because actually the technology, at
Speaker 1: least the early technology of film editing, it was incredibly simple,
Speaker 1: is essentially apparent scissors and some tape. What the leap
Speaker 1: I'm talking about is a psychological leap. Now, it's hard
Speaker 1: for us to imagine this now because we've all lived
Speaker 1: in the era in which movies and television are everywhere.
Speaker 1: But think back to imagine that you are in the age.
Speaker 1: Actually you know what way back machine get in? Here
Speaker 1: we go this next copyright all right, our time travel
Speaker 1: machine patent pending. Let's see, we're just gonna set this
Speaker 1: to the beginning of let's say, the twentieth century. Okay,
Speaker 1: you're all right, and here we are beginning of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century. Now we're talking about a time when entertainment
Speaker 1: was essentially you would go to a you know, maybe
Speaker 1: like a vaudeville theater and watch a live show. So
Speaker 1: what you're used to seeing are actors coming out on
Speaker 1: stage where you can see the actor. Uh, you watch
Speaker 1: a sequence from beginning to end, and you get one
Speaker 1: view and that's it. Right. You might change some scenery
Speaker 1: between scenes, but other than that, you know, you're watching
Speaker 1: a scene play in full no change of perspective. Film
Speaker 1: gave you the opportunity to use multiple perspectives in one scene.
Speaker 1: So you can have two people talking, but you could
Speaker 1: have the camera focused on one character for part of
Speaker 1: that scene and then take a totally different shot and
Speaker 1: focus it on another character for the rest of that scene.
Speaker 1: We see this all the time in any sequence that
Speaker 1: has dialogue. Sure, so you might be like over the
Speaker 1: shoulder of one character and you're looking at the face
Speaker 1: of another, and then it switches views. Well, in the
Speaker 1: earliest days of filmmaking, no one knew that that would
Speaker 1: work because no one had done it before. No one
Speaker 1: had thought, is the human brain capable of following a
Speaker 1: sequence of events that are happening at different perspectives and
Speaker 1: make that one narrative? And it turned out yes we can.
Speaker 1: And once we were able to to establish the fact
Speaker 1: that it doesn't really matter where you place the camera,
Speaker 1: doesn't really matter where you make the cut as long
Speaker 1: as continuity is preserved, uh, people will follow and and
Speaker 1: go along with you, and they have no trouble thinking, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this is a continuation of that scene. But before we
Speaker 1: tried it, we didn't know. It might have been that
Speaker 1: you would cut from one perspective to another, and the
Speaker 1: whole audience go, what just happened? I don't understand anymore,
Speaker 1: This doesn't make sense. I'm leaving, and I'm sure there
Speaker 1: are people listening who are saying, no, that's not possible.
Speaker 1: Of course it was going to work out like that,
Speaker 1: but you don't know until you try. No, No, And
Speaker 1: it's it's like science. You know, you have someone who
Speaker 1: makes a discovery, the next generation of scientists sort of
Speaker 1: take it for granted because it's been proven scientifically. So
Speaker 1: now that we're at the point we are now these
Speaker 1: things we could take for granted because we know for
Speaker 1: a fact that they work, But we took the work
Speaker 1: of the early filmmakers to discover that and and and
Speaker 1: allow us to build on that at this point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and there was really no way of testing
Speaker 1: it other than editing film. When you get down to it,
Speaker 1: I mean, what were you gonna do. Put two actors
Speaker 1: on the stage, have one of them facing upstage, one
Speaker 1: facing downstage, deliver a line of dialogue, have them switch
Speaker 1: places and do it again. Well, you know, today we
Speaker 1: might use multiple camera angles, you know, with with several
Speaker 1: different cameras from different perspectives and and have it all
Speaker 1: done that way. But you know, back then it might
Speaker 1: not have occurred to anybody to do that, or it
Speaker 1: might have been too expensive for them to try. Right, So,
Speaker 1: a lot of the early early films looked like they
Speaker 1: were just film productions of it, like a stage show.
Speaker 1: You know, the camera pretty much had a view as
Speaker 1: if you were sitting in the audience watching a stage production.
