tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38197882038805199062024-03-06T02:41:18.075+00:00Pixel WizardA blog about all aspects of digital post production for Film&TV.Andrew McKeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909081557550778323noreply@blogger.comBlogger40125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819788203880519906.post-62086836411538602632013-10-19T16:55:00.001+01:002013-10-19T16:55:03.311+01:00MOVED OUTThis blog has moved and is now integrated into my website. This one will no longer be updated.<br />
<br />
Head over to http://pixelwizard.net/<br />
<br />
Thanks.Andrew McKeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909081557550778323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819788203880519906.post-19097756376706481972013-05-31T15:43:00.003+01:002013-05-31T15:59:31.330+01:00Are ACES High or Low?Right, I promise the title is the only card pun I'll put in this post. Its been ages since my last blog post due to a mixture of not being inspired by any topics and just being busy. My 4th feature as Editor was locked early this year and a month or two ago I finished the grade and sent the film off to the guys as <a href="http://www.carouselmediacompany.com/">Carousel Media Company</a> for them to create the DCP and other deliverables. Now I'm in a little bit of down period before my next film so I'm going to be focusing on networking, planning ahead and research.<br />
<br />
One thing I've come across in my relentless pursuit to know everything about digital post is the ACES (Academy Color Encoding Specification) colour space and how it can be implemented in post-production workflows. Why should you care about this? Well, if your concerned about making beautiful images you should know about it because it can improve colour rendition and help you bring footage from various different cameras (that all "see" the world differently) into line with each other. Now, whilst reading this please bear in mind that I'm only just dipping my toe into this world. ACES is used in the highest end film workflows and I'm really only just grasping the basics here.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
To understand ACES, you first need to know what a colour space is. Before that though, you should understand the concept of a colour model. A colour model is the method you use to create the colours you see (on screen or on a piece of paper). One typical colour model is the RGB model. It is additive, in that it adds together different amounts of Red, Green and Blue to create the colour that you want. Full Red, full Green and full Blue would result in white. It assumes the base level of the display is black and then adds to that. This is the opposite to the CMYK colour model used in printing which assumes the medium is white and then combines colours to subtract from the light that the paper reflects, the more colour, the darker it gets.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c2/AdditiveColor.svg/400px-AdditiveColor.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c2/AdditiveColor.svg/400px-AdditiveColor.svg.png" width="200" /></a><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/SubtractiveColor.svg/400px-SubtractiveColor.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/SubtractiveColor.svg/400px-SubtractiveColor.svg.png" width="200" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
If a colour model determines how you create the colours, the colour space determines which colours you can create. Our eyes are capable of seeing a huge range of different hues and levels of saturation. This is the visual spectrum. But most displays (eg. televisions and projectors) aren't capable of producing all of the colours we are able to see. They have a narrower gamut than our eyes. If the display we are going to see the end result on cannot produce a colour, there is little point in creating a digital file to send to it that contains colours outside that gamut. Colour spaces define a subset of the colour range that can be stored in a digital file and reproduced on the intended display. Two of the most common colour spaces you will see are BT601 (used in standard definition television) and REC709 (used in high definition television). As you can see from the image below, these colour spaces hold quite a small subset of the range of colours our eyes are able to see (the inner triangle is REC709, the outer horseshoe is what our eyes are capable of).</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ef/CIExy1931_Rec_709.svg/476px-CIExy1931_Rec_709.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ef/CIExy1931_Rec_709.svg/476px-CIExy1931_Rec_709.svg.png" width="282" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
A lot of video cameras record this narrow range of hue and saturation values because they are designed to be shown on TVs that can only reproduce this range anyway. Until better technologies like OLED become the standard in peoples homes, this will continue to be the standard. However, many cameras are capable of recording something much better than the limited range available in REC709. These cameras can either record in a LOG colour space which maximises the range of colours and brightnesses the camera captures flattening the values down into the REC709 space resulting in image that initially looks low contrast and desaturated. Or, they record RAW which means that they literrally just capture the numbers as they come off the sensor. Whatever the sensor is capable of seeing is recorded and it is not interpreted into any given colour space before being stored.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.arri.de/uploads/pics/LogC_Rec_709_header_01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="128" src="http://www.arri.de/uploads/pics/LogC_Rec_709_header_01.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
Both LOG and RAW footage needs to be interpreted in some way in post production. A Look-up-Table (LUT) can be used to convert the footage into something which looks like a regular REC709 image that our eyes are used to viewing. Essentially you are stretching the flat image out so it takes up the whole REC709 range. The benefit of doing this in post rather than just using a camera that records REC709, is that there may be hue or brightness values that, once the image is stretched out, stray outside the REC709 range. If you had recorded in REC709 on the camera, those would have been clipped and lost forever. After applying a LUT, you still have access to those ranges and you can easily select them and bring them back into the REC709 space if required. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
So even if your end product will be delivered in REC709 space, recording in a format that can capture a greater range of colour and brightnesses is a good idea. It gives you a failsafe to help you grade the images more effectively and correct any accidental over or underexposure. And if your images will be delivered in a colour space with a bigger range (like DCI-P3 used in digital cinema projectors) there is even greater reason.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
One problem with this workflow is that once you have applied your LUT to bring your image into the colour space of your delivery format your corrections are restricted to what can be done within that space. You will also only see what your output will look like in that colour space and if you need to create a DVD/Bluray and also a Digital Cinema Print, you may need to repeat some of your work in two different colour spaces. You are also possibly shooting yourself in the foot in terms of future proofing. Archiving is only useful if you can archive something that will be adaptable to future standards. Standard definition scans of films became irrelevant once high definition became the norm and any work done now in a limited gamut colour space might become irrelevant once when displays with larger gamuts become the norm. This is why ACES (Academy Color Encoding Specification) was created.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
The main point of ACES is that, as colour space, it contains the entire visible spectrum with plenty of leeway to push brightness and colours back and forth without ever clipping values. The main points at which it is currently used in post-production pipelines are during the creation of dailies for the editor and in the grade. My experience of using it so far has been in DaVinci Resolve. I tested the workflow of grading in the ACES colour space using a piece of ARRIRAW footage which you can obtain from the <a href="http://www.convergent-design.com/Products/Gemini444/Gemini444VideoSamples.aspx">Convergent Design</a> (makers of ARRIRAW recorder, the Gemini 4:4:4).</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEholzlLPf-GRkrdjAjUs1NHjGEiYNWEJ8iUxi2s4S6O1vBSYBv0f86NC33ZMhUkop5TL4aMBY-oQE3dPTi6n__iRQxQTlE57gUYl4q66Yva4V9JqILW9A9SohssXhks2Rr2iVez-GkfFsRr/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-05-31+at+13.57.18.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEholzlLPf-GRkrdjAjUs1NHjGEiYNWEJ8iUxi2s4S6O1vBSYBv0f86NC33ZMhUkop5TL4aMBY-oQE3dPTi6n__iRQxQTlE57gUYl4q66Yva4V9JqILW9A9SohssXhks2Rr2iVez-GkfFsRr/s320/Screen+Shot+2013-05-31+at+13.57.18.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
Bring the footage into Resolve and the RAW image will seem flat and desaturated. The standard colour space in Resolve is YRGB which is slightly wider than REC709, but this image needs to be stretched out to fit that colour space. We could add a LUT to the image and carry on working, but instead you can change the colour space of Resolve to ACES in the Master Project Settings.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu66EzcNugPTLJF1IpsQ6qd4ywcINP0L-KSF2nav_xqs_3KTHfi2oIDLXWV4qNgHiIXOFKPVUy24FIHAChnkiNCEAXyG_j8HTBdbGDrrNvXmtAZX5VMOonIPwk-nvuU6NTOfHdW5RI3tWu/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-05-31+at+14.37.26.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="161" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu66EzcNugPTLJF1IpsQ6qd4ywcINP0L-KSF2nav_xqs_3KTHfi2oIDLXWV4qNgHiIXOFKPVUy24FIHAChnkiNCEAXyG_j8HTBdbGDrrNvXmtAZX5VMOonIPwk-nvuU6NTOfHdW5RI3tWu/s400/Screen+Shot+2013-05-31+at+14.37.26.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
