Switcheroo..

I switched to wordpress and back to a blog hosted on my own site. Much more flexibility with Wordpress, plus the opportunity for video blogs from my phone.

You can find it at www.kyleesportfolio.com/blog/. Everything here has been imported there, so this site is now useless.

Another Public Screening

Our 48 Hour Film Project team was invited to another public screening of award winning films last night.

It took place at the Monkey's Tale, a bar with a nice outdoor patio area in Indianapolis.

Several other award-winning 48 Hour films also screened revised version of their films, so it was interesting to see the little changes that were made in the last month. It was also interesting to see a couple of films that weren't in our screening group. One of the films, Silent but Deadly, was created completely by novice filmmakers but still managed an audience award because what it lacked in production value it made up for in creativity. I think that's one of the coolest things about the 48 hour film project, a much more level playing field than other contests.

The Monkey's Tale set up a red carpet, a walk of fame with stars, and popcorn and movie candy. The films were projected outside on the building so people could also see them as they walked through Broad Ripple (the bar district).

We also got a chance to talk about our film for a bit and answer some questions.

It was nice to be invited to a screening, and thanks to Jae with Monkey's Tale for putting on this event. I hope it's a regular affair soon.

Stuff I Didn't Learn in School #1 - Exporting - The easiest and best way to export a FCP timeline

For an explanation of this blog series, check out the post where I explain the blog series. That would be best.

 

I feel like I should make the number in this post #5 or #98 so it looks like a long-standing series with a huge amount of credibility. But then I thought about that old joke about letting 2 pigs loose in a school for a senior prank, and painting #1 on one of them, and #3 on the other, and watch as everyone tries to find #2. I wouldn't want someone searching through the crevasses of my blog for nonexistent pigs OR blogs, so we'll keep it truthful - this is the first post. Disclaimer: I am in no way a world class FCP expert, but this information is accurate as best I know. Blogging to give others useful information is somewhat new to me (I grew up with a Livejournal, which is information NOBODY EVER NEEDS), and I'm going to try really hard to evolve with it and make it better continuously. What I'm trying to say: if this sucks right now, please come back a few times.

First up - Exporting - The easiest and best way to export a FCP timeline and use Compressor to make it awesome! This is an easy one, yet something people seriously struggle with. I think it's the confusion caused by attempting to guess at the correct thing to click on within the export menu, the lack of anyone ever explaining this, and the fact nobody reads on their own to find out the best way because eventually SOMEthing works SOMEhow.

Let's say you have a completed timeline. It's a masterpiece. You've saved it, watched it through a few times, and you're confident it's Oscar-material.



The only thing standing between you and the recognition of the Academy is a little exporting. No problem, you've made it this far. You click some stuff, and then

18 hours remaining…

or

"Wait, why is it all …squishy..?"

or

"The file you sent us is 20 mb and Quicktime can't play it. Are you an idiot? You're never working in this town AGAIN!"

Crap.

(In school, I never remember going over the various parts of exporting. That is ridiculous, considering what a valuable asset knowing your codecs has become with the prevalence of internet video. I think the only bit of information I can remember is list of steps and settings to create an acceptable video for a random class. How silly.)

There are a few different ways to get a deliverable out of Final Cut Pro 7 (many of which are also available in previous versions, and work almost exactly the same OR exactly the same). One of these ways is generally far superior to the other, but I will explain them all. I'll start with the Export menu. Go to File, and then Export and check out the list.



We're going to concern ourselves with the first two on the list - Quicktime Movie, and Using Quicktime Conversion. The next 2 on the list are Livetype and Soundtrack, two other apps within the Final Cut Suite. The rest on the list are for other post production tasks that are useful to know, but for the sake of this article I'm skipping them. We're talking about getting a video file from the current timeline, so I'll save EDLs for another day.

So, what's the difference between Quicktime Movie and Quicktime Conversion? Well, they're pretty much exactly what they sound like if you think about it.

By choosing Quicktime Movie, you are telling Final Cut that you would like a copy of your movie as it stands in the timeline. FCP will export your movie using your sequence settings, which usually (but not always) match your source footage codec. You know what codec you're sequence is using…right? To check that, go up to Sequence, and select Settings.



You'll see the information for your current sequence here, and you can change it if necessary. You typically want all this set up BEFORE you start editing, because things can and will go nutty if you start changing things now.



You'll probably have to render most of the timeline if you change it to something other than the source footage codec. If everything seems well, then we'll assume you set it all up right and close that window.

One cool thing about using Quicktime Movie is that you aren't compressing the movie any further. Go ahead and select Quicktime Movie from the Export drop down (or use the keyboard shortcut CMD-E).

The Save window now pops up for you to select some final settings before export.



To export an identical movie to what you see in the timeline, keep Setting on Current Setting. There may be instances when you want something smaller, but if you are going to be changing frame sizing, it's usually best to let Compressor do this task (or so I've been told). You can select Audio and Video, or just Audio Only or Video Only depending on your next step in the post process.

You can also export markers if you have some on your timeline.

DVD Studio Pro Markers are useful if you're going to be bringing your video into DVD Studio Pro for authoring a DVD. You can place a few different useful markers right on the FCP timeline, like break points that don't interrupt your scene for dual layer discs, or simple chapter markers.
Compression Markers are good if you're doing a bit more advanced compressing with Compressor. You can tell Compressor where certain frames are for various reasons.
Chapter Markers are basic chapter markers.
Audio Scoring Markers are useful in Soundtrack Pro to guide the scoring process.

For our project, we'll select None for Markers.

You'll also see two checkboxes.



Recompress All Frames, and Make Movie Self-Contained.

Recompress All Frames will make for a smaller file, but it'll also be less quality, so don't click on that. Sometimes it's not available to you depending on your project settings.

