@Zbutcher and I have been yucking it up lately on Twitter with the #editorsofacertainage meme.
 
You know, stuff like “remember when it took 3 machines to do a friggin’ dissolve?” or, “I love the smell of film cement in the morning…”
 
Nostalgia aside, it got me wondering: what analog creative techniques have made the transition to the digital age? Well, when there’s time permitting for any kind of pre-visualization, paper cuts are still the answer.
 
A good definition of a paper cut can be found in the book No Budget Digital Filmmaking by Chuck B. Gloman. According to Gloman a paper cut is “basic editing using information written on paper. The in and out points of each are written, and the information on the paper is cut and pasted together to perform a rough edit”.
 
Years ago, back when budgets still allowed for luxuries like pre-production – I would get a storyboard sheet that would be like a linear paper cut:
 

 
There would be a rough sketch of what the producer thought the viewer should see with the corresponding dialogue or narration listed underneath.
 
Drawings in the box, letters on the line.
 
Here’s a good article on how and (why) to make a paper cut. This further explanation from the Knight Digital Media Center goes into even more detail.
 
 
The linear paper cut was a great start for us, but if we wanted to change the order of shots we would have to start over with a blank set of boards. So once we had a good idea of the shots we wanted to use we would cut up the sheet and play with the order on a big corkboard.

 
This is fine for pre-production, when the images aren’t yet set in stone. But after your footage is shot, how do you stand back and look at the big picture in one glance?
 

The Decisive Moment

The venerable Walter Murch has an elegant solution. In his near mystical book on the craft, In the Blink of an Eye, he describes how he gets a bird eye view when editing films:
 
“…I would…select at least one representative frame from every setup (camera position) and take a still photograph of it off the workprint. We then had these photos developed and printed at the local “one hour” place, like family snapshots, and they were put onto panels arranged according to scene. Whenever a setup had a complex staging or a moving camera, it was necessary to take more than one photo…usually it was three, and most of the time it was just one”.
 

 

 

 
These snapshots from the towering documentary on video editing The Cutting Edge, show Murch using this technique as he edits Cold Mountain.
 
It shows what can be accomplished when you have a single person with a single format with a single focus.
 
Ok, so what happens when you have none of these?
 
The editors of the new documentary “Pearl Jam Twenty” used a similar method to coral and parse 3000 hours and 20 years of footage shot on every format known to man! As they went through the footage and found performances they liked, they would stick them on the ‘big board’ and shift them around until they found the order they liked. They said this method help them create their road map.
 
So how has the paper cut adapted to today’s remote, collaborative and mobile digital post environments? There are many apps that expand the process of pre-visualization. What works for you all depends on your situation.
 

prEdit

 
prEdit is a pre-editing tool for developing paper cuts from transcripts. prEdit features include the ability to:
 
• Allow producers or editors cut transcripts into selects in seconds

• Add and update log notes with auto-complete logging fields

• Preview the video for any clip, subclip, paper cut or section of paper cut

• Export to Excel spreadsheets and Final Cut Pro, or Premiere Pro Sequences
 
 

Final Cut Pro X – Placeholders

 
In Final Cut Pro X you can use Placeholders to rough together a sequence to be filled in later. You can even use them to build a complete storyboard inside the app. Here’s a tutorial on using Placeholders in FCP X.
 
 

Martini – The QuickShot Creator

 
Not ready to brave the wilds of Final Cut Pro X yet? No problem. The Martini QuickShot Creator for Post-Visualization plugin goes beyond the Placeholder feature in FCP X by giving you hundreds of pre-loaded backdrops. And if you’ve already scouted your location you can bring those photos into your shot.
 
Martini works with Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut 6, 7 and yes, now Final Cut Pro X.
 
 

Storyboard Quick

 
Now if you want to step outside of the editing software, StoryBoard Quick is a stand-alone app that takes pre-visualization to the next level. Some of the features include:
 
• a cast of customizable characters that come in various positions, rotations and elevations

• an array of backgrounds and props

• a wide variety of file types are supported including Photoshop files and layers

• the ability to import your script into the app and even keep your formatting

• the ability to print to HTML or Flash for viewing on the web
 
 

Cinemek Storyboard Composer

 
And while there is no official video editing workflow for the mobile storyboard composer Cinemek, that doesn’t mean we can’t find an excuse to buy this app. There is an iPhone and iPad version but they will cost you $15 and $30 respectively.
 
But if rumors of a HD, quad processor iPad 3 (with hopefully a better camera) are to be believed, I could see the benefit of passing this app around the edit suite.
 
What kind of paper cut workflow do you use?
 
 
 
Also, don’t forget, today is the last day to take the 2012 Splice Vine Community Survey. And a lucky surveyee will have a shot at winning a bottle of “Splice Vine Wine” courtesy of Windsor Vineyards of Napa Valley. So when you get a minute, take a render break and tell me a little about yourself and what you want to see more of on the Vine this year.

 
—–> THE SPLICE VINE 2012 COMMUNITY SURVEY