What does your assistant do for you?
by Jim Blokland
on
Nov 20, 2008 at 3:13:06 am
Hello:
I'm about to start cutting a feature, and I'm wondering if other editors with experience in low-budget feature film can give me some advice about working with an assistant. Beyond ingesting, synching rushes and tracking the Cinema Tools database as the rushes pour in, how do you make use of your assistant? Do you find there is a certain period that you need them, and then once you're in the thick of cutting you don't? I'm used to doing most things on my own. I've cut one feature prior to this, and only used assistants for the production phase.
Any real-world experiences/stories/advice welcome.
Re: What does your assistant do for you? by Shane Ross on Nov 21, 2008 at 12:34:06 am
Log and captures...labels, sublcips... and organizes footage. Build the show from the acts that several editors have worked on and then output and compress that. Makes DVDs of the tapes for the producers. Imports and organizes the constant influx of stock footage and music selects. COnverts online video as temp stock footage. Creates and manages tape logs.
Makes sure that all the footage that the editors got during the day isn't sitting on the desktop while being referenced in a project...a big no no for FCP. Performs daily maintenance of XSAN. Creates lower thirds for all interview subjects. Often performs the radio edit (VO and Interview bytes) of sequences for the editor to start editing with in the AM.
Lots of stuff to free the rest of us to just plain edit.
