“I was free to move individual frames or groups of scenes around as I saw fit very easily,” he said. But I could not have put it all together as efficiently without EDIUS.” To emphasis the value of EDIUS, Ladner said the Sequencing tool really helped shape the film by allowing him to quickly group clips in sequences so that he could look at them on the timeline, see all of the tabs immediately, and reorganize the story as necessary. That was the very nature of this film and it worked nicely. I didn’t do any casting-I just picked people based on the way they looked and how they spoke. And I used local people, which can be dangerous. I didn’t have a script, but a rough idea of how the story would go. Organization Is Key “I was very careful to organize my clips and label everything in the proper bins ,” said Ladner.
The frenetic speed of his workflow was directly related to the capabilities of the tools and functions found within EDIUS. With no real script and a cast of local talent (he hesitates to call them “actors,” and he himself makes an appearance in the film as the Monster Team’s most reclusive member, Leland Walles, Ladner knew he had to work fast and instantly understand what he was getting in his dailies and how his story was shaping up. He would shoot each day, then assemble a roughcut that night (wherever he happened to be) on the latest version of Grass Valley ® EDIUS ® multiformat nonlinear editing software. To capture the dry humor and backcountry actions of the ragtag investigative team, Ladner used a Canon EOS 7D DSLR camera (shooting 1080p24) and a separate (modified) Marantz PMD-660 solid-state audio recorder in the field.
Town residents round out the quirky personalities presented in this story, offering up their theories about what the creature is, where it came from, and what should be done about it. Shot over eight months (February to October, 2011) in Southern Mississippi, the comedic, sci-fi story follows the curious, yet hilarious efforts of the Monster Defense Team, a group appointed by the 94-year-old mayor of the town of Farr after the small, reportedly monsterinhabited town is ridiculed by local and national media. That was the thinking of director/cinematographer Frank Ladner when he made his first full-length feature, a quirky “mocu-mentary” called Hickory Never Bleeds. It should cost-effectively help the process in a highly transparent way.
CASE STUDY FRANK LADNER – HICKORY NEVER BLEEDS CUSTOMER Frank Ladner, US Independent filmmaker – director and cinematographer of Hickory Never Bleeds CHALLENGE To quickly and easily assemble dailies into a rough-cut To modify scenes to fit creative vision SOLUTION Grass Valley EDIUS Multiformat nonlinear editing software with ability to work instantly, without rendering BENEFITS Sequencing tool to quickly group clips in sequences, play and reorganize on the timeline Masking tool to create slight vignette effects Layouter tool for zooming in on still photos or video images and the ability to animate them Grass Valley EDIUS Helps Shape Hickory Never Bleeds BACKGROUND As most independent filmmakers will tell you, technology should not get in the way of creativity.