This other box is important. A Quicktime Movie that is NOT self-contained (box unchecked) becomes a Reference movie.

A Quicktime Reference File looks like any other file, but will usually be much smaller in file size. It will export much faster unless there is unrendered stuff on the timeline to work through. It will pretty much act like other Quicktime files too - until you start moving things around. If you try to use this file as your archived master copy, uh oh.

Unable to open or read file...

A Reference Movie contains all the pointers to your original footage and cuts and render files. If you move anything in the slightest, these pointers get confused, the paths break, and your file is useless. However, Reference files are incredibly useful when taking your movie from FCP to Compressor or another app, or simply to preview it outside of FCP. And the more rendered your timeline is, the smaller the file size of the Reference file since it doesn't have to create its own render files - it points to the ones you already made.  

Exporting a Quicktime Movie (not self-contained, a reference) with a completely rendered timeline also makes the export super fast, which is great when you are in a rush. This is the best way to export your timeline to transcode for the web, for DVD, whatever you need in Compressor. You'll always get the best result when taking the Quicktime Movie and putting it into Compressor.

A Self-Contained movie is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. The file can stand alone on its own without referencing anything else. It can be archived. It will also typically be a pretty huge file, so prepare for that. It will be a copy of your movie directly off the timeline that stands alone. This is generally the best way to make a master copy of your movie to back up and transcode to other formats or codecs later.

Sidenote: Occasionally Compressor will get hung up on a Reference movie for some reason. If you're trying to work with a file like that and it seems that Compressor isn't doing any processing, try exporting a self-contained Quicktime Movie instead and use that. I'm not sure why this happens, but it randomly does.

So that's Quicktime Movie exporting, and it's what you should be using to export your timeline on a daily basis! Use not self-contained for a Reference movie to use for transcoding right away, self-contained for a master copy.

Using Quicktime Conversion is a little more difficult.

If you go to File > Using Quicktime Conversion, you'll see another save window pop up.



You can choose your Format or settings straight from this window, or you can click on Options… on the right. You'll see a possibly familiar Quicktime Movie Settings window.



Here you can adjust lots of settings that I'm not going to go over right now. This is where you can select a different codec from what you edited in, such as H264. Using Quicktime Conversion means you're adding another layer of compression to your export. If you're exporting a high quality copy for DVD, this isn't what you want to do. If you're exporting a small copy for the web, you might use this. However, I typically export a reference file and place it in Compressor for whatever various codecs I might need because I feel that Compressor, although slow, does a much better job of encoding than FCP's conversion. Plus, I have the reference file to use for a bunch of different files if I want to do that.

That's the gist of that selection. Like I said, I don't use it much unless I want a quick and dirty file for some reason. It doesn't do the best with encoding.

Another way to get your deliverable out of FCP is the Share menu. Go to File > Share.

And you'll see this little Share window pop up.



This is the only way to get a blu-ray out of FCP, if you're interested. The Share window basically is using Compressor in the background to encode some basic files you might need. You can select a few different things, like iPhone, Apple TV, H264, YouTube, MobileMe, etc. If you have a custom setting you frequently use, this could be useful for you. Otherwise, I don't use it too often because I like to dig into the settings more than this menu allows, and it's slow. The good thing about Share is that the encoding happens in the background, so you can continue to work in FCP while your file is created.

And yet another way to export is by going to Send To under the File menu. You can send your timeline to various other apps within Final Cut Studio like Color or Soundtrack Pro, so that could be an option for you if you're trying to get to that point.



You should note however that your timeline might need to be tweaked to optimize it for these apps. Select Compressor from the list. Your timeline will be sent to Compressor without the intermediate step of a Reference file. Again, I don't use this much (if ever) because it ties up Final Cut completely (not that I'm usually editing when I'm encoding stuff, but still) and it usually goes quite a bit slower than putting a file straight into Compressor. I haven't had the same consistently good results with it either.

There you have it, the best way and all the various ways to get your stunning work out of FCP and into your hands, or the hands of a client who needs it yesterday. Generally, if you render your whole timeline and stick with exporting that Reference file then drop it into Compressor, your life will be much easier than your peers'.

You can also enhance your post-production lifestyle by setting up Compressor droplets to drop reference files onto in order to create regularly used file types. And you can make post a trip to the spa if you set up virtual clusters for Compressor. This allows multiple instances of Compressor to run, splits up files, and encodes them separately, and puts them back together. It's magical.

Professional Resolutions Checkup

I should have done this about 2 months ago at the halfway point of the year, but it's still worth checking in to see how I'm doing with my resolutions. In January, I made 5 resolutions for the year. Here's how I'm doing, and how I intend to steer myself in the right direction.

1. Dig deeper into After Effects.

I kind of have. I've taken more time on AE projects to go into new areas, work with cameras and lights more, etc. I haven't done much on my own time.

2. Kind of learn Motion.

Fail fail fail. I really need to focus on this.

3. Actually watch all the behind the scenes stuff on my DVDs.

I've caught up on many episodes of Doctor Who confidential, but I haven't taken the time to watch behind the scenes on DVDs. YET. I will.

4. Take time to refocus on my craft.

I've done OK with this, but fall will allow me a little more time to do this.

5. Do a few personal projects. Something new, just for fun.

I've done pretty well with this, but I'd like to get one more project in before the end of the year.

Not too bad. We'll see how I did in December.

Also, blog series post coming up for reals.

48 Hour Film Project - Screening

The screening of our film at the IMA went really well. The theater ended up being sold out and we had a huge group of people there supporting us. When our title slide came up on the screen, I could feel an air of tension among my group members. It was extremely gratifying to be in a crowded theater watching your work on the big screen, hearing people reacting and laughing. I see the appeal. Our film was definitely a stand out among our group, technically and from a story-telling perspective. We had a great time sitting in the IMA's cafe drinking cocktails while we waited for the awards to be decided.

