Organisation and Director Envy

Having just taken on my first feature film editing job I have had a lot of opportunity to think about the way that organisational skills impact filmmaking. A boring topic, I know, but having a pre-established system of organisation really is what separates a professional from an amateur. Without a definitive way of tracking your decisions throughout the whole filmmaking process something is always going to get lost. For any budding editor or assistant editor I would definitely recommend Make the Cut by Lori Jane Coleman and Diana Friedberg. It has a plethora of information on how to organise your work-flows and keep track of things. Just when I thought I was being too anal about my bin layout in Avid, this book showed me that I wasn't being nearly anal enough.

Before this film I had taken somewhat of a break from filmmaking as I focussed on teaching my various degree, diploma and short course students all the wonderful features of Avid and the intricacies of Music Video production. Coming back the world of filmmaking has stared to give me a fresh dose of Director Envy, which is a great way of motivating me to finish my short film script. Hopefully by the time I have finished this feature I will be ready to think about shooting it. I can hardly wait.

The Technical Details

Its something I say often to anyone who has the misfortune of having to listen to me, but the most difficult thing about the world of TV and Film production is that it is simultaneously very technical and very creative. This is why so few people end up being masters in this field. It takes a very rare kind of brain to be both technical and creative.

The Storyteller's Flicker

I've heard alot of different views expressed on the difference between progressive and interlaced video and the effect it can have on your audience. Phrases like "the eyes see in interlaced but the mind sees in progressive" and "24 frames a second synchronises with the pulses of the brain" come to mind. None of these have ever really struck a chord with me but recently someone I was doing some training for, Christopher Mann of Mannmade Productions, came out with something that made much more sense to me. He referred to the phenomenon as "the storyteller's flicker". His reasoning was as follows; way back when we were cavemen we would spend the day outside hunting and foraging etc. At night we would go back to our cave's, light the fire and tell stories to one another. People would draw on the walls and string narratives together as an effective way of passing the time and passing on information to others. In the day time there would be a lot of light and our eyes would be pretty responsive. This is the equivalent of interlaced video now. But at night the flicker of the fire would be only light to see the images on the wall by as the stories unfolded. Chris suggested that progressive footage, and particularly film, flickers in a way that reminds us on some genetic level of the flickering fire. It reminds us that these are only stories and not to be confused with the reality outside. This is why is makes so much sense that whilst the news looks right in 50i, films look right in 24p. It also explains why it feels weird watching a film with daylight pouring through the window.

I hope we remember this idea as filmmaking technology moves forward. Yes, more frames may be technically superior at capturing motion. Yes digital projection may be more cost effective for distribution. Yes 3D produces a more immersive environment. But we should think very carefully about weather these things are good for the medium. People don't go to the cinema for realism. They go to sit in the dark and see a story flicker into life. The shorcomings of cinema in representing reality are what makes it an artform. For every detail you fail to capture a million more are formed in mind of the audience. What so many filmmakers do not realise is that it is not you, but your audience that create the definitive version of your film. You can guide them, but the final result is always out of your hands. Scary, but true.

"This Time of Year" and Gear

Not posted anything in a long time, mostly because I have had so much work to do. Have now finished David's Schofield's film, "This Time of Year" so I'll try and post it up soon. Am really happy with how the grade went, I've been quite subtle most of the way through and tried to help the story along more than anything., using the colours to show the progression of the day and indicate the main characters state of mind. I had a little trouble with a few shots that had a dodgy light that was spilling some magenta (my personal grading nemesis) onto the scene. Yet again the wonderful saturation curve tool came to the rescue on that one. I'll post some before and after stills this weekend. The only shot that I am not happy with features a view out of a window which is a bit blown out. I spent over an hour trying to pull that down and bring in some detail but in the end the way the light was wrapping round the character made it impossible. I wouldn't usually let it bother me, but the shot cuts to outside where it is supposed to be dusk. I think in the context of the story, we get away with it, but I would have liked to find a way to solve it.

Other than that I have been in charge of ordering a load of new gear for work. Some of the most exciting objects that will be coming our way include a 24inch FSI Grade 1 Monitor and a Euphonix MC Color control surface, both of which will hopefully improve and speed up my grading work. Honestly can't wait to try them out. Lots of other toys coming too, including some Kinoflo's, a Dolly, a small Jib arm, a few Canon DSLRs (which I've already talked about extensively on here) and a Panasonic HPX500. Think I'm gonna be a bit giddy when all this stuff arrives.

Pics as promised.

This comes from the shot I talked about with the magenta spill from a faulty light. Fleshtones were horrible and you can see the effect it is having on the boys vest and the wallpaper especially. I slightly desaturated the whole image, used a saturation curve to remove the magenta and then pushed the mids back into the bleak brown colours that the wrest of the scene occupies.