Speaker 1: So let's get to the point where they figure out, hey,
Speaker 1: we can edit, we can actually take little bits, we
Speaker 1: can cut out stuff we don't need, we can switch perspectives,
Speaker 1: everything's all right. Actually, that that opened up a huge
Speaker 1: world of possibilities in filmmaking. Because let's say that Chris
Speaker 1: and I want to film a scene where the two
Speaker 1: of us are having a discussion, and we have found
Speaker 1: this amazing room to film the scene in, and we
Speaker 1: want one of us to have a window to our
Speaker 1: back where with a beautiful vista. Unfortunately, the room we
Speaker 1: found it's amazing, but it has a terrible view. But
Speaker 1: we found this other room that's terrible but as an
Speaker 1: amazing view. Well, film editing, of course, allows us to
Speaker 1: film one side of that conversation in one room and
Speaker 1: the other side of the conversation in another room. It's
Speaker 1: taking place in two totally different times, in two totally
Speaker 1: different locations, edited together to make it look like a
Speaker 1: single time and place. And again, this an amazing thing
Speaker 1: about film editing that had not existed before. There was
Speaker 1: no way of doing it. You had to have everyone
Speaker 1: in the same place at the same time in order
Speaker 1: to get something done. So how they do it well,
Speaker 1: they shoot the film. They shoot as much film as
Speaker 1: they need for as many takes as they need in
Speaker 1: each location. And then they end up making a workprint
Speaker 1: of the film so they're they're able to look at
Speaker 1: it and beyond the negative. They still have the negative,
Speaker 1: but they've made a workprint. An editor goes through and
Speaker 1: views those scenes scene by scene, uh, and then physically
Speaker 1: cuts up the film, physically tapes film together to create
Speaker 1: a new print, which usually we call like an editor's
Speaker 1: print or a rough cut. And then from that you
Speaker 1: could look and say, all right, this is good, we
Speaker 1: need to shave a few seconds off this scene, or uh,
Speaker 1: this take is too long. That kind of stuff. It's
Speaker 1: a lot easier to cut than it is to add.
Speaker 1: That's one of the big problems with the old old
Speaker 1: work version of film editing. Once you started cutting, you're
Speaker 1: really committing yourself. You didn't have a lot of opportunity
Speaker 1: to switch stuff out either. If you said, you know this,
Speaker 1: this other take worked a lot better than the one
Speaker 1: that you're using, it's a lot harder to switch that
Speaker 1: out using the old old method of film editing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a really painstaking process, and you know, it
Speaker 1: probably was a little easier for film editors than it
Speaker 1: was for sound editors when you had to listen to
Speaker 1: a thing and sort of guess where the tape was, uh,
Speaker 1: when you would cut it, because you couldn't actually see it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean we're literally talking about somebody sitting
Speaker 1: there at the board with a light you know, the
Speaker 1: light table, you can actually see what's in each picture.
Speaker 1: And then you know, take the the scissors or I
Speaker 1: assume probably a razor blade something it cuts you know,
Speaker 1: pretty precisely, and and splicing the two together. Yea, uh,
Speaker 1: you know that that's that takes a lot of work.
Speaker 1: It's it's painstaking and eventually um technology started to catch
Speaker 1: up to this technique. That's you start seeing editing machines
Speaker 1: like the Moviola Yeah. So Moviola is essentially like a
Speaker 1: projector where it's a viewer to let you view what's
Speaker 1: on each frame of film, so you can go through
Speaker 1: and uh look at a print of film. And then
Speaker 1: it also even has uh the the stuff there so
Speaker 1: that you can cut the film where you want it
Speaker 1: to be cut, uh, and then you would splice it
Speaker 1: together and you can view it again. Um. They're really
Speaker 1: loud machines. Old timey editors loved them. They swore by them,
Speaker 1: saying that you know, you just you would, you would
Speaker 1: craft a film, you would build it frame by frame.
Speaker 1: And the editor was just as important part of the
Speaker 1: picture as the director or producer, uh, because the editor
Speaker 1: really helped shape what the movie became. The director would
Speaker 1: do all the things about, you know, making sure people
Speaker 1: were giving the performances. The director wanted that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: But the editor was the one who said, you know,
Speaker 1: this take is the perfect reaction, but it's a reaction
Speaker 1: to something that was said in this other take. So
Speaker 1: I'm going to be the one to combine the two.
