For almost 20 years, Nathan Adams has proven that he is comfortable bridging the gap between creative and technical. As a musician and recording engineer, Nathan has worked in legendary recording studios. With a solid understanding of the “old school”, Nathan began helping studios in LA and NYC switch from analog to digital. By 2001, Nathan added Avid & FCP to his knowledge base and quickly became a pioneer in the transition from traditional film workflow to all digital and HD pipelines.
Nathan continues to provide sales and consulting services to productions and companies looking to save time and money using the latest technology. Recently, Nathan provided technical services, workflow consulting, and on-set data management equipment and services for David Fincher’s The Social Network. Nathan continues to work with Mr. Fincher on his most recent project, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, currently shooting in Sweden and editing in Los Angeles. Nathan’s core business has evolved to focus primarily on asset, storage and archive management solutions and workflow.
1. Describe an “average” work day.
Well, I wear a lot of hats so I don’t really have an “average” day. I have average editorial days, and average DI days, and average production days, and then average days trying to find work, which is probably the most average day of all.
An engineer I know says, “Plan the build, then build the plan”. So when I’m doing a project for Cinematomic, I start with a scope of work that everyone can agree on. Then I create a plan for every stage of post and try to stick to it. As things change and evolve I try to make sure everyone has changes to the plan at least a week in advance. This tends to keeps everyone in lock step. A lot of editors, myself included, can get wrapped up in the minutia of nudging a cut one or two frames back and forth so on a feature, I’m always pushing to just make the cut and move on. Odds are we’ll be back here trimming the scene down in a few weeks anyway.
These days, when editing unscripted content, the edit room takes on a more creative vibe, which is fun, but it makes the process slower. Suddenly the story is getting created spontaneously based on the footage, and the collaboration between producer, director, editor, and others becomes very apparent. It reminds me of when I was a recording engineer. I loved catching those serendipitous moments on tape; the perfect drum take, or the perfect vocal take. It’s the creative process in its purest form. That’s why I do this stuff.
2. What is a common mistake productions make in regards to workflows?
Not enough planning. It’s amazing how much money gets thrown away in production and post-production because of preventable mistakes. If you plan properly, you end up saving time, hiring the right people and minimizing the surprises that cost money. Too often I see productions jump into the deep end and then they realize they don’t know how to swim. It’s a shame because they end up spending their entire budget on production and there’s nothing left for post. A good A.D., U.P.M. and/or Line Producer can make the difference between staying on budget and blowing it.
For instance, I got a call from a client a few weeks ago that lost 11 days of a 13 day shoot because they hired an unknown as their data wrangler. Well, he just opened the SxS cards and started dragging, dropping and material and he completely screwed the entire production. It was a disaster. They ended up doubling their budget and losing money on the job, and their client was still unhappy at the finish line. What a nightmare.
Unfortunately, most people think they’re much more talented than they actually are. And the ego’s are so big, that no one will admit they’re in over their head. If productions would just stick to word of mouth referrals things would be a lot better. People should be rewarded for honesty. Instead, they’re punished. I love people that say, “I don’t know but I’ll find out the right answer for you”. It means they’re not full of crap and they don’t mind humbling themselves to get the right answer. That just shows integrity to me.
3. At what point do productions usually bring you onto a project? i.e development/pre-production
It’s different for every project. In the past, I usually stepped in after the bulk of editorial was completed. I would shepherd a project through DI, sound mix, film print, Digital Cinema mastering, Dolby encoding, etc. all the way to theatrical release. But now, I’m doing a lot more consulting before a single frame has been shot. Now that so many shows and features are shooting with file-based cameras, at least half of my discussions revolve around how they’re going to safely add metadata on set, back up the files, and get them to post. Of course everyone has their own product, widget, software, etc. to handle this. I’ve just started directing for the first time, and I’m so meticulous about everything. I’m literally storyboarding interviews so everyone knows what I want, and there’s no surprises.
