The X-Files: I Want to Believe Cut to the Truth
One of those key people was assistant editor Ryan Chavez, who Harris hired at the suggestion of the studio. “Ryan is a Final Cut Pro wizard,” says Carter. “And therein lies the beauty of this system: it has no limit if you understand it. As Ryan says, it’s all about workflow. And if you understand the workflow, there is no better system than Final Cut Pro.”
Chavez blue-printed a post-production workflow for the film that emphasized maximum speed and flexibility. With some brief hands-on pointers from Chavez, Harris was quickly cutting the show in an edit suite set up in Carter’s house in Malibu while the crew was shooting in Vancouver. “Because Richard had never done a Final Cut feature before, this was all new to him,” says Chavez. “But I was amazed at how fast he picked it up. I’d show him a shortcut and that was it. He was good to go.”
“I like the simplicity of Final Cut, I really do,” says Harris. “I’m not a technical guy, but it was just very friendly, as well as flexible enough to handle all the formats. And certainly the HD picture output is better than anything I’ve seen.”
Chavez’s Final Cut Pro-based workflow delivered to spec, allowing quick daily turns of significant footage. “Our schedule was extremely fast. As soon as I got a drive with new footage, Richard was watching dailies. I would organize his material as he was watching, and the moment I finished, he was cutting. So we were always right up to camera. I think we surpassed a lot of people’s expectations with what we were able to do.”
Closely Watched
Because Chavez’s workflow allowed for secure digital HD dailies, Carter and Spotnitz could watch the progress of the edit while still shooting in Vancouver, in a nearby facility, at a trailer moved in for the snow shoot, and even on the set. Editorial also had the ability to securely DigiDeliver encrypted QuickTime files of scenes for Carter and Spotnitz to review.
“This was the first time I had the luxury of having digital dailies delivered to me on set," says Spotnitz. “Richard would cut scenes, and his assistant would email me links where I could download QuickTime files of the scenes as they existed and watch them on my MacBook Pro. If something came up, I could show it to Chris or the DP right away and deal with issues before principal photography ended. That allowed us to get tons of little pieces that we realized we wanted, and it saved a lot of money and time.”
Wrap
The tightly-strung editing workflow helped bring the movie in on schedule. Carter showed a cut to the studio after only three weeks of editing, less than half the time allowed in his Directors Guild contract. “I knew that I couldn’t take that time,” says Carter. “We wouldn’t have been able to make our release date. I ended up showing it to them after three weeks of cutting.”
The front-loaded editing workflow also produced other backend results. “A month after we finished shooting, I gave Richard Harris a week to cut before I came in and saw the picture. And that first cut, which some people call the “suicide cut,” was nothing of the sort. You could already see the shape of the story, and it was very exciting.”
Working with Harris, Carter and Spotnitz cut the movie from a 2:39 running time to a lean 1:45. “We locked picture by the end of May,” says Spotnitz, “which is just unheard of in the movie business, to go that fast.”
Pleased with responses to the film in previews, Carter says he’s open to doing another X-Files movie if this one does well. But if the next movie never happens, Carter says he is fine as well with putting the monsters to bed. “What happened with X-Files, I know, may never happen again in my life” he says, “where you write something that interests you, and it interests other people as well. I have to say, it’s been a miracle.”
