The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film
First Cut: Conversations with Film Editors
POST: The Theory and Technique of Digital Nonlinear Motion Picture Editing
The Technique of Film and Video Editing, Fourth Edition: History, Theory, and Practice
Special bonus edit given to the client - even though what they needed was a suitable-for-free-to-air-local-TV TVC. We felt this would have been a more effective TVC since it really captures the essence of the musical... BUT due to 'circumstances', we had to go for the more standard-issue one below:
But we're trying to pimp the Trekkie Monster Karaoke online - where there aren't any pesky censorship rules to navigate ;]
A client of ours asked me for software recommendations for the new Mac they've gotten. They're in the financial education and consulting business and reach out to their clients using web, print and video. They're PC all the way, since they usually outsource their video & audio work.
Not able to find out what kind of Mac they've gotten [Mac Pro? iMac? MacBook Pro?], I emailed them a generic list based on what have worked for me over the years. They don't have an in-house production/media department, so I'd reckoned something not too fancy, since the Mac would probably me a multi-purpose media machine.
A quick company shopping trip to Sim Lim Square revealed that the price of external HDD has dropped again.
A 1TB 7200rpm 32MB 3.5" Seagate external HDD now costs only $198. A casing with FW400, USB 2.0 and eSATA ports costs about $80 the last time we bought one.
Tempted to buy and build a set for myself now. Well, perhaps when I next secure a biggish freelance job - since prices will surely continue to drop.
At the moment, we're also checking out external monitors for on-location use. Currently waiting on more information for the Ikan V-series 7"/8"/9" LCD Monitors: http://www.ikancorp.com/pages/monitors/index.htm
In order to maximize its usage, we're thinking of using it as an additional monitor for editing. Though we'll probably make a decision only after we get to hold and touch a unit for ourselves.
Meanwhile, here's something I've finished the edit on not long ago:
[I have a quick cameo IN it as well - I don't think I like editing myself]
Mixed DV with HDV footage [with a whole lot of time remapping]. Color graded. Final delivery was on 16:9 SD DVD, for a 42" LCD screen, playing on loop inside an exhibition gallery.
*Fast
*Cheap
*Good
It's pretty true - clients always ask for all three when the reality is: you can almost always only get two of them. One of 'em Universal Truths in Production.
No cake and eat it, I'm afraid.
Today's post 'inspired' by meeting someone whom this jingle was written for, fo' real:
After working on industrials/corporates for the past few years, I think this client has won the right to this jingle/song.
And said client has cemented the fact that my favorite emoticon is now:
>_>
---
Meanwhile, in Editing Land, it has been a test of endurance pulling a 9-hour and 11-hour weekend edit for said R.C.L. When pre-production gets cramped due to circumstances, production and post-production gets seriously shaken AND stirred.
For now, we are aiming to deliver something that is:
*Fast
*Cheap
AND
*Good
... because we're badass like that ;]
More of a MacBook Pro tip than an FCP one, even though it was the choppy audio playback on my FCP timeline that alerted me to the problem.
So, it was the first time I'm experiencing choppy audio playback from my timeline - never had any problems with DV25 or DVCPro50 [or even HDV] footage running off an external 7200RPM Firewire HDD via FW400.
Trashed FCP preferences. Unmounted and remounted my external Firewire HDD, where my media and project files are stored. Restarted the MBP. Reset PRAM [the startup chime sounded! But oh... that didn't solve the problem...]
Was going to repair permissions using Disk Utility but didn't have the patience to twiddle my thumbs for 15 mins. Besides, it didn't feel like a permissions problem... for a moment, I was afraid the sound card/logic board has gone all funky.
A quick google shows that it might be some weird MBP-headphones quirk. This morning, I was watching a movie on the MBP while commuting to work, with headphones plugged in, naturally.
I don't remember yanking out the headphones after I put the MBP to sleep... but the solution googled worked nevertheless: Plug in a pair of headphones, restart your MBP and once the Mac starts up, pull out the headphones.
Voila - works! Even though it took a few tries since I didn't pull out the headphones early enough. The key really was to pull 'em out immediately after the Mac boots up.
The page with the tip [which dates back to 2007] is:
http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/macbookpro/topic4078.html
A few minutes ago, I experienced a similar problem: the red optical light in the line in jack was on, which also meant only the 'digital out' audio was on... and I couldn't get any sound out from the internal speakers. Plugged in the headphones a few times and that seems to solve it for now...
Moments like this are made less jittery because I've got AppleCare on this machine. But definitely NOT looking forward to having to send the bugger away for a week.
The Final Cut World Tour finally landed in Singapore, at the Raffles City Convention Centre. Event was packed and they ran out of seats, so a bunch of people had to stand throughout the presentations. I suspect it’s because they didn’t limit the number of registrations, since on a whim, I decided to do a dummy registration yesterday and it still went through.
I remember when Adobe had their CS3 demo session, seats ran out very early even though they held it at a bigger venue [Suntec Convention Hall], which was easily 2.5x Apple’s venue. Then again, Adobe was demonstrating a range of products that targeted print people, designers, illustrators, web developers, Flash developers, video professionals, motion graphics artists and the new market of medical/industrial professionals. So, not a fair comparison.
