Optical Critical Dimension
An Interview with Academy Award winning editor, Chris Dickens.
Even before the Oscar ceremony on February 22nd, my feeling was that Slumdog Millionaire was clearly this years best film Optical Critical Dimension. The story, acting, imagery and music were all outstanding and were guided by the sure hand of veteran director Danny Boyle. Made for approximately 15 million dollars, Slumdog has become an international phenomenon with a worldwide gross of nearly 200 million dollars. Not bad for an independent film which Warner Bros. didn't think was worth distributing. So I was thrilled to hear that Slumdog's film editor, Chris Dickens would be in town for awards season and would be available to do an interview with me for Hollywood Reinvented.com.
Chris couldn't have been a more gracious guest and he was surprisingly cool and collected considering that two days later he would find out whether he would be taking home the Oscar for best film editing. Maybe his disposition was tempered by the fact that he had already won the best film editing award from the British Academy of Film Optical Critical Dimension and Television Arts or BAFTA in addition to nabbing the "Eddy" award from the American Cinema Editors, or A.C.E.
I started out by asking Chris how he became interested in film editing. He told me that like many people he began making his own Super 8 films as a child. He then went on to art school, but after determining the level of difficulty of making a living as a painter or sculptor he made the decision to go to film school. It was there that he made many of his early contacts, which would later lead to some of his earliest film jobs. Next I wanted to know how he came to work with Danny Boyle, as the director had worked with the same editor on his last four films. It turns out that it was just a matter of timing, as it often turns out, Chris Gill was simply tied up on another project. Dickens came in and did an interview and although he said he though it went well he was nonetheless surprised when he received a phone call an hour later informing him he had the job. Next it was off to India for the four months of production.
I asked Chris about some of the challenges both creative and technical he faced in editing the film. I felt very fortunate that he went into great detail about how he, Danny, the producers and the writer crafted the film from its initial length of 3 1/2 hours to its final running time of 120 minutes. Being a film with multiple story lines set against the backdrop of a television game show, Chris explained that one of the biggest obstacles to overcome was the intercutting of the different elements into a cohesive whole. At the same time he needed to make sure to maintain the integrity of the stories while bringing it all down to a manageable length of time.
We went on to speak about technical issues and the fact that the film was a hybrid; shot on both 35mm film and digital. Cut on the Avid, the complexity of post production was compounded by the fact that the 35mm elements were shot 3-perf, a technique where the exposed image fills the entire surface area of the frame without any matte area or "wasted space". 3-perf is an excellent solution when shooting in 1:1.85 aspect ratio because it reduces the cost of film stock and processing by 25%. The digital acquisition was done with Silicon Imaging' SI-2K MINI, a new camera from a German manufacturer which is gaining popularity for its flexibility and size. The entire "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" show was shot with the SI-2K MINI, in addition to much of the breathtaking material captured in the slums of Mumbai.
Tag : Optical Critical Dimension