Our film won one award - best musical score. We were so happy to win it because it took a lot of our time, and plus it was our first year participating, so we were glad we were able to snatch up something.

We're going to meet up and go back through the film to make it stronger and submit it to a few other small short comedy festivals and see what happens. Here's the final product as it was at 7 PM on August 1st:

More photography

I never posted any photos I took at my sister's graduation. I've been trying to do more with still photography and I think these turned out nicely as keepsakes for my parents. Here are two outside after the ceremony.

First installment of my awesome blog series coming soon.

Things I Didn't Learn in School Blog Series

This series is something I've been thinking about for a while now. Since graduating from college, I've realized there is an awful lot of information I never learned that really would have been useful. And while I don't expect college to teach me everything I ever needed to know, I wish I had learned more technical details about how certain aspects of the video industry work. A lot of what you learn in school is based in theory. That's fine, but when you get into a real job, the technical becomes a much bigger part of what makes or breaks your work. With budgets and deadlines, there's no time to cuddle up with a tutorial and attempt to learn new things every single time. At some point, you have to know what's going on.

I've spent a lot of time in the last year and a half reading a lot of articles, tutorials, blogs, and books, mainly focusing on post-production. My desire to attaint fluency in post-production workflows has allowed me to get through projects quicker. While I'm not going to pretend I know everything - because I really really don't - I know what myself and my peers missed, and it's probably similar across various programs.

This past weekend, being within the school again, reminded me about how much is left out of the classroom and left up to individuals to fill in the blanks. So I decided to do a blog series - Things you didn't learn in school. There are tons of resources out there for a lot of these subjects already, but my intention is to write for entry-level/intermediate recent graduates and build from what they already know, or want to know. Too many articles are way too technical, and too many are too flimsy. So, here's my attempt. We'll start with these subjects:

- Aspect Ratio - why is my stuff all squished man?

- Exporting - The easiest and best way to export a FCP timeline and use Compressor to make it awesome!

- Rendering - What all those options under the Render menu mean, and how you can render your timeline in full to reduce exporting time. AKA What the hell is that orange line?

- H264 - The mystery of H264, why it takes no time sometimes and forever other times.

- Simple audio - How to roundtrip to Soundtrack Pro for basic audio fixes and use Scripts to make your quality of life better.

- Codecs - What the hell is ProRes and why are there different levels of it, what the hell is an editing codec, what the hell is going on?

- Setting up your FCP project correctly - Organizing and getting the settings correct on a project before it's too late.

- Basic color - Basic color balancing in FCP and how to set up a project for roundtripping to Color so you can be a bad ass.

- Basic DVD authoring - How to export your timeline to prepare for DVD and set up a basic DVD menu in DVD Studio Pro, when you might need more advanced options like overlays or scripting. Also, why DVD specs SUCK.

- FCP hints to make your life easier - Features of FCP that newer users don't get into, the 4 editing tools, useful shortcuts, three point editing, and other basic useful crap that nobody ever shows you.

-Why does my greenscreen look like #*^$? - How different formats capture color and how it ruins your life.

I'll start with these topics and see how it goes. Hopefully it's entertaining or useful to SOMEone.

48 Hour Film Project Recap

Well, we did it.

We completed the 48 Hour Film Project - on time.

Now I've been obsessing over little details I wish we had caught. It's so easy to let yourself get caught up in your mistakes. Overall, we put together a pretty solid little film for what we had at our disposal within the constraints of the competition. I kept it together pretty well this weekend and now that I'm sitting still, I can feel that my brain is a little tired. Here's a recap of the weekend as best I can remember it.

On Friday night, we met up at Starbucks and headed to the Kickoff. We were told to get there BY 6 PM which was lame since we didn't need to actually be there until 6:45 PM. So we waited and waited until the genre draw at 6:45. When our time came, Aaron stepped up and drew "fantasy" for us. We were so happy that we didn't grab film de femme because none of us can write strong female characters and we were seriously considering going for a wild card.

We rushed back to Starbucks where we camped out outside for the rest of the evening. As soon as we sat down I presented an idea I had and we went with it, scripting and creating a shot list until about midnight.

We met back at IUPUI at 8 am, followed shortly after by our crew. Except for our main character actor. We went to work setting up, getting everyone ready, trying to reach him, but every call went to voicemail and Facebook was quiet. We were more than a little worried at this point, because 10 AM was our targeted time to start shooting. Luckily, Josh managed to dig up a friend of his that was willing to come help us and he ended up being perfect - even more perfect than our original actor that flaked.

Our filming started off slow and sped up throughout the day. Most productions end up like that, which drives me insane. My favorite shot was a long tracking shot with the main character walking through a crowd of people. I got to direct this part and coordinate 10 different actors/extras at the same time, which was fun :D I was so thrilled by all the people that turned out to help us. Josh managed to convince 3 hair/makeup people to come and they were fantastic. A couple of my friends from high school showed up, one to be an extra, and one to be our fabulous still photographer for the morning part of the shoot. She did such an great job. The black and white stills in this blog entry were shot by her. You can see her work at mecampbellphotography.blogspot.com.

My mom and her friend brought us lunch around noon - fruit, chips, and subway platters, which was exactly what we needed. Nobody ever got moody from lack of food while we were shooting, which is a big achievement. We continued to shoot until about 8PM.

Katie and I set up to edit at around 2 and realized that we didn't have the appropriate capture cable. The new MacBook Pros don't have firewire 400 anymore. T____T A few phone calls later, we were on the road allll the way up to Fry's Electronics to purchase a firewire 800 to iLink cable. Luckily it didn't really hurt us at all in post production. It just added a few grey hairs to our heads.

