kyppk wrote: ↑Tue Aug 11, 2020 3:55 am
I'm not quite suggesting that shots with a higher focal point didn't have the tape marks removed, more so that any shot in which you can't see the area itself doesn't have them removed. Although, it would be an impossible task to quantify just how many scenes are shot so that the fixed tape mark area shows vs not.
If the lead editor has the knowledge that the product will be cropped then they can choose which frames need tape marks removed based on some metric, and frames that aren't fixed can be cropped around.
Just as a reminder, the frame-by-frame cleanup was done first,
then the cropped framing was decided. They told us this in the Season BD video extra with Matt O'Hara. Unless you're suggesting that the person in charge of framing went through the footage frame-by-frame
twice: once before cleanup to mark frames that didn't need tape marks removed, and once after clean-up to actually go through and do the selective cropping...this would probably take more time than just having the cleaner remove all tape marks. If they really wanted to go down that route and not waste time, then the framing should take place before the cleaning so that the cleaners would have the exact knowledge about whether a tape mark would be visible or not on any given shot. But that's not what happened. Based on what Matt O'Hara said, and based on in-progress footage they've shown us where
the un-cropped frames have been cleaned, DNR'd, and sharpened (this is not 30th footage...it's from that Season BD making-of video), we know that the framing/cropping was one of the last steps done. So the person doing the tape mark removal wouldn't know if a given shot would be framed higher up, in the middle, or lower down. Short of the framing person literally standing over their shoulder and making these decisions
during the cleanup, the only shots the cleaners could confidently say wouldn't have tape marks visible are those where a higher framing is required because the action is taking place in the upper part of the frame. And there are very few of those kinds of shots.
I don't disagree from a practical position as a person, but I do disagree from a logical position as a business. Investing money in a product that you can sell immediately but choose to wait years for is an opportunity waste of said money and something no business would do. If it costs X to fully edit the series (the argument that the Season Sets were fully edited) and X-Y to partially edit the series (the argument that the Season Sets were partly edited), then it would only cost Funi Y to complete the editing in the future (maybe even less if editing software progresses enough in that time that it makes the process quicker/simpler/more efficient). It's not like they even stand to potentially lose sales by not completing the edits, since the final product (Season Sets) isn't changed in any way.
I don't think it's quite as simple as that. You have to take into consideration the actual practicality of this sort of thing. Removing tape marks is a tedious, but brainless task. I'd imagine it's something that a person can settle into a groove for: one hand on the mouse, one hand on the "next frame" button, make a few clicks around the tape mark, go to next frame, a few clicks, next frame...etc. Now imagine that instead of being able to go through the footage as fast as possible, you are told that you have to pay attention to the footage, and expend extra brain power on deciding which shots
shouldn't have their tape mark removed. When that extra layer of decision-making is introduced, the person doing this job will go slower and waste more mental energy. Or maybe the framing person is standing over their shoulder and stopping them after every shot to decide on the framing. It's just not practical. Time is money, so if you take longer, then that is more money being lost.
KBABZ wrote: ↑Tue Aug 11, 2020 6:34 am
My problem there though is that while most shots communicate what they need do with a 16:9 crop, the framing of it and the actual frame real estate is still compromised. Watching The Final Chapters after Kai feels like watching the final arc from inside a letterbox because there's no space around the subjects, and the tops and bottoms of characters are frequently clipped off. There's no breathing room at all.
Well yeah, the decision to crop is itself a bad idea for footage that was intended for a 4:3 framing. But the point I was making is that if cropping
has to be done, then a center-crop would work best for
most shots. So if they wanted to save time, then the common sense thing to do is to not remove tape marks on shots that should be center cropped, which is 95% of shots. However, as we've seen, the Season BD sometimes didn't do the obvious center crop and instead did a
lower (and worse) framing on certain shots. If this sort of thing is possible then, from the cleaner's perspective, not even center-focused shots are safe and so tape marks should be removed on even those.