In order for this to work there is one more step you need to take and that is setting up the IDT (Input Device Transform and the ODT (Output Device Transform). You can do that in the Look Up Tables settings.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj47C8hjsdBbk62rT-kqvaLZfOGVcE9P3WW5JAotIMr-0L2yVaIa3LFyi-kIAOLtENFuRL9bqsIJ4-mkx33s6escZUeY1Foamrxdpr7PgEibaoJV_nsGh8g5pU_oSdxcply9DS3H4-dlOZW/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-05-31+at+14.39.36.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="80" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj47C8hjsdBbk62rT-kqvaLZfOGVcE9P3WW5JAotIMr-0L2yVaIa3LFyi-kIAOLtENFuRL9bqsIJ4-mkx33s6escZUeY1Foamrxdpr7PgEibaoJV_nsGh8g5pU_oSdxcply9DS3H4-dlOZW/s400/Screen+Shot+2013-05-31+at+14.39.36.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
The IDT tells Resolve which camera the footage was shot on. It is a blueprint of how that camera "sees" the world. That image is then converted into the ACES colour space which can hold all the information in the original file. This should flatten the playing field between different cameras as they enter a shared colour space, but obviously it can't create quality where there is none and cameras with lower bit depth, dynamic range etc. will still look worse. I have read that ideally you should be using not just a general IDT for your manufacturer, but something generated from your camera with the lens you are using. Sounds crazy, but using a general IDT is certainly a start.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
The ODT tells Resolve what type of display you are going to watch the footage on. It converts the image out of the ACES space and into an image which will look good on your monitor. Here I have chosen Rec.709 because I view my images on a Plasma screen hooked up to computer via a Black Magic I/O box. Again an ODT should be tailored to your specific display for best results but the Rec.709 one should look good on a calibrated Rec.709 display.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
Now without the need of a LUT, the image looks correct on the monitor and on the interface and you're ready to start grading. Below is an image and a video which shows the results of my comparison between using a LUT in YRGB and using ACES on this ARRIRAW footage. I did a slight correction to the contrast on both after that, and those images can be seen here to.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvGvXD-8H3phlhCLk6sT8DI1Q6ZXLtK_AdY9lKoT5yRGs8S3zfe8jYmBi5J6wNAPuY-QB4t80adTUTWKb1Bz0uYjp3yFRfW5ZRismtLoLuQqOYMFfPydhTbcVDHmE-q1as4y3AgyN5wt2f/s1600/ACES+TEST.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvGvXD-8H3phlhCLk6sT8DI1Q6ZXLtK_AdY9lKoT5yRGs8S3zfe8jYmBi5J6wNAPuY-QB4t80adTUTWKb1Bz0uYjp3yFRfW5ZRismtLoLuQqOYMFfPydhTbcVDHmE-q1as4y3AgyN5wt2f/s400/ACES+TEST.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="281" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/67396096" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="500"></iframe> </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Now, as a starting point going into a grade, I definitely prefer the look of the ACES image. The colours just look better and if I can implement this on an upcoming job I definitely will. There are however, a few things to get used to with ACES. First, any manipulation of the metadata that can usually be done with RAW footage is no longer possible. So you can't go in and change the ISO or White Balance. This sounds bad, but it doesn't really make a difference. The gamut of ACES is so wide that changing the exposure or white balance in the metadata wouldn't give any better results than simply shifting the controls around in Resolve. Any data currently outside of the colour space your viewing in isn't lost, its just hanging over the edge of your display gamut and can be easily brought back. The other thing to get used to is that the controls in Resolve feel very different than when operating in YRGB space. I'm assuming this is something one gets used to, but at the minute I have a hard time making corrections as they seem to do something slightly different than what I am expecting, especially the Lift, Gamma, Gain controls in which the range of influence seems to be shifted slightly. I have been told this is something that improves with every version of Resolve and it gets closer to how it feels using these controls in YRGB with each version.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Well this has taken me quite a long time to produce, so I hope someone out there finds it useful. Its basically the sum of all my colour science knowledge. As the quality of digital cameras increases and the price decreases, knowing this kind of stuff is what will separate professional image makers from amateur ones. And whether your a colourist, a DOP, a makeup artist or a set dresser, knowing how your work will end up looking on the big screen (or the small screen) is pretty important. Obviously not everyone needs to understand this in depth, but a little knowledge can go a long way.</div>
Andrew McKeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909081557550778323noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819788203880519906.post-70573836790257297132012-09-04T23:51:00.002+01:002013-05-31T15:59:05.409+01:00Grading (A Resolve Set Up)Been a while since my last post but I'm just getting towards the end of the edit of my fourth feature film as editor, Tamla Rose. Its been an interesting job because whilst principal photography ended several months back and I have been working on the film on and off since then, the team only shot the final day of pickups a couple of weeks back and we are already trying to get the film locked. I also got a nice surprise when I was asked to grade the film as well. I wasn't expecting this as the last film I did for this company was sent down to a Colourist in London. This is going to be my third feature as Colourist (after <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qINwCRM8acM">Born of Hope</a> which has now had 11million views and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7b-NIu-GPBo&feature=relmfu">The Turing Enigma</a>) so I made a couple of big decisions. Firstly, I wanted to do it in DaVinci Resolve (which I have recently spent a lot time learning so that I could teach it at the <a href="http://www.futureworks.co.uk/">media school</a> I work at) and secondly I wanted to have at least some kind of proper video monitoring and a colour control surface.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://encrypted-tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTmT2Sv6eJFZqaI8fGYzIHXYsdw2utrvHFEa5lKHtou1zmQxMxg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://encrypted-tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTmT2Sv6eJFZqaI8fGYzIHXYsdw2utrvHFEa5lKHtou1zmQxMxg" width="200" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
VS</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://encrypted-tbn3.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSf8JqTJBE-tv0NE5SUBcHssm0EgD_V3rXDZcRo4_t395m8DZQE" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="161" src="https://encrypted-tbn3.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSf8JqTJBE-tv0NE5SUBcHssm0EgD_V3rXDZcRo4_t395m8DZQE" width="200" /></a></div>
<div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So the first decision was easy. Whilst I love Apple Color (which I used on the previous two features and several shorts) it's a dead application (thanks Apple) so continuing to hone my skill on it seemed kind of pointless. Resolve is the industry standard and now its cheap (or free for the Lite version which "only" goes up to HD resolution) it's becoming incredibly commonplace.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The second decision was more difficult because it would mean a lot of research on my part into getting the "right" setup and it would involve not only spending all the money I was getting for grading the film, but also getting a loan to pay for the rest. But I think any career in such a competitive industry as TV & Film needs to be full of bold moves that you hope pay off. When I quit doing temp work in an office I had no idea if I could support myself with just film work and teaching, but it paid off and 4 years later I'm still paying the rent, so you have to have a little faith. But how much to spend? That was the big question. I priced up my ideal suite at between £8-10k. It would have looked something like this;<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2011/04/pvm-2541-620x465.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2011/04/pvm-2541-620x465.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="http://www.applecomponents.com/media/computers/0083.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://www.applecomponents.com/media/computers/0083.jpg" width="120" /></a></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTwWL5y4XpMBUSYqjvm_sBtV8xOKqIH5XJ6GlS4WL2O0CU5iE7G_w&t=1" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="135" src="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTwWL5y4XpMBUSYqjvm_sBtV8xOKqIH5XJ6GlS4WL2O0CU5iE7G_w&t=1" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img.chinaagriculturenet.com/pic/z2d82000-300x300-1/black_magic_design_decklink_hd_extreme_3d_video_card.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://img.chinaagriculturenet.com/pic/z2d82000-300x300-1/black_magic_design_decklink_hd_extreme_3d_video_card.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.iridasmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/wave_corner_001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="153" src="http://www.iridasmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/wave_corner_001.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Now if that doesn't make you drool then what the hell are you doing reading my blog? But £8-10k is a LOT of money to be dropping unless you have several well paid jobs definitely lined up. Which I don't. I have some pretty nice potential jobs and few definite jobs on the horizon but in the end I thought that spending this money would be a mistake because it would essentially be taking several steps at once. I would be moving up from my MacbookPro, to a tower with additional GPU processing, adding external monitoring of my video signal and getting a broadcast quality OLED monitor.<br />