There was a brief period where we thought we didn't have enough footage, which I now have an ulcer from, but we then realized were fine and moved forward, completing the rough cut just before midnight. My husband brought us pizza and wings to keep us going, which was also effing amazing. We basically finished the fine cut by 2 AM before getting kicked off campus by security.

We met again the next morning at noon and got to work on the music since that's the earliest we could meet up with the sound mixer/recordist who was absolutely amazing. He was with us for the entirety of our shoot, and I think he just might win VIP for our group. While the sound was mixed, Katie and I color balanced and graded the edit with Magic Bullet Looks, and rendered the timeline in full.

Once the sound and music was complete, we took the exported sound file and slapped it on my rendered timeline. We had some aspect ratio troubles on Saturday I soon found out, so we ended up with a 720x480 letterboxed file. Whatever, it was done at 6:45 PM. We left and drove to the drop off, and breathed a sigh of relief in completion of our work. There are minor fixes I'm going to make to the master copy of our work (like putting it back into 720p), but really the story is pretty strong and succinct, the color looks good, and it was turned in at 7:14 PM which means it was on time.



In the future, I will strongly advocate having multiple eyes looking at every step of the way. While you all trust each other, at the same time you have to consider the extreme circumstances. It's so much easier if multiple people are putting their collective observation skills in play when no one is operating on all cylinders.

Overall, it was a really good experience for us. I am really happy to have a core group of talented peers that are passionate about the same things I am. We had a lot of fun together, and if we don't win any awards, it's ok with me. Of course it'd be really nice to win something, but the experience, the memories, the photos, and then the screening will have been worth all the stress of putting the film together.

That being said, I'm really glad the next 48 Hour Film Project isn't for a year. HA.

If you're interested in coming to the screening on August 7th, our film will be in Group B at 7PM at the Indianapolis Museum of Art Toby Theatre. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased online. We would really appreciate all the support of people coming to our screening (and voting for us for the audience award!), and seeing Pants Cannon Media's big-screen debut.

I'll be updating again after the screening with a copy of the finished film embedded and some more production stills. I re-exported in the correct aspect ratio with higher quality and asked if we could swap it out, but alas we cannot. At least we have a high resolution 720p file for ourselves, and to submit in other festivals.

One last breath before the 48 Hour Film Project

Well, we've done everything we can possibly think to do in order to prepare ourselves for this competition. We're going into this as rookies to the project so we can expect some bumps and unpredictable things to occur. I really don't want to be rushing to the finish, swerving in and out of traffic, running in the doors and throwing the DVD to the judges in slowmo, overdramatic fashion.

In spite of the preparation, I can't help but be really anxious about this project. I'm a planner, and the fact we're going into a production weekend without even a script is KILLING me. I just want to get started right now and get it over with. I know we'll have a lot of fun and learn a lot about ourselves this weekend, and in between all that excitement is a tiny sense of impending doom.

Here's a little more philosophical buddha existentialism than I'm used to posting on this blog. I go to yoga regularly, and I have 5 classes I have to use by next Wednesday or they expire, so I've been to 2 classes this week already. I didn't plan my class usage very well. I'm sitting waiting for class to start right now, slightly dreading ANOTHER class this week. I love yoga, and it feels great especially after class, but sometimes during the class, usually in Warrior II pose, my feet cramp and I'm thinking "AUGH why didn't I go home and nap??" I would love to skip class and eat my raspberry ice cream sitting at home.

However, I'm glad I forced the yoga this week because of the anxiety this competition is causing me. In a yoga practice, you usually set an intention, whether it's mental or physical or whatever. Tonight's intention: let go of the anxiety from all the unknown factors and rely on myself and my teammates because we have the talent to pull out something totally wicked. And if we don't, at least we tried.

But please, don't let us draw "musical" as our genre. 

If you want to track our progress during the event, follow me on Twitter. Like I said, I'll also be posting here immediately after the event with our finished film and a recount of the weekend. 

(I also have class on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday next week if anyone wants to join me. Monday is a basics class, one is open level, one is open level heated.)

48 hour film project update! Can you help us?

Our team, Pants Cannon Media, is getting really excited for the 48HFP. It's next weekend, and things are really coming together for us. I feel like our team is going into this 48 hours with a good solid plan (as best we can), a ton of talent, and a lot of luck. As of today, we have:

• Update: lunch will be catered by my mom and her friend, Debbie Riffe
• Generated some buzz on the IUPUI Informatics website
• Secured the location of our shoot and the release form is on the way to me
• Confirmed one actor and actress for sure, 2 more guys are likely maybes
• Confirmed the assistance of a very talented past professor in the music composition and sound mixing department
• Lots of equipment, more than I ever thought I could pull together between a few poor students (3 cameras, lights, recorder, mic, tripods, dollies...all kinds of stuff!) 
• Donation of labor of hair stylists, make-up artists, and a local costume shop if necessary

Things are falling into place, and we've nearly done everything possible to make this the least scary 48 hour film project we can. We're all good at this stuff, and we have a realistic idea of what to expect out of ourselves in 2 days, so I think if nothing else, we're going to forge some new relationships, get some great experienced, and create something for which we can be really proud.

That being said, we're getting to the stage of planning and purchasing necessities for our cast and crew to get through the shoot. This includes bottled water, ice, and snacks like granola bars and fruit. We're looking to you, great friends, family, and anonymous strangers on the internet who admire us from afar, for any donations you are willing to give us. This would also be used for any other production costs, such as props, last minute fixes, and caffeinated beverages.

