AS THE Cathay Jumbo made an apparently suicidal and terrifically exciting 90 degree turn, only 100 metres from the streets below, and only 300 metres from the start of Hong Kong Airport's main runway, I wondered what I had got my self in for. My mission, should I choose to accept it, was to find out why postproduction had fallen way behind on the first sync-sound television series ever attempted in Vietnam.

I watched my armrest videophone self-destruct in a puff of smoke and clenched my teeth for the inevitable crashlanding while I mused on the details on hand. One of the world's poorest countries. A 30-part soap opera with an HIV/AIDS theme. A co-production with Vietnam TV, who supplies the crew and the talent, the best writers and directors with top overseas consultants to get the show rolling. The other partner supplies the editing gear which would be donated to the TV station at completion. One Lightworks system and one Heavyworks system installed in the best rooms available at the TV station.

But work had stopped on the series.. Due to repeated breakdowns the editors had expressed unhappiness with the setup; what used to take them two days now took four - they had totally lost confidence in the gear and were not prepared to continue until an independent expert had given the system a clean bill of health. Thus I find myself inoculated to the hilt and on the slow plane to Indochina.

Hanoi Airport is dusty and cute, notably the 20 metre bus trip from the plane to the arrival lounge! There's only really one of anything, oh except uniformed officials - of which there were a legion. I was met by a CARE driver in a 4WD, and was escorted along narrow roads in this huge vehicle to the strains of the straining Gypsy Kings. Incongruous and unexpected!

Fleeting glimpses in the dark of alien architecture, decay and another way of life at the same time tantalised and terrified me, and arriving at my hotel at 10pm I needed little encouragement to hit the sack - after brushing my teeth with Stolly and flicking quickly through the satellite TV channels.

First Impressions

Stepping onto the footpath the following morning I'm confronted with ... Hanoi by day - women behind low benches with bowls of onion, chopped meat, whole raw livers, dried fried garlic flakes, jars of pickled red and orange chillies, tiny round green eggplant and fresh mint ... something I suspect is deep fried worms ... plastic stackable stools everywhere or simple wooden stools with customers squatting, eating, laughing ... men chopping meat, ice, onions, anything and scraps into the gutter ... women with clear skins, spotless clothes, easy walk - and cracked, grimy feet ... men squatting, smoking cigarettes or bamboo pipes, drinking coffee or beer ... "shops" narrow, deep, dusty and dark ... winding steps to ... who knows? ... carved wooden chairs line the shop walls ... motorbikes parked in "kitchen" ... an old woman washes her feet in a pink plastic bowl ... and just masses of bikes and motos and cyclos honking constantly - no, incessantly - weaving in and around at 20k in every direction ... The taxi arriving for me did a 3 point turn while other traffic pushed and scraped past - no-one stops for anyone, getting through busy traffic here is JUST like heading into the start of the Tour de France but going the wrong way!. But the amazing thing is, no-one gets angry, no-one swears, just a lot of beeping from those who have things to beep and pushing and scraping from everybody else.

I got quite a surprise when I saw the "best rooms" available for the Lightworks. My overall impression was that of a basement footy changing room with bare wires strung around the ceiling, a bit of paint splashed on here and there and some squares of thin grey carpet. A dehumidifier roaring away next to the door and this stupendously expensive (by their standards) editing kit, stuck grandly into an old control room desk in the middle of the room. At this stage I hadn't quite realised how poor the country actually was.

Well there was nothing wrong with the gear itself, apart from a corroded fuse and some crusty old cables borrowed from someone's drawer. The repeated breakdowns were a legacy of the Micropolis 1991 fiasco, with SCSI drives dying left, right and centre and causing no end of confusion and anger. Been there, done that!

But it took some time (speaking through an interpreter) to convince them that the problem was not actually a Lightworks fault, but an unfortunate choice of the material drives supplied with the systems. I was also a bit worried about the lack of earth connections, and the effect of the omnipresent dust, heat and humidity on the machines (not to mention the termites.). But with the last of the bad drives on its way back to Micropolis it was time for Q&A and a training session. But first, lunch.

Out into the street, a low pressure storm is brewing, very muggy and steamy and wet. Lunch today is in the state-run beer hall now patronised primarily by the VTV staff - hence profitable, which is why it is still running, unlike most others. A plate of dark and succulent BBQ pigeon, a plate of cooked pumpkin leaves and a plate of snails with green banana and tofu - the bananas with outer peel removed, leaving the soft inner peel, cut in 8, once across then lengthways x 4 - looks a bit like okra in the bowl. The snails were actually as tough as car tyres and about as tasty. All served with pepper and salt and lime juice and washed down with green glasses of the local draught beer.

 

 

Never a simple solution.

Television drama in Vietnam is usually shot on SVHS or SP Betacam, with a guide track only (mainly because the crew won't shut up!) and all the sound is added in postproduction. From what I could make out, the editors don't worry about sound, they just seem to cut pix and sound together, and butt on the next line, then the next, with no overlaps and only the occasional cutaway - if it's written into the script. All this on Umatic. Then the "finecut" is taken into an ADR session. I watched one of these sessions, and the only thing "A" about it was the preroll of the SP-Umatic deck! Listening to the guidetrack on track 2, the editor marks an in and out on the Umatic front panel and does a quick insert edit into track one. If actor fluffs the line they do it again until they get it right. Then the next actor steps up to the mic for the next line, and so on. All onto the one track, no overlaps ... no timecode even! Then I presume this track gets mixed with a few effects (probably overwriting the guidetrack), the

titles and credits are added from an Amiga character generator, and the Umatic tape is then put to air. .