<br />
So I downsized my budget (several times) and ended up with a figure of £4k, which meant I could get pretty small personal loan that if worst came to worst it would still be pretty easy to pay back on a minimum wage job. So instead my setup looks like this;<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.cinema5d.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/ultrastudio.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="103" src="http://www.cinema5d.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/ultrastudio.jpg" width="320" /></a><a href="http://www.maclife.com/files/u129772/imac27_full.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="234" src="http://www.maclife.com/files/u129772/imac27_full.jpg" width="320" /></a><a href="http://www.iridasmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/wave_corner_001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="153" src="http://www.iridasmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/wave_corner_001.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTwWL5y4XpMBUSYqjvm_sBtV8xOKqIH5XJ6GlS4WL2O0CU5iE7G_w&t=1" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="216" src="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTwWL5y4XpMBUSYqjvm_sBtV8xOKqIH5XJ6GlS4WL2O0CU5iE7G_w&t=1" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
I replaced the MacPro (which are a dier need of a revamp by Apple anyway) with a top spec iMac. I replaced Black Magic card with the cheapest Black Magic thunderbolt box (the Intensity Extreme). I kept the colour control surface and the 42" high end consumer plasma screen but lost the OLED monitor. Whilst the setup (I'm looking at it right now) doesn't make me drool quite as much as I had in mind it is still a major step up for me (and I still feel a little giddy about it). I believe I was stretching my Macbook as far as it would go and that is the moment that you should upgrade. So that's what I did. Now I can edit and grade in HD whilst monitoring the actual video signal on a faithful(ish) monitor that at least attempts to emulate the scale of watching a cinema screen and I can grade at least 4 times as quickly (and I'm not even practiced yet) with the control surface. Once I have pushed this gear as far as it will go then I can upgrade to the suite above and this setup will become my offline suite. Until then, I'm happy with this.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br /></div>
Andrew McKeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909081557550778323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819788203880519906.post-86804093185792519532012-05-20T00:44:00.001+01:002012-05-21T08:51:03.318+01:00My Career So Far<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.thezombiekingfilm.co.uk/images/downloads/the_zombie_king_wallpaper_4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" src="http://www.thezombiekingfilm.co.uk/images/downloads/the_zombie_king_wallpaper_4.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
These past couple of months have been pretty chaotic for me. I have been very busy with The Zombie King which we locked picture on last week, The Turing Enigma has made its way into the world via <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Turing-Enigma/dp/B007RG4BBO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1335348745&sr=8-2">Amazon</a> and <a href="http://theturingenigma.com/">Distrify</a>, I started a new feature called Tamla Rose and edited a good portion of the rushes during its first 3 week shoot and I recently put the finishing touches to the first feature I edited, First Time Loser, which has at last come out of the other side of its audio post and grade. All in all I'm feeling pretty reflective about my career so far and also thinking about what the future will hold. So far I have edited 3 feature films (First Time Loser, The Turing Enigma and The Zombie King) and going into my 4th I think I have learnt alot from all of them. I try to keep away from discussion of technology on this blog as much as possible, not because I don't find it interesting, but because there are so many other blogs which talk about the software and hardware side of editing. That mostly means I'm talking about editing techniques or the philosophies behind editing but today I'd like to share my experiences in the general post-production flow of the films I have worked on so far, what I have learnt from them and how I applied that knowledge when taking on the job of Editor for my next feature, Tamla Rose.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitRdMjQpOAL4Xgo-AuhayvHp5xo3Hpxfu1duoMTCgB9rhs8R29i3kxTeibJxgYwdErYHYoC7IzAFvAiOlnqW14LJPIbZrXoBaqqithsvxOeDV3xx0v1ac7d_vUsoBpb_qVgtdmGnuuDatd/s1600/51R2GG5wpDL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitRdMjQpOAL4Xgo-AuhayvHp5xo3Hpxfu1duoMTCgB9rhs8R29i3kxTeibJxgYwdErYHYoC7IzAFvAiOlnqW14LJPIbZrXoBaqqithsvxOeDV3xx0v1ac7d_vUsoBpb_qVgtdmGnuuDatd/s320/51R2GG5wpDL.jpg" width="226" /></a></div>
Let me first point out that all of the films I have worked on so far have had low budgets (and should probably be classed as no budget films). Whilst there was money spent on them all (in amounts that would make a lot of indie filmmakers drool), they are all at a level where most of the cash will dissapear into things like food, accomodation, camera and light rental and the general administrative process of getting a feature film made. What this basically means is that on all the films the majority of the cast and crew's payment was either partially or competely deferred. Working for free or a fraction of what you should be getting paid is a difficult game when you still have to pay rent/bills, but its really the only way you are going to get a foot on the ladder in a business as competitive as this one. Its a raw deal, but whining about it gets you nowhere. So if your interested, I'll describe my first 3 films in detail after the jump...<br />
<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br /><br />
<br />
<b>First Time Loser</b><br />
<br />
After editing several shorts and music videos whilst still doing my practical post-production diploma I turned my attention to grading to get some expereince with more advanced workflows and basically get better footage on my reel before I returned to editing. First Time Loser was my first time back in the editors chair after that short break. I got the job through the producer, Hannah Quinn, who had also produced a short I had edited about a year previously. It was a music based feature, so my experience with music videos gave me a good edge in getting the job. I had little to no involvement in pre or production and just let them get on with it. They shot the majority of the film over a few weeks on a Panasonic HVX200 with a lens adapter and Nikon lenses. I received the drive full of footage in about August 2010 and was pretty much left to my own devices to work through the film. One of the most difficult things about this film was that they had not used a slate at the beginning of every shot. The sound was being fed straight from the sound recordist to the camera so the slate was not necessary for syncing, but I still find it very useful to have every shot labelled with a unique slate number, take number and the scene which it is from, to help me organise the footage in Avid (or your NLE of choice). I was my own assistant editor, so labelling all the clips and organising them was my responsibility and this took quite a while. Because I was working on the film in my spare time, between a full time job and my course and because I only had access to Avid at college, it was towards the end of the year that I completed a first cut of the film. I then started meeting with the director. Fairly soon, we decided that we would need to shoot more. He came up with some additional scenes which would help the flow of the story and we wanted extra establishing shots of the various locations in order to help the audience jump from one scene to the next, especially as the film cuts back and forth between Ireland and Liverpool. The shooting went on throughout the first few months of 2011. In the meantime, I was also working with the director refining scenes and rearranging them quite a bit. This was my first experience of this process. When editing shorts, you have all the camera angles to work with and must decide on the best order of presenting them to the audience, but there are usually not many scenes so they stay in the order scripted. With FTL there were around 150 indivudual scenes with lots of jumping around in time and space. Assembling the scenes into the whole movie, is very much like assembling the individual shots into a scene, you can reorder them to best present the story to the audience. It's one of the most difficult tasks of editing a feature and one which initially made me very nervous. As I have done this more and more it has become more natural to me and something I really enjoy. In April of 2011 I was offered the job of editing another feature, The Turing Enigma. FTL was almost complete bar the insertion of some final establishing shots and some archive footage to help sell the 1960s setting, but The Turing Enigma was too interesting to turn down and the director of FTL was fairly understanding about me taking a short break to get through the initial stages of the film. However, as production on The Turing Enigma finished, the director of FTL came under pressure from investors to get the film finished and decided to pull in another editor to make the finishing touches. I handed over the drives and expected the film to be finished within a few weeks. Six months later I recieved word that the film had still not been finished and the director asked if I would come on back on to get it done. The Turing Enigma had been signed off and delivered a couple of months earlier so I agreed to take it back on so that it would see the light of day. After 6 or 7 sessions with the director we finished the film and a I passed the film on to a colourist, compositor and sound editor to do there part on the film, towards the end of 2011. The grade and compositing was finsihed fairly quickly and the final sound mix of the film was delivered last week. After one day adding titles and marrying the sound with the graded picture, the film is complete and ready to hopefully be sold at Cannes next month. All in all this film spent 20 months in post production, some of which was down to me learning how to edit a feature, some of which was not. But at least the film finally made it through post, which is often a massive hurdle for low/no budget films.<br />