If you might be willing to donate to us, you can either give items directly to us this week if you're around, or use the Paypal button below (the one that Aaron is about to eat because he is so hungry) and give a cash donation. Rest assured, it WILL be used for production. Also, in exchange for donations, we will give you an Associate Producer credit for supporting us financially in various ways. AND we'll give you a copy of the finished film on DVD so you can behold it as your first produced film. And of course, everyone is invited to purchase tickets to the screening of all 48HFP films on August 7th at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. We'll make sure to let you know at which of the 3 screenings our film will be shown. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased on the IMA website.

To make a monetary donation, just click on the comically oversized button below. Thanks in advance for your support.

Inception

I thought about writing a review for Inception, but I'm not really sure I can write anything cohesive or anything that hasn't been said already. Here is what I DO know:

1. Christopher Nolan is my favorite director. When I saw Memento in 2000 as a little naive 13 year old who scarcely had scratched the surface of amazing cinema, I distinctly remember sitting on my floor in my room alone after midnight watching the credits roll, waiting for my brains to unscramble. It definitely affected my career path. His approach to storytelling along with his innovation in how he tells stories (without being gimmicky) is unmatched. I look forward to seeing the 1 or 2 other Nolan films I've missed.
2. This film's story is brilliant. It moves quickly, it doesn't give you unnecessary information, it has the right amount of mystery, it has emotional payoff, and the story itself is completely new and familiar at the same time. The concept of going into a person's subconscious is old and new. 
3. The visual effects were amazing. I won't go into specifics, but you can tell that Nolan takes great care to do a lot of stuff in camera, and the seam between real and vfx is blurred so greatly, you can't even tell what's real.
4. The music was perfect. It accompanied the pace and story so well, you almost didn't notice it. It pushed you deeper into the movie. The movie also had the right amount of silence, which is really important.
5. I found myself wondering how this movie could end in a satisfying way. Often science fiction stories have a difficult time ending in a way that isn't contrived or cheesy. Of course Inception found a way to have the entire theater on the edge of their seats until the last cut to black, and then have everyone scream at the credits.

Toy Story 3 was so excellent, but Inception has definitely unseated it as my favorite film of 2010 so far. I don't think any films will unseat Inception, because it's pretty much the exact kind of movie that I absolutely love so much that I want to hunt Christopher Nolan down and give him a bear hug.

48 Hour Film Project, here we go!

I registered a team for the 48 hour film project in Indianapolis. If you don't know what that is, go to their website and check it out. It's a film racing competition. I've always wanted to participate, but the timing was never right until. I've formed a team with 4 ex-classmates that all graduated with me or shortly after. We have more equipment than I thought we could ever come up with, we work well together, and we're good at what we do, so I think we have a good chance at winning some awards. Regardless, it'll be a lot of fun to rekindle that feeling of "OMG HURRY" we all felt when we were in college together, and great to see our film screened on the big screen in a movie theater in front of a sold out audience! Our team name is Pants Cannon Media. The YouTube has a lot of old stuff

We're trying to get permission to shoot on campus since there is a good variety to the different areas and we can make it look like totally different locations without the travel. Otherwise, we're just wrangling some talent and waiting for July 30th to roll around so we can get going.

I really hope we don't draw musical as our genre.

I'll do a post-mortem after that weekend is over. I'm sure there will be plenty to talk about. In the meantime, here are the bios I sent along with our entry:


Director of Photography - "Jeremiah Nickerson is a recent graduate of Indiana University School of Informatics.  Working as a freelance videographer and sound designer in Indianapolis, his background in traditional arts has helped lay the foundation as an artist in the digital realm.  His work is often emotionally driven, casting light on personal and social issues that affect us all."

Assistant Director/Grip - "Joshua Kent Fike earned a degree from Indiana University in Media Arts & Science while focusing on audio and video production. Establishing himself in the industry keeps him busy with freelance work, interning at Boost Media Entertainment, and initiating his own video production business. He has always been attracted to the power of music and images and is continuously inspired by artists around the world and strives to inspire others by adding his own flavor into the life and energy of storytelling."

Editor/Production Manager - "Kylee Wall graduated from Indiana University in 2009 with a degree in Media Arts and Science with a focus on video production. After having spent time interning for local companies such as Pathway Productions and NUVO Newsweekly, she now works as a Multimedia Producer for Tangent Point Media. She has been passionate about video post-production since she was young, and continues to take on freelance work and volunteer in the local independent film scene as much as possible."

Director - Aaron Whiteford recently completed his degree at Indiana University in Media Arts and Science (video production). Passionate about great storytelling and great pictures, he works as an independent videographer. His diverse background lends itself to bringing each vision to life in a new way, and continues to explore new opportunities in narrative filmmaking."


Editor/Post-production Supervisor - "Katie Toomey recently earned a degree in Media Arts and Science from Indiana University, focusing on video production. Working as an independent videographer and editor, she has interned at NUVO Newsweekly and worked to build a reputation as a local freelancer. She is passionate about narrative filmmaking, volunteering with local independent filmmakers on recent projects. Her passions lie in post-production, where she strives to bring energy into each story she cuts."

Leah not Leia Post-mortem

Edit 6/30: Added photos!

The shoot for the project I blogged (and have been tweeting) about wrapped last night, so I thought I'd do a short post-mortem about the experience while it was still fresh on my mind.

Background on the film: It was written by Kate Chaplin, directed by Tom Johnson and Nate Savidge, produced by Karmic Courage and Inverted Staircase Productions. The crew and cast were entirely local, volunteer basis only. The superquick synopsis - A short film about how Star Wars can ruin your life.

 A teaser "poster" someone made.

The shoot took place over 6 days, and I was present for 4 of those days, plus the day before shooting started for a crew meeting. Between that and my regular job, it's been a long week. I served the crew as a Production Assistant, which meant a lot of scurrying around for short periods of time, a lot of waiting, and a lot of lugging stuff around and wrangling people.