This shot comes from a slow motion sequence. The main character is drunk and disorientated and I tried to reflect that with a high contrast blown out look.

 This scene in a cramped toilet was a little underexposed. I lifted the shot up and defined the characters face with some secondaries. It has also been heavily desaturated to give the environment a feeling of sterile hostility.

Digital Snow

I'm currently working on some effects and the grade of a short film by David Schofield (see his last film The Most Important Things in Life in a previous blog). The majority of the effects work is adding some snow into a couple of scenes. This film is set at Christmas and whilst they were lucky enough to have snow on the ground on the days of shooting the exteriors, they're was no snow falling from the sky and David felt that it was integral to the mood of the film. Below is a preliminary test for the particle system I have created for the shots. I'm using Trapcode Particular inside of After Effects to generate the snow. I still have a little bit of work to do, to introduce some snow behind the character and make the snowflakes a little less uniform in shape. I'll keep you updated as to how its going.


Snow Test 1 from Renegade Films on Vimeo.

Avatar Days

Just saw this video and thought it was really impressive. Not only are the VFX done really well, but they perfectly serve the purpose of film. I love these types of documentaries that actually explore the best way to visually represent a subject rather than sticking to the interview, cutaway, moco still, reconstruction formula.


Avatar Days from Piranha Bar on Vimeo.

Update on the Alexa and Avid

Just wanted to update a couple of my recent posts. Having now seen footage from the Alexa I am even more convinces that it is going to be THE camera of the next few years. The DOF fall off looks better than the red to me, and the rolling shutter doesn't seem to be much of issue, and if the greater latitude is true then this would be my camera of choice if I was going to be shooting a feature or spot tomorrow.


ARRI Alexa World Cup from Stargate Studios on Vimeo.


Also, my recent post about Avid vs FCP needs a some new discussion now that Avid have announced Avid MC5.0 will have native RED support (and apparently can debayer to HD video in real time????) and also will be able to playback QT videos natively without transcoding to an Avid codec. The other interesting announcement is that you will be able to use a Matrox MXO2 Mini as an IN/OUT, which is unprecedented for Avid to say the least. Seems like an odd choice until you think about the fact that this box will only give you HDMI and Component sockets. So it gives a cheap (around £350) monitoring option for low level Avid users without really threatening the sales of any of Avid's own boxes which will give you HD-SDI etc.

RED KILLER!!!

So I've been looking over the specs of the new Arri Alexa and its looking mightily impressive. It has a similar chip to the RED One and can record to a RAW format similar to R3D. But it can also record straight to 2k ProRes4444 files to SxS cards. And, it can also make create ARRIRAW and QT files simultaneously so you have you offline and online files ready from the get go with identical metadata. That could be a deal breaker. It also is likely to have more latitude than the RED and a native 800ASA rating.

Avid vs Final Cut

I'm not gonna pretend this is a fair or unbiased contest. I learnt Avid first and I think it's brilliant, but for what its worth he're s a few why Avid is better than FCP and a few reasons why FCP is better than Avid. Here I am comparing only the systems I use, Avid Media Composer 4 (usually with an Adrenaline) and Final Cut Studio 3

AVID


Real Time
When Avid says real time it means it. Yes you have to use computer that's up to it, yes you have to use Avid codecs to edit in, but if you do that then you know without a shadow of a doubt that everything that has a little green dot will play back, without delay at a full frame rate and with full resolution. No rendering (except for the occasional complex effect), none of this Unlimited RT business (what kind of use is realtime playback if its not the full res and framerate??), it just works. And now that Avid accepts multiple resolutions and framerates within a sequence (and still manages realtime playback) there really are no arguments here.

Trimming
After using Final Cut for a while I rejoiced the first time I got back on an Avid and used trim mode. It just makes sense. Its fast, efficient and lets me analyse every cut with ease and make sure the pace is frame perfect, (which is and editors job yes?). FCP7 has brought in some features that are pretty similar to trim mode and I appreciate the effort on their part, but I still prefer the way Avid works. In terms of my editing workflow, going into trim mode after I have done my first assemble just makes sense to me.

Media Management
If you plan your media management well then FCP can be great. Certainly relinking to media when it goes offline is a hell of a lot easier. But I find that FCP allows you to be sloppy all too easily, and evidently people will be sloppy when they are allowed to be. Doing online work for independent films can feel like a military operation to get all the media you need. Avid is strict but that forces you to be neat. All your media is kept together and when you consolidate it works reliably.

FCP


Color
Without a doubt the main reason I use FCP. So much better and so much more intuitive than trying to use Media Composer to grade, this tool sets my work apart from others. No, its not as quick or accurate as a DaVinci or Pogle or anything, but chuck a Blackmagic or AJA card and a broadcast monitor on your MacPro and you have a viable broadcast finishing solution for a ridiculous fraction of the cost of the those other systems. 