Watching such shows off air is disconcerting. Not only is the editing quite slow and the picture crummy, but you constantly have to adjust the TV volume control to keep the program at a comfortable listening level!

I soon found that the battle for the silent crew was only the beginning...

I discovered that the editors would usually "fine" cut a 25 minute drama in 2 days. They were concerned that on the Lightworks it took them 4 days to achieve the same result, due mostly I suspect from the need to digitise the material in the first place! Also, they shared work on episodes according to who was on shift, and didn't seem to have much emotional attachment with their work.

As part of the training session I took them through one of their "completed" edits - which to my taste was just an assembly - and was stunned to find that their level of knowledge of the machines was limited to very basic assembly functions, so the result was just like one of their linear umatic edits. Not an overlap or a trim in sight. And whilst the editors were delighted to be shown tips and tricks and better ways to use the Lightworks system, they showed very little interest in actually doing a second "finecut" on their edit, even as an exercise, and were positively negative about my proposal that they actually spend some time on the soundtrack! It took a while for me to discover why; it turned out that they are paid per episode so the quicker they finish the better, and as they wouldn't be paid any more to work on the sound they weren't about to make life easier for the sound editor ...

But I felt sorry for them not having access to manuals in their own language. Such a hurdle! Time was short, so rather than going through the manuals page by page, feature by feature I decided it was better to show them the results it was possible to achieve, and then let them ask questions on how to get there. As I continued with my demo finecut, I decided it was time to slip in a reaction shot. So I found the original take, spooled to the end of the line and ... "cut!". Oh. So lets have a look at another take. Same. Hey what's going on here? The more I looked, the less I found. The directors were more or less editing in-camera, so even if the editors WANTED to put in a cutaway they couldn't, because there wasn't one! (However I did manage to salvage a couple of cutaways - using those precious moments between roll camera and action when the actor hasn't yet started to act and whose face is a blank canvas onto which an editor may project just about anything. The editors were suitably impressed - at last!)

Lunch again. Vietnamese take their lunch seriously. On the back of editor Mr Son's Vespa and off we went. One of the most hair-raising things I've ever done ... and not only because no-one has helmets ... My driver weaving through the peloton looking over his shoulder while talking to me and his mate the director riding alongside, the two men passing cigarettes and chatting whilst crossing a large busy intersection diagonally! I couldn't help noticing that my knees stick out a lot more than the handlebars and at one point my arm got caught on something and I though it was the end ... but it wasn't. It was fun instead, and stepping off the bike I got that lovely buzzing in the legs I'd forgotten all about.

Upstairs in the Pho restaurant we sat at one table by the window over the street. High hinged wooden windows separating the little room from the upper part of the main room. Sliced kidney and chinese mushrooms on rice noodles. Salad of viet mint, lettuce, "beefsteak" leaves, coriander leaves and beansprouts. Bowl of cucumber in vinegar, nuoc mam and chilli bits. Then another, larger plate of noodles with shredded meat. Before the meal I was already worried about the return trip - after the effect of several Tiger beers on the driver - but as it turned out, the beer had an effect on me as well and I didn't give two hoots and had a great ride back.

And the perfect answer is?

One of the more contentious issues on the agenda was the use of a Heavyworks machine to "online" the episodes. The same system was also to be used to complete audio postproduction. I don't know who made the initial recommendation about this workpath, though I have my suspicions, but whoever it was either had a vested interest in selling the machine, or had not bothered to research the Vietnamese TV industry.

A Heavyworks is basically a souped-up Lightworks system, with twin-screen graphics monitors, higher resolutions (image quality), eight channel audio output and enhanced capabilities such as live multicam editing. At the highest available resolutions - comparable with the best Avid resolutions - the image quality is mostly very good and certainly broadcastable. But does this make it an Online Machine? Good question. The digital audio quality is naturally excellent, but the level controls in the system are not designed for producing a final mix and cannot be altered on-the-fly. Neither is there any EQ or delay available.

But someone, somewhere along the line had decided that it was a good idea to finish the entire series using one of these machines - and this was one of the main questions I was asked by the VTV management: "Was it possible to complete the series to international standards using ONLY the Heavyworks system?"

After taking into consideration their existing production standards, their long and short-term goals, and the resources and finance available to the station, my guarded response was that yes, it was possible to achieve that result, although it wasn't the way I would choose to do it! Unfortunately they didn't really have much choice. No mixing studio in town. No online suite in town. Not much money to splash around.

But there are so many factors playing in the situation ... for the editors, using Lightworks was like leaping from a pencil to Word6, without passing via a pen or a typewriter first ... for the station, not actually paying for the gear in the first place they didn't really have any concept of what either system was worth in dollar terms. And I couldn't help wondering if they had a budget to support the ongoing use and maintenance of these machines.

In my opinion, given the simplicity of the programs being produced (mostly buttcut images with scarcely a dissolve in there) a simple 3-machine SP Betacam suite would have been more than adequate for the onlines. As for audio ... well that's not my speciality so I'm not really in a position to conmment ... but I do know that the airconditioning and dehumidifiers made such a noise that I wouldn't feel confident doing a final mix in their Heavyworks room!

But there again, compared to the general state of local television in Vietnam, it would probably seem superb.

Hanoi was terrific, and the people were wonderful. I can't wait to go back!

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Copyright © 1998 Matthew Tucker