You may recall in the April 2013 issue of Screen Africa we covered “A shoot on a
Shoestring’, a story about two Screen Africa freelancers efforts to capture a
motorcycle rally for machines manufactured before 1936, which ran from
Johannesburg to Durban and commemorates a road race that began in 1913.
Well the shoot was relatively successful, and thanks to kind donations of two
Sony HD cameras and the purchase of a helmet mounted Prestigio HD helmet
cam, some 13.5 hours of footage were transferred to hard drive. Ok, so we have
the footage but now what? The team was a little stumped as each capture
device was different and had different file formats.
So first trick was to attempt to download each in the same format onto a single
hard drive. This was the start of complications as yet unknown to the totally
inexperienced post production team, however again thanks to kind assistance
from various bodies, a single hard drive containing all usable footage in a
singular file format was created.
We had Windows Movie Maker so let’s get going, we thought, and so
commenced hours/days and weeks of fruitless attempts to be an editor. It’s not
easy when you have three timelines each containing over four hours of footage.
Not easy at all, and finally the decision was made to dip into the pockets and
seek professional advice.
After being shown an amazing motorcycle documentary entitled The Sabi 109 TT
made in an effort to make Mpumalanga the South African home to the Isle of
Man TT, friendly DOP Tai Krige recommended that we talk to Richard Muller, a
multi talented cameraman and editor.
“I got a call from Krige who I have worked with for many years asking me if I
would be interested in working on a motorcycle rally,’ says Muller. He told me
about the history and described the cool, old motorcycles and I was hooked.
“I became familiar with the footage and looked at the management. When you
are dealing with documentary footage from unscripted material it follows a very
similar structure. The first approach for material like this is that you go through
the material, but having limited resources, I decided best was to lay everything
we had. This meant everything from each camera start to finish.
Muller then watched each camera’s footage in double or even triple time and
skimmed through it and deleted shots that could not be used, based mainly on
technical reasons alone. “You then do this again looking for material that you
know is not going to usable,’ continues Muller, “and by doing this you can trim
13 hours to around five to six hours.’ So in a short space of time you have
halved to even quartered the amount of footage you have to deal with just by
deleting the footage you can’t use.
The next step was to establish what shots are duplicated between cameras and
this leaves far less of a mountain. The cameras were different and one camera
was producing better pictures than the other two, so how do you decide which
shots to use?
“You pick the best shots and use these as the master,’ answers Muller. “You
basically create as much of the story as possible from that camera. You then
look at the other cameras, and where they offer material that the best camera
does not, this is used to help cut gaps between shots etc. The helmet cam is
used to help add texture and journey, which the other cameras cannot easily
supply.’
Also the excellent archival footage adds meat, and adds to the “outside feel’ as
well. The archive footage was great and gave value to the nature and history of
the event.
“The edit was run mostly on Adobe Premier Pro – part of the Creative Cloud
package, which meant that myself and another editor were able to work
together on the same production. This helped with one of the cameras whose
file format was difficult to read.
“The audio consisted of wild sound and interviews as well as music and voice
over. We were able to handle this within the editing process without going to
final mix which was not allocated in the budget. Most of the audio followed the
video principals. We laid up all the good stuff and discarded the rest.’
The final product was edited to 50 minutes and this is for showing at clubs and
as a memento for the competitors. A shortened 27-minute version is also
planned for broadcast. The quality of the video shots will have to be carefully
selected as some perhaps are marginal for broadcasters, but the content value
is high, and with some careful editing the show should receive acceptance.
Keep an eye out on your screen for this production – The JD Rally, a Centenary
Event.
