Its nothing to do with where you live, your segment of the industry, the people involved or anything other than the modern production process. 'Testing' is to blame. No one commits to anything anymore, so why expect film to be any different. We are tweaking shot durations on vfx shots until after delivery dates while in my TVC work approval has become such a temporary term that its meaningless.
The biggest problem with testing is the test audience. The only people who will give up their afternoon to go to a TVC screening are;
- the unemployed
- students
- insane people being 'cared for in the community'
its quite natural that this segment of the general population will say things like 'i have no idea what this commercial with 40 shots of a car is for' which translated to a change order of 'we need to extend the end logo' or 'i dont like red' which translates to 'we need to ensure the grade is more on brand'.
Picture lock? I have clients wanting changes on the director's cut (60 sec) while the real master (15 sec) is still in testing...
What I'd suggest is get your colorist to ouput a .drp from resolve and have a copy of the free version on your smoke box. When the edit changes just load the grade to the new/extended take and export/import to smoke. Its generally only one shot, (well one shot each round of revisions - of course they will all change eventually) so the roundtrip for the grade is less hassle than all the extra roto and tracking you're going to have to do anyway.
I should log off, it's been a long week...
Mike
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