|
|
| LED ZEPPELIN 'THE DVD' |
| Led Zeppelin ‘The DVD’ Double DVD M Productions for Warner Music. |
| Surround Music Awards: Surround Artist of the Year. Fastest selling music DVD of all time. |
| Executive Producers: Jimmy Page, Dick Carruthers, Directors: Dick Carruthers, Jimmy Page, Senior Editor: Henry Stein, Editors: John Mayes, Rod Main, Paul Machliss, Simon George, Online Editors: Phil Timm, Roger Watling, Stills: Sharen Woodward, Sound: Jimmy Page, Kevin Shirley |
| When this project came in, Edit Video had already been working with parts of the Led Zeppelin archive for 7 years. |
As the Royal Albert Hall footage was a 2-camera shoot,one would expect that cutting it would be relatively easy. Not so! After roughly matching the tracks on the Lightworks to the old sound mixes we discovered that the cameras were not crystal locked – one being on average 101.5% and the other about 102.5%. Then there were speed changes as batteries went flat and and at times both cameras had run out of film. A further problem was that some of the neg had been cut or was missing after previous attempts to edit it. |
| One month later, having worked day and night, it was finally in sync and every usable frame had been used. Whilst it looks like many long shots, on average there is a speed change every 5 seconds and, in order to cope with all the minute speed changes, the concert was conformed and rendered in the Smoke*. It was then passed through Archangel at Metro to remove the scratches and dirt. |
| The Madison Square Gardens concert was edited on Avid, and proved to be the biggest challenge, as it was soon discovered why some of the tracks had not been included in the film ‘The Song Remains the Same’. Basically, the footage (sometimes in chunks of only 10 seconds) from 3 cameras over 3 nights, followed by a 2-week studio reshoot, had to be identified, and synced up. When finally complete, it was conformed on Symphony. |
| Simultaneously, we were editing the Earls Court footage on Avid, later conforming on Symphony. |
Meanwhile, the Lightworks was editing all the TV clips and interviews (linear online and grade), off lining the Knebworth footage (online linear suite), offlining ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and all the menus and credit sequences (onlined in Smoke*). Grading was done at The Farm and Blue whilst our linear suite was used to repair grading problems on field 2 edits and flash frame edits and the Smoke* was used to ‘paint out or in’ and repair. Finally all the elements were reloaded into the Lightworks, synced to the remixed sound, changed and joined before being re-onlined in the linear suite. |
Every member of Edit Videos staff was vital, for almost three months we often had every edit suite and all the machines and tape ops working on the project, with the office responsible for hundreds of priceless tapes being moved on a daily basis. Every tape had to be logged, and every viewing copy had it’s own unique burned in identifying code. |
| Hopefully none of everyone’s hard work shows on the final product. |
| Offline: Lightworks / Avid, Conforming: Symphony / Linear Suite, Grading: Linear Online, Effects and repairs: Smoke* |
|