<br />
<b>The Turing Eingma</b><br />
<br />
This being my second feature I went into it with a much better picture of what I had ahead of me. I was brought onto the project after a reccomendation from a good friend of mine Enos Desjardins who I had worked with before and was handling sound recording and audio post on this film. The producer/director had the foresight to bring me on board about a month before production started. Whilst we didnt do an extensive ammount of work together before the shoot, this allowed me to do a couple of things which made my job easier and quicker and ultimately improved the film. Firstly I got chance to get some footage from the DOP to test my post workflow. This is an absolute must if your taking on a tapeless project with a camera you have never worked with before. In this instance, the camera was the Red One loaded with the newest firmware at the time which had just enabled the camera to shoot 4.5k resolution. I won't go into my workflow here as I have talked about it in other posts, but getting to test it out was invaluable. Secondly, I got the chance to sit down with the director and plan how each scene would cut into the next. This sounds like a simple thing, but editing FTL had taught me that the joins between the scenes were one of the most difficult things to get right. Just a few hours making sure we knew what the first and last shot of every scene would be so that we could visualise how they would cut together, made a huge difference to the overall flow of the film. We then moved into production. One of the key differences on this film was that I was able to be on set every day of production (which was a very short 11 days). I bought a 17" MacbookPro just before production started and also hired an assistant editor who also had a MacbookPro. Between the two of us we managed to keep up with production, backing up, transcoding, syncing and editing the footage as it was shot. We were generally about a day behind production, having rough cuts a day after they were shot. With such a short shooting schudule this was very useful. On more than one occasion, I spotted additional shots that would help a scene work better and we were able to pick those up because we still had access to the locations and actors. The other benefit was that a day after production finished, I had completed a rough cut of the entire film (something which even I find hard to believe). It would have been tempting to take a break because we were so far ahead, but instead I worked a couple of sessions a week with the director and after a couple of months we had a locked edit of the film. Because the film was only 72 minutes long we did very little restructuring and the final edit was actually fairly similar to my original rough cut. The film then went to audio post for a couple of months and I graded it myself. We had a premiere of the film for cast/crew and families/friends at the Cornerhouse in Manchester and the film is now available to rent or buy on VOD and on DVD through Amazon and Distrify.
<b> </b><br />
<br />
<b>The Zombie King</b><br />
<br />
Not long after finishing up on The Turing Enigma I was approached by two producers from a brand new company, Northern Girl Productions. They had written a low budget zombie comedy and managed to secure two known American actors, Edward Furlong and Corey Feldman, to play key roles in the film. They were eager to secure an editor quickly so they could nail down their funding from Templeheart Films and I had been recommended by a couple of people. A strong script and the actors that were attached made it an easy decision. After funding was in place the shoot was arranged for december and I went about trying to get in touch with the director who was attached at the time. Unfortunatley it was very difficult to get in the same room as him and I found this pretty frustrating. With only a couple of weeks before the shoot, the director was replaced with Aidan Belizaire, a local director that I had met a couple of times and was actually pretty keen to work with. Obviously his plate was pretty full, with very little pre-production time for his first feature film, but we met up and discussed the style of the film and editing and this put me at ease. The shoot came shortly afterwards, which was 3 weeks long and happened in Somerset. Because of my teaching schedule I was only availabe to be there for the first week, but being there allowed me to set up a workflow for the DIT/Assistant Editor, Iain Thomson and to rough cut some of the most important scenes being shot towards the beggining of the shoot. When the shoot was over, I recieved the drive and set to work. Whilst the footage had been synced from the first week whilst I was there, there was still 2 weeks worth of footage to sync so that was my first task. Towards the end of this process I met with the producers and the rest of the post team to discuss deadlines for the edit which would give enough time for audio post, music and grade. I then got on with doing my first cut of the film. I had already done scenes here and there but this film featured a lot of fairly complex scenes with many flashbacks and a much bigger cast than I was used to. It was also my first comedy feature, but thankly I had some experience with comedy from a short I shot and edited whilst studying. Thrown into the middle of all this I was also asked to edit a trailer for the film that they could use in their quest for a sales agent. Because of the importance of the trailer, it took a few weeks work to get something that everyone was happy with, and this of course stopped me from getting on with the task at hand, editing the actual film. A big sales agent came on board as a result of the trailer, so it was worth it, but then the soft deadlines that we had talked about in that early meeting became rock solid deadlines very quickly so that they could start the process of selling the film to distribution. Myself and the director had to put a lot of hours in to refine my early cut (which I managed to finish just after the trailer) in time for the deadline. The film is now in audio post, the visual effects are near completion and it will then be off for the grade, ready for release in autumn. <br />
<br />
So, as you can see, each film I have done has been a learning curve, and this is one of the things I actually love about features. Every one is different. Going into each film I have been a little more prepared for the road ahead. You will always meet obstacles that you have never encountered before, but experience lets you overcome them quicker and more calmly. When I signed on to edit my 4th feature I was determined that it would be the smoothest road yet so I applied much of what I had learned from the very beggining. One of the first tasks you have is to agree a fee for your services. I think everyone knows how hard this is. It's something a lot of students ask me about and probably the only thing I am uncomfortable advising them on. There are just so many factors that go into deciding how much to charge for a job that it becomes an impossible equation. So I'm not going to give figures here, but what I will tell you is that I took a different approach to negotiating a fee for this film and I was happy with how it worked out. Initially I was offered a flat fee for "Editing" the film. The problem with agreeing to something like this is that there is no definition given for what that means. Am I Editor, Assistant Editor, Colourist, Compositor, Post Production supervisor etc all rolled into one, or just the Editor? Am I cutting just the film or will you need trailers too? What are the deadlines, will they move? The list goes on. So what I decided to do was to draw up a menu with 3 different rates on it. It stipulated exactly what I would provide for the money and when it would be delivered with each increase in rate offering more services and a faster turn around. I based the services offered on what I had observed from previous films in terms of what a low budget feature needs to get it completed. The turnarounds I based around how much work I would have to do on the side if I was getting the 3 different rate. This, I thought, would make it as clear as possible later down the line what I was being paid to do. A suprising bonus was that even though the lowest rate on the menu was more than the flat fee I had been offered, production actually agreed to the highest rate on the menu after seeing how it would benefit them. The other major thing I did was do extensive script analysis. I have the benefit of having a brain that can soak up quite alot of text and store it for a long time. This means that reading a script through a few times allows me to remember most of it and looking at a bit of footage I can remember which part of the story it comes from. Unfortunately