I am an editor, and that's always where I gravitate, feel most comfortable, and ultimately want to end up. At my current day job, I do a lot of all the other stuff, as most people around here do, including lots of shooting. There is, however, a huge difference between a small interview shoot, and a narrative fiction piece with a crew and cast of 20. Production has never been my favorite step of filmmaking. It was always just a hoop to jump through in order to have material to edit. But I really do enjoy being a part of it sometimes, getting out of my comfort zone, and learning new things on the set. It's an entirely different energy, and you get to know people a lot more.

The shoots that were outside were ungodly hot. The inside shoots were cramped and also ungodly hot as the AC had to be killed for sound. Our final day of shooting was inside a movie theater, so that stayed cool since the theater had to remain operating, luckily. I ended up having to be an extra in the very last setup. It was amusing to be on the other side of the camera for that last stretch, but hopefully we're out of focus because my hair was not cool.

 Katie & I loving on the jib.

I learned quite a lot about production, and about myself during the last week. I had a chance to set back and consider the hard work people put in to filming movies. I considered my own career choices, solidified once again by my experiences. I thought about if I would ever want to serve in a larger capacity in a production like this, and how my set would operate differently. I think I would be a good director, by the way. Maybe somewhere far down the line after I accomplish some other priorities.

Nearly midnight on the final shoot day, we're in front of the camera as extras, plus we got light sabers.

All in all, I'm really glad I had the opportunity to finally help out with a Karmic Courage film. Even though as a production assistant, I had no creative input in the film itself, I still was part of the production, and every piece is important to making these things run. I'm happy to be a part of filmmaking in Indiana and to get to know other people on the crew better.

Katie showing off the giant crane set up in a movie theater lobby.

Next time you go to a movie, think about the people that have to set up those scenes, or cater to the stars' needs, or clean up the trash left behind. That's a lot of crazy hard work that you'll never really appreciate!

 The giant contraption we made out of light stands and trash bags to block ambient light.

PA Survival Kit

Tomorrow, I start a 5 day shoot as a production assistant for a local short film called "Leah Not Leia". While my main interests and career lie in post-production, I do enjoy the camaraderie of a set, and I've been wanting to get involved in the indie film in the Indianapolis area for a while. I'll blog more about the experience after principal photography is finished on Monday.

I've put together a survival kit for myself and another production assistant, Katie. We decided since we're going to be going straight from working all day to 7+ hour shoots in the evening, or 13 hours a day this weekend, we may as well be prepared. Here's what we have:

• 5 t-shirts (non-logo, just in case we have to fill in some empty spots in the scene)
• Clean socks
• Backup bottled water
• Vitamins
• Small snacks
• Medications (tylenol, stomach stuff, throat stuff)
• Cough drops
• Baby powder
• Small sewing kit
• Band aids and liquid bandage
• Lotion
• Wet wipes
• Smelly spray
• Deoderant 
• Umbrella
• Sunscreen
• Playing cards
• Pens

I think that's all I have. I'll let you know how it goes.

The edit suite is everywhere.

The new iPhone 4 was just announced and demoed at WWDC, and I feel the need to briefly blog about the video features because they are exciting to me: 720p video and video editing, and video conference (called "FaceTime").

This stuff astounds me. Is this what it's like to get old? Constantly amazed at technology, and how it keeps shrinking? I'm OK with that. 

 

First, the 720p video and editing with iMovie. When I started editing less than 10 years ago, I had a Hi8 camera with an analog signal and Premiere 1.0, and I could barely get anything of quality of out it. Hardly a editing veteran compared to the people who edited actual film that are still around, or even reel to reel, but still, very different than now. I liked instant gratification with video, and "instant" to me and my friends then was "online in a terribly low bitrate within 2 days". And that was enough for us, we loved it! Then eventually came a small consumer level camera + laptop combo. When I went with my mom to Michigan Stadium for her first time there in late 2008, I took my camera and recorded the experience, edited it into a 7 minute video later that night in the hotel room using iMovie, and pushed it to YouTube immediately. It was done within hours, perfect. 

Now? I can record video on my phone as it happens, throw together some edits, and text it or YouTube it over 3G or WiFi? That is amazing to me. Going from a couple of days of editing in order to stream a teeny tiny 30 bits (yes BITS) per second video to capturing HD in the palm of my hand and emailing it to everyone I know so they can watch it on their phone, in just a few years. I don't mean to be one of those crazy weirdos that gets completely excited about tech stuff, but I am completely excited. I could go on a trip to New York City, shoot random bits of my touristy day in Manhattan on my phone, edit it all together while I wait for my dinner to arrive in a restaurant, and upload it before the appetizer arrives. As someone who has always been a big fan of capturing and sharing experiences, this is a whole 'nother level of sweet. 

And the other video aspect, the video conferencing. That is AWESOME. I've always thought video chatting was a very interesting communication medium, though we have always typically ended up in front of laptops chatting into a computer screen. Something about replacing that computer screen with a little iPhone that fits right in your hand seems right, so much more intimate. I've played around with the various video streaming apps available on the iPhone in the last 6 months, and I've been pretty happy with the Ustream app, but to have a front facing and rear facing camera that you can quickly switch between is amazing. I know people thought having the idea of 2 cameras was stupid, or having a front only and having to turn the phone was stupid...but seeing how Apple handled it, seamlessly switching from front to rear view with a little button tap..that is magic. It'll be neat to see how video conferencing is worked into the next iPad.

Being able to be away without my laptop and still see someone face to face, or go on a trip and share an experience with someone half a world away, that is the kind of stuff 13 year old me always thought "Man, that'll be cool if we can ever do that." 

And it IS cool. 

