| My only counter to this "rolling lock" scenario (ie, it isn't really ever locked until they lose interest in it and move on to something else: broadcast, premiere, festival or DVD be damned) is to insist on starting my work as early as possible. The gamble is that by the time they export to me they have really done most of the editing, and will be doing a lot of little adds, tweaks, frame fiddling etc etc. In order to have time to do those changes at the last minute I need to get the "heavy lifting" out of the way ASAP, so I harangue the editors to start exporting me what they have as soon as the are close to completion, even if I'm just getting chunks of the film or single reels etc. I can always paste the chunks together later--I'll be doing that to conform their tweaks anyhow. When the changes come there is always a choice to be made between using a conform app or just having at manually--often the latter is more direct and faster. I know starting early seems a bit counter-intuitive, but it seems to work better for me than waiting for the Really Locked Picture, which never arrives.....
Philip Perkins |