this allows me to be a little lazy because I can get away without disecting the script too much, instead relying on finding the core of scene as I edit it because I can remember its context. However, disecting each scene in terms of its core narrative point, the motives of each character going into it and the point of view that you want the audience to take is essential to good editing and I wanted to do more of this time round before I got down to cutting. I also created an empotional map of the film so I could quickly see how each scene performed structurally. All in all I'm exited about how this film, and the 5th which I am in talks about now, will turn out. As I move into bigger productions I will get more money, but it is important I traslate this into better results and see it is a chance to hire assistants, buy better equipment and ultimatley spend more time on the film, rather than a chance to buy nicer things. For my age, I really shouldnt expect to be doing better than I am right now in a such a competitive career choice, but that isn't going to stop me.Andrew McKeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909081557550778323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819788203880519906.post-75098782432045441182012-04-02T16:01:00.001+01:002012-04-09T08:12:44.842+01:00The First CutMy favourite part of the job I do is doing the first rough cut of a dialogue scene. It doesn't have to be a dialogue scene, I'm quite happy with an action scene or music video or a simple montage, but dialogue is my forte. But that moment when I have a bin full of footage ready to go and a completely blank timeline is the most exciting moment in filmmaking for me. Truly, I believe it's the moment when the filmmaking actually begins. Production is exciting and I wouldn't dream of demeaning the input of the various roles involved, but a lot of the skills which go into it are not unique to filming. Photography, lighting, acting, art direction, they all have there roots in other art forms, but editing is the thing that sets cinema apart from everything that preceded it. Up until the moment you start trying to seamlessly combine the various performance and camera angles together to create a new little universe that no longer contains cameras and lights and crew and actors, only the characters that inhabit it, you don't really have a film. You just have footage. And that is why I love being an Editor.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I have in the past had people ask about how much "say" I get into what goes into the final draft of the films I edit. They are usually surprised that, technically, I don't get any. Thankfully, I am usually afforded the opportunity to put together a first cut of the film on my own. But if the director came along and decided that he literally wanted to change everything, he could. And at the end of the day he has that right, because its him that will get the credit if its great (i.e. it sells) and the stick if its rubbish (i.e. it flops). But putting money on this happening would be a foolish way to waste money, because it underestimates the power of the first cut. There is something special about seeing the footage cut together for the first time, and although there is always going to be a lot of work done after that, the first cut (if done well) will always leave an imprint on the finished project. So even, if I encounter a director who doesn't know the meaning of the world collaborate, I'm pretty sure I will always get my fair share of "say".<br />
<br />
To finish off this post, I'm going to put my money where my mouth is and give you a complete dialogue scene that I did for The Turing Enigma, my second feature as Editor. It's one of my favourite scenes that I've had the pleasure of working on.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="180" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/39628160?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="320"></iframe></div>Andrew McKeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909081557550778323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819788203880519906.post-71753280139425519472012-03-30T20:07:00.001+01:002012-05-21T08:49:26.433+01:00Prying Open Your 3rd EyeOne of the most important skills a good editor needs to develop is the ability to understand and manipulate the gaze of the audience member. The quality of every cut you make depends on your ability to determine where the audience will be looking before the cut and control where they look too after the cut. Many factors go into this including the emotional content of the scene, the composition, lighting and focus of the shot and the movement of objects within the frame. A lot of the time, this decision is made instinctually and you can usually feel if a cut is smooth or jarring (both have their place), but there are several things you can do to improve your cutting ability. One resource which has only recently developed is technology which can detect where your audience members are looking on the screen and log that information as data. The following video comes from a small audience watching a scene from There Will Be Blood. The circles on the screen represent where in the frame each audience member is looking. If someone maintains there gaze on one spot then the circle grows in size. I hope you find this as interesting and useful as I did.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="200" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/19788132" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="400"></iframe><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Andrew McKeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909081557550778323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819788203880519906.post-83747560640408915762011-06-09T14:52:00.001+01:002011-06-09T22:24:49.773+01:00READ BOOKS!I'm going to be in danger of sounding like your dad with this post but what the hell. If you want to be a writer/director/or filmmaker in any capacity, you should read more novels, not watch more films. Seems counterintuitive, I know, but let me explain a couple of reasons why I believe reading makes you better equipped to make good films.<br />
<br />
<u>Inspiration</u><br />
<u><br />
</u><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb2Y6XKaMam0rIAzjjoEz2H7PqmoOacMOmUCRRB5aVfvz7PBO8Z6MtRJ8yeDQjsOQkdmtTfYdFkL5u-bHx_ETNrI5nZd1tUfUaI6FSJSYCJi_fBgNu3cfGCmA-KXDlqsqpVNOCbpGJ44h1/s1600/killbill232335.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb2Y6XKaMam0rIAzjjoEz2H7PqmoOacMOmUCRRB5aVfvz7PBO8Z6MtRJ8yeDQjsOQkdmtTfYdFkL5u-bHx_ETNrI5nZd1tUfUaI6FSJSYCJi_fBgNu3cfGCmA-KXDlqsqpVNOCbpGJ44h1/s1600/killbill232335.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<br />
With the amount of remakes, reboots, knowing winks and downright plagiarism (I'm looking at you Quentin Tarantino) in the world of cinema it is has become patently obvious that more and more filmmakers are only looking to films for their inspiration instead of the plethora of art forms available to them. This gives us a situation where the same ideas are recycled and rehashed over and over again, each time becoming weaker than the last like the page of a book that has been photocopied, and then the photocopy has been photocopied, and then the the photocopy of the photocopy has been photocopied and.... well you get the point. The reason I think books can be such a good source of inspiration for original filmmaking is simple. They can be far more specialist. Films take a lot of money to make and distribute and whilst there are some niche markets, they just can't aim at the narrower audiences that authors of books can aim at and still make a living because of the lower production costs of writing and printing (or kindling? that's almost a pun because paper can be used as kindling and amazon's reading gadget is called a kindle, get it? anyway moving on). You can quite easily buy a book about a couple who use a clone of the baby jesus as a but plug (imaginatively titled <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Baby-Jesus-Butt-Plug/dp/0972959823">The Baby Jesus But Plug</a>), but I'm fairly certain it's unlikely to get optioned by Paramount. If you can publish to a smaller audience, you can take more risks. Filmmaking often falls victim of the committee. Now, I'm not suggesting that you should make films with a very narrow audience, because you won't get the money to make it. But taking inspiration from something specialist and niche and adapting it for a mass audience can be fruitful, interesting and (most importantly) fresh. Similarly, don't see this as an excuse to adapt every good novel into a film.<br />
<br />
<u>Subtext</u><br />
<u><br />
</u><br />