4. Which members of the production team do you work with closely when designing a workflow?
Almost always there’s a guy on set that’s managing the data. He’s the key. Either he’s the DIT or a dedicated data wrangler, or the producer’s nephew who’s “interning” for free (bad idea). On the Social Network, I worked with Tyler Nelson, David’s Assistant Editor, and Joe Wolcott, David’s Technical Advisor. We had a prototype system that we had already used on set for a couple of projects, but we had to make a lot of changes to it for David’s workflow. We needed new software from Red for the Red Rocket card to handle the footage from the Mysterium sensor (this was long before the sensor was released to the public). The studio required an LTO-4 backup of the camera masters, so did the production, and we needed a fair amount of RAID storage to handle all of the new content Tyler was generating. Tyler spent weeks prior to production timing things with a stopwatch so he knew exactly what the system could do. He is the most thorough “planner” I’ve ever met. And it worked beautifully. Tyler not only handled the work of the assistant editor, he also did the job of a DIT, data wrangler, telecine facility, editor, composite artist…I could go on for days. He’s amazing. I don’t think he requires sleep like the rest of us.
Anyway, the key to designing the right workflow for me is the seamless hand off from production to post; to blur the line between the two. The person that is responsible for data management needs to understand both sides of the coin, read between the lines, and be two steps ahead of everyone on the production and in post.
I do have some basic rules that I try to live by. I always try to write everything down. I always speak to the Line Producer and get budget restrictions. I always quadruple the amount of data the director thinks he’s going to shoot. And perhaps the most important rule is that I always start the plan from the finish line and work my way backward. For instance, if we’re finishing for the web, we don’t have to post everything in 4k and do a DI. The problem comes with productions who say, “We want to keep our options open to prepare for 4k DI and theatrical release on film”. They usually change their mind when they see what that does to the budget though. More and more I find myself just recommending that we finish in Prores for low budget features. Prores looks great and I’ve even seen it recorded to film and it looks really good for many projects. And what a time save it is to edit “online” the entire time. It’s great for non-technical directors to just adopt the WYSIWYG philosophy. Keep it simple. I think that’s my new motto.
5. How have you seen the DIT role change since HD has really taken off?
Take a step back and look at the migration from film, to HD tape, and now file-based HD productions. When a DP shoots with film, they can, for instance, shoot with the aperture wide open and still be able to recover detail in the areas that were [intentionally] overexposed. In a digital world, once the image clips, there’s no more information there, so the switch to the all digital world of HD required a DIT to manipulate the color on set, like a telecine colorist, to make sure that they could get the desired end result given how the DP shot it. Basically, the DIT was primarily responsible for making sure the actual image reflected what the DP and director actually wanted to see. In the last few years, as things have shifted away from tape to file-based workflows, the DIT’s responsibilities have increased significantly. On small productions, the DIT often handles the role of a data wrangler, in addition to the typical DIT duties of image manipulation. On bigger projects, the DIT tends to focus on basic color grading, image enhancement, LUT creation, transcoding, and even some compositing if needed. The bigger the project, the more people they can usually dedicate to making sure that the files are safely backed up, with the necessary metadata applied to speed up post later.
Lately, it seems like the experienced DP’s have their own DIT who knows them very well. The DP can shoot totally flat, to achieve the right exposure and get the optimal amount of color information to the camera’s sensor. Then the DIT and DP can create a look, which can be saved as a LUT and applied to other images that need that look. The LUT can be baked in to the offline editorial content, delivered to VFX houses along with camera master files, and eventually to the final color correction as a reference for what everyone expects the end result to look like.
6. Here in Australia it is sometimes suggested that the 2nd Assistant Camera take on the role of DIT in a small production. How important is an experienced DIT to a production?
It depends on the production, but usually it’s pretty critical. If there is any image manipulation happening on set, it’s a necessity. The big question in Hollywood has been, “Who is that person and how do the unions approach that position?” It seems like at first it was a hot potato that no one wanted to touch. The cinematographers were pushing it to the audio guys, because they were the ones that had previously dealt with data and hard drives. Suddenly, they all realized that the hard drive was their NEGATIVE and the cinematographer’s guild took the hot potato back. In general, it seems like DIT’s typically gets paid on scale with a 2nd Assistant Camera, as they have to do many similar duties. If there’s a person dedicated to data management, he/she usually gets paid on scale with a film loader.
It’s all very political in Hollywood. There’s a system, and it seems like those that try to circumvent the system from the bottom up, get easily squashed. I am genuinely thankful to directors like David Fincher, who take the process on themselves and deliver a finished product to the studio. It eliminates the committee that can get in the way of creativity. Clearly, if you’re at the top, you can dictate the process.
7. Storage and archiving of materials is an important part of ever increasing data-centric workflows. Can you offer any advice on the best ways keeping track of media?
