Indie film

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:

I wrote two articles for the Final Cut Pro User's Group Supermeet at NAB. They appeared in the SuperMag magazine. Here's part one of the second article looking at Simplemente's work with the Phantom HD camera:

Rune Hansen and Monica Reina at Simplemente in Mexico City recently acquired a Phantom HD Digital Cinema camera from Vision Research. We got to shoot a bunch of slow-motion footage and then worked with it in Final Cut Pro to create demo reels for theatrical projection. We needed to accomplish all of this in the space of about 48 hours.

The Phantom HD’s claim to fame is the ability to shoot uncompressed, high speed footage at up to 1,000 frames per second (fps) and up to 2K (2048x2048 pixels) resolution using a special CMOS imager. It accepts standard PL-mount 35mm cinema lenses and is also capable of capturing in standard and HD resolutions from 1 fps all the way up to 1,000.

I mentioned this briefly in my series on how to get your film distributed and I wanted to expand on it just a little. I cannot emphasize this enough, get photos of your movie as you're making it. Now there are two basic types of photos you need and both are important: behind the scenes and production stills.

Behind the scenes photography are the photos where you can see the movie crew and the gear being used to make the movie. Now of course you'll be tempted to photograph your cool crane that you managed to borrow or steal for a day or the Steadicam operator running after your actress. Or maybe you have a car mount or maybe a really nice Panavision or RED camera. These are all great to have but not the most important.

The most important behind the scenes photo, as least as far as the success of your movie is concerned is a shot of you, standing with one of your actors or near a movie camera pointing. Now this is silly, but read just about any movie magazine like Entertainment Weekly, US, Maxim, Moviemaker, etc and you'll see oddles of the directors, "directing." Now of course some of us might actually direct like this but probably not. Anyways it's a must.

Call for Entries - 2nd Annual SFMUG Short Movie Festival

Deadline Physical- Postmarked by 4/16/08
Digital- Uploaded by 4/21/08

Any movie 5 minutes and under, any genre, any topic, but no commercials, industrials, or explicit adult content. Movies do NOT need to be made on Apple Macintosh computers or any specific software.

Guidelines http://www.santafemug.org/film_fest/2008_film_festival.html

Prizes:
Best of the Festival Award - Apple Final Cut Studio 2, Toon Boom Studio 4 & Toon Boom Storyboard 2

Gold Award - Apple Final Cut Express 4, & Aquafadas iDive

Silver Award - Aquafadas PulpMotion, Aquafadas BannerZest Pro, Aquafadas VideoPier & $50.00 Apple iTunes Gift Card

Audience Choice Award - Apple iPod Touch

The best of SFMUG SMF08 movies will be shown at a future Film Industry Night in Albuquerque, NM and subsequent screenings.
totaling over $2800

"Best of the Festival" is going to win a moviemaker’s dream software bundle!

A selection of the best movies submitted will also be screened at "New Mexico Film Industry Party" in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

IFC, the Independent Film Channel, is having a film contest.

To promote this contest they have made a GREAT promo video...

IFC PROMO

What makes me like it more is the fact that I WORK in broascast TV, and must adhere to those rigid standards. Frankly, it can be a bit tiring. I mean, make the colors look good, make it not look to hot, but when I get a show kicked back because I am .02 above 100IRE...that pisses me off! What about my content? Oh, yeah, the networks have hacked that to death with their notes and there are structure rules to follow and then we get to the show timing, and my head REALLY swims when it comes to the technical mathmatical crap that we have to know about video levels. Sometimes I just want to make a good story that people will enjoy.

Sorry, ranting. Rough weekend. Watch and enjoy.

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.

A couple posts ago I pointed out the great PSA "Indie Fever" that Scott Simmons of the EditBlog made.

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.

And you better not miss the Indie Fever PSA.

Please spare yourself and your loved ones from further pain and misery from your independent filmmaking addiction.

(Thanks to Scott Simmons of the EditBlog for bringing this to light, and for making the PSA)

As I write this, it's Oscar eve. Just like Christmas eve, only more exciting. At least to my wife Nora and me. In fact, our primary celebration of Christmas is going to the movies, preferably a movie where things blow up. A festival of bright lights if you will.

