VFX Editor Tasks
In this episode of VFX for Indies, Paul DeNigris, CEO of Foxtrot X-Ray, breaks down the essential tasks involved in managing VFX editorial. From managing elements within the timeline and organizing VFX spotting sessions, to handling turnover, overcuts, and final render integration, this video explains how the editing team plays a crucial role in the VFX process.
Paul walks through the key responsibilities of a VFX editor and explains how these tasks are often handled by assistant editors or the editor on smaller projects. If you're wondering how to stay organized and streamline the VFX editorial process for your next project, this video is a must-watch.
You can find a VFX Shot List template on our Resources page.
Transcript
Hi, I'm Paul DeNigris, CEO and founder of VFX shop Foxtrot X-Ray, and the host of the VFX for Indies podcast. On this VFX for Indies short, we're talking about... How to manage VFX editorial tasks. When I talk about VFX editorial tasks, what I mean is, What is the editor's role or the editing department's role in the visual effects process?
I often see filmmakers posting on social media, " I need a VFX editor for my project." When what they really mean is, "I need a VFX artist for my project." These are two very different things. On a big budget project, you'll often see a VFX editor listed in the credits, and this person works in the editing department, not the VFX department.
In fact, they are the go between that connects the two departments during the post production process. On smaller budget projects, there usually won't be a specialized VFX editor on the team, so these tasks will fall to an assistant editor, and on a really small project, to the editor. So what are these tasks?
First VFX editorial task, managing elements within the timeline. For some VFX shots, there's just a background plate and something will get added or something will get painted out, but there are no other filmed elements that need to be synced up and cut into the timeline.
However, if you have multiple elements like actors shot separately on a green screen, a driving plate that needs to get composited outside the car windows, a newscast that's going to be comped onto a TV, all of those things need to be added to the cut and edited to fit the story. If the newscast soundbite is 10 seconds long, we need a plate of the TV that it's going to be on,
to be 10 seconds long as well. Very often the editing team will do what are sometimes called "Slap Comps" right in the timeline. They might drop the editing software's chroma key effect onto green screen footage, or they might roughly scale and position that newscast over the TV, so the edit plays more or less like it will in its final form.
The next VFX editing task is VFX spotting. As the edit approaches, what we call "Picture Lock," that is the point at which no more editing of the video tracks will be happening. The editorial team working with the director, probably the producer, and if there is one, the VFX supervisor will hold a VFX spotting session.
This is where the team goes through the film and identifies shots that will need visual effects. On a film where VFX were planned to be part of the project as far back as pre production, most of the shots will have been expected. But on a lot of films these days, there's a phase of discovering things that VFX needs to take care of, paint and cleanup work, for example.
The next responsibility of the VFX editor is staying organized. Once the VFX spotting session is done, there may be hundreds of VFX shots that have been identified depending on the scale of the project. This can get very daunting very quickly. One strategy would be to use the editing software's markers function to drop markers in the timeline where each VFX shot is.
Color coding these markers can help too. Markers can also be labeled and the time code and labels can be exported to help you build a VFX shot list, which I'll be talking about shortly. Another vital organizing principle is the adoption of a common naming convention and sticking to it.
Every shot gets a unique name, kind of like a serial number, based on the name of the project, the scene number, the shot number, and other identifying factors. It helps to sort this naming convention out before going into the spotting session.
The next VFX editor task is Burn-Ins and String-Outs. The shot names and VFX descriptions also often get added as a caption for each shot, so when anyone watches the export of the timeline, they can see which shots are VFX shots and what work is expected to be done on them. Captions like this are commonly called Burn-Ins, and on most projects, the burn in will include timecode, shot names, the name of the project, the production company name, and whatever other information is pertinent to the project's workflow.
When Editorial's handing off the project to the VFX department, it's often helpful for them to export what are called String-Outs. These are shorter sequences of the VFX shots, just the VFX shots, pulled from the master timeline and presented back to back for the sake of efficiency. The VFX department shouldn't have to watch the entire film in order to look at just the VFX shots.
The next VFX editorial task is to create a detailed VFX shot list. Develop a comprehensive VFX shot list that outlines every shot requiring visual effects. Include key details such as shot descriptions, frame ranges, and any specific notes from the director or VFX supervisor. This shot list serves as a roadmap for the VFX team, ensuring that no elements are overlooked.
Bonus points if you've paid attention to naming conventions and were diligent and organized with markers and labels during the spotting process. Most editing software gives you the ability to export your marker list in a format you can paste right into Excel or Google Sheets.
