Video StudentGuy

It's been a while and I've been working, I really have, and it's going to be great, you're really going to love it. 

Give me a few more days.

You're beautiful, thanks.

I've been spending most of my free time completing the transcription

process. This is critical for me to figure out what remains to be shot

in order to complete my film, as well as speed up the editing process.

Transcribing

is boring, tedious work and there's not a lot of stuff I can say about

it, though I try my best. I've tried to speed things up by using

transcription software. I started out with iListen from MacSpeech

and then, when they came out with Dictate I switched to that, Dictate

uses a vastly improved software translation engine that was licensed

from Dragon Naturally Speaking on the Windows platform. I think I will have to look into using Dragon on my next project and see if that tops them all.

I've

also been using my time to talk with instructors and get critiques on

how well my film works. I know it needs improvment. I've spoken to a

number of film faculty at CDIA. It's interesting to see how each person

views the essentials of filmmaking.

One instructor, who is not a

documentarian, emphasized the story elements and how the story is

presented. Franco Sacchi, our resident documentary filmmaker was all

over the structure of the film and how to use visuals to connect the

ideas. I have another critique coming up soon with an instructor who is

a strong editing and sound person, so it will be interesting to see how

he views the needs of my film.

It's been a couple weeks since graduation, so I've decided to catch you

up with my plans for the coming year. I've got some additional podcasts

in the works as well as ideas for this show. you can look forward to

more interviews in the near future.

This is an unusually long

show and I'm loading a lot of news on the front end, so if you want to

skip that, jump to 10:40 where I start my eval of Avid.

My film,

Handmade in America is still in process. I'm screening it with a number

of people at school over the next few weeks, to find out how I can make

a good film look and play better. I'm conscious that meeting the

graduation deadline required me to skimp on some quality features, and

while I don't want to dedicate the rest of my life to this story, I do

want to look back on it knowing I did the best I could given my current

abilities. I already see the need to do some pick-up shooting.

Even

though I'm out of school, CDIA has a very open approach towards it's

alumni, encouraging continuing connections and mentoring between former

students and faculty.

I can spend a lot of time validating the

time I spent in school, learning this craft, but I'll put that off for

another time. I do want to bring to your attention a series of articles

by Mike Jones of Digital Basin

about whether it's worth your money to go film school at all. His first

post was dated Monday Sept. 08, 2008 and continued for 4 more posts up to

Wednesday Sep 17, 2008.

In the show, I mention a video host called Vimeo that I'm considering using to post screencasts. Blip TV is similar one that comes to mind. Anyone had experience with either of those, or recommendations of others?

And as far as a host for future sites and blogs, I've committed to BlueHost,

a name I've heard other podcasters refer to positively. I've looked at

a lot of different hosts, read comparative reviews and I feel that, at

least on the basic level, they're more or less the same in terms of

features offered. So, in the absence of any clear direction, I'm going

with what's appeared on my radar.

Check out the Ruff Cutz

Film Festival. I submitted and have recently been added to the films

screened at this event, taking place at the Center for Digital Imaging

Arts at Boston University in Waltham Massachusetts, in the middle of

November. I don't know much except that CDIA is a sponsor, they're

encouraging films that are rough, which mine is, and it's inexpensive

to enter. I'll be there and let you know about it.

The remainder of the show is spent sharing my thoughts about the pros and cons about using Avid.

Bear

in mind, I'm approaching this from a beginner's perspective. As far as

I'm concerned, I'm standing on the edge of the learning prairie, the

mountains are nowhere in sight and I have no idea if I'll reach the sea

on the other side.

So a lot of my concerns and ideas are limited

by my exposure and use of this program. I don't think this negates the

usefulness of what I've got to say though. I think this program is

really, really weak for the beginning user. There was a time when the

only way you could learn this software was from the cocoon of the

production company that had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for

each Avid workstation. Anyone who was chosen to learn this tool had the

benefit of a seasoned professional editor, as well as their own years

as assistant editors, watching in the shadows.

Experiences like

that can still be had, but they aren't the norm anymore. At the

midpoint on the user curve are people such as myself, people who want

to produce their own independent films with a small team of people.

Bootstrap filmmaking. This is where Final Cut Pro and Premiere have

taken the lead and Avid is lagging behind. I think Avid has a lot to

offer today's independent filmmaker, but I think they're shutting

people out by raising the learning bar too high at the point of entry.

I'm going to check out the book by Diana Weynand, Final Cut Pro for Avid Editors.

I haven't been able to find any books for people who use Final Cut Pro

and want to use what they know to learn Avid, but I have found a few

sites. Avid's site has video tutorials geared towards FCP users, Editing Organazized has a useful blog post about how specific editing actions are invoked in either program, Final Cut Pro to Avid and the Avid Community site also has tips and tutorials.

