Destroying the myth of RED and Final Cut Pro

Posted By Max Burgess on September 14, 2009 12:00 am | Permalink
As part of my busy IBC, I was asked by Avid to participate in a Talk on their stand about the Post Production of RED projects and how the Avid workflow has really opened up the format, making it easier and more creative than ever before.

Destroying the myth is a quote from Ted Schilowitz from RED who was supposed to be talking during the presentation aswell, but was unable to fly to Amsterdam for health reasons, much to all our disappointment (wishing him a speedy recovery) So we went ahead with the presentation with Michael Lindsay of 16oz (www.16oz.co.uk) and myself.

From my part the talk was about being able to conform complex offlines from Media Composer into DS without loosing control of the edit points and effects, which is something you weren't able to do with ease before limiting a RED offline to a basic edit. Having used both Avid and Final Cut Pro to edit RED projects before, this is something I feel passionate about.

To help demonstrate the point Avid demoed a project called 'I Love It' by Sneaky Sound System which is a music video I edited for an Australian band with director James Copeman. (An example can be seen here http://www.maxburgess.com/Max_Burgess_DS%26MC/sss_like_it.html) Because it was shot on green screen with alot of timewarps and effects there had to be alot of previs and layering done at the Media Composer offline stage. Initially some post houses in London were asking for more than 100 hours of post to finish the project. Instead we worked hard with Avid and the East London post house Splice TV to create a workflow that brought as much of the offline through to the online, saving crucial time and money in the conform. A complete file based end to end workflow using Media Composer, DS and Baselight enabled us to get the high end finish that we required for the piece at a budget that wasn't out of this world.