Negative Cutting - Basic Negative Cutting

Basic Negative Cutting

After a film shoot, the original camera negative (OCN) is sent to a film laboratory for processing. Two or three 400-foot (120 m) camera rolls are spliced together to create a lab roll approximately 1,200–1,500 ft (370–460 m) long. After developing the lab roll, it is put through a telecine to create a rushes transfer tape. This rushes transfer tape is of lower quality than film and is used for editing purposes only.

The rushes tape is sent to the Editor who loads it into an offline edit suite. The lab rolls are sent to the negative cutter for logging and storage.

After the Editor finishes the Edit it is exported to an offline EDL list and the EDL list is sent to the negative cutter. The negative cutter will translate the Timecode in the EDL list to edge numbers (keykode) using specially designed negative cutting software to find which shot is needed from the rushes negative.

Traditionally a negative cutter would then fine cut the negative to match the Editor's final edit frame accurately. Negative would be spliced together to create rolls less than 2,000 feet (610 m) which would then be sent to the film laboratory to print release prints.

Today most feature films are extracted full takes (as selected takes) and scanned digitally as a digital intermediate. Television series and commercials shot on film follow the same extraction process but are sent for telecine. Each required shot is extracted from the lab roll as a full take and respliced together to create a new selected roll of negative. This reduces the negative required by up to 1/10 of the footage shot, saving considerable time during scanning or telecine. The negative cutter will create a new Online EDL list replacing the rushes roll timecode with the new selected roll timecode.

In the case of feature films the selected roll and Online EDL are sent to a post production facility for scanning as a digital intermediate. For television commercials or series the selected takes and EDL are sent to a post production facility for re-telecine and compiled in an Online Suite for final grading.