The Hollywood Type

Someone recently commented that she was glad to find I wasn’t the ‘Hollywood type.’ It’s such a strange preconceived notion to me. I most certainly am!

I’m very proud of what I did for a living and the people I had an opportunity to work with and know. It occurred to me that a lot of people are confused with what I did for a living. They say, “She animated cartoons. She did graphics. She worked on the news. She did the credits.”

Wrong! Never worked for Network News and never did a cartoon show. I worked in Post Production. I was a Visual Effects Artist/Designer and Online Editor. I think this is best way to explain it. This is the process your commercials or favorite shows go through making their way to your television set. Of course there are a lot of side trails that I don’t mention here, but this is the path:


1. Production Company – This is the shoot, set, actors, directors and so on. They film the show or commercial.
2. Dailies transfer –Once it’s shot there’s miles of footage. All their negative is transferred to film. -But when they transfer the negative here, they’re NOT creating the film you’ll see. This is just a raw machine processed film so the director can see what he’s got. This rough transferred film is called Dailies.
3. Dub House- Then all this Dailies film is transfer to ¾” videotape cassettes. This is just to make it easier to work with.
4. Offline Editorial House- With all these ¾” cassettes, the offline editor and director cut the show/commercial together. They select and time the scenes and put together what’s called a ‘rough cut’. The rough cut is very important. It is the bible for the rest of the process. (The Offline Edit is where the expressions ‘The cutting room floor’ and ‘you didn’t make the cut’ come from.)
5. Mix House- This is the recording studio or audio edit. Sound Editors put together the final audio and music, syncing the voices to the rough-cut. They also record any voice- over (like you hear in commercials.) As the word implies they ‘mix’ all these audio elements together into one tape for the final commercial or show. The audiotape they create is called a Dat.

6. Telecine or Color correction- These guys get a list of all the final scenes that have been selected/defined by rough-cut. This is the final transfer of the negative or film. They transfer ONLY the scenes that will be used. They color correct the footage, making blue skies blue and the like. This is really important because Telecine defines what the show will actually look like. They create what is called a Master Source Tape. Finally my job. I had more fun than anyone. I got to put it all together.

7. Visual Effects Artist/Designer and Online Editor –The Rough cut, Master Source Tape and the Dat all came to me. I created the final commercial or show you see on air. (I worked specifically on spots that needed my talents as an artist.)

On-line editor means final cutting editor. Using the rough-cut, I cut the final show or commercial from that Master Source Tape.
Visual Effects Artist/Designer means I designed, created or composited special effects over scenes. This could be anything from explosions, ghosts, snow, rain, fog, blue screen composites, painted background, the Red Sea parting or making man fly. I also composited or created graphics, made them move or dance. I fixed and removed errors. Then I laid down the final audio over the spot. Last but not least I created the final tape, threw on a label and it was carried off to the Network Fairies.

As I said, there are many side trials and parts and pieces, but this is the perfect world to your television set. Got it? Any questions –ask me? I’m most definitely the “Hollywood type” and very proud of it.
Vikki

All the images in this blog are from just a few of the many commercials or shows that I worked on.

Link to Propoganda that was spread about me in 2001