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Speaking to Editing Students at De Anza College

Tuesday night I will be speaking to editing students at De Anza College in Cupertino, CA. De Anza is one of the premiere community colleges for film and television training in the United States and has an extraordinary Advanced Technology Center. Looking forward to it.

Cinematographer Nelson Cragg does a nice test of the Canon EOS-1D Mark IV.

Canon EOS-1D Mark IV HD exposure test (iso500-6400) part 1 from Nelson Cragg on Vimeo.

How to build an #Avid Workflow for Independent Film Production

So for a while now, Avid Technology was the unchallenged leader in creative cinema production.  Along came Final Cut Pro and a lot of folks, especially independent producers, found that the less expensive software and open hardware packages available.  I've even heard of educators making a generalization about FCP being the future of film post production.

In my humble opinion, this is a total miss and dangerous for the next generation of filmmakers.

First of all, in the last several years, Avid has made major leaps in innovation from the original Avid Media Composer system.  The development of the software only editions of Media Composer combined with a massive price drop has helped continue to make Avid the best solution for nearly all production models.  In addition, Avid comes with "script sync" and a back-end media management model that has been tested and developed for over 20 years.  Avid AMA continues to expand to use new tapeless formats natively, like P2, XDCam, and I've even done some stuff with the new Canon cameras.  They're awesome.

The good news is that this year Avid was the major tool of choice for the success of a large portion of films being featured at festivals.  The high end jobs are still on Avid worldwide wide, meaning that art high schools and Universities need to take note.  The original trim tool still trumps FCP, innovations on collaboration including Avid Unity, and the rock solid platform gives independent editors and producers an edge through a great product.

And, if you look at the recent speed of the innovation and new quality feature releases coming from the company (Xpress Pro, MC 2.5, 3.0, 3.5, 4.0), Avid is no doubt the future of post production at this rate.

So how does an independent production get their hands on an Avid?

It's easy, here's some tips

First, map your workflow.  I literally draw it in word or pages with boxes and sometimes web links which later can appear in PDFs for producers.  You can connect charts to databases with financial data to help figure out the budget.  With indies, every penny counts and you need to be able to build the workflow perfectly.

Second, you get into the least expensive system the software can handle.  This can be as small as a certified laptop, iMac or a PC.  In fact, I've edited multiple features running Avid on a Mac Book Pro laptop.  It's fast, it's cake to use, it's not expensive.  Many producers are surprised when I tell them that Avid can run on a laptop.  It's doesn't just run, it screams.  You can easily hook up a second monitor and some basic speakers and boom you're editing on location.

Third, you get into the software which only runs around $2500 and a special note for students/educators, you can be running the software right now for only $299.  It's a great way to learn before your first professional project.  Now the bean counters out there are reading this saying, but Final Cut is less than a grand.  The deal is, that between time spent on managing metadata on thousands of clips, vfx, and audio file, interfacing with your mix house (which most likely is Pro-Tools, an Avid company), handling i/o for your visual effects, and perfectly clean edls with your DI (if you send out), Avid will save you massive amounts of money in the long run through labor and efficiency.  It's worth every penny, especially on features.  You can also rent, but these days, most editors have the latest and greatest at their finger tips and will cut you a deal, or you can buy a workstation for yourself and rent it to them.  Another note: Avid is available to help; in my experience over the last several years, they have been very supportive of Independent Filmmaking and keep an open line of communication with their customers which makes life a lot easier.  They're all over their forums and get back to you when you need support or advice.

Fourth, one of the biggest concerns for producers is the ingest workflow.  Time is money and so deck rentals, tape costs, dubs, and new technology can be scary.  A lot of FCP uses will say, "I can get a AJA card for super cheap".  I say, if you're dealing with expensive HD-SR decks on set where you need an AJA board to manage your media, grab a low cost XDCam or P2 recorder and attach it into your workflow.  Your ingest workflow will go tapeless and be faster then digitizing in realtime, and since Avid loves working with P2 and XDCam, you'll find you save a great deal of and money by cutting time ingesting and spending more time editing.  The cost saving can go to color correction where the audience experiences it on the screen.  You can also downconvert on set to a firewire compatible less expensive NTSC device and save money by not needing any extra hardware.

Fifth, combine Avid with new technology for digital dailies, web-based cut reviews, and digital delivery.  The reason is that it'll save you on hardware costs, dvds, and tape stock.  The more that reviews are done in a green way, the more money you'll save.  This should be a part of your workflow when you chart it.  Ultimately, you're using the Avid to make creative decisions and collaborate.  There are awesome low-cost services like dropbox.com or xprove.com that help with this collaboration.  You can program an Avid to export the appropriate media for your clients/producers/distributors and automate updates for them to pull the materials directly onto their computers for review.  It's an amazing way to work and allows you to spend more time on location, spend more time editing with precision, and less time rendering or ingesting.