I'm

committed to this course regardless of wolves, snowstorms or bandits,

so any helping hand you can lend would be kindly appreciated. Thankye.

Day Zero - Project Due

It's fitting that this show, which is about the final day of my film

project for the Film program at CDIA at Boston University ends with a

lot of energy and emotion, because, up 'til now I've been holding it

in, quite well I think.

I wouldn't say I lost it, but it was close, it was more like clawing my

way back onto the cliff edge that I was sliding off. But I'm getting

ahead of myself.

I only want to say that over these past 4 weeks the excitement and fun

of editing and completing a film has completely leached away to

frustration, stomach gnawing stress and all other kinds of unpleasant

feelings due to having too much to do in way too little time. In the

end I have to confess to dreaming too big.

I'm not apologizing for that, nothing I've experienced so far will

change that about myself, but I have learned that I never want to do a

film this way again. We'll see if I can hold true to that promise.

Today was a race against time, right up to the wire to complete color

correction and titles - how many times have I talked about getting

those two things done.

I seem to have gotten on a rag about various features of Avid, GUI in

general, but Titles really took me for a beating. In the end I had to

bail on using titles in Avid and did something quickly in Final Cut

Pro. Don't do this at home, it's very, very painful and time consuming.

Bringing an exported Quicktime file from Avid  into FCP requires that

you render the entire timeline and the titles will have to rendered

each time you tweak them. But it was necessary to meet the deadline. I

would be better to know how to use the tools within Avid. I'll let you

know how difficult that really is in the next few weeks, once my head

clears and I can approach learning it with a little more time.

I also plan to do a review of working in Avid, talking about the pros

and cons. I know that most people listening are not using Avid, maybe

not even using Final Cut Pro, but it is an industry standard tool, for

the present, and I would like to give the benefit of my experience, as

painful as it sometimes has been, so that you know where it sits in the

pantheon of NLE gods.

Day 2 & 1

As a

result of excellent feedback from Linda, my wife, I've made some

significant changes to the order in which speakers are introduced. I

had begun with discrete, self contained blocks, where an individual

presents themselves. Of course I intended to mix individual's comments

together where they touched on the same topic as the film progressed,

but it was made clear to me through Linda's perspective that I could

begin that earlier, so there wasn't an obvious transition from one

person speaking at a time to many people speaking.

It was a real

structural problem for me and I'm grateful for the insight she

provided. You know, I know what I want to do and could have acted

alone, but I had nagging doubts that my perspective was too inside, too

familiar to be trusted as far as how much I could ask the audience to

accept as they were introduced to the film's characters and ideas.

Things such as the pacing, I'm using a lot of rapid cuts. It really

pays to have someone you can trust who can offer concise, intelligent

comments.

Day 1 ends and I still don't have the film transfered

to tape. I spent a number of hours but between working with HD footage

in Avid and moving it to HDV tape, or SD for that matter, there were

lots of unresolved problems. And I lost a lot of editing time in the

process.

Not that this isn't my own fault for starting late in the first place.

I

mention a number of suggestions made by one of my constant instructors,

Howard Phillips, for enhancing the movement of the story and I did a

poor job of explaining J & L cuts,

so follow the link to find out a little bit more. I've added them

throughout the film to ease the audience from one cut to another. It's

a subtle thing. The difference it makes is not so much what it adds, so

much as what it removes, which is often an abrupt, gawky cut between

two speakers, or scenes.

Another point I missed in the

excitement of reciting my day, is that the 90 second segment where I

introduce a new character and I thought I was going to have to scrap it

because I didn't have B-roll to cover several jump cuts.

I forgot to mention the solution, which was to use dip-to-color between

the cuts. It's only a second where the clip fades in, then out to

black, but it heals the jump cut wound quite nicely.

Now, I know

how to do this and had used it sparingly in other parts of the film,

but I thought it was too much in your face, it would be too jarring to

the viewer if I did it several times within 90 seconds. I was assured

by people whose opinions matter that it was fine and acceptable. I

don't know if they meant in general, or under the circumstances of the

looming deadline, but I gladly accepted it like a get out of jail card.

We'll see how people react at the screening.

Days 5, 4 & 3

Still working on the rough cut, focusing on story pacing, removing things that take you out of the story.

I'm reflecting a lot on the meaning of craft, the subject of my film,

and being as tired as I am I'm afraid I'm not completing whole

thoughts. I'm gaining spontaneity at the price of coherency when I'm

not reading off a script. You tell me if it's worth it!

About five and a half minutes into the show I'm trying to make a point

about the life craftspeople try to lead and I'm using a sports

competition metaphor and it utterly fails. What I'm trying to say in

this instance is that the measure of success is the process of work and

learning they're engaged in, their life's journey, not a specific

accomplishment or feat.

