Finishing workflow for hdv project. HELP!

[Nik Manning]

Ok here is the situation I will be doing some simple visual effects (after effects or motion 3) and color correcting (Color) for a friend who is editing his movie in FCP Studio. He wants to send me the 5 minutes of video that need visual effects and then eventually send me the whole movie (1 hour long) to color grade in Color. The movie is a shot on Canon A1 in 24f mode. He is using FCP5 but I can tell him to upgrade to 6.

I think this will be my workflow.

1. Tell him to export to Animation Codec for the VFX shots.
2. Tell him to send me some tiff files that represent each scene of his movie so I don't have to wait for the editing to be completed.
3. When his final edit is locked have him upgrade to FCP Studio 2.
4. Export his finished movie in ProRes and mail it on a Hardrive
5. Color Grade in Color and send back a ProRes version. Poor mans color monitor by burning SD dvd-rw and playing on multiple TVs.

Does that sound like a good workflow? Any comments and help appreciated. Also anyone know if there is anything different I have to do because the video is 24f? Thanks very much.

 

[VaricamLife]

Looks okay to me. But why are you going to have him export the TIFFs exactly, I don't see the purpose of that from your description? And are you handling the titling for him as well? Or will the absolute final onlining/going to tape be done by someone else? If you're going to completely be the last person working on the film then I wouldn't see the need to rush him into buying FCS 2. He'll need it long term to access the stuff you create for sure, but if you're going to go out to tape and if you author him some DVD-Rs, then I wouldn't see the need of him having to upgrade immediately (if doing so would be a budgetary problem for him). If he's sending you a hard drive as is, he could just media manage the piece onto there and you can do the export/render into ProRes on your end. Anyway, just a thought.

cheers.

 

[Nik Manning]

Thanks VaricamLife, I believe I am sending it back for him to add titles and do sound mixing. The tiffs are so I can start color grading the scenes for him while I wait on him to finish the actual edit. I don't want to send him back ab uncompressed 10 bit 1080p file when I can just send a ProRes file. He is a director more than a editor so the simplest way is what works. Does anyone know if I need to do anything special with 24f to get it to work in After Effects?