Other great independent tricks and benefits...

World-wide collaboration with industry's most acclaimed editors-  I've had editors approach me from international locations needing help on their project and vise-versa.  We mailed a copy of the dailies or sent files over the net, then we emailed Avid bins back and forth to help get their edit done.  Since Avid bins live independently from your project, it's easier to manage in this sort of collaboration.  If someone recorded a temp line, Avid's Media Management made finding the files easy, and iChat, Dropbox, or FTP did the trick.  Files can be sent at the speed of light around the globe.  I even did one project with a friend while I was traveling.  You can make a change at an airport and the collaborator has the revision almost immediately.

Clean EDL's - Speed changes, pull-down and cadence, precision edits always come out perfect via Avid.  I did a project where specific frames were selected for an action sequence and edited one frame at a time.  There is no doubt that sending a clean edit decision list to a conform facilities comes in handy and when you're editing, you want to know that the frames you chose are the same one's the audience sees, every time.  Avid has been doing this for 20+ years and plays well with others.

Use Quicktime Reference for faster delivery - Avid has a function called "export Quicktime reference".  Basically you export the quicktime reference at the native resolution which links to your Avid media or linked files from AMA.  It's real fast.  From their you can use quicktime pro or another app to re-compress for the web, digital delivery, or use the file to burn a DVD.  On a Mac, those processes can happen in the background while you continue your work editing.  It's a huge time and money saver.

Well that's all for now.  Look forward to hearing your thoughts.  And please let me know if I can help any of you on your projects.  Always helps to have someone to bounce workflow ideas off.

-D

The Digital Age Gap... Facebook vs. my Grandparents

A fascinating problem has come to my attention... my Grandparents have lost a level of communication with their Grand kids.  It’s not due to a lack of effort on their part.  They did and do correspond via letters and telephone, for instance. They travel to spend time with us and attend family events, they also host numerous family events for everyone to enjoy.  Anyone who has met them knows that they are the coolest Grandparent’s on the planet.  When the evolution of email developed and faster internet speeds came about, they changed from dial-up to high speed connections so that they could be a part of emails and keep in touch with family downloads.  These massive update emails used to include large paragraphs of details of our lives so that we, as an extended family, were connected.  They were “in the loop” so to speak.  Photos were shared via email, responses were a part of them as well.  They’ve been PC users and Mac users.  They’ve used multiple OS’s.  Tech savvy Grandparents.

But something has changed everything, a technological development that snuck into our lives and altered the way we get our information... facebook.  The immediate power of social networking and feeds has completely changed the way we, as a large family communicate.  It happened very fast, in just a few years.  Instead of paragraphs of data, through singular emails, my cousins, siblings, parents, aunts and uncles are connected through social networking means and now we receive updates instantly, daily, and have a much better immediate sense of how each other are doing.  When something important happens, it hits our accounts, our feeds, our email inboxes, our iPhones and Blackberries.  We call, we chat, we share and respond multiple times a day with each other.  We tease, we chuckle, we share stories, and debate the latest political issue.  No matter where in the world we might be, we are connected.  My brother and I even sang Happy Birthday to my Mom on a facebook video message last year; family that was connected saw it.  Those not on the site did not.

Unfortunately, my Grandparents were not prepared for this change and they have been somehow technologically left out.  The other day I was catching up with my grandfather who started to share a story, without thinking I related, “Oh yeah!  I totally saw that post the other day!”  My assumption was that everyone in the world knew this information, at least in the family right?  But unfortunately my assumption rendered his oral retelling of the story and our conversation over.  I already had comprehensive knowledge of the event, and he wasn’t a part of the original information flow.  He was frustrated.

I didn’t immediately understand what had happened or why he was insulted until later when it was explained to me that Grandma and Grandpa aren’t on facebook.  I realized, they probably feel disconnected.  No more big emails, no more photos, no more updates, it’s all hidden from them on a seemingly complicated social networking site.  It’s not like they’re un-invited either, it’s just something outside of their comfort zone.

Now it would be easy to suggest that they should just join but if you really think about it, it’s just an overwhelming task right now.  Email was a challenging thing for them to adopt, and I’m so impressed as how cool they were for embracing it years ago.  They still use it, but at it’s core, email works conceptually like sending a letter by way of computer, it’s simple.  In contrast, the concept of cascading link feeds, complex interfaces, segmented usages for photos, messaging, chatting, video, and status updates can be daunting to someone who was born before the invention of the television.  They’re cool enough and smart enough to pick it up technically, but this seems more like a generational gap than one of ability.

And so what are we to do?  As a family, we ARE still communicating, we are still connected, in someways even more than through our old emails, we ALL just adopted a medium that they’re not comfortable using.  Have we left them out or is this more of an evolution of tech communication that is supposed to happen?  How can those who find facebook challenging still connect in a facebook world?

