Every Day

Written and Directed by Richard Levine (Nip/Tuck)

Edited by Pam Wise, ACE (Secretary, Transamerica, Then She Found Me)

First Assistant Editor: Robert Grigsby Wilson

Local 700 baby! My first union job. After busting my ass for years trying to get a shot on a union gig, Pam hooked it up and gave me a chance to be her Assistant Editor on her indie feature. I met Pam way back when I was a production assistant for Carl Byker on a PBS Frontline documentary called “The Meth Epidemic,” which she edited. We’ve stayed in touch since then, so now here I am!

The film was shot on the RED Cam, which is basically the “new hotness” of digital filmmaking. It records at 4k resolution (although its quality is frankly debatable) which is comparable in quality to 35mm film. The essential benefit of this is that you can shoot without the constraints of film, film equipment, and film processing on your budget. In addition to that, there was no need for heavy editing equipment either. Pam and I are editing the entire film on our new MacBook Pros and a couple 1 TB drives.

Oh we had problems, but mostly it arised out of not being able to manage the original RED media ourselves. A lab in New York (that shall remain nameless) received all our original media and downconverted everything into DNxHD 36, Avid’s new compressed HD codec. In an ideal situation, this would’ve been fine, since they would have taken that extra step out of my hands. However, this was all during the time when Final Cut Pro had exclusive rights to the SDK for RED, which essentially meant Avid and Red didn’t always want to talk to each other correctly. Thus creating huge headaches with converting media, all while trying to stay on schedule. I’d say, if you plan on making your film with the RED, either edit in Final Cut Pro or at least manage all your RED files yourself.

Some RED links: Avid and The Red | Spilling The Beans On The Red One | Avid/Red Forum on Reduser | Peter Jackson shoots RED | Soderberg shoots RED

Not bad for a first entry, eh?