We're working on a corporate documentary type of project that involves teenagers who lived through Hurricane Katrina. The project is all shot in high definition and of course, the producer was in the market for some news footage of the hurricane and its aftermath to help craft the story.
Looking around the web we found buyoutfootage.com with the most reasonably priced footage, about $450 for 19 minutes of the aftermath rescues and such. The description of the reel describes pretty much exactly what we were looking for with military personnel helping people, flooded streets, the mayor walking around, etc.... It's available on BetaSP so we naturally assumed it would all be clean, good quality footage. Being on a quick turnaround schedule, we simply ordered the master without getting the sample DVD.
That was a bad decision. When we received the tape, a lot of the footage looked like it had been captured at a very low resolution or it had been through about 5 or 6 generations of dubs. Most of it is very soft, again, like bad transfers along the way.
So, day two of the shooting extravaganza went great. We started in the OR with about a dozen people and 4 cameras, shot some conflict scenes for the communication video, then broke into two crews for the rest of the day.
I hired two actors to role play about 15 different communication and conflict scenes. While we had about 25 pages of scripts, we improvised some new scenes and modified or deleted existing scenes. Overall it was loads of fun, single-camera film style setups. I even did a little acting.
As the day progressed from 7:30am call time to 4:30 wrap, people were getting a bit punchy and goofy, and there are some great outtakes and giggles, which keeps everyone engaged and working together.
I say this every time I participate in this type of shoot - it is some of the most fun one can have as a job.
Before I get to the crux of my post, I would like to explain a few terms that a few people might not know about. Here is the progression of a cut as I do it...when dealing with a documentary project that has a script:
RADIO EDIT - Laying out of narration and sound bytes. Just getting things in script order on the timeline.
ROUGH CUT - Filling in the cut with footage. This is also the time that I start to ad pacing to the cut. Adding slates (title cards) where footage is missing and needed.
FINE CUT - Fleshing out the cut with music and more footage. Deal more with pacing as music is added...give breath to scenes and add montages when needed. Start to get into creating the style of the show, creating transitional moments and unique pacing. Sound effects added at this stage. Perhaps adding lower thirds (ID tags for interview subjects).
FINE CUT 2 - Addressing the producer and network notes. More versions as the notes progress.
Biscardi Creative Media is proud to announce the completion of "Jayne's Café" featuring Jayne Olderman, owner of Red Warrior Records. Looking for a unique way to present her songs to a wide audience, Jayne created the concept of an unplugged 'café.'
"Jayne and I have been working together for a long time and when she mentioned this project, I immediately jumped in and said we'd like to produce it at BCM," notes Walter Biscardi, Jr., Principal Biscardi Creative Media. "Our challenge was to be able to shoot it well in a very small studio space. There's very little room for lighting and the ceilings are only 9 feet tall and we had up to 6 people for each song and 2 camera operators, so it definitely made for some tight quarters."
Now here's something interesting, the folks over at Silverado Systems have partnered up with Vuze to create a different kind of contest. OpenCut is a completely open-source film competition designed to encourage people to take professionally shot material and edit it in their own way. As there is no "one way" to tell a story, so too can stories benefit from being re-edited and re-told from many different vantage points and perspectives.
They have a short film shot on the RED camera with dailies they'll copy over to your hard drive. Then you cut it altogether any way you want using Final Cut Pro. It's a good way to get your hands on RED footage if you haven't already and maybe even get credited as the editor on the final version as they submit it to festivals.
As you output your project to tape, or to DVD...whatever. Or before you encode it for the web or DVD...watch it all the way through. Even if you have seen it three dozen times, it would be very wise to watch your project before you do your final output, or an output that is going out to the network.
Why?
Well...one of the other editors here came to me with a big issue...one that I have never seen nor heard of before.