Speaker 1: That's right. Don't forget the editor is important. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: am constantly reminded of that fact. I put a sign
Speaker 1: up in his cubicle, so he doesn't forget right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and whenever I do anything wrong, big red ink. So
Speaker 1: that's that's the old style of film editing, you know,
Speaker 1: the actual physical cutting of film, and some of that
Speaker 1: still goes on today, depending upon how a particular film
Speaker 1: company is doing a particular shoot. But a lot of
Speaker 1: the editing that you see these days are a lot
Speaker 1: of the editing that that movie studios are are using, uh,
Speaker 1: involves digital editing, that's right. And um, you know, of
Speaker 1: course this has been made possible by the the advent
Speaker 1: of of the low cost machines that we have today.
Speaker 1: Of course was Uh, it's a lot cheaper to do
Speaker 1: now than it would have been even ten years ago. Um.
Speaker 1: And a lot of videos are thoroughly invested in and
Speaker 1: using the technology. Um. Of course, the using technology like
Speaker 1: that to edit of a movie in post production goes
Speaker 1: back even to preproduction, because I mean a lot of
Speaker 1: In a lot of cases, they decide the the director
Speaker 1: and producer, I guess, decide who they want to use beforehand,
Speaker 1: go ahead and tell them I guess what they're going
Speaker 1: to do, what they have in mind, and then you know,
Speaker 1: once they've actually done all the shooting. Then they bring
Speaker 1: the the material back to the studio and of course,
Speaker 1: um that could be either film or you know, an
Speaker 1: actual digital version of the uh, the movie as it exists,
Speaker 1: you know, directly after it's been shot. Right. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can uh to do digital editing. There are several different
Speaker 1: ways you can you can go about it. You can
Speaker 1: either probably the easiest way is you're using a digital
Speaker 1: camera to start with. Oh yeah, because then you don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about any any kind of conversion. You
Speaker 1: don't have to come in vert anything, you don't have
Speaker 1: to scan anything. You you just port the data from
Speaker 1: your camera over into the computer system and then you
Speaker 1: can start editing. Uh porting talking about your capturing the video.
Speaker 1: You're capturing it from the camera and putting it into
Speaker 1: the computer. Uh. That process can take a while, depending
Speaker 1: on how high resolution you were shooting and the connection
Speaker 1: you're using between the camera and the computer. But but
Speaker 1: it's still faster than converting film to digital. Now, to
Speaker 1: convert film to digital, you've got a couple of different
Speaker 1: uh options as well. You can use something called a
Speaker 1: tell us any which it's sort of it's kind of
Speaker 1: like a scanner in a in a sense, and some
Speaker 1: scanners are called tell us aanys and vice versa. The
Speaker 1: terms are somewhat interchangeable, although purists will tell you that
Speaker 1: there is a distinct difference between the two. Uh. Tell
Speaker 1: us any convert its film to video formats and UH.
Speaker 1: You may have heard us refer before about the different
Speaker 1: frame rates of film versus video, the twenty four frames
Speaker 1: per second for film versus the thirty frames per second
Speaker 1: for video that's in the US. I should point out
Speaker 1: that's not that's not a global standard. Um. It's different
Speaker 1: in different regions. It's a standard, but not the standard. Yet.
Speaker 1: It's a standard in the United States and a few
Speaker 1: other countries. UM. So at any rate, because twenty four
Speaker 1: and thirty don't match up quite right, you have to
Speaker 1: do some some trickery to get them to kind of
Speaker 1: coincide more closely, and then that can introduce some jitter. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is why if you watch a movie that's been
Speaker 1: converted to video, Let's say you were watching an old
Speaker 1: VHS tape or you were watching a movie broadcast on TV,
Speaker 1: you might notice that it doesn't look quite the way
Speaker 1: you remembered it looking when you saw it on the screen. UM.
Speaker 1: And some of that's the conversion process. So uh, Now,
Speaker 1: if you're using a scanner, some scanners they'll just scan
Speaker 1: it in at the proper frames per second. Some telestening's
Speaker 1: due too at this point, um, well, so that you
Speaker 1: no longer have to worry about that. It's not it's
Speaker 1: not an issue. And so you can digitally manipulate stuff
Speaker 1: at the same frame rate as you would, um if
Speaker 1: if you were just working on film right all the time.