This is the question that is perplexing everyone right now. My business partners at CET Universe have done some interesting things with their asset & storage management software, Constellation. It’s what Tyler used on The Social Network. But it’s got strengths and weaknesses, just like everything else. Sometimes the best thing is a laptop and Shotput Pro and a few EditVault’s by Maxx Digital, for cheap, durable firewire storage. It’s just such a moving target that it’s difficult to pin down a standardized workflow process.
I’ve seen interesting solutions from Fotokem, and from MTI, and from One Beyond, but the one company that seems to consistently stay ahead of the curve is LightIron Digital. Michael Cioni does an amazing job of anticipating the next great thing and he addresses the problems before anyone even knows there’s an issue. It’s like running a marathon and you think you’re in first place, and you get to the finish line and there’s Michael, resting with a beer in his hand, playing cards and waiting for you to catch up.
I just worked with Sean Cooney, the VP of Advanced Production Technology at Warner Brothers Studios, to help answer these questions and we had some real revelations. First, all LTO software is not created equal. Most of the software writes to LTO tape in a proprietary format, which can be cheap, but it makes it difficult for the other person at the end of the line who is trying to actually recover the files from that LTO tape without the necessary software. Additionally, very few apps actually have some sort of management GUI that allows you to search for archived files that are sitting on a tape in a vault somewhere. Cache-A does a good job of addressing both of these issues, so I like their products a lot. The other thing we discovered is that many of the “on-set” solutions are really more like “near set” solutions. But vendors just don’t think about a RAID array cranking out 120db of noise in the background and how that just isn’t going to work when the director needs quiet on the set. And the big question mark is creating and applying LUTs in a cost effective manner. I can’t believe there isn’t an inexpensive application for LUT creation that will bake that LUT into Prores or DNXhd files for offline editing. There are plenty of devices that do it, but they’re prohibitively expensive for most independent DIT’s. Most DIT’s that I know say, “Hire me and you get my gear for the entire period”. The best solution I’ve seen, and it gives you a lot of bang for the buck, is Speedgrade by Iridas.
In general, I think the studios need to standardize on a mezzanine format so there’s a delivery standard. I’ve dealt quite a bit with the folks from one particular studio (nameless), and they are really struggling right now to find the right workflow process for their episodic television shows. They have always had a production hand them a reel of film, the film gets telecine’d and then sent to the vault for archive. Now, the same people are getting a firewire drive with a bunch of .R3D files on it (for example). Well, the studio doesn’t want to do transcoding and color timing and archiving that they’ve never had to do before, and I don’t blame them. But neither does the production company whose budgets have been squeezed to the limit from the studio. So it’s a real issue that hasn’t been totally resolved, but it’s getting there. The first step is for the studios to set a delivery standard. If they said, “We will only accept 2k DPX sequences on LTO-4 in .TAR format”, or something like that, then the production companies could have a target to hit, and include that in their budget. Until then, it’ll be a constantly moving target and everyone will just keep handing the problem off to the next guy. Kudos to Sean Cooney and the folks at WB Studios for making the most involved, thorough, concerted effort I’ve ever seen to really get to the bottom of the issue. It’s a tough one to resolve right now.
8. What was it like working with David Fincher on The Social Network?
Honestly, I worked mostly with Tyler Nelson and Joe Wolcott behind the scenes. It’s not like I was hanging out sipping wine with David between takes. But his presence is felt in everything related to the project. He is a perfectionist, but he’s not a diva, and he’s totally fair and realistic and logical in the way he gets things done. He knows what he wants, he does it his way, and he keeps things under wraps until he wants others to see it. So most of the post happens in his facility. He also works very fast, so everyone else just has to keep pace or catch up. Perhaps the most important thing I’ve taken away from my time with the Fincher camp, is to surround yourself with great people. Everyone involved with David’s projects, from the studio executives to the runners, are all at the top of their game. It really drives you when you’re around people like that. It makes you want to go the extra mile, not to avoid a problem, but because you believe in his vision and you want to help him get the best result possible. It’s truly inspiring.