Always trying to come up with clever headlines for these blogs, today I settled upon Random Access Memory. We in the video business are always talking about RAM as it relates to using multiple programs at once, having enough juice to run your software. But in this case I am talking about the availability of information in a randomly accesible fashion.
Take a database, or a simple Excel speadsheet - randomly accessing desired information is as simple as a search or a query. However as we all know, the specificity of the search is limited by the details of the data stored.
For example, if I have a database of oh, I don't know, surgical videos. We store the name of the procedure, the author/s, the year produced, the running time, the available formats and a brief description of the video, either something written by the author or the first few lines of narration.
Thus, i can search for: Cholecystectomy AND Jones to find videos on Cholecystectomy by anyone named Jones.
My producer from The Mexican American War and Andrew Jackson is teaching a 4 week workshop. Time permitting I might see if I can pitch in when it comes to the editing phase. Anyway, here is the press release for this event:
HISTORY/DISCOVERY Channel Producer to conduct summer HVX-200/Final Cut Pro workshop at LA's Citrus College
This can actually fall into many categories. Scope creep is when the initial project plan morphs into something you could not have anticipated, often thanks to last minute "emergencies" and clients changing their minds.
As a customer service oriented organization, it is easy to say "yes, no problem." A better response, based upon the estimated budget and a signed contract which explicitly discusses overages, is "yes, no problem. That will cost an additional $4,000. How would you like to proceed?"
See the difference?
Which response you give has to do with how you have structured your financial terms with the client.
Here are a few semi-autobiographical examples (the names have been changed to protect the guilty!):
Client XYZ
We shot a re-make of an older video, approx 90 minutes running time. The client provided little feedback on the transcript for the original video, aside from "yeah, let's shoot it." The agreed upon deliverable was a DVD, perhaps with chapters.
The first edit took a couple of weeks - we made it match the original video, except with more up to date graphics and narration.
Once we have the actual shot, we can then control the downloading of footage from the camera using Vision Research’s software. Thus far they’ve only released a version that runs on Windows. In order to preserve the Mac-loving image of Simplemente, we decided to run it on a MacBook Pro with Boot Camp. We can then select the ins and outs of any particular shot. Typically the exact moment you want to save is a tiny fraction of that 6 minute take and the rest is a lot of frames with no activity you can delete. The selected portions are then saved out to a hard drive using Vision Research’s proprietary Cine file format.
I've been doing editing since the last 3 years, I've heard and read a lot about the subject and even though I still consider myself a newbie, I believe that the editing software we use has NOTHING TO DO with the quality of a movie. Editing is the art of puting video sequences at the right place at the right time. In my mind, even with Windows Movie Maker, people like Terry Rawlings or Pietro Scalia for example would still create a masterpiece !
If there's something that bugs me is when I see people arguing about using this or that software or this or that version. Keep in mind that not very long ago, someone was cutting the tape with a knife ! On many websites, blogs, forums, I'm always amazed to see that the best movies of all times are more than often, old movies !!!
Recently I was asked to make a video loop to play on the hotel television system during this week's convention. No problem, I had already begun receiving videos. The format requirements were simple: DV tape, DVCAM tape or authored DVD.
In reality, I received videos in the following formats: DV tape, Authored DVD, Windows Media, MPEG-1, MPEG-4, H.264, DIVX - all the usual suspects.
In most cases this is not a problem, Premiere Pro 2.0 will import just about every format. A few files had to be converted to another format due to the wrong audio frequency (32 vs 48k). Two videos came in without their audio, so i used Squueze to convert the original file to an MP3,import the MP3 and line it up on the timeline.
No, that's not the name of a new company - but it sounds good actually.
I actually was thinking of the term "go fast boats" as used in the Miami Vice movie. Basically fast racing boats used for smuggling.
This week was a go fast production week.
Monday - Pack my gear, print Google maps of two hospitals and a client's offices in Massachusetts. Fuel up the Wagon Queen Family Truckster (Saturn ION) for a mere $30, and hit the road. I also hit the library to stock up on Jackie Collins books for my wife and hit the supermarket to get her some provisions.
