At the telecine studio, give a copy of your printout to the colorist or assistant, and a CD of the list as a data file if they prefer. They will also take your reference tape and digitize it for quick reference. Here is a checklist of things to do in the telecine session:

• After every scene has been corrected, check off the scene on your list.
• When all the scenes are completed and have been recorded to tape (and if you are truly paranoid), shuttle through the tape and check off all the scenes again. Each scene should be recorded “flash to flash,” meaning from the camera start white flash prior to the scene, to the camera stop flash after the scene. Make sure there are at least 10 seconds of pre- and post-roll adjacent to each scene.
• Now for the “idiot check”: go through the *rough cut* scene by scene and check off all the scenes on your list AGAIN.

Why so damn many times checking scenes off? Because telecine is really really really expensive. You don’t want to wrap your session, ship the negative, go home, then find out the next day you forgot a scene. I have done this. My bosses have done this. It happens to the best in the business. What’s worse, if you do end up forgetting a scene, you might not be able to get into the same studio with the same colorist in time to get the scene you need done for your online. Try not to put yourself in a position of simultaneously begging for forgiveness and begging for studio time to fix your oversight. It’s a really bad feeling. Oh God, just thinking about it makes me sweat…

At some point during the session, there may be a suggestion to do several alternate passes on a particular scene. Unfortunately, you cannot have the same scene recorded several times with the same timecode. It will drive your editing system crazy trying to find the correct clip. Instead, your colorist will offer to lay down the alternate passes with a “timecode offset”. This means that, if the primary pass on the scene is recorded at its native timecode, the alternate pass would be recorded with 10 or 20 minutes added to the native timecode number. For example, native timecode pass for a scene might start at 1:04:32:00. The same scene with an alternate pass would be recorded with 10 minutes added to make it 1:14:32:00. You will need to make a note of it for your online re-digitizing session so that you digitize this clip manually. And why, you ask, a 10 minute offset? Because each 35mm lab roll is about 10 to 12 minutes long, and by giving a clip a 10 minute offset, there is a high probability that the alternate pass’s timecode will not be duplicating already existing timecode from either your dailies or your rough cut. If this is happens to be the case, use a 15 or 20 minute offset.

(I am making an assumption here that re-transfer sessions as I have described above are such a rarity with 16mm film that the concept of the 10-20 minutes timecode offset is technically not an issue. 16mm lab roll assemblies can create video transfer timecode hours that go much longer than 20 minutes.)

So what else should you do in a telecine session? In all likelihood, you will be attending the session with one or more of the following: the director, DP, producer, art director, creative director, client, and who knows how many underlings. You are NOT in charge of how the colorist does his or her work creatively (although you could be given that responsibility, it is not the norm). The colorist will be working directly with the creative team, who is under the supervision of the producer. Remember, the producer is in charge of managing his or her creative team, the schedule, and the budget. The producer controls how long the session can last.

Your role in this situation includes the following:

• Make sure everyone knows where and when the session is, that the session starts on time, and that everything is available to begin.
• Be alert to answer every question about the footage, meaning, if someone is groping around looking for something, offer assistance.
• Make sure that the person(s) whose job it is to actually guide the colorist is paying attention (more on this in a second).
• SUPER IMPORTANT: Watch the clock!!! Be mindful of the pacing of the work as it gets about 1/4 or 1/3 through the list to estimate if you will finish on time. Remember to include the time it will take to take film reels on and off the machine and to record the scenes to tape, not just the creative time.
• Be sure the colorists are following the list and laying off all the scenes to tape properly.

Your partner in this session is the producer. He or she needs to hear from you that the session needs to pick up its pace so that he/she can crack the whip on the creatives to keep moving. Always be discreet about this. Make sure that the producer knows that you are on his or her side to protect the budget, while making sure all the work gets done as well as it can be done.

Last, the first one or two scenes will ALWAYS take longer than the rest since they are usually the ones where the style is established. The rest of the scenes will be mostly a variation of the established style. Do the math in your head to account for this when you estimate the pacing of the session.

When the session is over, you may be asked what to do with the materials. The negative should probably stay there until the master is shipped, just in case something changes. The reference tape can be chucked, or you can take it and re-use it. The OCN Transfer Master tape, or disk drive, is a matter of your own discretion. My policy is to always take the tape myself and personally return it to the editing studio. No matter what happens, that tape is my responsibility, whether it is lost or destroyed by the telecine facility or by my own handling.