Trust is a perennial issue for me, and exercising trust in the audience is what I need to do as I continue this edit. Just as Jay Moonah said At  Podcaster's Across Borders

this past June, the content is the audience. They create meaning out of

the context of their experiences, in this case, watching this film when

it's done. Learning to trust that people are paying attention and

pulling all the disparate pieces and ideas within the film to create a

whole that leads them to… what, my way of thinking.

No, this film is not like driving cattle through a narrow, fenced in

path (don't know the name of the path, sorry), but I do hope that it

will direct people to think about specific ideas with new

understanding. Providing some understanding, that's sufficient for me.

Day 7 & 6

Originally I thought I'd name this show Recognizing Mortality. I've

heard that if you want people to find your posts you need to give them

names that reflect the general nature of your content. I thought that

fit because editing requires you to face the death of so many things,

ideas, hopes, illusions, favorite bits, not to mention your own

inflated ego. However, oblique, inside-joke titles, while clever, don't

have much value if no one gets them, or listens. So I decided to change

the title to something that at least will show up in a search on film

or editing. Am I selling out my art for convention or monetary sake?

I don't know if Holistic Film Editing is any better, but I think it's

appropriate because in this show I'm all about working the entire story

on one timeline, making sure everything works together. There I go

repeating myself. Forgive me if it seems like I'm continuously in

search of what I mean, but, well, I am.

One of the requirements for graduation, besides finishing this film, is

to give up a minute of the film,  uncompressed, that will be shown

during graduation. It's a great idea, but I begrudge every distraction

at this point in time. My film is very rough still, so I had to pick a

minute of footage and clean up the audio, do a little color correction

and make sure i t was coherent before I could export it. Fortunately I

had a segment that I had already done some finessing. Still, a

distraction.

Right now I'm taking the segments I've created and place them in order

on the timeline so they work as a whole. That involves making changes

at the beginnings and endings of each, so there's a comfortable,

natural transition in terms of ideas. This is pretty tricky and I'm

finding that, where it's difficult to accomplish that, I may have to

choose to radically change one segment or the other to make the

transition coherent. Either that, or I need to add more footage to make

the transition, or lead-in make sense. And you know, by transition, I

don't mean a transition effect, I mean  adding clips that allow the

viewer to make the leap from one idea to the next.

Here's a couple lessons that I've been learning during the past few

days while editing. I'm pointing them out here because doing the edit

is where they've become real. All the preparation, classroom

instruction, friendly advice wasn't enough to take this to heart.

Editing, especially against a tight deadline is what has really brought

it home to me.

 Getting feedback early and often helps a lot. Early because it's

then that you can afford, ego-wise, to surrender ill conceived ideas

that are apparent to others, but hidden from you.

Trust the intelligence of the audience. Once they are engaged in

the ideas you're presenting, they will be able to follow on their own,

they don't necessarily have to be lead to conclusions.

Day 8

Over the past year I have been trying, without success to figure out

how to use a calibrated monitor to display  video coming out of the

computer, as I color correct. Today we had a color correction class for

Final Cut Pro, something that was arranged outside of the program,

based on specific requests from our class. I think that speaks volumes

about how flexible and generous the school and the instructors are

towards meeting the needs of students.

Anyway, I'm going to create a screen cast, post it on YouTube and you can link to it to see how it's done.

The unfortunate thing is that you can' display HD footage through an SD

monitor. So there you are, I have HD footage and I can't monitor my

color correction, I have to go solely by the scopes, the Waveform or

RGB Parade monitor, VectorScope and Histogram. Of course the trick is making sure you're viewing your results on a calibrated monitor.

Of course, that's not nothing, it

counts for 90% of the way home, but that last 10% is the difference

between a vacant stare and a smile.

I've used a monitor for color correction on SD footage shot for a

Practicum film back in May. (Show 91) It made

a big difference, not only in terms of quality, but also in building my

confidence in my own color correction technique.

Howard Phillips, a frequent instructor screened my latest revision and

gave me a very good critique. There's so little time, so every

intelligent comment is greatly appreciated. The big problem is that I'm

making the same point over and over again. I couldn't see it myself,

but once the scales were removed from my eyes it was embarrassing how

obvious it was. That's half the value of having others review your

film. And getting that input before you're too attached to the cut is

the other half.

A really long, typical, frantic day

Arrive early at school to pick up equipment and I trigger the alarm

Once back at work I quickly set up for the shoot at 1:00, so the shoot in short order, quickly tear it down and capture it before I run off to school to return the equipment

I'm trying to squeeze in a little editing and hand off copies of a rough cut and end up wasting most of my time.

Really, the day is an example of how lack of time leads you into making stupid mistakes that waste more time.

After wrapping up the day I include a few comments about coping with the stress and  allowing the film to work itself out in the moments between getting things done.  

Countdown to final project delivery. Days 11 & 10.

A lot of hand wringing, but there's hope too!