Founding
partner at New York City post production house Edgeworx. Christensen
talks about films such as The Kids Stays in the Picture
by Tom Soper
Edgeworx was one of the first post-production places to edit High Definition video?
Yes. There had been a fascination with Hi Def, at least on my part, since the late eighties, early nineties and we had an opportunity to meet with the captain of Hi Def in this country, which is Barry Rebo, when he saw a project that we had done for a group in Washington. And he thought we were doing really impressive stuff, and we had a good relationship for a number of years. But ‘97 is basically when we started working with Hi Def movies. We were testing disc recorders for all the different manufacturers, which were all way too expensive to actually buy, so we were putting them through their paces.
So you were looking at a linear system then?
No, we’re totally about non-linear.
Can you get the same tools in the non-linear situation?
As of today, no. But that isn’t to say that we don’t take advantage of those tools. For example, The Kid Stays in the Picture, that was all done on Final Cut. We did a little bit of color correct on that and then went to tape to tape on-line and we did final color correct with that. So depending on how the producer wants to work, if they want to do the real time thing, then that’s fine, we’ll factor that into the budget and work that way. But we just did a feature where we did all the color in Final Cut and it works well enough. And you’re not spending a million dollars on machines and their support kit.
Could you give me a run down on what you are using here in your HD editing system?
It s a dual processor Mac with about two terabytes of disk space, running, at very fast rates, Final Cut, on OS9, because the Pinnacle people haven’t come out with the OSX codec yet, though they’re working on that [editor’s note- this has changed since this interview was conducted]. It’s a Pinnacle Cinewave system. At this moment (Nov 2002) the Avid DS still works with proxies but with the Pinnacle System you’re working with completely uncompressed footage in real time.
What did you use originally,
back in 97’?
Actually we used a Restore, which loaded two frames at a time and it controlled a tape deck. We were making single frame edits to a HTD 1000, which is the huge big open reel format machine, which actually Lucas has bought up all of them recently and they’ve modified them to run at slightly higher bit ratios. For a while you couldn’t get rid of those old machines but now they’re buying them left and right. For our first piece there was 16, 200 edits to get the piece out to HD. That was for the Newseum in Washington. It was groundbreaking at the time. We put an awful lot of wear and tear on the tape stock and the heads and stuff and a lot of time. On a good day we averaged about 2 frames a minute.
When did Mac really come into the picture with HD?
Well, After Effects is resolution independent so we’d been working with Hi Def way before ’97, but it wasn’t until then that we actually had a project that required delivering in High Definition. The technical limitations were with being able to get the images out. HD was always a natural progression on the Mac side.
But it was only with Final Cut Pro 3 that incorporated HD?
Yes, it was only with FCP3 and the Cinewave that we were able to do it all on the desk top, which was something we’d been wanting to do for ages. But it finally came out and it works. It works really well.
Do you feel there are differences stylistically editing on HD as opposed to DV?
That’s a question for Michael Moore who insisted on editing Bowling For Columbine in a linear High Definition room for reasons I don’t yet understand. I’m sure there are advantages but I think editors can extrapolate visually enough. And if you want to see a scene in the HD you can always load the tape and look at it but it’s a practicality issue more than anything. The down converts that we use are probably more than adequate.
Considering how far things have come in the last five years with HD, any predictions on how things might get even better in the next five years?
Well, it’s quite probable that HD as we know it will change. There’s already talk of another HD acquisition format that the Hollywood guys will embrace because it’s not what you’ll be watching on TV.
And small Hi Def cameras will be available?
Inevitably. Just like there’ll be smaller and smaller DV cameras. There’s obviously a trend in the independent film industry that HD is going to be very helpful. I think it’s even more important to be thinking about widescreen because if you expect international sale it has to be made in widescreen. And of course HD is widescreen automatically.
Do you have a particularly
love for the look of HD now you’ve worked with
it?
I’ve got so used to it now, and watching it at home on cable, that when I don’t see it I notice the distinct difference. What is the look of High Definition? The Panasonic camera looks like one thing, film transferred to HD looks like film. It’s certainly harder on the make-up people. Television shows being finished in HD have to think about set design and make-up more than they used to.
