Preparing your Film for a Digital Interme

Discuss post and share editing resources here
Post Reply
User avatar
Paramvir Singh
Hero Member
Hero Member
Posts: 677
Joined: Thu Nov 23, 2006 12:54 pm
Location: Mumbai
Contact:

Preparing your Film for a Digital Interme

Post by Paramvir Singh »

Neil Sadwelkar has an excellent guide on this subject.

Check it here

Neil Sadwelkar, based in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) India. Was born and raised right here in Mumbai. Both his parents were artists - Vijoo and Baburao Sadwelkar.

Spends most of his waking hours working as an Editor and Edit System Consultant - for Avid and FCP systems.

Has a Masters degree in Physics with specialization in Electronics.

He took up his first job at the Nehru Planetarium as a maintenance person - to help repair the exotic electronic systems they have there. Sometimes they even let him do some repairs all by himself.

While working at the planetarium, he assisted on an animation film on Astronomy. Also worked on the production of over a dozen "sky-shows" on Astronomy. Nearly half a million people see these shows each year.

Later, he worked as one of the sound recordists for a long-form film series "Bharat ki Chhap". Created by Chhandita Mukherjee and telecast on Indian Television.

He also interned as Asst. Director (the guy who writes continuity and claps) and Edit Asst. (the guy who winds reels and syncs sound) for the same - on Steenbeck and other "manual nonlinear" devices. Yes, those were the first "nonlinear" editing systems.

The editors on that project were Reena Mohan, Renu Saluja, and Dipti Bhalla. He watched them closely and tried to learn their craft. And the DPs were Anil Mehta, Inderjit Bansal, Ranjan Palit, Fernando Cabral, Murlidhar, Mohanan, some of the best this country has produced.

Worked his way upwards and made it to Senior Scientist at the Planetarium, and then Technical Manager of a museum on Indian history - the Discovery of India at Nehru Centre, Mumbai. Eventually worked at Nehru Centre for 16 years - 1982 to 1998. In those years, met and married a college friend, Nivedita who also worked there till recently.

Later and over ten years or so, he produced and co-directed (with wife, Nivedita) several documentaries. On non-conventional energy sources, building of a bridge, Radioactivity, Astronomy, and other such.

Neil has worked on and tinkered with a variety of post-prod equipment - "low-band" & "hi-band" Umatic edit suites, A/B roll setups. And then nonlinear systems on NuBus and PPC Avids going on to today's G4 based MC 1000s and 9000s, G5 based Final Cut Pro systems, Titanium and Aluminium PowerBooks, Table-lamp iMacs, Quicksilver, mirror door G4s, anything he could lay his hands on. From 1983 till today, and won't stop.

Taught film students at the Xavier Institute of Communications between 1990 and 1999. Also was visiting faculty at the Bachelor of Mass Media Course at Wilson College (Univ. of Mumbai). Has given some talks at C-DAC's Advanced Computing course, and a multimedia course at Edit Institute.

When the TV boom happened in the nineties, Neil worked with old friends Indrajeet Neogi and Dileep Subramaniam and did sync sound. Indian film industry term for sound recording on location that is not overdubbed. Between 1992-98... he did sync sound for over 200 TV shows - soaps, game shows, talk shows, corporates, ads.

From 1996 onwards has been editing ad films and other films, for production houses in Mumbai. To drop a few names. Squirkle, Ramesh Deo Production, Picture This, POV films, Performance, TropicFilm, VideoKraft, etc. ("etc" means there aren't many more and/or they are too small a name to drop - yet).

He's done a bit of post overseas in Dubai and Singapore. Made video capsules for the web, for the Dubai Shopping Festival from Dubai.

On some occasions recently, films edited by him have even made it to the short list at the Cannes Ad film awards and won other awards. And he has been awarded at the Times Asia Pacific Advertising Awards 2003 (for the Hitachi Electric Bill commercial) and at the IDPA awards 2005 (Indian Oil Elephants Commercial)

Has lost count of how many TV commercials he's edited, but from studying TDS certificates he estimates these to be around 200.

Was associated as "Technical Consultant" with a FCP setup to edit a real Hindi feature film called "Lakshya", directed by Farhan Akhtar. And another feature called "Akoori" directed by Homi Adajania. The film was later called "Being Cyrus".

Neil is now a technical consultant for the setup and operations of a large post house in Mumbai, Pixion which is part of Century Communication. Pixion is a complete end-to-end film and video post setup - with a Spirit Datacine, Northlight scanner, Quantel eQ and iQ and Autodesk finishing systems - smoke, flame, editing systems from Avid and Apple(FCP) and CGI and VFX systems.

In past two years, Neil has been associated with film Digital Intermediate or DI projects. He has already worked on some Hindi, and other overseas films - Barsaat, Chocolate, Don, Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd, Namastey London, Broken Thread, to name a few - guiding them through the various stages of digital film post and VFX integration.

And for the most part of 2006 Neil, along with partner Anand Subaya, co-edited a Hindi feature film called 'Don', Produced by Ritesh Sidhwani, Directed by Farhan Akhtar, and featuring Shahrukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra, and others.

Apart from these projects, this year, Neil conducted workshops on editing at the Film course at Whistling Woods International and Mass Media Course at the Mumbai Educational Trust. And a weekend workshop a the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune.

In his spare time, Neil assembles and tinkers with PCs and Macs and has 'made' many PCs. He a lso does some one-off projects in deploying high-end projection and playout systems.

Neil also helps people out with DI projects, setting up editing systems, and lately dabbles with DVD authoring. Neil has authored completely five films so far - 'English, August', 'Split Wide Open', 'Don', 'Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd', and '1971'. Menus, compression, builds everything up to the glass master.

Was a contributing editor at Misenscene a meeting ground for media professionals from the Indian sub continent. And wrote for their magazine creative-i. Niether of these exist any more, but we're willing to give it another go if anyone will foot the bill. Until then you can still read these articles here. (Some are outdated by now)

Is forum host at the DMN Forums FCP forum (formerly WWUG).

In whatever time he can spare, Neil maintains web pages on Apple Final Cut Pro and on the film Digital Intermediates or DI. He also writes a blog on Digital Film Post.
User avatar
Paramvir Singh
Hero Member
Hero Member
Posts: 677
Joined: Thu Nov 23, 2006 12:54 pm
Location: Mumbai
Contact:

Re: Preparing your Film for a Digital Interme

Post by Paramvir Singh »

ParkRoad a post facility in New Zealand has teh following suggestions for preparing yoru film for a DI at their place. Its a good help in learning a process....
Attachments
Digital_Intermediate_Guide_for_Filmmakers.pdf
(92.37 KiB) Downloaded 680 times
Post Reply