If you grew up in the late 70's or early 80's like I did, you could not go five minutes without seeing one of the now famous spelling commercials on tv. First came the Oscar Meyer jingle: Oscar Meyer has a way of B-O-L-O-G-N-A. Next came Tommy Lasorda spelling relief R-O-L-A-I-D-S. No wonder I can spell so well! The subject of this post, thus, is about the letters (and symbols) that mean a lot to me: Relief from endless mouse clicks and eye movement in Premiere is spelled J-K-L-; Let me explain. Recently I had a dream that I was...
When I started this blog, I thought I would focus on reminiscing about the good old days. In reality, the present constitutes the good old/new days, and the old days are simply old. That being said, my recent activities on Facebook, namely getting reacquainted with fellow college students, has gotten me thinking about some of the old times. During college I helped to produce a weekly student news cast and did several internships. Sometimes we were a little short on news, so we had to get creative. Campus security bought themselves a radar gun, and they were stopping students for...
When I read about the new and improved standalone Media Encoder that comes with Premiere CS4, I was very excited. Gone are the days of exporting files one at a time from Premiere, a potential savings of hundreds of hours per year. If this works, it would be like Space Mountain - worth the price of admission. Can you tell I grew up in the 70's when Space Mountain was the best ride Disney had on offer? For those of you unfamiliar with the pre-CS versions of Premiere, let's take a look back. In Premiere 6.5 and earlier, you were...
Footastic Theatre has been a really fun way to work and network with different talent. Assorted combinations of writers, shooters, and talent for each one. Fun to shoot too! We have 7. I was going to end this at 10 but it appears that plenty of people want to play, so we'll keep going for a bit. Bring in the new year with some Footastic fun! Promo for the Grease ep- http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/22c568d27c/grease-footastic-promo-from-southernjewishprincess Our Christmas Episode- http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/cf154ed72b/footastic-theatre-dreaming-of-a-better-christmas-from-southernjewishprincess And this Halloween ep did very well as Internet Video Magazine's Video of the Week and it was #1 top User Pick out of...
Many of my blog posts include mentions of food. Alas, a good hearty meal before and after a shoot is a good idea, especially since you are on your feet for 8-14 hours a day. If you are one of the 5 people who have read my blog from the beginning, you may see some repetition, but in the great tradition of "the man who made lists", I shall make a list. Boston I have had a few conferences and numerous shoots in Bean Town. There are enough hospitals in Boston to care for millions of people. One of my...
The COW Blogs have recently come under the microscope and things are being developed to make them a more friendly place and more uniform to the rest of CreativeCOW.net. There's been a lot of changes recently away from the Drupal system so I thought I might give you a heads up on some of the new features and the new look of the new and (we hope you agree) improved blog system. Logging In: To log in to the blogs you only need to be logged into the CreativeCOW.net site. Do this by clicking on the SIGN IN button at...
The other day I mentioned to Abraham how much I disliked our blogs section and how little I liked Drupal, the system we have been using for a while now. He wrote me today and said that he had been at work on the blogs and wondered if I liked what he had come up with. My answer? "Please change over to this system today, Abraham. No need to wait." Kathlyn and I are going to adopt him. Or give him money. The nicest part of this system is that it is custom developed and Abraham has tied it in...
I don t know about you, but around our household, nothing says Christmas like farting. This is apparently true elsewhere as well. On December 22, iFart Mobile, the leading fart app in the iTunes store, pulled down nearly $10,000! That s right, in a single day. This is one of many, many fart apps in the store. I got this from VentureBeat, a blog syndicated by the New York Times covering venture capital in Silicon Valley. Founder Matt Marshall used to cover technology for the San Jose Mercury News, the undisputed authority on tech news in the Valley. So if...
Just want to wish everyone here a very Merry Christmas and prosperous New Year. We ll be celebrating with an Italian traditional Feast of the Seven Fishes. I grew up on this tradition at home and about 5 or 6 years ago, we decided to carry it on down here in Georgia. We re expecting 21 folks on the 24th this year and every year we have old friends, family and new folks joining us for the first time. It s a wonderful evening of food and good cheer. Here s the menu for this year, and yes I pretty...