A lot of people talk about making their films more cinematic, and this phrase is generally interchanged to mean a lot of different things. They could refer to using wider shots so that it suits projection, using a wider aspect ratio like 2.35:1, shooting at 24 or 25p etc etc. For now, I'm going to cast the technical stuff like 24/25p aside, not because it doesn't matter, but because too many indie filmmakers get bogged down waiting to make their film until they have the right camera or whatever when you could just make that film and then make a better one when the Red Scarlet, that will so drastically improve your film, is released. The way I think of cinematic is based on what defines cinema as a medium. For example, cinema differs from radio and books in that you can show things to your audience rather than describe them. And cinema differs from theatre in that you can put every member of the audience at the same distance from the actors and you have almost total control about how great that distance is. The first one of these leads good script writers to the realisation that cinema is most powerful when it shows us a story rather than tells us one. Which is why action films are generally considered more cinematic than, for example period dramas. Some people take this a step further and seem to think that dialogue heavy scripts simply can't be cinematic but this ignores the way that cinema can project just the face of person on a 40 foot screen. The medium shot and the close up give us the power to show more than just what the actor is saying. So, even a dialogue heavy film can (in my opinion) be cinematic, if the emotions and story developments are shown rather than explained through dialogue, as they would have to be with theatre. This (at last) leads me to books, because what you need to make a dialogue scene cinematic is subtext. You need things for the characters to think, to want to say but never say and to mean when they say something completely different. A novel is one of the few places where you find subtext explicitly written down. In a novel you can write 5 paragraphs about the thought processes a character is going through before he or she responds to a question they have just been asked, even though in real time (and usually in cinema) the conversation would have continued at a normal pace. A lot of good novels are mostly subtext, because like making your film cinematic, this takes advantages of the characteristics of the medium. By reading novels and being more exposed to subtext you can become better at integrating it into your films Now, in a film script you don't (and almost certainly should't) write the subtext of scene down. But by knowing the subtext of a scene, by knowing that a character means yes even though they are saying no, by understanding that people might talk about something not because its relevant but because it can distract them from what they should but perhaps don't want to say, you will almost certainly write better scrips. And applying the same ideas when dissecting an already written script will also almost certainly make you a better director, actor, director of photography etc. By making a scene about the subtext rather than what the characters are actually saying, you instantly make it cinematic because you are showing rather than telling your story to the audience and taking advantage of some of the key characteristics of cinema.<br />
<br />
That is all.Andrew McKeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909081557550778323noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819788203880519906.post-41994821928101898172011-05-28T23:21:00.003+01:002011-05-29T19:12:58.490+01:00Empathy<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I have just started teaching a new group of students the joys of Avid Media Composer, through a series of 3 hour evening classes. Whilst we follow the 101 course laid out by Avid, I always like to mix it up with discussions about editing in general, so that I'm not constantly teaching them to how to push the buttons. In the first lesson we looked at the history of editing, which is very much tied in with history of storytelling in film.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8w5QJnT-s47VcqouI_DVp5Zdj9rGHMgBH5qB9ylrTkYcvNyzrifsP5DDAF5KFPwGK6Uz6KgY2mNkFAQnKU3HwUSmUNgjLOeYdcch5LNGJVSHxqIJZGEgltJqwqJ0W2ioM45GiF9ndLoqI/s1600/175px-Edwin_S_Porter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8w5QJnT-s47VcqouI_DVp5Zdj9rGHMgBH5qB9ylrTkYcvNyzrifsP5DDAF5KFPwGK6Uz6KgY2mNkFAQnKU3HwUSmUNgjLOeYdcch5LNGJVSHxqIJZGEgltJqwqJ0W2ioM45GiF9ndLoqI/s1600/175px-Edwin_S_Porter.jpg" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Edwin Porter's early films were some of the first to explore the cut and also some of the first to explore many of the ideas we see today in narrative cinema.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Recently in their 4th lesson, I started a discussion about what qualities a good dramatic editor needs to have to cut well (there are many other qualities which an editor needs to help him work well with clients and meet deadlines etc). There are some obvious ones such as creativity, imagination, attention to detail, focus and concentration. Knowledge of the editing software is also important but I was quick to point out that I consider this a base level for editors really and probably the least important thing in making you good at cutting. I see the software simply as a tool to help you make the decisions you need to make. Knowing the software inside out is not guarantee of success if the decisions you make with it are lousy. There are also plenty of excellent editors who can do very little with the software they use other than just simple editing, as they are used having everything else done for them. It is the the decisions they make about what to put in the sequence and in what order that makes them excellent. So in relation to different software packages, the only thing you really need to consider is whether it allows you to make the decisions you want to make, easily and accurately.</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQQDLTLbrq7xF9vBIKjMZZfysGXaSWaS2hPYuVV23Zs9-fjwD9zZ4DJysra5giR4Wabo8EMBoSW9KgsGGBodaD9scU_s7XWQLsZcyDuUEYgZJBS9gLakS_pLbBQX8HsL75lhHp6P26zKst/s1600/fcpx+vs+avid+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="131" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQQDLTLbrq7xF9vBIKjMZZfysGXaSWaS2hPYuVV23Zs9-fjwD9zZ4DJysra5giR4Wabo8EMBoSW9KgsGGBodaD9scU_s7XWQLsZcyDuUEYgZJBS9gLakS_pLbBQX8HsL75lhHp6P26zKst/s400/fcpx+vs+avid+1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></span></span></span><br />
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">So this led to a discussion of what I consider to be the most important quality that makes you a good editor, empathy. Don't confuse this with sympathy. You can be a complete bastard and still be a good editor. Empathy isn't about feeling sorry for people, it is about being able to put yourself in their shoes and as an editor, it is a skill I am always trying to improve. There are many different types of empathy, and two in particular come into play every time you make an edit. The first is kinetic empathy. Being able to feel and understand the movement of the characters on screen is vital every time you try and cut on an action. Accurately matching an action across a cut is integral to making the kind of invisible cuts that will allow your audience to seamlessly enjoy the scene unfold before them. The second type is emotional empathy. If, for example, you are editing a shot:reverse shot sequence of two characters talking to each other, you usually have a great deal of control over the spaces between when one person finishes speaking and other starts. Getting the gaps to sound fluid a seamless is one of the most important things to get right. This is where emotional empathy comes into play. If you can feel and think the way the character is supposed to be feeling then you can start to make decisions based on the emotional subtext of the scene. When a character asks another character a question, the speed at which they reply says as much or more than what they actually say. Are they reluctant to answer, are they desperate to answer having been waiting for the question to be asked for a while. Perhaps they even interrupt before the question has been finished/ The possible connotations are almost endless. The difficulty with this kind of thing is that there is no correct answer to how long the pause should be. I think this is why as editors we often have a tendency to talk about technology and software when we talk shop. But these are the things we should be considering, discussing and analysing. They are what make a truly great editor and finding ways to be better at should be at the forefront of our efforts to be be better editors.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I also wanted to discuss the empathy you must have with your imaginary audience, but this post is getting a little long, so another time.</span></span></div>Andrew McKeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909081557550778323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819788203880519906.post-63318636532665342712011-04-25T12:52:00.001+01:002011-06-26T11:56:53.136+01:00Dynamic TrimmingI mentioned the other day that as my experience has grown as an editor I have strayed from the step by step way of <a href="http://pixelwizard.blogspot.com/2011/04/crafting-scene.html">crafting a scene</a> and instead fluidly move between the different stages as I edit. That got me thinking about how else my editing style has changed since I first started. One significant thing I have noticed is that I use dynamic trimming (or trimming on the fly) more and more when refining a sequence. For anyone who doesn't know, trimming is a way of adding or removing footage to the beginning or end of clips in a sequence. So in a dialogue scene, it can be used to remove a word that shouldn't be there or add a word that should. But perhaps more importantly, it can be used to control the length of the gap between the lines of dialogue. For me, controlling these gaps is one of the most important part of making a scene feel natural and right. They can also add a layer of subtext to the dialogue itself. If someone takes a moment to think before answering a question, it can add a new layer of meaning to their response. Perhaps they are lying? Or maybe they just don't want to answer? When I was a teenager learning to play guitar, my dad would often say to me "It's not the notes that are important, its the spaces in between." I apply that logic to my editing today. So how does this link to dynamic editing? Well early on in order to control the length of the pauses between lines I would trim using numbers. I would preview the edit by looping it and then remove or add a set number of frames, then preview again. This gave a good degree of accuracy and I would always find the frame eventually, but there was a significant amount of trial and error. Dynamic trimming allows me to hit play on an edit point and wherever I hit pause, the edit will move there. Sounds simple enough, but this allows me to <b>feel </b>where an edit should be, rather than <b>find </b>where it should be through trial and error. I know that using this method has sped up my work, but