I got involved because I was showing off a mobile Red Rocket system at a trade show with LTO backup, metadata tagging, transcoding, etc. This was the summer of 2009, so the Red Rocket card was still pretty new to the market and the solution I had designed was pretty cutting edge for the time. I met Joe Wolcott there, and he told me that he needed to replicate the HDCamSR workflow he had devised for Zodiac and Benjamin Button, but we needed to do it for Red. So we (CET Universe) had to design a new system based on an untested prototype, and we had very little time to do it because of all the camera tests and the fact that David wanted the Harvard material to take place in early autumn with the trees changing color. To further complicate things, David wanted to overcrank the Red camera to 36fps but stay at 4k, which the Red One camera couldn’t do. So Red generously retrofitted a Red One with the (relatively untested) Mysterium sensor, and they wrote new software for us to try with the Red Rocket card. It was an interesting combination of a proven process on unproven equipment, so we were very cautious and stayed up many nights testing and retesting and timing things with a stopwatch with Tyler. He ended up in Boston (and Baltimore and London and Los Angeles) ingesting, duplicating, archiving (to LTO-4), and transcoding over 80GB of Red CF cards per day. Additionally, he was transcoding to ProRes and H.264, then uploading the H.264 versions to the dailies server so Angus could pull the selects in LA and get cutting while the ProRes material was shipped on a firewire drive to be relinked in at David’s post facility in FCP. It was hectic but a solid workflow that allowed David to have a rough cut by the time he returned from principle photography.
Angus is a really cool customer. We rented and supported their entire post setup, a 96TB XSan, 4 FCP stations and a few After Effects systems. There was a really tense moment in the post process where we had to shut the SAN down for some maintenance. I was really nervous about telling Angus and David that they had to stop for a few days, but Angus was really cool. He understood the situation, he said, “No problem David, we’ll just keep cutting from the ProRes on the firewire drives”, and that was that. They are total professionals that really want to focus on the best way to tell their story. Sometimes the chatter of gear and technology can get in the way, but they all really use it to their advantage. I’ve always said, “Use whatever serves the story”, and I think David would agree.
9. What are the challenges (with regards to Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) on workflow’s that cross continents?
Well, the workflow is very much the same. The production is much more mobile though, so Tyler had to go much lighter this time. And David is moving at an even faster pace in many ways. They shot a bunch last year in the winter, then came back to LA for a few months, and returned to Sweden in March. As a matter of fact, they wrapped in Sweden today. Angus and David just flew back and drove to the edit bay straight from the airport.
This question is probably better posed to Tyler as I’ve just been here in LA the whole time dealing with the edit systems and the After Effects systems for conform. I think the cross continent challenge was more of a shipping concern than anything else. They’re basically using the same workflow, only they’re using a custom built system that Angus made for data wrangling. In an effort to save costs, they’re not shipping a single drive every day, but several drives at a time once a week or so. But other than that, the workflow is pretty much the same as The Social Network.
10. What is the industry like in LA?
Competitive. I know a lot of incredibly talented people with a long history of successful work, and they’re totally broke and unemployed. People are doing ridiculous amounts of great work for peanuts, and it lowers the value of the work they do, but everyone’s got to eat I guess. Last year I started a list of crazy job postings that I discover. I saw one the other day where they asked someone to do After Effects work and 3D modeling in Maya. He/she needed 12 years of experience or more, a reel showcasing only their work, with a description of what they actually did in each shot, and the list went on and on. The end of the ad says they can’t pay ANYTHING! And I’m sure they found someone. The new crop of kids coming up can do it all too, and they’ll work for beer money, so unless you stay sharp and hip to the latest technology, you’ll be left out in the cold. The days of the prima donna editor that won’t even reboot a computer after a crash are over. And it also means that the editor also has to be a graphics guy, and a sound guy, and an assistant editor, and he has to know compression, and camera operation…the works. It’s the dawn of the Producer / Editor, or PREDITOR. One guy, that does it all.
Color correction has changed dramatically too. Color correction used to be a process used to make subtle changes to different scenes, or cameras, or reels of film. Now, in the DI process, artists are relighting scenes and doing amazing things. The “fix it in post” mentality is still in effect, but now a lot of the problems actually CAN be fixed in post, for the right money. On The Social Network, most of the stuff Jeff Cronenweth shot was handheld. The footage was meticulously stabilized in After Effects and it looks amazing. Every shot seems so deliberately smooth and deliberate. I love that.
I think we’re already seeing that technology makes power available to the masses. More productions are happening outside of Hollywood than ever before. New Mexico, Lousiana, Florida, Michigan…they’re all doing big “Hollywood” features. There’s talent everywhere now, and the technology means that talent doesn’t have to come to LA or New York. They can stay in Nova Scotia, or Sydney, or Detroit, and get good work.