I REALLY hope the frame rate for the video is truly 29.97 fps and not 30 fps. I hope Apple has been paying attention to the nightmare that was 30 fps with still cameras. Many of the editors I follow on Twitter are pretty cynical about the whole thing, mostly because they know they're going to be brought client footage on a phone and be expected to ingest it and use it quickly. Others have said "You can't make a movie on a PHONE" or "A PHONE will never replace what I do!" You're missing the point if that's all you have to say. No, you can't make a Hollywood feature on a phone (yet), and you can't replace an experienced editor with a soccer mom and her cell phone. Instead, the iPhone will continue to help you connect with those you love, whether it's sharing an experience or recording it for your own memories. People will make films with this phone, and some of them will be outstanding, but nobody is going to send their corporate video work to their brother and his phone instead of a production house. I think for a little while, it might be tricky to deal with this footage, but eventually we'll all work it out, and in the mean time, it's job security.

Sidenote: Larry Jordan has great commentary about iMovie for iPhone on his blog, along with this great story that was sent to him:

I have been using LogMeIn.com for at least six months. It works great. With that as background, here’s my story.

I was flying from New York to San Francisco recently, and said, “why not try using LogMeIn  from an airplane at 35,000 feet and see how it behaves?”  I had purchased an internet connection on my flight — the cost was discounted since I was a first-time user.
I checked my email and read that my client had a revision to be made on a current Final Cut Pro project. So, I said, what the heck? Let’s see.

I logged into my edit system and discovered I had great response/control from the flight. As good as I had when I am connected on land. I was amazed!

I made the changes to the project and exported the file.  It went from Final Cut Pro to Squeeze, all controlled from my flight. Then, I opened up Transmit to send the newly compressed file to their FTP site for approval.

Now, here is where the story gets even funnier.  I sent an email to the client telling her I was making the changes right now — but NOT that I was on a plane.  She reviewed and approved the changes — all before I landed.

It was a VERY cool moment.

I took a picture.

I took some pictures, rather. I don't have a nice professional camera, so when I want to take some nice, professionalish pictures, I borrow a friend's Canon 10D. I baked him a pie in exchange for use of his camera this time so I could shoot my best friend's engagement portraits. I thought I'd post a few of the pictures I took in a blog here, along with some others I've taken over the last few months.

I wish I had my own camera so I could get more hands on practice on a daily basis. The operation of the camera is all the holds me back. I can't think fast enough to compensate for certain situations, like the constant changing light during the engagement session. I don't know basic camera operations off the top of my head like I do a video camera. I need my Canon T2i so I can do some HDSLR video AND some stills, and get more fluent in the various knobs and buttons.

Here are the pictures. I put the majority of them behind a cut as to not weight down this page.

 It started to rain, so a few pictures were taken under a porch in some bizarre lighting conditions.

Tutorials Suck.

Does anyone else think online tutorials are the death of creative ingenuity?

This is the thought process of a 20 year old media major:

Wow that effect is so cool.
I wonder how I do that?
I know! I'll just Google it.
Oh man, After Effects? Well, I'll just figure it out as I go along.
SCREW THIS, AFTER EFFECTS SUCKS. -or- Awesome, it kind of looks the same but I have no idea why it looks bad.

This post goes along with what I was saying (complaining about) on a previous post with Video Copilot tutorials. Tutorials are a fantastic learning tool when they are used correctly. Unfortunately, almost everyone seems to use them as a way to quickly reproduce an effect. Instead of building from them, learning WHY they work, and applying them toward new projects, they're dropped for the next cool shiny thing.

If you just want to stick a canned effect in your reel, just buy someone's project file and move along.

The thing that made me think about this again is that I was thinking about school, and how my classes worked. I realized over the last few months that the way I was taught most applications was not from the ground up, or even by concept. It was just a string of tutorials that the teacher would learn well enough before passing along to us.

As time goes on, I continue to wonder what the point of going to class was at all if all that knowledge can be found in a half second on Google.

Would I have skipped college? No way. Would I have gone to a different program? Who knows. Would I have figured out how to get more student loans, work less, and put more time into intensive internships and self-learning? Absolutely.

No freebies!

I saw this video retweeted by @FCPUGIndy today and thought it was perfect. If you're in multimedia, you know how often you get asked to do things for free by random people. "I need this 3 hour documentary edited, it's totally low budget so I can't pay you until it makes a few million bucks, but it'd be GREAT for your reel!" It's just ridiculous how people either want to pay you next to nothing or nothing at all for your work when you are worth so much more.



When it comes to video, there's definitely a place for free work. I do a lot of free work on my own to build up a variety of things in my portfolio, but that's not something I'll do in the future. Working for free can also be a great way to show someone your skills and seriousness about a job, as long as there is some kind of promise of payment when you prove your worth. But generally, if you're lowballing your peers every chance you get, you suck.

The good and bad of student projects

I attended IUPUI's Media Arts and Science capstone last Friday. I knew a number of people from classes that are graduating this year and had projects on display and wanted to support them as they supported me when I went through the capstone experience this time last year. Including my own, I think I've attended 5 of these capstone evenings altogether, and each time I go I have the same kind of observations. I tend to think that way too many of the projects are not at the level a college graduate receiving a BS should be producing. It seems to me like it should be much more difficult to get through that last hurdle of the program and get a college degree.

There aren't an overwhelming number of video projects on display usually, as the Media Arts and Science program is somewhat small as it is, and usually focused more on interactive media or web development. However, this year there seemed to be more on display than before, so I got a good look at the fresh faces of video, or the people I'll be competing with for jobs I suppose. Overall, the video projects were OK. For the most part, they weren't great, creative, interesting, and innovative,  nor were they terrible. They were just OK. Well, except for two.