Speaker 1: So you've moved the film into the digital format. Um,
Speaker 1: and now you have two options, two big options available
Speaker 1: to you. You can either use the digital media to
Speaker 1: assemble your movie in the order that you wanted in
Speaker 1: like using choosing the takes, choosing you know, the transitions,
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff, and and uh and essentially
Speaker 1: making a video checklist for the negative cutter. So what
Speaker 1: what you would do is once you've put your movie together,
Speaker 1: and again, the cool thing about digital is that it
Speaker 1: makes it really easy to switch stuff out. So let's
Speaker 1: say that you know, you have two different, very different
Speaker 1: takes of the same scene and you want to see
Speaker 1: how they both play out in the context of the
Speaker 1: overall film. It's not that hard to lift it one
Speaker 1: out and replace it with the other. If it's all digital,
Speaker 1: it's really hard to do with film. Sure. For one thing,
Speaker 1: you have to pay more money just to get more
Speaker 1: film to do it. So you assembled your movie in
Speaker 1: video format, you hand that to your negative cutter. Your
Speaker 1: negative cutter goes back to the negative of the original
Speaker 1: film you shot, and using the video as a guide,
Speaker 1: assembles the movie. Right. So that's one way of doing
Speaker 1: it that seems almost as painstaking as the original version.
Speaker 1: The middle process is not as pain is not as
Speaker 1: painstaking because it is easier to edit once or it's
Speaker 1: easier to assemble the movie and the way you want
Speaker 1: that part is easy easier anyway. Um, but yes, there
Speaker 1: is still quite a bit of manual labor the you
Speaker 1: have to do, oh yeah yeah, And it takes a
Speaker 1: real skilled cutter to make sure that you get what
Speaker 1: you captured in video, because you definitely don't want to
Speaker 1: get to the point where you view the the negative version.
Speaker 1: You know, when you've made a print and you you think, wait,
Speaker 1: that doesn't follow what I made in the digital right,
Speaker 1: So your other option, instead of using that as a guide,
Speaker 1: you can actually print to film from your digital video,
Speaker 1: and in that case what you do is you have
Speaker 1: you have film coming in, you manipulate it however you
Speaker 1: need to. You can do color correction. This this is
Speaker 1: actually where you get the most freedom as an editor,
Speaker 1: right you you digitize the film, print the original of
Speaker 1: the film as it has been shot. You take the
Speaker 1: material there on the computer and then print it to
Speaker 1: film exactly so so that way you can do things
Speaker 1: like color correction. You can do you can do some effects.
Speaker 1: You can do lots of stuff that you could not
Speaker 1: do if you were just assembling the movie, right because
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're just assembling the movie and making
Speaker 1: a checklist, it's not like you could insert a huge
Speaker 1: special effect in the middle because you wouldn't have the film.
Speaker 1: The negative cutter will be like, all right, that's awesome,
Speaker 1: where is this? Well that's That's something that I think
Speaker 1: it is worth pointing out to. You can do things
Speaker 1: with color even when you're doing you know, a manual
Speaker 1: film at it, but it takes a lot more work
Speaker 1: because if you're going to do something like that, you
Speaker 1: have to go in frame by frame, you know, certain
Speaker 1: special effects and things that you want applied, and you've
Speaker 1: got a lot more freedom to do that with the
Speaker 1: digital process because you can add those things in the
Speaker 1: computer that you you know, would have to go in
Speaker 1: hand by hand to say, if you wanted to, uh,
Speaker 1: like all the famous movies that have been that were
Speaker 1: shot in black and white and we're later colorized for
Speaker 1: TV and things. Um, you know that has to be done.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're going to do that for film,
Speaker 1: that would be a real paint in the neck to
Speaker 1: go in and and actually paint the cells you know,
Speaker 1: or that i should say, the frames one by one.
Speaker 1: That would be a real real pain in the next
Speaker 1: to do. And their entire companies that that's all they do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they take other people's films and then they do color correction.