I also think that it has improved it. Hopefully it has made my work more emotional and less mechanical which, in filmmaking, can never be a bad thing.Andrew McKeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909081557550778323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819788203880519906.post-73546535197058850742011-04-22T23:55:00.001+01:002011-04-22T23:55:18.012+01:00FCPXA quick aside from all the Turing Enigma stuff, to comment on the details that are floating around about the new version of Final Cut. A lot of people have been commenting on it after the NAB supermeet, and I have been putting off forming an opinion. Firstly, late me be clear that I am an Avid editor first and foremost but I do use FCP and I am soon to become an Apple certified trainer. I use FCP for corporate's and documentaries and find it works really well for fast editing where I am just simply assembling things on a timeline or where I want to create flashy sequences over music. I don't mind it for music videos and I also grade in Color, so I often use FCP to prep sequences for grading. But my ambition lies in editing feature films. And when I do that (as I am doing at the minute2) I want to do it in Avid because frankly, its perfect for it. I honestly can't understand how people craft dramatic scenes quickly in FCP. So my main reason for watching the sneak peak at FCPX was to determine whether this situation will be changing anytime soon. Short answer, no. FCPX looks like a great tool and will likely make what I use it for now, even easier, so I may even start using it more. But for editing features, it has moved further away from what I want. I'm sure there will be keyboard shortcuts but the focus is definitely on drag and drop editing, even more so than FCP7. And I don't want to drag and drop. I will race anybody, anytime, editing a rough cut of a dramatic scene if I can use the keyboard and they only have a mouse. There will also only be one window for viewing clips and sequences and it will alternate depending where your mouse is. Which sounds great, for when your editing a corporate on a laptop and screen space is minimal, but again, when I edit dramatic scenes I want to see the last frame of the sequence, when I'm finding the first frame of the next shot. Surely thats a must for any cut on action? The randomly appearing "magnetic" tracks also disconcert me because they will remove the idea of keeping the same stems of audio on the same track. That's important for me, when I build indivual scene sequences and then want to assemble them into a master sequence. Who knows, maybe I'll be proved wrong and by editing corporates on FCPX i'll be converted, but these are my initial thoughts. Anyone else?Andrew McKeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909081557550778323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819788203880519906.post-30434419230710712682011-04-20T12:34:00.003+01:002011-04-20T23:21:07.635+01:00Black & WhiteSo yesterday was day 4 of "The Turing Enigma" shoot and today we have the day off (so a chance to recuperate after going till 4am last night). Now we have changed tic-tacs (or tactics), we are keeping up with production pretty well. I have edited 11 scenes of the 12 they have shot (number 12 wasn't finished till 4 so I'll be editing that tomorrow) and there are some amazing looking scenes coming out. The longer scenes especially are seeming really slick. Some screenshots after the break.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
The film has an usual style as all the scenes set in present day are black & white and all the scene's set in the past are in colour. As the Red shoots RAW and doesn't bake in any of the settings you set on camera, we have been able to turn the saturation down as we shoot so the monitor sees black & white and my rushes come out black & white but if we for any reason change our mind, we can always go back into the settings and raise the saturation in the grade. I doubt that will happen though, as the footage looks stunning. There has been a lot of talk recently from big filmmakers like Peter Jackson of 48fps 3D being the future for filmmaking for the heightened clarity it gives to the audience. I suppose shooting in black & white is a direct challenge to that idea. When I was doing my film studies degree, I was taught photography and film isn't seen as an art form by some because of its similarity to real life. But there are many differences, like the constraints of the frame that force you to choose what to show and what not to show, or the fact that there are only 2 dimensions to the picture. It is these differences that make photography and filmmaking an art form. The pursuit of realism through 3d and higher framerates is a slippery slope in my opinion. Personally, I'm voting for going back to black & white instead.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT5UvP55GIHNjPs9h_77Oah9CSLRCxpuIJNaAZ_8uaPE7alaLWxtloHHnMTz8fil8UUUGz5idN-_8SBk03Vpkb2vL3ObQBQqHmNN_IjlfnsB9J7fvr1sXyQ51csl7-hQxy3IhcjWcTw9LU/s1600/2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT5UvP55GIHNjPs9h_77Oah9CSLRCxpuIJNaAZ_8uaPE7alaLWxtloHHnMTz8fil8UUUGz5idN-_8SBk03Vpkb2vL3ObQBQqHmNN_IjlfnsB9J7fvr1sXyQ51csl7-hQxy3IhcjWcTw9LU/s320/2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8g3gqfHOSIZqx276EfrbMv-x0w-aw0oUCtQuBDBc3Pqxd2CfY8OHCOj5KVO6A8-wJcnJWJek6JpEJSkGU88zaHhdIH4AMhBA674M7plEBvBU6p-7K3VObangY2Tv8MNNTp3A-4nzpl0WB/s1600/3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8g3gqfHOSIZqx276EfrbMv-x0w-aw0oUCtQuBDBc3Pqxd2CfY8OHCOj5KVO6A8-wJcnJWJek6JpEJSkGU88zaHhdIH4AMhBA674M7plEBvBU6p-7K3VObangY2Tv8MNNTp3A-4nzpl0WB/s320/3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg8X7BLvPRs0ro83F6Cm7PIbnYZAgfsrmkLhYlsN9K-j6sRoM65PFS_kGegWTNdpzY3Gd20pepT5eSTj7sCc6gvllQfaLOxsPs-AbGDN1X1L5A5eOqKN7FTqWc-0ezywjXcB6EdKcxJdcL/s1600/4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg8X7BLvPRs0ro83F6Cm7PIbnYZAgfsrmkLhYlsN9K-j6sRoM65PFS_kGegWTNdpzY3Gd20pepT5eSTj7sCc6gvllQfaLOxsPs-AbGDN1X1L5A5eOqKN7FTqWc-0ezywjXcB6EdKcxJdcL/s320/4.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM4rET_ZWnDYiNVdukiV_zW8skrTFsq8qOsI4HtmBybOOc3wGgptPKi4rhMx7xehTEGgfoycGXlqum9BmCLPRPcYMoOXqVDrt_Wk6YYTIZUvNAbHsh61aAlRmPX8WBpb_c-0NcopDrmcuo/s1600/5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM4rET_ZWnDYiNVdukiV_zW8skrTFsq8qOsI4HtmBybOOc3wGgptPKi4rhMx7xehTEGgfoycGXlqum9BmCLPRPcYMoOXqVDrt_Wk6YYTIZUvNAbHsh61aAlRmPX8WBpb_c-0NcopDrmcuo/s320/5.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6rQR96Y1UmduFmEZOYQJjmmCzDOskejSUdOmRj0Nwxdo0GTR4w9OcHeUxqqe7837H5YuaXMn1W-fDQOXS8QX8R3oKjjS2AXowngwgfIbXuvjJRfWpcbHm8VKb6nSzG59TIY3nLvnVbbmo/s1600/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6rQR96Y1UmduFmEZOYQJjmmCzDOskejSUdOmRj0Nwxdo0GTR4w9OcHeUxqqe7837H5YuaXMn1W-fDQOXS8QX8R3oKjjS2AXowngwgfIbXuvjJRfWpcbHm8VKb6nSzG59TIY3nLvnVbbmo/s320/1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7AI4VD0HHtWAolBjliSA1GpnHOdIDlDySh-Z6D3WJY781rWrJuG7uFwGd-pP-ndyaVnyAhdYaYiCgK72FT4-O5eumiAwMhKpjR2I4HSDTE8SEf0MUDL21-VgodwzK_WSUBuvhMSsrRMAl/s1600/6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7AI4VD0HHtWAolBjliSA1GpnHOdIDlDySh-Z6D3WJY781rWrJuG7uFwGd-pP-ndyaVnyAhdYaYiCgK72FT4-O5eumiAwMhKpjR2I4HSDTE8SEf0MUDL21-VgodwzK_WSUBuvhMSsrRMAl/s320/6.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRRDR3j866NmdDI5gaVPNbQuU10lcsyLovJHlSf8X8wYpDGSqUyTA9AeD3kzWqUDWMuNAMwFJaRddw9bLtedMvPzLYPnPYjywG0zCr_elKiOuvdhjrvwlpKmEq6CR78MJBM9zw0Q2DvMjO/s1600/7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRRDR3j866NmdDI5gaVPNbQuU10lcsyLovJHlSf8X8wYpDGSqUyTA9AeD3kzWqUDWMuNAMwFJaRddw9bLtedMvPzLYPnPYjywG0zCr_elKiOuvdhjrvwlpKmEq6CR78MJBM9zw0Q2DvMjO/s320/7.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Andrew McKeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909081557550778323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819788203880519906.post-57675415323658541852011-04-19T11:57:00.000+01:002011-04-19T11:57:12.606+01:00Crafting a SceneYesterday was day 3 of "The Turing Enigma" shoot. After spending the night before retranscoding the rushes from day 1, it occurred to me that we had been wasting a lot of our time on day 1 and 2, watching the blue transcoding bar creep across the screen. So we decided to leave leave transcoding unless there was time for it and focus on syncing so I could start editing. As it happens, the crew were working on some fairly complex scenes and so footage came in fairly slowly, but from now on, we will likely leave transcoding and just set it going after the day is over.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
Anyway, the outcome of all this was that I actually got down to the task of editing and have finished all the scenes shot on day 1 and 2. Rough cutting a scene is undoubtably my favourite thing to do in the world. It's easy to get overwhelmed by the number of possibilities ahead of you when you look at a bin full of different shots. On my first short a couple of years ago, I was very methodical in my approach to crafting a scene and this helped stop me getting overwhelmed. First, I would create a radio edit, focusing on getting every line of dialogue into the timeline, from the camera angles I wanted to use. Then I would go through every edit in the sequence and listen to it, refining the in and out points to remove extraneous noises and make the gap between the lines sound natural by adding to or removing the gap between them. Only then would I start to focus on what the video was doing. Using split edits (or j/l cuts as some people call them) I would move the video edit points away from the audio edit points. Using this method you can fix continuity problems, show reactions by cutting before someone starts or after some one finishes speaking, and generally create a more fluid scene. Hearing the audio from one shot and seeing the video from another, can help the audience link the two spaces in their mind, creating a scene rather than a series of shots (which is basically <a href="http://pixelwizard.blogspot.com/2011/03/my-job-as-editor.html">our job</a>?). Then I would pepper in some reaction shots and cutaways if needed, to break up a very long shot or show something to the audience that isn't in the frame.<br />