The Final Cut World Tour felt more… familiar, kinda warm and fuzzy, since even when your big post-production and Hollywood movie studios are using Final Cut for their post, they are still essentially using the same FCP interface [of course, their systems are… "very high end"]. The Adobe event felt more exciting, a lot more showmanship, as compared to the marketing/sales pitch [shareholders’ meeting?!] feel of the World Tour.
Other big difference is that there was more interaction during the Adobe event, plus a Q&A session – both of which were not present at the World Tour. Then again, the World Tour took about 3.5 hours, the Adobe event was full day.
Enough of random comparisons. Back to the main event – the Final Cut World Tour.
Much of the first half was spent on the features of Final Cut Server and how it helps your workflow. Quite cool, especially if you run a shop that has editors, colorists and artists working with FCS applications. The main selling point is that it’s highly customizable for your workflow, which they demonstrated using the case study of a post-production facility that did a reality program on the Beijing Olympics, with post-production setups in USA and China.
We’re not doing anything of THAT scale, but the idea of having transcribers and translators working concurrently on the footage and exporting XML which can be brought in as subtitles delighted me. The ability to automate the review workflow [eg: auto export to H.264 – upload onto a web page – email notification – client/producer can make notes based on timecode – comments feed back to editor] is very neat as well. Not enough reasons for us to buy the Server though.
The price of the Server itself is quite accessible – around $1,500 for the 10-seat license and around $3,500 for an unlimited version. But obviously you’ll need a solid hardware system to support it and someone who is able develop a workflow that works for your projects.
Ran intp the technical manager of my alma mater after the event and he said they’re gonna get a visit from the Final Cut Server guys to talk about the system. Sounds good, especially since they have upgraded to FCS2. There are 4 AVID Adrenalines in school, but I remember fondly the time I spent in the less glamorous Final Cut lab [only fluorescent light!] when I was doing up my graduation short film. I was one of those rare people who went straight for the FCP option – didn’t even bother with balloting for the AVID, heh.
The rest of the afternoon was spent showing how FCS2 integrates Motion, Soundtrack Pro and Color together with FCP, so you can port your footage and project to and fro easily, with instant updates when changes are made in any of the applications. The one thing I really got out of the session was: time to start playing around with Motion.
My feeble ‘motion graphics background’ is based on Adobe AfterEffects – because I had a really good trainer back in school. But a motion graphics artist is not created over one final semester [I blame attribute it to the school curriculum for not starting us earlier in motion graphics, since we wasted an entire Year 3 ‘Advanced Multimedia’ curriculum on Flash]. I have done fairly simple motion work in AE [when trying to animate 30+ layers in FCP proved to be a lesson in madness], though I have done quite some bit of keyframing and compositing in FCP as well.
From the demonstration, Motion’s principles seem fairly similar to AE, especially when he was demonstrating the use of 3D space.
There was extensive demo [twice, in fact] of Color – which was quite exciting to look at, since it doesn’t look THAT imposing anymore, even though you can most definitely achieve a lot more if you know how to work the advanced details. For a marketing event, surely you don’t talk about the drawbacks, since I remember one of the main complaints about Color is that it still can’t handle nested sequences properly.
The case study they used for Color was a Jaguar TVC – a lot of masking, isolating and tracking of the grading. Looks like fun! The grading really defined the TVC, since we also got to see the raw footage… zzzz! Reminds me of the fun we had grading our latest TVC, even though in comparison, ours was extremely rough and applied with a very broad stroke. Different budgets/parameters, different strokes :P
In comparison, there wasn’t much talk about Final Cut Pro itself. No mention of the cool Smoothcam feature I read a lot about when it first came out. The feeling I got was that this was not about selling the FCP that many editors had grown to love but to push for those who haven't upgraded to FCS2 to seriously consider doing it [ProRes 422 is something they mentioned quite a bit]. Plus, to see the value-add in the other applications neatly integrated into the workflow.
I had a moment of Deja Vu [which I couldn't trace back, as Deja Vu moments tend to be; was it during the Adobe event? Read off some editing site/forum/newsletter?], when the seemingly most simple of features turned out to be A Very Big Thing.
The loudest applause and maddest props were given to this particular demo of Soundtrack Pro 2 where the presenter showed how, with a simple step or two, you could easily remove ambient noise AND audible audio clicks/pops – which you tend to get when you boom a shot in the great outdoors. The really neat thing is that you see the waveform itself morph into ‘what it should be’. All this applied on a clip from a real-world project [stamp of authenticity there]. On playback, the audio was remarkably clean.
Simple solution to your everyday problem = most appreciated.
There were a few supporting vendors outside the venue, notably the Matrox MXO, BlackMagic and... The RED Camera [the Panasonics in the other end of the space didn't seem to get the same level of interest]. After seeing many variations of glossy photos of the RED camera online [plus footage], it's hard to be wow-ed by the actual camera, especially since I don't remember seeing any demo footage being played alongside it.
Superficial Sidenote: end of the seminar, there was a lucky draw, with the awesome and exclusive [read: 'one'] prize of... an iPod nano. Meh :P C'mon, show us FCP groupies some [more] love! I remember Adobe gave away... three Production/Extended Suites during their presentation! Couldn't hurt if Apple gave away a nice set of FCS2... right?
I wish, I wish. Still running FCS1 now. Works great for our current needs, though since we also shoot on HDV, ProRes422 is something that would help with our workflow.
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