Speaker 1: I mean you'll see that in the credits of a
Speaker 1: movie if you look for it, you might see that
Speaker 1: there's color correction by such and such company. Um. But
Speaker 1: if you use this, this digital intermediate process, you could,
Speaker 1: if you have an editor skilled at this, could actually
Speaker 1: have the editor do some color correction without ever having
Speaker 1: to go to another company. Um. Chances are you probably
Speaker 1: still would have to because if you're transferring back to film, uh,
Speaker 1: then there's always the chance that just that transfer process
Speaker 1: means that you need to do some clean up on
Speaker 1: your print before you start making uh copies. Also, I
Speaker 1: should have said there is one other option besides printing
Speaker 1: the film. Oh yes, yeah, distributing digitally. Good point. You
Speaker 1: don't have to go back to film at all. In fact,
Speaker 1: if you did, you can either convert a film to
Speaker 1: digital and keep it digital, or of course you could
Speaker 1: use the digital camera and it's just digital the entire time. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in either case you could distribute it digitally. Now
Speaker 1: the we we talked about this a little bit in
Speaker 1: the other podcast. It makes it a lot easier to
Speaker 1: distribute the film. But on the flip side, there aren't
Speaker 1: as many projectors that can run it, right. You have
Speaker 1: to have the equipment on the at the theaters the side.
Speaker 1: Otherwise it's sort of a moot point. Yeah, you could
Speaker 1: send them a disk and then they said, this is nice.
Speaker 1: We have nothing that can play this, yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: If it's all the old style film projectors, then it
Speaker 1: doesn't do you any good. So as technology catches up
Speaker 1: in the cinemas, in the actual movie houses, uh, that
Speaker 1: will become a bigger and bigger push. I think it's
Speaker 1: just because of the ease of use. I mean, the
Speaker 1: the easier it is, uh, the more likely people will
Speaker 1: adopt it. Now they are those film purists who bemoan
Speaker 1: this fact because they think that it doesn't have the
Speaker 1: same sort of quality as the old films. And I
Speaker 1: can see their point. I mean it there is there's
Speaker 1: an argument to be made for both using the old
Speaker 1: style film editing and the digital editing editing methods um
Speaker 1: and it's two completely different philosophies and two completely different methodologies.
Speaker 1: When you're doing the old film editing process, you had
Speaker 1: to be O. C D really, because you had to
Speaker 1: be able to keep track of miles of film, right,
Speaker 1: and you're cutting film and you're gonna have to keep
Speaker 1: track of all these different canisters of film until it's
Speaker 1: all put together, and it just it took organizational skills
Speaker 1: to a whole new level. I mean, you had to
Speaker 1: be an amazing organizational genius really to be a great
Speaker 1: film editor. Now a lot of that is done for
Speaker 1: you with computers. That's that's one reason why they call
Speaker 1: the digital process a non linear editing process, because you
Speaker 1: can access any part of the movie at any time
Speaker 1: digitally once you once you've converted into digital format, or
Speaker 1: if you shot it digitally, then you already have it.
Speaker 1: You can go to any part of that movie at
Speaker 1: any time, and the computer essentially is keeping track of
Speaker 1: everything for you. Now, there's not really a standard way
Speaker 1: across all different editing suites that allows you to h
Speaker 1: to organize your data in a in a standard format.
Speaker 1: So if you were trained on one kind of film
Speaker 1: editing software, you may actually have to learn a totally
Speaker 1: different style if you if the company you work for
Speaker 1: it switches, right, It's not like they all have the
Speaker 1: exact same layout. So that's a downside. Um. I was
Speaker 1: gonna talk also, just really quickly about the scanners. It's
Speaker 1: also a time consuming process depending upon the equipment you have. Well,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to be of any quality, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: So uh let's talk about film quality. Here's another issue.
Speaker 1: People talk about how film the quality of film may
Speaker 1: be higher than digital, and that was probably true, especially
Speaker 1: in the early days, but it's less true now. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that that's a fairly recent development. I mean
Speaker 1: just thinking about the quality of for example, consumer grade
Speaker 1: uh digital still cameras. You know a lot of people
Speaker 1: were unwilling to switch make the switch to a digital
Speaker 1: still camera because they said, well, you know, it's just
Speaker 1: not as good equality as my film camera. But you know,
Speaker 1: today people take photos with their phones, the little cameras
Speaker 1: that are built into their phones, and expect them to
Speaker 1: be you know, good enough to print. Maybe not, you know, archival.
