…SEAMUS O’TOOLE, ONLINE EDITOR
It’s Tuesday and I’ve got a busy week ahead with online deliveries of Noddy and offlines to be sent off for the all clear. It takes me about two minutes to get into work as I live in Smithfield where the studio is based. After grabbing an apple in the shop downstairs (I don’t drink coffee like everyone else in the world at this time of the day as I’m a nerd!) I’m ready to go…
8.55am Once I’m at my desk, I check my mails and what’s on for the day. I’m an offline editor on Noddy. On this particular day, I have one episode that needs to be ‘offlined’ to be signed off by the powers that be, and one episode that needs to go to online (the final phase of putting the episodes to tape lies with the online editor).
Seamus's Desktop
9.30I know where we are at in terms of the retakes that have come in, and in some cases haven’t come in. I have a diary with what I have to do for the day and without this bible I would be lost. Today I’m waiting on three shots that have been requested since Friday and there are no signs of them at all. I’m slightly worried but a cup of tea is my saviour at this stage of the process.
10.20 David is here at last! He is the director of Noddy and is up the walls in the ‘Week of Hell’, as we have christened the batch delivery week. Normally there are 12 episodes so it’s scary-hectic trying to get everything in order and out the door by 4pm on Friday afternoon. More than likely we’ll be in an edit for over two hours but we like to get it locked to time as much as possible. We’re almost there. Once this is done David dashes out of the room and I go about making a Quicktime of the edit with time code and send that on asap.
David McCamley & Seamus O'Toole working on Noddy
1pm It’s lunch time, I head home to sit down in front of the TV. This being the only time I never feel guilty about watching daytime TV (Hello, Oprah!) Back to work at 2pm and this time my retakes are in so I can lock this particular stubborn episode. At about 2.30 I have gone through the notes and everything seems in shape except one retake that wasn’t properly rendered.
After playing through the locked episode I’m happy with everything that can be done. I make an XML of the episode. This has all the cuts, transitions, fades, X-dissolves, wipes etc that we used in the edit and can be viewed when the whole episode is imported into Smoke (the final phase). Every now and then a few shots won’t translate so I make a ‘cutting copy’ which is basically the most up to date Quicktime for the online editor.
3.40 – I move onto the next episode that needs locking where I see that we are now in need of 11 retakes – these shots are still being downloaded from overseas. They should be in by tomorrow morning so I e-mail the relevant bunch to tell them that the locked offline will have to wait until tomorrow midday-ish.
5.45 I get a quick update from the co-ordinators and see where we are at with everything. I write a list down in my diary so I don’t forget it the next day and at 6 I should be ready to go home….Hopefully!