In an effort to keep them updated, I’ve started to go back to basics with them.  Emails, phone calls, and visiting seems to be a great way to solve this problem, a lot of fun too (my Grandparents are wonderful storytellers and fantastic cooks).  But I wish there was a way I could help them more.

Do you have suggestions?  How do you connect facebook, to a non-facebook person?  With Google Wave on it’s way, is it even worth it?  Or how should we all just get back to basics and ditch the computers wholesale?

What are your thoughts?

P.S. Love you Grandma and Grandpa...

Transformers 2 Editorial...

Top Ten Reasons Avid Beats Final Cut Pro

I just left an event in Burbank hosted by Key Code Media and Avid where they showcased the new Avid Media Composer 4.0 software.

It's amazing!  With a ton of new features but for now, here's my list:

TOP TEN REASONS AVID BEATS FINAL CUT PRO...

1. Avid's AMA allows for Real-Time linking of XDCam and P2 workflows.  No transcoding needed so you save time and MONEY on the digitizing/assistant editor side.  If you save one week of work time ($1500) you'll save enough money to rationalize the difference in purchase price between a Media Composer 4.0 software ($2495.00) and FCP studio ($999.00).  Imagine saving multiple WEEKS on a large project because your workflow is cleaner and faster.  And if you're a student Avid only runs you $295!

2. The new Avid system allows for multiple frame rates in a single timeline, in Real-Time.  Not only that, you can fix and adjust cadence which is a huge deal.  Why?  Normally you'd have to rent or purchase a $10,000 frame rate converter or go to a dub house, run it through a software solution, or take your reel to a facility.  Now you can do it from home and it looks amazing.

3. Script Sync!  This tool allows for scripted editors or reality/documentary teams to work from transcripts or scripts and edit using voice recognition.  It makes assistant editor life easier, which equals faster, and then accelerates the edit.  This tool allows for a searchable script and saves time during editing by finding materials using text searches.  Also helps on dialogue editing because every line is at your fingertips.

4. EDLs for multiple frame rate timelines.  Avid has had EDLs down for years but now you can export the timeline with frame rate adjustments.

5. 3D - Avid allows for multiple options for 3D editors.  Side by side, above and below, left eye, right eye, or 3d variants like checkerboard, anaglyph.

6. Avid Unity - The best networking/media solution out there for editors.  FCP is now approved for use on it too.  Multiple editors working on a single project, multiple bays using the same media to accelerate workflow.

7. Color correction in the system.  FCP requires Color or another application for advanced color work, Avid's is built right inside.

8. Bins and Project are separate in Avid.  If there is a problem with any corruption, each bin is backed up separate from the project.  In FCP, all materials are a part of one file.  Loose this and the whole edit breaks down.

9. Total Synergy through Post, Audio, and VFX - Avid encompasses Media Composer, Digidesign (Protools), M-Audio, Pinnacle, and Sibellius.  In a nutshell, your EDLs work with almost every major editing system in the world, perfectly.  That is if you don't want to finish on a Symphony Nitris or DS (though many users finish broadcast quality in HD right from a laptop).  Your OMFs transfer to Protools for audio mixing easily since it's the same company.  It makes sense.

10.  Avid is for editors, by editors.  The top films and television shows have been edited on Avid.  Everything from Star Trek, to Transformers, to Academy Award Winners like Slumdog Millionaire.  They say editors mature like fine wine.  If that's the case, hiring people with lots of experience will only make your project better, and most of those folks use Avid.

Cool Technology for Wireless Device Recharging

Powermat.com | Powermat Wireless Charging

Cool technology!  Recharges a bunch of devices wirelessly.

Writer Tip of the Day: Cast Photos...

So you're trying to write, trying to find a voice for your characters.

An easy trick is to print photos.  Cast all of your characters.  Print photos of a friend or family member that is inspiring your character, or maybe it's a celebrity?  Movie stars have a "voice" and scripts are often revised to support their brand.  Imagine the difference of writing a character for Jack Black vrs. Angelina Jolie.  You'd focus the dialogue more, you're also have freedom to play.

Granted all of these "casting" choices probably will change before the time the final film hits the big screen but it can be helpful to a writer to find a voice for the characters and hear them speak from the page while writing.

Grabbing photos is easy, you can go on Google and do a search.  Almost all working actors have a headshot of some sort online.  You can print fairly nice 4x6 headshots of your entire cast with most office printers and hang them on the wall in your workspace.  Label them with your character's names and boom!

...you have a cast.

Original Project1982.com Filmschool Podcasts Available for Download.

NEW TRAILER: James Cameron's "Avatar"

Here's the new trailer for James Cameron's "Avatar" fresh off the presses.

Enjoy....

All about the new Canon 5D Mark II

All about the new Canon 5D Mark II from StudioDaily.com

It shoots 1080, 30p, digital RAW files. Seriously.

Wait until they release the 24p version.