It's not really the contest aspect of the thing. Most years we see a significant number of the nominated films. This year, we haven't seen a single one of the movies nominated for a major award. A lot of the movies look wonderful, especially Juno, but we just haven't gotten around to it.

One reason is that we keep upgrading our home theater - most recently with an upconverting DVD player. I can honestly say that our viewing experience is every bit as satisfying as a trip to the movie theater...

...with one obvious exception. There's something tribal about sitting in an audience of strangers, being moved by the same story in our own ways. It can be startling to have the same experience, including those rare occassions...though not as rare as you might think...of rising in a spontaneous ovation at the end.

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.

Okay, CC bloggers, I just got a new EZ FX jib for my Z1U. Having never used one before, I thought that a blog exploring how to use a jib would make a useful addition to the blogs. So, any ideas on how to best use the thing? I also have the "pedestal" option, and man it's a beast! I'm using it for the first time this morning, so talk now!! I'm stoked but a little bit out of my league as far as skill on using this thing, so any suggestions would be very welcome. TJ

Before I go into this, if you haven't read Chris Poisson's article here at the Cow on how to capture HDV as ProRes 422 via firewire please do so now.

I'll wait.

The New York Times reports that Warner Brothers has now lined up in Blu-Ray DVD corner effectively giving the Sony format about 70% of the high definition DVD market. They'll continue to release movies on both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray until May and then switch exclusively over to Blu-Ray. This leaves Universal and Paramount along with Dreamworks as the only major studios backing HD-DVD.

As a production company that had to jump into Blu-Ray production in support of one of our clients, this is welcome news for us. I have to say, if you have not seen Pixar's "Cars" and "Rattatoule" on Blu-Ray disc, you have not seen the true capabilities of Blu-Ray. Jaw dropping is the only way I can describe what these movies look like in HD. Better than what it looked like in the theater.

Full article on the New York Times website.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/05/technology/05disc.html?ex=1200200400&e...

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.

Hi all,

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!

http://library.creativecow.net/articles/biscardi_walter/stopstaring.php 

Enjoy! 

In Part 2 of this series, I gave you some thoughts on setting up your shop. If you missed that part or Part 1, links are at the bottom of this article. Now that the doors are open, the furniture and equipment is in, we need to get the word out so you can really get your company running and building. Just because you’re open, doesn’t mean people are just going to find you.

Congratulations! Hopefully by now you’ve finished off that bottle of champagne, grape juice, coffee, or whatever it was you used to toast your new company. The doors are open, the business cards are lined up and you are officially In Business! Nothing to do now but just let the folks in and get to work.

Yep, the coffee’s ready, the cups are out……

Just a minute, they’ll be here in just a minute…..

I’m sure they just missed that left turn, they probably turned right……

Anytime now, they’ll just come strolling right into the office……

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.

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!

This is Part 1 of a 4 Part series on Starting and Running your own business in the creative industry. We start out this week by asking, Are You Ready? Are you really ready to step out on your own and become your own boss? Before you say yes, consider these thoughts.

Hi everyone - I've been pretty silent for the last few months because I've been hard at work on a new Creative Cow Master Series DVD - "Internet Killed the Video Star: A guide to Creating Video for the Web." The 4.5 hour DVD will be available very shortly. Feel free to spread the word.

Here's the basic description of the DVD:

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.

This portion of my three-part catch-up blogs focuses on the audio portion of my music video project.

I have read many tutorials and seen just about every podcast on how to lip-sync animation to audio in After Effects. Alas, after much trial and error, none of those methods worked. It wasn't until I got a response on Adobe's Audition forums, that I was given a somewhat workable solution.

What I wanted to do is have the main beat to the song be the rhythm to the video. And to be over-literal, have a clock ticking to the beat.

As most After Effects users know, After Effects isn't the best audio tool.

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.

The Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center has a heavily scholarly orientation, maybe moreso than you'll find useful. But the coverage here is certainly exhaustive.

Originally posted on The Editblog.

I recently got suckered into a low budget music video. How low budget? The decision was made not to hire an audio person for playback. Without that audio person it meant there would be no audio master made for the song and no timecode slate for syncing later in post. What was the solution? Use an iPod with video and make our own timecode slate!