Dialogue Editing

Set Daily Goals 95
Schedule Your Time
Make up a schedule that marks the important landmarks of your fi lm. These
landmarks aren’t yet your steps in the process but rather the important dates
for it.
• Picture lock
• More realistic picture lock
• OMF and other materials delivered to you
• Character A leaves the country; character A returns (and is available
for ADR)
• Director not available from to
• Holidays and personal commitments
• Studio rented out for another job on these days
• First screening with director and picture editor
• Final screening with director and picture editor
• Dialogue premix
• Anything else useful
Put these dates on your calendar. They’re the realities you have to deal with.
Of course, everything will change, but you have to start somewhere.
See how many days remain for actual editing. If you originally had 30 days
for dialogue editing but 4 will be taken up with ADR spotting, director meetings,
and the like, assume you have 26 actual working days. Using the percentages
from Table 8-1, determine how many days you have for each step in
the process. Your 26-day schedule for a 6-double-reel fi lm might look like
what’s shown in Table 8-2.
Before plugging these days into your calendar, remove one or two from
pass 1 and one from pass 2. Unfair? Perhaps, but this is your contingency if
something surprising comes up. Something surprising always comes up. The
computer breaks, your child gets sick, the director wants to screen again, you
get stuck in an unanticipated ADR recording session. It’s limitless. Stealing
from yourself about 10 percent of your editing budget will save you when
you need it.
Now you can create a schedule that might look like Figure 8-2.
As a last step, I calculate how much fi lm time, on average, I must complete
during each shift. Our imaginary 6-reel fi lm is 105 minutes long and we’ve
budgeted 15 days for the fi rst pass. This means we have to average 7 minutes
of fi lm dialogue each day to stay on schedule. Of course, some days are good,
others are bad. There are times you’re the smartest, most creative editor ever
seen and times when you wonder how you got the job. That’s why the