Red Codec Support
Can't argue with FCPs RED support. Alot of the projects I work on are shot on RED so its good to have a viable workflow that will allow you to at finish your project at a 2 or 4k resolution from the original R3D files (although this will eat your MacPro for breakfast). In defence of Media Composer, it has never claimed to be a finishing solution, it is a cutting machine. And it does offline RED footage well.


ProRes 4444
It was a close call in the codec wars until Apple released this. I only use this to transcode RED stuff too if I'm not going to have the time to go back to the R3D. If it's just HDV or XDCAM or something then 422HQ is good enough. Grading from it in colour is amazingly quick and painless and you can certainly push things further than you would dare with 422 or DNxHD.

The Light of Life

The Light of Life from daihei shibata on Vimeo.

Thought I would share this stunning piece of animation. I am always in awe when I see these types of organic artistic pieces of CGI executed so well. To turn something that is completely digital and fabricated into something so beautiful is a talent I just don't possess (or at least not yet). My work is still very much grounded in the real world, but this is something else entirely and it blows me away. Check it out.

Beeple

instrumental video nine from beeple on Vimeo.

Not the most original idea ever but extremely well executed. This guy is scarily talented. Not many people have such a great eye for design and composition and such a great ear for music and sound. He makes lots of VJ footage which he releases under creative commons for all to use, so get your fill.

Star Trek: The Wrath of the Lens Flare

Just finally got round to watching JJ Abrams Star Trek. The visual effects were stunning, the story was as good as that kind of formulaic American blockbuster can be, the sound was amazing (especially the first space battle with Kirk's dad, the subjective sound focusing in on the baby crying over all the battle going on in the background) and even the performances were pretty decent considering the cliched characters the actors had to work with. But the lens flares. What the hell was going on?

Alvaro Posadas

___ from Alvaro Posadas on Vimeo.

I don't know why I like this guys stuff but I do. Simple and complex and incredibly digital, check it out.

Zen and the Art of the Focus Puller

I read about film and film production a LOT. Probably more than any sane person would want to read about anything. When I get onto a set or start working on a some post production I like to feel that I am prepared, that I know everything it is possible to know about what I am going to be doing. But this knowledge is only a crutch, something to fall back on if everything is going wrong.

Video and Audio

I recently did a Pro Tools 101 course. Audio is a little outside my remit as a pixel wizard but I've been a musician for a while and have recorded my own music and obviously I have to deal with audio when editing so it wasn't a completely alien territory for me. What struck me is the amount of similarities between digital audio and video, both technically and in the way you work with it.

Low Poly Animation

Here's a video for everyone who is thinking the photo-realistic Avatar approach to CG is the be all and end all of animation. This video chooses a low poly aesthetic that looks really cool and gave the filmmakers the chance to focus on what's important in any film, the story. They give you like 10 seconds to start caring for the character (which you do), and then plunge him into danger, and then they tip the whole thing on its head. Excellent piece of cinema, check it out.



Pivot from Pivot on Vimeo.

4 Days with the Canon 7d

Following on from my last post about VDSLRs I thought I'd talk a little bit about "From the Former Republic of Czechoslovakia with Love", a short film I was DOP for. 

VDSLR

No this isn't a post about some new STD, I am of course taking about Video DSLR Cameras, or to be more specific, DSLRs that can shoot HD video.

Codehunters and Complementary Colours

Codehunters from axisanimation on Vimeo.

I just saw this short animation film and thought it was worth sharing.

Born of Hope and Lens Adapters

Last year I graded my first feature, a Lord of Rings fan film called Born of Hope by Actors at Work Productions in London. It was an epic project (excuse the pun), that had me deal with every problem I'm likely to face as Online Editor or Colourist.

Invictus

Visual Effects can easily be seen as something only ever used in Sci-Fi and Action films, but the art of Pixel Wizardry can be used in much more subtle ways than sending people into outer space or blowing stuff up. It can enhance any drama by giving the director the power to create or enhance things that he would otherwise have to spend huge amounts of his budget creating in production. Invictus, Clint Eastwood's latest staring Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman, used an immense amount of rotoscoping and crowd duplication to fill the rugby stadiums with the 10s of thousands of people that should be there and the audience doesn't even notice, which is exactly why it is so good.

The Most Important Things in Life

Last year I graded a short film shot on a Red One by director David Schofield and DOP Doug Walshe, called "The Most Important Things in Life". 

Pixel Wizardry

In this blog I will discuss all aspects of Pixel Wizardry in its many forms, including editing, compositing, CGI and grading. By Pixel Wizardry I am of course referring to digital post production for Film, TV, the Internet etc, which I have spent the last 3-4 years of my life learning. I will share tips and tricks, post examples of my work and talk about how I achieved them and generally just chat about the Film and TV industry as a whole. Stay tuned.