I believe that we all are the sum of both the positive and negative experiences, and people, in our past and present lives. As an instructor, I know that both my good teachers and bad teachers helped to shape my teaching styles and methods. In some cases, one of my teachers would do or say something, and I would think, wow, I gotta use that when I teach! Other teachers, I would make a note to do the exact opposite. It is with this in mind that I would like to publicly share what I feel was the defining moment...
As the year comes to an end (or a screeching halt if you are heavily invested in the market) it is time for my annual self assessment of...myself. This year I feel I have made the most progress in project management. I have blogged previously about various workflow improvements, experiments and systems for managing multiple projects, and/or managing a single project to completion. Rather than looking at these nuances or exingencies of workflow, in this post I will analyze my overall project management philosophy. Some Background In 2003 I was given oversight of all multimedia projects, both as project manager and...
Hi everyone, it's been a while, I know. But, here goes. I have been a computer lover since, well, since "The Dead Sea" was still sick. I initially had a Macintosh and then a Dell (don't get me started with Dell), (that's for another "Bitch Blog", not for the holidays). Have an HP now, just so you know. I have used "Internet Explorer" for many years. And, I was not very happy with it, so I also tried "Mozilla" "Firefox". Still not happy. I plodded along, like a sick horse, Until, one day when I subscribed to Google's "G-mail". I...
Hello fellow COW, This is my first ever blog on Creative Cow but have been reading Mike Cohen's and Walter Biscardi's blog ever since I came across the site over a year ago. I first came across the site looking for solutions to sony vegas 6 (i think it was) and was stumbled by the amount of knowledge in the field and have stayed ever since. For those of you that don't know me, I'm a student at the John Martin Cass Academy in Sydney, Australia. I have been interested in television and film ever since I was about 12...
Editorial has been completed on the new business television pilot developed by Biscardi Creative Media, ideaWercs and Arriving with BB Webb. BCM Principal Walter Biscardi, Jr. served as Director, Editor and Post Production Supervisor on this project. Additional credits include Brian Mead for logo design, Aaron R. Stewart for graphics design and Brian Little for opening title design. The episode was produced in 720p HD. More details will be provided as the series moves towards full production of Season One....
Biscardi Creative Media recently delivered an introductory project for an upcoming feature-length documentary about River Blindness disease. Produced by Gary Strieker and Cielo Productions, the project was a 10 minute overview of what the disease is and a brief look into some of the preventative measures being implemented by The Carter Center. The presentation, The Crab and the Fly was shot in 720p HD in multiple locations in Africa and Latin America over a two year period. Editorial was performed by Aaron R. Stewart and the final presentation was delivered on 1080i BluRay disc using BCM in-house BluRay authoring publishing...
Can you tell me what the following 5 artists have in common? Bayje Justice Young Steff The Zac Brown Band Estelle Besides the obvious, which is that I ve never heard of them, and doubt you have either. They re all featured on the front page of AtlanticRecords.com , in that order. It matters because Atlantic has the largest market share of any label, and is also the first to report that more than half of their sales are coming from digital sources. (The link above is to one of those NYT stories you have to register for. VERY much...
What makes a great client? There are of course many ways to address this question. First, let s talk about the different kinds of clients. Client paying for services, such as a video shoot A great client hiring you for a video shoot only, hand over the tapes, has arranged the logistics ahead of time. In my case, the client has arranged entry into a hospital, gotten me a day-pass or badge and mapped out the shooting locations, schedule and perhaps lunch. Given a really hectic day, a cup of coffee goes a long way. Client paying for services, shoot...
When Steve Jobs called Blu-ray a big bag of hurt, he was being asked why the new MacBooks have no Blu-ray drives. His answer spoke to the cost of licensing the hardware. When his lieutenant Phil Schiller chimed in, HE was speaking about Blu-ray content when he said that the iTunes Store and Apple TV was the right way to deliver HD. Steve knows how much a Blu-ray drive costs to license, so I ll take his word for it. I won t bust Phil too badly as an individual, because lordy knows he s not the only one to...