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll be blowing it up to the size of
Speaker 1: a building. But right, But you know, of course the
Speaker 1: people who are in the movie studios have access to
Speaker 1: a much wider range and much deeper range of equipment
Speaker 1: than than you or I would have because they have
Speaker 1: deeper pockets. But but yeah, I mean it's it's still
Speaker 1: you know, only been in the last few years, a
Speaker 1: couple of decades, right, And and Chris sent me a
Speaker 1: really good article from Editors Guild magazine. It was called
Speaker 1: Digital Intermediate for Film. And in that article, uh, it's
Speaker 1: discussed about the resolution of film versus the resolution of digital.
Speaker 1: So when you scan a movie in are you losing resolution?
Speaker 1: And depending on the scanner you're using, yeah, you you
Speaker 1: do lose some resolution. And uh, and also the higher
Speaker 1: resolution you're scanning to the high resolution you're converting into digital,
Speaker 1: the more information that the more data that that requires. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you're scanning a film and you wanted to
Speaker 1: be as true as possible to the original film. That's
Speaker 1: gonna result in an enormous file and it's gonna and
Speaker 1: that also means it's gonna take more time just to
Speaker 1: capture the film. So the example that Editors Guild magazine
Speaker 1: makes was that right now, the the what they call
Speaker 1: the gold standard for resolution and digital film is four K,
Speaker 1: which is uh four thousand ninety pixels horizontally by three
Speaker 1: thousand pixels vertically, and there there are actual digital cameras
Speaker 1: out there that can capture video at that resolution. At
Speaker 1: the four K resolution, Now, some purists will argue that
Speaker 1: film itself really ultimately could be up to six K
Speaker 1: in resolution. However, that we're talking about that as a
Speaker 1: perfect negative. A perfect negative could be at six K resolution.
Speaker 1: Once you convert that negative into a workprint, you lose resolution,
Speaker 1: and once you start copying from the workprint to make
Speaker 1: your prints a film that you distribute, you lose even more.
Speaker 1: So by the time you will see a film on
Speaker 1: the screen, it may be closer to two K than
Speaker 1: six K just through the whole process. So, while film
Speaker 1: at its ideal is a higher resolution than most digital video,
Speaker 1: you don't see the ideal, so it doesn't really matter. Okay, no,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. So when you're scanning the film, you
Speaker 1: have to choose what resolution you want to scan it at.
Speaker 1: And if you're scanning, the higher resolution you you use,
Speaker 1: the more information is going to require, the more time
Speaker 1: it's going to require to scan. Until recently, that meant
Speaker 1: that it could take weeks to scan uh film. For
Speaker 1: let's say a feature link film, it could take weeks
Speaker 1: to scan all that film into four K quality. It's
Speaker 1: gotten to the point now where there are some companies
Speaker 1: that have scanners that can if you're if you're scanning
Speaker 1: it at two K, which remember that's the resolution that
Speaker 1: most feature films appear in, and once you get to
Speaker 1: the theater, if you're scanning in at two K, you
Speaker 1: can do it in real time. So at thirty frames
Speaker 1: per second, it's not a problem. Uh. If you want
Speaker 1: to do four K, it tends to be a little slower,
Speaker 1: usually between eight and sixteen second eighteen and sixteen frames
Speaker 1: per second, so you're scanning it in at a slower
Speaker 1: speed than you would be playing the movie. However, at
Speaker 1: least that's improve somewhat, So that's the editing process in general.
Speaker 1: I guess we could actually talk about what you're doing
Speaker 1: when you're digitally editing films, right You're you're cutting and pasting,
Speaker 1: but you're cutting and pasting pixels instead of uh, instead
Speaker 1: of film actual film frames. That's true. Actually, the consumer
Speaker 1: level video editing programs that you might see as part
Speaker 1: of UM, you know, just your your standard I want
Speaker 1: to make a DVD to send to my grandparents type
Speaker 1: of programs, sort of like I movie for example, for
Speaker 1: UH for Macintosh, UM, I know there are several for
Speaker 1: for Windows that that do essentially the same thing. These are,
Speaker 1: you know, fairly inexpensive pieces of software, and you might
Speaker 1: think that they're very dissimilar to high level programs. I'm
Speaker 1: sure professional editors would probably say they're completely different. UM.