The good? Maybe I should say great. The great video project, and probably best capstone project I've ever seen, is a short form documentary called Changing Faces by my friend and classmate Jeremiah Nickerson. Changing Faces digs into Jeremiah's family situation which has been largely affected by his father's alcoholism and subsequent suicide attempt. He sits down with members of his family and explores what happened - a subject they haven't discussed before. The emotion is raw yet controlled. The interviews are individual and assembled to tell the story of his childhood and dysfunction throughout, expertly paced with meaningful b-roll and photos. So many things in stand out in university projects that just scream STUDENT FILM HERE, whether it's the hesitant framing of shots, clunky and meaningless editing, lack of cohesive theme, or just plain bad technical aspects. This film was a total breath of fresh air that showed the program can take people with natural talent for storytelling and help them develop into filmmakers. You should definitely go to Jeremiah's website and give this film a watch. It's very impressive that such a personal project can have such an emotional universal theme and appeal.

The rest of this blog entry is going to be me complaining about student projects. If you prefer to leave on a positive note, end it right here and go check out Jeremiah's work.

The bad. Boy, was it bad. I feel like as a recent student of the program I can comment on this without seeming too all-knowing or self-righteous about it. Hopefully, anyway. I'm not going to put links up or name any names obviously, but one project I saw was a movie trailer for a movie that doesn't exist. It's a fine idea for a project and one that I considered as an editing exercise and demonstration but ultimately passed on. Editing trailers is a great skill to have and a perfect way to show your full range as an editor - if you put an insane amount of time into developing the project so it really looks like a trailer. This project basically highlighted exactly what is wrong with very young editors and motion graphic artists. Rather than digging into a very deep program like After Effects and learning the various parts from the ground up, young people tend to Google for the most relevant tutorial and just learn enough to get by. While this might get you through a tiny little problem here and there, you will never really be a motion graphics artist from doing tutorials.

 It was painfully obvious that this project was completely reliant upon tutorials and nothing else. In fact, almost every shot was created with a tutorial from videocopilot.net, an extremely well-known website for AE tutorials. I feel quite bad for this student. His capstone would have been a great independent project to work on in order to learn different aspects of AE. Tutorials are great tools to use for practice, as long as you can understand how all the pieces work in order to adapt it to another effect later on. Simply copying a canned effect you find online doesn't show me you are an artist. It shows me you can push the correct buttons in the correct order to produce a mediocre result.

I truly wish that this person's mentor had stepped in and made him take it a step further, because with that piece as the center of his portfolio, any mograph person worth their salt will never hire him. While the Internet has given us the ability to find all kinds of amazing tools, effects, and instant answers, it also seems to be making new generations of media professional wannabes so much lazier, which is sad. If you want to impress, you have to innovate a little.

Dearest student, if you happen to come across this blog and know I'm talking about you, please take that out of your portfolio. You're worth more than that.

Theater and Post-production

Yesterday, I was watching the RSC's latest performance of Hamlet on PBS for the second time (because it was amazingly good) and was pondering how I miss being a part of theater. Earlier this year I was thinking about volunteering in a production as a stage hand, though I didn't get around to it for a variety of reasons. (Perhaps after baseball season, as I've picked up a second job at Victory Field.) I was in a lot of plays from kindergarten through high school - a lot. Once I got to 6th grade and was able to join the drama club, I did 2 plays a year until I graduated. Unfortunately, since I developed early (you know what I mean) and was taller than everyone else, I was regularly typecast as the mother/grandmother/old lady characters. I haven't acted in a play since graduating from high school (though I did end up having to play a character in a ridiculous short film we did).

The things I enjoyed the most about theater were the camaraderie between the cast and crew and the energy and volatile nature of a play in progress. My mind was wandering a bit on this thought and I began to compare it to what I love about post-production. I realized that performing in a theatrical production and editing a film are so completely different with the same end.

What I like about post is the ability to think things through. I can undo, switch things up, redo entire sequences, and trash things that suck if I want. In theater, once something has happened, you have to deal with it and improvise if necessary to make it work. You don't have a few hours to mull over the best way to go about a scene - once you're in the moment, that's it.

The interesting thing about this, however, is that I'm not the kind of editor to take my time mulling things over.  I've always had a keen ability to look through my footage quickly an efficiently, and instinctively know when to cut things out. I have no qualms ruthlessly going through a timeline, chopping chunks here and there. I rarely dwell on sequences. I just go with my instinct, give it a try, and if it doesn't work, I do it again with minor changes. I enjoy thinking things through even though I don't work like that.

I wonder how much of this editing sense has been enhanced or changed by my think-on-your-feet experiences in theater? In a play, the actors play a big part in the pacing of the play, like the editor controls the pacing of a show. A play does have edits, just like a show - passing of time, flashbacks, dissolves, vignettes, it's all the same, but instant.

Basically, I find it really interesting that the thing I loved most about theater is exactly the opposite of what I love about video post-production.

It's interesting how things that are almost completely irrelevant to nonlinear editing can have a profound effect on it. Another thing? Music. I'm positive spending three years playing the clarinet and sight reading sheet music has enhanced my pacing and rhythm.

I wonder what else there is?

By the way, my favorite role was as Alice's mom in Go Ask Alice, because it was the only play we ever performed with any real emotion to it. I like to think I played it well, though nobody ever gave me any feedback on my performance so I guess I'll never know. The scariest role was the villain in a strange adaptation of Robin Hood.  The original person dropped out right before the play, and me, one of the reject extras that wasn't to be trusted with any real lines, was promoted to her part. I got the privilege of learning 110 lines in 2 weeks in 8th grade. The same day I was required to recite O Captain my Captain for English class, and the Gettysburg Address for history. And that night was the school lock in and I stayed up all night after that day. How on Earth did I ever manage to live like this? Oh, to be 14 again..