Saw my first sub-$200 BluRay player yesterday, a $179 Sylvania model at Costco. I m still partial to the Samsung 1500 unit for about $270, but what a cool evolution from $1,000 just last year to only $179 for a BluRay player. Now you have no excuse not to get one!! I honestly have a hard time watching DVD s now since we got the BluRay player last year. Especially when it comes to the Pixar films which are just ridiculous on BluRay. Happy holidays! ...
Check it out: I know how hard it is for film music composers to get legitimate work. The fact is, if you don't know Hans or someone who does then you really don't have a chance in Hollywood. We spend all day on craigslist or mandy trying to build our resumes only to find ourselves working on dead-end films. I learned of a company of professional music composers (represented by the Kaufman agency) who started a company for independent composers like us who work virtually. Check out their website: http://www.thecomposercollective.com/. I've been working on films with real budgets and offering...
In this industry, I m a certified old-timer. Not in the sense of I start my car with a crank in the radiator but my first paying job was sweeping up the piles of confetti in a computer punch-card center after hours. The center had two 8-track tapes: Elvis Christmas Album , and Steve Martin s Let s Get Small . Forgetting about the long-term damage of hearing Blue Christmas approximately a billion times, let s just say I grew up comfortable with digital technology. My father started programming for a living in 1959. I still remember him bringing home...
A friend and associate of mine told me a tale of woe the other day. He made 1,000 dupes of a DVD project and delivered them to his client. Not long after that the client called with bad news. There was a tiny, tiny error in the program. A couple of seconds of the dreaded "Media Offline." He told me, "It was the kind of error you could overlook if you took your eyes off the monitor for a second." I said, "It's the kind of error that you might miss if you're tired of looking at the program." You...
My friend Dean recently bought the new Nikon D90 DSLR with HD video capability. His company Dean's Photography Services owns many DSLRs and his justification for the purchase was to be able to shoot short videos for some of his clients. He went along on a recent shoot as PA and to take some stills. He also wanted to shoot some HD video that I might be able to use. Yesterday he came over with the camera to see how the footage looked and how it would import into FCP. The Motion JPEG AVI clips imported into FCP with no...
In addition to shooting surgeries, most projects include one or more on-camera interviews with surgeons or other providers of care(commonly referred to as providers ). Sometimes these interviews are run and gun like news, other times they are more organized, and sometimes a combination. Run and Gun Very often, an interview may be done between cases, either in an empty OR or ideally in a corridor, away from the hustle and bustle. Granted, in a busy hospital, hustle and bustle is just around every corner. The thing I like about a long corridor, is I can position the camera far...
Hi Folks! I m Brian Maffitt, Renaissance Man. That s not saying anything these days, of course. Most of us have learned to master a startling variety of skills to stay competitive—or if you ask my wife, just to operate the entertainment center. For those of you who don t know me, I m a former actor, Graceland tour guide, and broadcast designer. I created a few After Effects plugins, sold them to Adobe, and co-founded an education company called Total Training. These days, I pretty much spend my time sitting around, eating ice cream, playing video games, and discharging...
Having experimented with HDV as documented in previous posts, this week was one of the first occasions to shoot a full day of open surgery with this format, using the Sony V1U. In the viewfinder or flip-out LCD screen, one cannot really see a difference in clarity. Focusing is, in fact, more difficult, especially since there is often some distance between the screen and my eyes. If I lean in too close I could potentially lose my balance, which is usually precarious to begin withstanding on three stacked 1 x2 step stools. Thus I alternate between autofocus and manual focus...
Few FCP editors have anything nice to say about the Media Manager. It's bitten me a couple of times when trimming a project to send to another facility. Having said that it really works well in trimming large media files. I like to capture whole tapes or large blocks of material. Captured media is easier to deal with and it's kinder to the tape machine and tapes. Basically I take a large clip and subclip (CMD+U) just the portions I want to keep. Then I rename the subclips to match the clip content. This eliminates false starts, bad takes, and...
I like FCP to make a new media file for each camera start stop. I edit a fair amount of documentary programs with lots of B-Roll. Ever since my early NLE days using AVID I ve used the Subclip function to manage long B-Roll captures. I don t like to scrub thorough long clips, preferring the film approach where rolls are cut up into individual shots or scenes, labeled, and hung in a bin. This is the librarian aspect of editing as one of my college professors used to say. Rather than shuttling back and forth through tapes and batch...
