The creators of the martial arts movie The Forbidden Kingdom brought two of the genre's top attractions—Jackie Chan and Jet Li—together for the first time on screen. This is certainly a significant event for their fans, but behind the scenes, Hollywood-based postproduction facility and consulting company DigitalFilm Tree had to bring together disparate technical elements to facilitate the project's editorial. The film, which was directed by Rob Minkoff, edited by Eric Strand and shot by Peter Pau, was the first major feature shot on mainland China with the Panavision Genesis.

The effects-heavy film concerns an American teen obsessed with Hong Kong cinema who discovers the legendary weapon of a famous Chinese warrior in a Chinatown pawnshop. He is subsequently sent back in time to take part in an ancient battle.

The film was shot in China, and the producers wanted to be able to edit nearby. Traditionally, big-budget features with American financing that shoot in China must send all original camera negative to the U.S. in order to receive the necessary completion bond. On this show, the original material would be a Panalog signal on SRW tape.

DigitalFilm Tree founder and CEO Ramy Katrib had worked with Executive Producer Raffaella DeLaurentiis previously on the digitally-shot feature Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, when Final Cut Pro HD, Apple's OS X and the AJA Kona capture card were all new. "She liked the flexibility and affordability of working in the HD 720p DVCPRO codec on Apple machines," Katrib recalls, "and she wanted to take advantage of the system for The Forbidden Kingdom."

Katrib's company designed the editorial and post workflow, which combined IT networking and post discipline. They assembled a custom editing system consisting of three 2.66 GHz Apple Dual Core Intel Xeon computers running Final Cut Studio. The systems share 8TB of data storage using Apple Xserve RAIDs. These were assembled and tested at DigitalFilm Tree's facility; the system was mapped, down to every connection and setting, to enable maximum efficiency if any long-distance troubleshooting was needed.

"We create a bible, where every cable is tested and then mapped, and the assistant editor is instructed thoroughly on installation and workflow. We spell out how to replace a drive, what command you execute to rebuild a drive—all those kinds of things. And then we ship the pre-assembled system."

Strand, whose editorial credits include Donnie Darko and Borderland, comments, "When I started this film, I knew it was going to be shot with the Genesis camera and edited on Final Cut Pro. I knew there were several [postproduction] companies to choose from. I was very familiar with DigitalFilm Tree and well aware of their outstanding work with Walter Murch on Cold Mountain. It helped put my mind at ease that we were going to be working with a team of creative experts that had been there from the beginning, using Final Cut Pro on big motion pictures."

Working nearly 6,500 miles away from the United States presented challenges for editing. Located in Hengdian, a five-hour drive from Shanghai, the production had no quick or close support. "The system design had to be simple and reliable, yet robust," de Laurentiis comments. "DigitalFilm Tree was instrumental in setting up our Final Cut Pro workstations and editorial workflow. I don't know how we would have functioned so well during the editing process without them."