The New Offline

ESPN "Historical TVs"

Having edited professionally for more than a decade now, I have watched the editorial landscape change dramatically in terms of clients' expectations—especially in the realm of commercial editorial. I believe the demand for faster turnarounds and better-looking offline edits is directly related to how we perceive and embrace today's world of high-end desktop applications and high-tech devices. The assumption is, and it is a correct assumption, that since editorial tools (in my case Avid), have gotten so much more technologically advanced, editors should use them to improve the overall look of offline cuts. What was once an accepted Avid offline with feathered in picture-and-picture effects, Adobe Photoshop cutouts and a burn-in timecode is no longer a standard for client presentations.

Some six years ago, I was working on a fairly complicated visual effects commercial for Tropicana. Visual effects were the story and in order to have a cohesive rough cut, I had to temp the visual effects elements in. I first attempted to do it on the Avid, but I quickly ran out of layers and computing power. That's when I realized that no matter what editorial software I used, I would still need to find a way to combine editorial with compositing. I chose Adobe After Effects as my compositing sidekick.

Tropicana "Fountain"

The reason I chose After Effects is not because, as many say, it is easy to learn and to use, but because after having done some substantial research, I found out that Avid and After Effects can communicate to each other without any third-party plug-ins, via the AAF platform. That enables me to export my Avid edit as an AAF file and open it in After Effects with all of my editorial decisions preserved in an After Effects timeline.

This discovery prompted Zoic Edit to create a process we now call The New Offline. The New Offline allows our clients to previsualize the final edit in a way that is far superior to traditional rough cuts. Today, it is commonplace to have hundreds of practical, previz, and CG elements that need to be combined in the offline to tell the commercial's story. How do you edit or assemble such spots so they can be submitted for client approval? We take pre-comping out of Avid into After Effects, where we create composites with practical or CG elements on live plates. We later take the After Effects composites that usually include dozens of layers with multiple effects and adjustments applied to them, and place them back in the edit. The advantage of this workflow is very simple: No longer do creatives have to walk their clients through the rough cut, explaining what would go where and when; the client can clearly see, even at the offline stage, an essential representation of a completed spot.

Craftsman and ESPN are two examples of where The New Offline played an integral role in the pipeline. In each, visual effects were central to the narrative and a traditional offline would have left a great deal to the clients' imaginations, making the approval process much more complicated for Zoic and the agency creative team.

Craftsman "Crew Chief"

For Craftsman "Crew Chief," the spot opens on the intensive driving action of a NASCAR cup race. On the sideline, the Craftsman Crew Chief pulls himself together—literally—in a calculated and calm manner, assembling the arsenal of tools which compose his invincible body. Then he waits for the right time to leap into the action and save the day. He is a single-man crew, composed of everything he needs to execute whatever the perils of the race throw his way. Here, the footage was just raw clean plates and the challenge was to comp in CG cars, the crew chief, the crowds, banners, and other details to demonstrate the true nature of the effects and edit.

ESPN's nostalgic lap around the Indy timetable in "Historical TVs" begins with legendary sound bites from the event's first radio broadcast, accompanied by images of old time AM/FM radio dials; panning through time, historical, live-action Indy footage projects on a movie screen before tuning into the early home television sets of the '40s and '50s. The wall of TVs multiplies as we steer into the color TV era, with more classic Indy highlights, before rounding off with HD footage. Historic footage, combined with graphics and animation were all part of the production, and we were able to edit something that represented the final product with a great amount of tracking, roto, and color-correction done in After Effects. It helped make what could have been a complex approval process much smoother.

In both instances, Zoic was the production/VFX partner so the approach was holistic, but we have also edited projects where the visual effects team was at another company— even an international—with the same approach and positive outcome.

At Zoic Edit, we are extremely proud of our body of work and are comfortable editing any kind of content. But when it comes to visual effects editorial, our roots are firmly planted in the fundamental understanding of how to put a heavy VFX commercial together so it achieves its full creative potential.

Zoic Editorial is the creation of Zoic Senior Editor Dmitri Gueer, whose experience includes commercial editorial (NASCAR, Best Buy, SeaWorld, Gamefly, Busch Gardens, Ask.com, Craftsman, Toyota, Dodge and Pontiac); VFX editorial (Killzone 2, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation title sequence; Linkin Park “Points of Authority” music video, Consol Energy “The End", Star Wars: The Old Republic, MAG: Massive Action Game); and promotional editorial (American Idol, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, ESPN).