Lately my best friend has been a thermos bottle. I brew some coffee using a French Press, add a few spoonfulls of hot cocoa powder and little milk to the thermos bottle, then fill it up with the brew. This stays hot and comforting all day long. I pull over at every rest stop, or about every half hour, and have a small cup using the screw on lid from the bottle.
Last week, on Thursday (March 13th for those who really want to know) we needed to output the rough cut of the first show and send it to the network. In actuality it was the SECOND show, but episode one was still being edited...but that's besides the point. So on Thursday I was pulled off my editing of a segment for show one (EP 101) and assigned to cut the tease for show two (102).
"Cut the tease"....sorry, that always makes me giggle a little.
Anyway...this was the beginning of a series of "missteps" that caused a couple complications with the assembly of the show. For the record, we are editing DVCPRO HD footage mainly shot with the Varicam, at 720p 23.98 This footage was captured via the Kona card and not via firewire, as firewire capture throws the audio off sync by two frames...audio leading by two frames. Instead of adjusting the sync on each and every clip we drop in the timeline, we captured via HD SDI from the Kona 3 ensuring perfect sync. Because of this, the Easy Setup we chose was AJA KONA 3-720p 23.98 DVCPRO HD Varicam:
Here is the Kona KBox mounted on the back of my IKEA "rack." I had to add an extra piece of wood to the side, but the 2U rack brackets fit nicely.
Now...onto TIME MACHINE. In my MacPro I have 5 drives. The system drive is in Bay 1, I have three Seagate 500GB drives in the other 3 bays. One stands alone as a work drive, where I store show exports, imported footage and other odd and ends that I transfer to the server. The final two are RAIDED as RAID 0 and I use them to capture media too before I transfer it to the XSAN.
I have a fifth drive installed in this MacPro. The fifth drive resides in the normally empty second optical bay. It is connected to the computer via one of the two spare SATA connections on the logicboard (accessed by removing the fans) and a 3.5" to 5.25" adapter kit. I use this drive as my TIME MACHINE drive, since I am using Leopard. Already this has saved my behind.
The official title of the History Channel Series I am working on is STRANGE HISTORY. The stories will mainly deal with taboos, cultural and sexual, and strange cultural practices from around the world. There, now you know.
The first week there I was working on one of the rental systems. Because my computer hadn't come in yet and because they didn't play on renting my system for a few weeks yet. Now, this rental system was a bit lacking. Sure, it had the Octo Mac 3.0Ghz and a LARGE Mackie Mixer (that you would find on an Avid system) with 16 channels, 4 of which we use. Two for FCP, two for the deck...oh, 5...one for the microphone (temp VO). It had a Kona 3 card, was on one of those HUGE editing desks, was nestled in a rack, and had big HD LCDs. Not color correctable ones, but an early model Sony Luma series that was fine for producers to look at. The computer monitors? Lacking....WAY lacking. 17" square LCDs...brand I haven't heard of. SMALL, to say the least. I suffered on these for two weeks. The third week I was on my system. The rental didn't start on it until THIS week, but I wouldn't allow myself to suffer any more.
Last December I was asked to edit a trailer for a documentary. This trailer would be used to solicit finishing funds. And while they couldn't pay much, they could pay. Since I wasn't doing anything in January and halfway thru Febuary, I took the job.
The client asked how they should deal with the payment I said that I would like half up front, and half when I deliver the final. That sounded fine to them, so I received half the payment and the tapes to begin editing.
I worked on the project for about 3 weeks, and delivered a rough cut. Then I waited...and waited...and waited. Finally two weeks ago I received word from the director (the guy who hired me). The producers partnership had split due to philosophical differences in the way they wanted to approach the documentary. So not only was it on hold, but it might be shut down altogether. At least the one that I was asked to edit. The producers might end up with separate docs...but for me, the project was done.
