When David Cronenberg screens rushes (also known as dailies) on the Alliance production of his virtual reality sci-fi thriller eXistenZ, currently shooting in Toronto, the much-lauded director is treated to the highest quality digital sound perfectly in sync with the film print, thanks to a new process utilizing the latest in post technology.

With the support of Avid Toronto’s Jeff Krebs and the cooperation of Magnetic North and deluxe toronto, the film’s picture editor Ron Sanders was able to convince the production to use the new process, which makes syncing sound much easier and allows rushes to be screened on a projector with synced digital sound from a hard drive played on a Pro Tools sound editing system.

Sanders says the new process, which combines various digital technologies, has generated a lot of interest from other editors and tech types who have dropped by to see the setup. ‘As far as we know we’re probably the first to do all of this in this combination,’ says Sanders, adding that other editors are no doubt working with similar systems.

Though the costs to set up the system were not insignificant (two modified Panavision cameras were needed, an Avid media station was required at Mag North, and a computer and Pro Tools system at the screening room), the new system saves the substantial cost of transferring the sound to 35mm mag stock and the expense and time of paying assistants to sync up the mag stock to the picture.

‘No sound editors use mag film anymore, they all work digitally,’ points out Sanders. ‘So in order to screen rushes you had to transfer everything to mag. It would be hundreds of thousands of feet of stock and two or three assistants and all their time, and that stuff would never be used again.’

On Cronenberg’s last film Crash, Sanders says printed takes were screened silent. Synced picture and sound rushes were available only on tape. ‘Other people have used a DAT tape or a D-88 and locked up to that, but the logical extension was to go right to a workstation where you don’t have any physical medium at all,’ he says.

Sanders says the process also saves the first picture assistant from having to digitize media, freeing them to do more useful things.

And because the sound stays digital throughout the new process there is essentially no generational quality loss, until the mixing stage, meaning that dialogue evaluations can be done right on the Avid.

Here’s how it works: As the negative is exposed on set, veteran sound recordist Glen Gauthier records the sound separately using a state-of-the-art Nagra D (digital Nagra field recorder). A modified Panavision camera with an Aaton Code Generator burns bar code into the negative opposite the key code when the picture is exposed. The Nagra D also generates this code and it is ‘jammed’ into the Aaton clock at least twice a day, giving the quarter-inch set audio and the film a common time code making the task of putting film and audio in sync very easy.

At the end of each shooting day the audio is shipped to Magnetic North, where the original recordings are loaded from another Nagra D (which Gauthier must lend to the video house for each production he works on) directly onto a hard drive which is attached to an Avid Media station set up in the transfer bay.

After Toronto’s The Lab processes the negative based on the director’s selections, the lab rolls are shipped to Mag North for the Telecine video transfer. The colorist, in this case Bill Holly, puts each lab roll up on the Rank and transfers each roll starting at the ‘Picture Start Mark’ on the Academy leader of the negative lab roll. The mark serves as a reference point between the negative and film print, which will be made from the negative and screened with audio in a viewing theater as rushes.

The film is color timed and transferred in sequence to D-Beta video. In addition to reading the key code, the Rank has been modified to include an Aaton code reader and is also able to read the Aaton time code burned on the neg.

Both the Aaton and key code are logged into the media station computer as text logs. The Aaton code log will match the code on the audio and allow picture and sound to be put in a sync relationship.

The D-Beta is now digitized onto the drive through the Avid media station. The logs of the film-to-tape transfer containing key code, Aaton time code, camera roll, slate and take-in and -out points, which were created by the video colorist as a text file, are imported into the Avid software.

The digitized picture is now called ‘media’ and is broken down into individual shots based on the logs.

Because the sound has been digitized and exists as media already, and the time code on the sound matches the Aaton burn time code on the film, the audio can be put into an immediate sync relationship through an Avid function called ‘autosync.’ This function takes separate audio and picture clips with common time code and creates a synced clip. These are the clips used by Sanders on his Avid for cutting.

The assistant editor receives the media files from Mag North on a media shuttle hard drive and copies them onto his Avid’s hard drive. The media shuttle is then sent back to Mag North where the synced audio is striped back onto the master D-Beta video transfer of the picture so that VHS dubs can be pulled for Cronenberg, the actors, executive producers, etc.

deluxe toronto makes a print of the negative as usual.

To do the digital rushes process, the editor assembles a sequence on the Avid which reflects all of the film selected for that day. The rushes are laid down in lab role order, with each lab roll starting with a different hourly time code. Lab roll one is hour one, roll two is hour two, etc. The hours correspond to the number of lab rolls and the sound and picture will match the print that has been run off the negative at deluxe. However, they have to be given a common start mark.

This start mark is the Academy leader, as the picture start mark on the media matches the picture start mark on the print. The zero hour of each code is at the picture start mark, so lining up the film print in the projector at the picture start mark is like parking the Avid’s cursor on the picture start mark on the digitized media.

To screen rushes in one of deluxe’s theaters, the editor exports the audio media only to a Jaz drive, as well as exporting a data copy of the lab roll sequence. The Jaz drive is connected to a Macintosh computer in the screening room that is installed with Pro Tools software. The data is imported into the Pro Tools system, allowing it to access the audio media which has been exported on the Jaz drive from the Avid.

The print is strung up on the projector at the picture start mark on the Academy leader, and the daily lab roll sequence imported into the Pro Tools exists as a similar sequence. The picture start mark on the sequence is represented by the zero hour of the time code for the first lab roll to be projected that day.

But since a film projector is mechanical and doesn’t generate time code, and the sound sequence on the Pro Tools needs to chase time code, a box called a JSK is attached to the projector which generates a code for the audio on the Pro Tools to chase.

With lab roll one in the projector cued to the picture start mark, the projectionist punches the hour one time code into the JSK generator box. The Pro Tools is put into ‘online mode,’ waiting to receive code to chase.

When the projector is started, the JSK box generates hour one time code and the audio sequence on the Pro Tools leaps to the zero point at the hour one mark and chases the code it is getting from the JSK which is slave to the projector. If everything starts at this common point, then the audio will run from the hard drive in sync while the print is running on the screen through the projector.

At the end of each lab roll the ascending number code is punched into the JSK box so the Pro Tools chases the proper time code for each lab roll. The process is repeated for each roll.

Sanders says the evolution of the new process will be when the transfer house is able to send the media through fiber-optic cable to the editor’s system. ‘They would be able to send a half-hour worth of rushes to us in three or four minutes,’ he predicts. ‘There would be nothing physical going back and forth at all, which is the logical extension of the thing. Everybody would work on a file level rather than drives going back and forth.’