True Grit: HD Editing Helps Deliver Rough, Authentic Atmosphere of Gone, Baby, Gone

Dorchester, one of Boston's largest neighborhoods, can be one tough place. Its streets are littered with broken families, hearts, and dreams. When a four-year-old girl from this world goes missing, two private investigators take on the case when no one else will. Based on the novel by Dennis Lehane (author of Mystic River), Gone, Baby, Gone marks Ben Affleck's directorial debut. As a native Bostonian, Affleck is no stranger to these streets - or to roles behind the camera, having co-written the screenplay for Gone, Baby, Gone as well as the screenplay for Good Will Hunting, for which he won an Academy Award. Affleck also took on a small temporary editorial role on this project, working closely with editor William (Billy) Goldenberg (Miami Vice, National Treasure, Seabiscuit, Ali). 

Gone, Baby, Gone was shot on 35mm film, but edited in HD for its crisp, rich detail, which enabled the filmmakers to carefully craft the gritty and realistic tone they were aiming for. Dailies were telecined to HDCAM-SR, and a Symphony Nitris system was used to digitize the media using the Avid DNxHD 175 codec, which delivered storage-saving efficiency along with pristine HD image quality to ensure just the right look for the film.

"The difference cutting in HD was huge. The biggest thing was that I was able to see the characters' eyes."
- William Goldenberg, Editor, Gone, Baby, Gone

HD Editing Performance

Gone, Baby, Gone marked the first time that Goldenberg edited an entire movie in HD, although he had previously worked on a movie shot in HD (Miami Vice) and screened in HD (National Treasure, Seabiscuit, Miami Vice) - all on Avid systems. "The difference cutting in HD was huge," he says about his experience editing Gone, Baby, Gone using the Symphony Nitris system.

The biggest thing was that I was able to see the characters' eyes. There's a fuzziness in SD, where you're a little bit distanced from the characters, and you just learn to make that leap in your mind to connect [to the characters' emotions]. But in HD, it's as sharp as seeing it on film - even sharper at times - so you can really see the light glint off people's eyes and catch those key moments in a performance."

For Goldenberg, whose editing approach is very performance-oriented, this ability to actually see and capture the most authentic moments in a scene was crucial. "Ben was going for a real, gritty feeling," he explains. "I always try to tap into the director's head, and in this case it was very easy because he's a writer/director, who really knew the material inside-out. So I sensed that it would be about understated reality, and Ben really wanted it to feel like a captured slice-of-life, like the best-shot documentary, where you're watching real people in real situations, without it being overly dramatic."

Gone, Baby, Gone

This worked well with Goldenberg's editorial style, where he often finds the most true-to-life moments in a scene - that place where actors become the characters, living the events. "My approach is all about finding the most real elements or moments, where reality is transcended and you're not watching a movie or actors anymore. Then, I build the scene out from there," he explains.

Gone, Baby, Gone also made use of several flashback scenes. "The flashbacks were actually designed into the screenplay," explains Goldenberg. "There are a lot of plot twists in the story, which are revealed through flashbacks.

In fact, this movie had the most flashbacks that I've ever done, and it was really fun to tell a story that way. We changed the color timing of the flashbacks to make them more vibrant, making the whites pop and the colors more saturated overall. We also used several of the Boris plug-ins in conjunction with the color-correction feature on both the Symphony Nitris and the [Media Composer] Adrenaline systems."

"I always try to tap into the director's head, and in this case it was very easy because [Ben Affleck] is a writer/director, who really knew the material inside-out."
- William Goldenberg, Editor, Gone, Baby, Gone

Comprehensive HD Tools

The film was cut almost entirely on two Symphony Nitris systems linked through the Avid Unity shared media networking solution with 24 terabytes of storage. Affleck used his own Symphony Nitris system, while Goldenberg worked on the second system. Two Windows-based Media Composer Adrenaline systems were also used on the project by first assistant editor Brett Reed, assistant editor Kevin Hickman, and later by post-production assistant Joe Galdo for digitizing, logging, syncing, and other assistant tasks.

Gone, Baby, Gone

Since Goldenberg was unable to immediately come on board the project due to prior commitments, Affleck began a rough cut of the film himself in the three-to-four week gap before Goldenberg joined the project. When Goldenberg arrived, he completed the initial cut and then recut some of what Affleck had edited in the first half so that the entire movie had the same, consistent editing style and rhythm.

Affleck remained involved in the editing process throughout post. "Ben is actually quite proficient at editing," says Goldenberg. "He knows the technical aspects and is very sensitive to what editing is about. But when he realized the amount of work involved, it became more of a collaboration, where I did most of the cutting and Ben offered comments, so he could return to more of a directorial role."

To review material from any location - at his home, on the road, or directly on set - Affleck used Avid Xpress Pro software on his Macintosh G4 Powerbook with a 1 TB FireWire drive, which was continually updated with video mixdowns of cuts in progress.

Down and Dirty Look

Goldenberg appreciated the comprehensive capabilities of the Symphony Nitris system with tools for editing, effects, and finishing - all of which came in handy on this project. "We definitely dipped into the [finishing] ability of the [Symphony] Nitris [system]," he explains. "We did some color-correcting on some re-shot scenes, where the footage really didn't match shot-to-shot. The Nitris [system] was invaluable to us in terms of treating the color right in the cutting room instead of having to send it out or have it re-transferred." 

Gone, Baby, Gone

Reed adds, "The Effects palette on the [Avid Symphony] Nitris [system] definitely helped in the editing of the flashback sequences. We were quickly able to add grain and distortion and greatly manipulate the color to [experiment with and create different visual] looks quickly, which set a template for how those scenes would stand out from the rest of the film."

"One of our favorite features on both the [Media Composer] Adrenaline and Symphony Nitris [systems] was the ability to add audio dissolves without rendering," he continues. "On earlier systems, an audio dissolve had to be rendered just to play it back, and any modifications you made to that edit - a volume adjustment, a trim, adding an EQ - caused the dissolve to become un-rendered, so you had to re-render just to hear it again. Now, the [Media Composer] Adrenaline and Symphony Nitris systems treat an audio dissolve as a real-time effect, so once the dissolve is added it will always play, and the 'a' and 'b' side clips can be manipulated without having to wait for a render. It seems like a small time-savings, but when you consider that an editor repeats that process many thousands of times over the course of a project, it really adds up."

The Symphony Nitris system was also instrumental for preparing screenings. "All of our screenings were done either in the editing room directly from the [Avid Symphony] Nitris [system] or output to HDCAM or D5 and screened in a screening room on a 2K projector," explains Reed. "This enabled us to edit right up until the last minute for internal screenings and greatly reduced the prep time for screenings held outside the cutting room."

 

For the utmost convenience and ease, Runway, the rental house, provided conversion software that allowed Goldenberg to use a Macintosh keyboard on his PC, since he was more familiar with a Macintosh-based environment. "I didn't have to relearn anything on the [Symphony] Nitris [system]," he says. "That made it just about the best system that I could imagine in terms of the speed. It just seemed so fast, and it was very stable throughout. It was really the best of everything that Avid offers in one system."

*Photo credit: Claire Folger/Courtesy of Miramax Films