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.
Ok so first you have to win some festival awards or at least be an official selection. Then you have to be on Windows. That said here's a very cool application that will make the creation of festival laurels for your movie's poster, DVD box, etc very simple.
EZLeaves is a FREE application that allows to quickly and easily generate custom festival laurel leave images. Features include:
Choose from four different laurel leave styles
Use any system-defined font
Export to JPG or BMP
Define up to 10 lines of custom text
Full control over the height and font settings of each
line, or you can use one font and color for all lines
EZLeaves runs on Windows and requires at least 1024x768 desktop resolution. For more information, visit this site:
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:
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.
Do you feel driven to making Independant Films? Do you watch art house films...and actually LIKE them?
Then you might have INDIE FEVER. Indie Fever is a crippling addiction that effects people nationwide...heck, GLOBALLY. But don't worry, there is help. The first step is to admit you have a problem. Once you do that, then please visit the Indie Fever website to find out how you can get help.
Until this weekend I have avoided the Media Manager, which has been dubbed the "media mangler" for good reason. In the past, when you used the Media Manager to do anything, it would produce varying results....none of them the correct ones. It still has issues with SPEED CHANGES, but that is because actual media isn't made. But other than that, its reputation has improved.
I saved posting the airdate until the time was close. Well, it is close. And it will air THREE times very close to one another...so you will be sure to catch it.
Sunday, November 18 08:00 PM Monday, November 19 12:00 AM (that's right...MIDNIGHT) Saturday, November 24 05:00 PM
Not sure if these are Eastern or Pacific times...there have been times when it was set to air at 8PM and I find that it is on a 5PM...so 8PM eastern, 5PM Pacific. But then it re-aired later that night.
So there's been a lot of talk on the forums lately about Magic Bullet Looks now being available for use in editing systems and I'm even going to try it out shortly myself. But for those of you with Final Cut Studio 2, keep in mind you have probably the most powerful color grading software available for desktop computers in Color just sitting there. Yeah it's not perfect, there are some issues to work around, but I have to admit, even with the issues, the end results are nothing short of stunning.
At long last, my traning DVD for Apple's Color is now taking orders! If you've been staring at this incredible color grading software for a while, it's time to start using it! "Stop Staring, Start Grading with Apple Color" is what you need to get going.
Here's the sales page with all the details and an incredibly cool trailer. It's my absolute pleasure to bring this title to you guys!
So we've had a lot of discussions on the Final Cut Pro and Apple Color forums about what can we use to replace the current Broadcast CRT monitors that are EOL? I've not been overly impressed with the current crop of LCD monitors out there. My favorite to date, the Panasonic 1700W and 2600W are both good, but cannot completey replace my Sony CRT Broadcast monitor.
I saw something when we were setting up at IBC that I wanted to mention. Because it directly relates to something that I do on all the shows that I work on.
At one booth I saw the face of the host of a Discovery Channel show I worked on...a series really. It was a freeze frame image of this host with burned in time code and no background, so I couldn't tell which show it was from. They were busy setting up, so I didn't have a chance to ask the guys (and gal) what it was right away. I waited until the show was running and they weren't so busy.
Most of you who know me are very familiar with this project that I am working on, but for those of you who don’t, here is a link..
I invested A LOT of my time into this project. I traveled to Sri Lanka with Eric Klein and James Sicignano in early 2005 to document the tsunami that happened in December 2004 - and spent countless hours, with the help of Eric Klein and Matt Bieler, cutting this trailer for a movie that we are still in the process of making.
Jonathan Demme's new documentary, Man From Plains, about former President Jimmy Carter had its World Premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 7th, 2007. The film received a two minute standing ovation and will next be presented at the Toronto Film Festival with the Carters in attendance on Monday, September 10th.
The film is an intimate two-hour portrayal of the 39th President set against the backdrop of Carter's Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid book tour.
This is Part 2 of a 4 Part series on Starting and Running your own business in the creative industry. In Part 1 of this series, I posed the question, “Are You Ready?” A link to Part 1 is at the end of this article in case you missed it. If you’ve thought long and hard on this and your answer is “Yes,” then let’s proceed with Part 2 of this 4-part trilogy. Here we’ll explore a lot of questions on setting up your company and getting ready to open those doors!
Talking to a fellow media professional recently, and they commented that the type of art they prefer to do now is simply for artistic expression rather than for communication. And that got me thinking about what the role of art in our (often) very utilitarian profession is and should be. I guess I default towards art only being a worthwhile investment when it clearly communicates. And yet I'm beginning to feel that there may be value to self-expression that doesn't have as its primary goal communication.
It's not even a background, really. It's pretty explicitly the absence of a background. Even lighting, no shadows, almost adrift. Not in a bad way. Stephen Smith did a great job of covering this in the May-June issue of Creative COW Magazine, including why it's best to use chroma keys to acheive the look.
The most frequent place you're seeing it these days is the "I'm a Mac" ads. (Check the end of this entry for a great variation.) If you cast your mind back a little further, you might recall the same look in the Apple "switch" campaign. As an Oscar-maniac, I hope you saw the short film with this look in the 2006 Academy Awards show, one of the highlights of what I thought was the best Oscarcast in years.
1. "Be in the right place at the right time" aka The Zapruder Rule. If you can stay on the right side of this rule you can ignore many of the others. However much TV photographers howl there is a compelling logic to the notion that for breaking news coverage the quantity of camera crews you field can often be as important as the quality.
First, watch the trailer. Want to do a Cinema Verité project? Spend an evening watching Lost Boys of Sudan first. The film follows several Sudanese young men as they leave their homeland and try to start life anew in the US. You almost never feel the intrusion of the camera, and the interviews are so organic and natural, it seems as though the subject is just talking to himself or a good friend, not to a producer.
Since the issues surrounding rights and fair use come up at The COW all the dang time, from various perspectives, here are some of my very favorite web resources.
As Chi-Ho Lee noted on the Final Cut Pro forum today, Quicktime 7.1.6 has been released in anticipation of Final Cut Studio 2 and you can now read timecode in the Quicktime Player. Wow! Finally! Not sure why it took so long, but here's the proof.
If you click on the running time you now get a drop down box which gives you three choices of the Standard Running Time, Timecode and Frame Number.
Life is stranger than fiction, or so they say. And even though my day to day existence doesn't contain much fodder for prize winning television, there are many true stories out there that make for riveting viewing. If the term "documentary" makes you yawn, you might need to shed your preconceived notions of picture slideshows. This genre is full of creativity and artistic expression. In fact, I'd say that watching documentaries is one of the best ways to learn the elusive art of storytelling.
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