The world is non-linear
- Article 15 of 34
- Televisual, October 1999
The last Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies was the first to go in for non-linear editing, but it wasn't until the next, The World is Not Enough, that the process paid off. Rob Buckley looks over the editor's shoulder.
Page 1 | Page 2 | All 2 Pages
With little financial reason to do the work in-house (and with turn-around eventually proving even faster than expected), MacRitchie outsourced around 220 effects shots to Digital Film, the Magic Camera Company and Cinesite. Being a Bond film, set-pieces are high on the agenda and this film's main sequences include the final confrontation between Bond and the villain in a pipeline (which involved approximately 60 shots), and another in a caviar factory.
The facilities had staff on-set able to work with the latest DigiBeta edits output by Sanger and co, then have an Avid Symphony auto-conform the results. Publicists could then have access to the latest footage for promos and trailers (as well as quick feedback on product placement within scenes…) and the stars could come in and sit down with the editors to see how cuts were progressing and keep up to date with how they looked.
Nevertheless, there was no “cgi for the sake of it”: crew pride wouldn't allow it. “The stunt guys and the action director all (quite understandably) want to be able to say 'we did that,' so cgi crops up where it's useful in other areas. There's a ski-chase with Pierce Brosnan and Sophie Marceau and it's mainly live-action stuff: it could have been shot blue-screen, but there are only a couple of cgs in it. Crews would still rather shoot as much as possible if they can and fall back on cg.”
MacRitchie pleads ignorance as to his budget (“I guess they just trust me”) but suspects it was slightly less than Bond 18's–- though final costs for 19 proved slightly more than its predecessor's. But, since he doesn't know his budget, he doesn't Eon's The World is Not Enough on set at Pinewood know if he's gone over it...
Of course, for Bond 20, there'll be even more refinements to the process. McGuinness regrets the film didn't happen six months later: the post-crew just missed the launch of Avid's 24P uncompressed universal mastering technology and its Unity media-sharing system. He's sure, however, that Bond producers and others will be going to non-linear editing even more in the future. “People are very cautious, producers in particular. They value predictability in what can be delivered. But now the technology exists for pictures as well as sound, we all believe it's just a matter of time.”
Page 1 | Page 2 | All 2 Pages