IT'S HERE! It was supposed to be delivered tomorrow, but it got here a day early. I was tracking it on FedEx and it seemed to be sitting idle in Fort Worth Texas...it was there for a while. But then I looked up the tracking number just after lunch yesterday and suddenly it was in Sun Valley CA (here in the Valley, close to Burbank Airport) and on the truck to be delivered! I called my wife...she was going to be out of the house from 11:45 to 3:00...and sure enough, that was when the delivery occurred. But then they made another attempt later in the afternoon and my wife was home and I GOT MY NEW MAC PRO!
I raced home from work...as fast as one can race in rush hour traffic...and burst through the door. There it was, in the entrance hall. Too heavy for my wife and kids to move. After dinner I unpacked it and...well, OK...I'll go into more of that later. Posting pics and all...as if you all care. I'm getting a new machine, it is exciting to ME. But I'll post a few pics as to what I installed and how crowded it is inside there.
Quick update. My MacPro is finally shipping. And it turns out that I will be getting the original machine I ordered. Even though my dealer bent over backwards to get me the older version of the MacPro, I will be getting the new machine. Why? Well, the XSAN we will be getting will be running Leopard, so the fact that my machine will be running Leopard as well can only be good. And this saves me a few hundred bucks too...which is also a good thing.
I am still tracking the progress of the shipment at Apple...building the excitement. And when it arrives I'll to the obligatory unboxing photos, followed by the installing of the accessories photos (Kona 3, x1900XT, hard drives).
In the meantime I finished building the desk. Here is a quick photo of the desk...built entirely from parts purchased at Ikea. Well, except for the shelf, that was bought from the lumber store.
This is something i wrote in another forum about "Phenomenon" apple's new compositor.
it's sad. i trouble shoot fcp daily...actually..a lot more than that. they do such a sh*t job of making apps. really they do. I have NO faith in any major app they release with the spotty work they have done since i got into their proapps
fcp 4.5 was THE most stable fcp ever, 5.0 went down the hole, 5.1 showed a resemblance of coming back to ok, and to say that i've been happy with fcs2 and all that has happened around that is an overstatement.
I run fcp in a few worlds. I have a boot drive for it running in tiger and it's pretty good in a hard core THis is an editing system environment.
So I have set my sites on jobs when I graduate. It's pretty clear I'm not going to be inducted to the orphanage as their newest lead compositor straight out of college, not that it hurts to dream mind you, but it certainly hurts to expect such things. So I've been focusing on a much more realistic vacancy: Roto Artist.
Well, I am still awaiting my MacPro. Everything else has arrived: Kona 3 with K-BOX, HD10AVA, RAM, X1900XT Graphics card...heck, I even bought the pieces to the desk I intend to build today. I am discussing the arrival of my machine on this thread on the Apple forums. Trying to build tension, and have fun discussions that aren't meant to solve issues.
I'll post desk pics when I get the thing together. I bought various pieces at Ikea, but the design will be unique.
With the most recent Mac OS Update, OSX 10.5.2, the Matrox MXO is now compatible with all Mac models, INCLUDING the new MacBook Pros. Finally.
To get this to work, the following is REQUIRED:
Update to Leopard 10.5.2 Then Update to Leopard Graphic Update 1.0 Then install the Matrox MXO 2.1.1 drivers.
This has been tested by Matrox and according to them, it works. This has always been a thorn in my side, as I try to recommend this great box, only to have to tell people, "sorry, it doesn't work with the new MacBook Pro models."
(Freemont Street light show - I was in Vegas this weekend)
I am on the verge of buying a new edit system for my next project, so I thought that I'd take this opportunity to talk about setting up a good working system. Unfortunately I won't get into exact details on OS versions and QT versions, because that is information that I and others keep closely guarded as this is information we use for consulting. But I would like to explain the general steps and reasons for those steps.
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