The next VFX editorial task is turnover. This is where the project really gets handed off, when the footage also known as plates gets turned over to the VFX team. It's important here to realize that editorial isn't turning over the original files. Also known as OCM, original camera media or OCN,
original camera negative, a throwback to the celluloid days. An original camera take might be minutes long, including slates, last looks, the director calling action, maybe a back to one without cutting the roll, and then finally calling cut and the camera being stopped. Your VFX shot might be 12 frames from that giant take.
There's absolutely no benefit to sending the VFX team all of that extra material. So you're going to want to trim the footage down to, and export only what's being used in the edit, but with one caveat... handles. Generally VFX wants some extra frames on the head and tail of the shot. This is for a few reasons.
One, sometimes when the VFX get added to the shot, the editor or director may realize, Oh, I'd like to see just a couple more frames of that before we cut. So handles give the option to slide the edit a little as needed. Second, effects that will be rendered with motion blur will usually need a frame or two to ramp up the blur to the correct level.
If your plate starts right on the cut, the first frame may not have correct motion blur and it'll look weird. Check with your VFX team for how many frames of handle they want. Some people ask for four, five, eight, or even 10.
Next on your list is the color space. Most cameras these days shoot some form of LOG color, which looks pretty flat and gray right out of the camera.
Most editors and directors won't want to look at that flat, muddy mess the whole time they're cutting, so they'll drop a color LUT, also known as a Lookup Table, on the footage to make it nicer to look at. Eventually when the material goes through its final color grade, that LUT may be removed or the colorist may use it as a starting point.
Either way, the colorist wants the LOG color to start with, and so does your VFX team. We want the full range of color data, which means any LUT you might've dropped onto your footage needs to be removed. Likewise, we want to be working in the camera's native resolution.
So we have pure unadulterated pixels to work with. You might be mastering in 4k, even though the material is shot in 6k. Check with your VFX team, but usually they're going to want that 6k resolution to work with.
VFX will also want the footage at the same frame rate it was shot at. So if you've dynamically speed ramped your footage or even just slowed it down or sped it up, you'll want to remove those effects before exporting your plates.
The VFX team will usually ask for a reference clip of the shot as it appears in the timeline, and sometimes an EDL of the key frames. If they're expected to match the speed ramping and their final output. VFX software has the capability to do much more refined retiming of footage,
so this is not uncommon on speed-ramped shots. And after you've removed any time manipulation from your plates, you're going to want to also remove any other effects you've added in the timeline. Punching in reframing, flipping, flopping, slap comp chroma keyers, anything like that, strip it all out of there.
Once all of that is done, then every plate gets exported separately using the naming convention established previously and in an agreed upon format. Some productions use ProRes 4444 MOVs. Some use folders full of EXR frame sequences. Discuss with your VFX team before clicking that export button. Next up is reference media.
As I mentioned, the VFX team will usually want what we call reference media for each shot. These are going to be MOV or MP4 clips of the shots as they appear in the master timeline with whatever effects, time remapping, slap comps, and temp color you may have done. And this is so the VFX artist can always reference what the editorial team did and what the intent of the shot is. This is a vital part of the communication between editorial and VFX.
The next VFX editorial task, would be Overcutting. As the VFX team works through shots, they will usually be emailing work in progress renders for director and producer approval. The editing team may be included on the review emails and may be expected to download the work in progress renders and drop them into the timeline for the director and producer and the VFX supervisor to review in context. This is called an Overcut, where you're cutting in the temp VFX shots over the original media in the timeline. On smaller budget projects, this often gets overlooked, but I really, really recommend it. Watching each VFX render as an individual shot, absent its original context generally makes people obsess about unnecessary details that won't matter at all when the shot is seen in the cut.
The next VFX editorial task is final render integration. When shots are approved and finaled by VFX, they're going to deliver back to the editorial team, all of their renders in the same color space, resolution, frame rate, and format as the plates that were turned over. This is why it's important to get those details locked in during the turnover phase. Those final renders then need to get cut into the timeline and then can be treated just like the original camera media they are replacing.
And the whole project can then move over to the color phase, whether that means a solitary editor doing color grade on the show or the timeline getting turned over to a dedicated colorist.
The most important thing a VFX editor can do is to stay organized. You will likely end up with multiple versions of your timeline:
the original picture lock version, a version where you're prepping the plates for turnover, multiple overcut versions with work in progress VFX inserted, a version where all the VFX renders are integrated and a version to turn over to color. Staying organized with naming and using markers, labels, and nested timelines can help you keep it all straight. So to recap, managing VFX editorial tasks effectively requires careful planning, organization, and communication. If you found this video helpful, please give it a like and subscribe to our channel for more insights into the world of VFX.
And if you have any questions or topics you'd like us to cover in future videos, Please leave a comment below. We'd love to hear from you until next time. Keep creating and we'll see you in the next video for Foxtrot X-Ray and VFX for Indies, I'm Paul DeNigris. Thanks for watching.