Speaker 1: But essentially the screen that that you look at when
Speaker 1: you're using these these programs, if you've seen any of these,
Speaker 1: they're they're really not all that dits similar. You have
Speaker 1: a video editing window where you can actually see where
Speaker 1: you are. It's like you would be, you know, looking
Speaker 1: at a particular frame of film, and then you have
Speaker 1: a timeline and you can take different pieces of video
Speaker 1: and drop them into the timeline to create at one
Speaker 1: long video segment. UM. And that's essentially what the video
Speaker 1: editor is is doing with that software now, um or
Speaker 1: the movie editor, I should say, The thing is, um,
Speaker 1: you know, of course the professional level packages have lots
Speaker 1: more capability. Yeah, there are a lot more features. So
Speaker 1: essentially the stuff that you get on your home computer,
Speaker 1: it's really the same sort of program that the professionals
Speaker 1: are using. It's just a dumbed down version, yeah, because
Speaker 1: most people don't simply don't need all of the the
Speaker 1: special effects and the ability to uh do a lot
Speaker 1: of color correction. UM. It's sort of like the difference
Speaker 1: in if you will photoshop elements versus the full version
Speaker 1: of Photoshop. It's just it's got far fewer features. Uh.
Speaker 1: As a result, it's more affordable to the average can sumer.
Speaker 1: But you know, if it's something that you're considering, if
Speaker 1: you if this sounds interesting to you as a career,
Speaker 1: if you'd like to get into professional motion picture editing, UM,
Speaker 1: you know, you'd certainly get a feel of for what
Speaker 1: it's like using some of these uh, you know, more
Speaker 1: simple programs, and then you know you can perhaps invest
Speaker 1: in some education and try out some of the more
Speaker 1: intense programs. I would recommend getting lots of hard drive
Speaker 1: space and a much more powerful processor. Right. You can
Speaker 1: never have too much RAM or processing capability or or
Speaker 1: hard drive space when you're doing this kind of work. Yep.
Speaker 1: And then you'll just go through the whole process of
Speaker 1: capturing the video from your from your recording device, whatever
Speaker 1: camera you're using, the editing process, and then rendering once
Speaker 1: you're done, and then you can go your Then you
Speaker 1: got your movie. We just simplified a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: the projects. Rendering is easy. It takes no time at all.
Speaker 1: I expect Tyler to run in here any seconds, guys. Yeah, no, No.
Speaker 1: Rendering is what we call. That's the time when we
Speaker 1: walk into the video department and people are playing video
Speaker 1: games or reading books or throwing things at each other.
Speaker 1: They just turned to you and say we're rendering right now,
Speaker 1: and you accept it and you walk out of the
Speaker 1: room like it's okay. Yes. I tried that in my desk.
Speaker 1: I said I'm writing right now, and that did not
Speaker 1: work at all. I can't imagine why. Well that that
Speaker 1: drives up a really good discussion about a video video
Speaker 1: movie editing. UM and again we've there's so much more
Speaker 1: to come to talk about, so we're going to put
Speaker 1: this research to good use, right right, Well, at some
Speaker 1: point we'll have plenty more episodes in the future, but
Speaker 1: like we said, we'll give you guys a break so
Speaker 1: that you don't have to get overwhelmed by a by
Speaker 1: movie stuff too quickly. But if there's a specific topic
Speaker 1: you want us to talk about about movies, obviously we've
Speaker 1: talked about how we're going to discuss sound at some
Speaker 1: point and how they do that. Um, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean anything else, and maybe eventually we will do an
Speaker 1: episode just on the Red one. Yeah, you know, I'd
Speaker 1: really like to just because it's uh, you know, apparently
Speaker 1: uh the hot camera right now in the market. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, if you have any of those questions you
Speaker 1: want to hear something specific about movie making or just
Speaker 1: technology in general, you can write us. Our email address
Speaker 1: is tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com and
Speaker 1: Chris and I will talk to you again really soon
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Speaker 1: us out on Twitter text Stuff hs wsr handle, and
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Speaker 1: Works dot com, and be sure to check out the
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