<br />
Now this process is more fluid. I have more experience and I jump back and forth between the various tasks, but I am glad I started out like this as it gave me a really good grounding in how to craft a scene, and how to avoid getting overwhelmed by the infinite ways the footage could be put together.Andrew McKeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909081557550778323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819788203880519906.post-73276919633670487652011-04-17T18:41:00.001+01:002011-04-19T11:58:18.384+01:00Make Your Mistakes EarlyDay 2 on "The Turing Enigma" has just finished. At the beginning of the day we caught a mistake that has meant a little setback in the editorial dept. Inside Avid Media Composer 5 there is an option for how you want to deal with AMA linked files called "Reformat". Unfortunately this option does not come up when you first link to a folder of R3D clips. You have to add it in the Bin -> Columns setting. This fact, combined with some confusion over what Quicktime player was doing when we played back the proxies (cropping the top with the quicktime bar) led to us transcoding the first days footage in DNxHD with the left and right of the image severely cropped into a 2:1 aspect ratio instead of the 2.4:1 that we should have had. So everything has to be retranscoded correctly, with Reformat set to "Pillarbox/Letterbox". A lengthy process to say the least, but it will be done by tomorrow. If we had noticed the mistake later, then we would have pushed ourselves so far behind we would have been catching up all the way through the shoot. And I would likely not have got much actual editing done. So make mistakes, but make them early on. Some wisdom we should all be able to take something away from.Andrew McKeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909081557550778323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819788203880519906.post-19832803674463726432011-04-16T14:54:00.001+01:002011-04-19T11:59:27.711+01:00Keeping Up With ProductionIts Day 1 of "The Turing Enigma" shoot. The morning started slowly but as production kicked into gear, we have had to work hard to keep up. We are holed up in our own room, backing up and transcoding footage as it is being shot. We have networked 2 macbook pro's together, one is reading the CF cards from the Red One, through an expresscard reader, the other is connected via eSATA to a GSpeed Q and it has become a juggling match between transferring data and transcoding inside Avid to DNxHD 36. The first scene (only 2 shots) is cut and the master of the next scene has been finished. As the medium shots and closeups come through, a third ball will enter our juggling trick. Should make for an interesting afternoon.Andrew McKeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909081557550778323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819788203880519906.post-9260876074104503292011-03-14T20:58:00.000+00:002011-03-14T20:58:31.690+00:00My Job as the EditorWhen I meet people in real world and tell them that I am an Editor, I am often met with a blank face. I have tried using Video Editor or Film Editor to clarify a little but still, the same blank face. Even film buffs who have a reasonable idea of how films work don't really tend to grasp the extent to which an Editor shapes the film they see so its hardly surprising that the public at large don't even seem to know what the hell we do. When you watch a film, you are hopefully experiencing a different world. Whether that world is similar to ours or in another galaxy is arbitrary, their has to be a space for the story to unfold in. The truth is that world doesn't exist. If its the bridge of a spaceship, that seems pretty obvious, but if its a bedroom inhabited by an old married couple, its existence is no more concrete. In an intimate moment, as the couple lie next to each other, perhaps after finding out that one of them is dying, the world of the film would have to you believe they are alone. But there is a camera there and a cameraman, a camera assistant (or two), a sound recordist, a boom op, a director, a producer, a few studio execs, a makeup artist, a script supervisor... well you get the point. Everyone working in post production has to trick you into believing they are alone. As an editor I choose not to show you the moment caught on film, where the AC marked the shot. I choose for you not to hear the moment where the studio exec choked on his donut. The other illusion is time. We have to make it seem as if the events you see are simply unfolding before you. When I cut from the old man to the old woman you have to perceive it as continuous. In reality it could have happened hours apart. The actors may have had lunch in-between shooting each shot, but I have to make you believe they are reacting to each other, organically and in the moment. This is the magic of editing and we underestimate it at our peril. With the onset of desktop editing is it becoming more and more common for directors/producers/executives' nephews to be the one tasked with editing. But just remember it is not being able to push the buttons that is important. It is knowing the order in which to press them.Andrew McKeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909081557550778323noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819788203880519906.post-30355641388371083522011-02-28T20:10:00.001+00:002011-02-28T20:19:49.670+00:00On Set Post ProducitonOn set post is a major new development in the industry and whilst it's motives probably lie somewhere in the ever increasing complexity of digital acquisition, I think directors and producers will soon be wondering why they ever tried to make films without post staff on site. As an editor I have been constantly trying to push the point where I start working on a film forwards, to well before the film shoots and the guys I know in sound post do the same. It creates better work, its as simple as that. We are starting to see that shift now and we need to embrace that wholeheartedly. On the feature film I am editing at the moment, they have just finished doing 2 days of pickups and because I was already on board editing the footage from the first shoot, I can already tell that the new footage is going to be easier to edit, just because I was able to have some input. So you can imagine my excitement at having just been hired onto another feature nearly 2 months before it shoots. I will be onset, with an assistant, backing up, transcoding and editing the RED One footage on a MacbookPro hooked up to a <a href="http://www.g-technology.com/products/g-speed-q.cfm">G Speed</a> drive. If I can establish that the new MBPs run Avid OK then I may even look into the possibility of utilising <a href="http://www.g-technology.com/products/g-speed-q.cfm">Thunderbolt</a>. I doubt budgets will stretch to a Thunderbolt raid, but maybe a Thunderbolt to eSata or miniSAS going into a G Speed? Even that would produce mouthwatering speeds by Laptop standards. So why this obsession with speed? Well, because basically I need to be cutting, and if I'm constantly waiting for transcodes then there ain't much use in me being there. I would be a glorified DIT and not much else. The processor and disk speed are always your major bottlenecks. I'm already getting the fastest MPB processor available so it makes sense to maximise disk speed as well. Occasionally we will utilise native R3D access over AMA into Avid MC5 when we really need to know how a scene is cutting before we move on and hopefully getting our drives as fast as possible will at least remove one of the hurdles. What kind of performance we'll get on a laptop, I'm not sure but hopefully it will be enough to make some basic cuts if we ride the settings down all the way. Mostly we'll be using AMA to transcode to DNxHD36 and we'll stay in that for all of editorial. After that we'll be sending an EDL and the R3Ds for finishing, most likely on a DaVinci 2K, outputting a 2K DPX sequence for Digital and 35mm print. Oh what fun lies a head. I'll be testing this workflow in the coming weeks and will post results here.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.kitmondo.com/images%5Clisting%5C2kplussm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.kitmondo.com/images%5Clisting%5C2kplussm.jpg" /></a></div>Andrew McKeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909081557550778323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819788203880519906.post-85078524146426503322011-02-01T01:29:00.000+00:002011-02-01T01:29:28.812+00:00ActingI have been thinking a lot about acting recently so I thought I would vent some of my thoughts at 1am on an outlet that nobody pays any attention too. We might as well start off with a bout of theatre bashing. I think a lot of people interested in acting would disagree but I wholeheartedly believe that the theatre is a crap medium for good acting. This seems kind of counter intuitive but I think if I can tell what your supposed to be thinking or feeling from the back of a theatre, then you can't possibly be acting well. Or at least not in a way that I would recognise as good acting. Let me elaborate. See, I'm a pretty rare breed of 20 something in that I watch the culture show on BBC2. If you aren't aware of it, it's generally full of self important wankers who toss off or criticise a bunch of pretentious bollocks, but they often mention good films that I might not otherwise hear of, so I watch it. And the thing is that every piece of theatre that they show on there looks rubbish, and this is supposed to the best of what's coming out. I really hope to meet someone who knows theatre and could show me where the hell I'm going wrong, cause I would hate to dismiss a whole art form off hand, but Jesus they're gonna have to be one persuasive bastard to get me to see how theatre isn't the most melodramatic waste of time in the world.<br />
<br />
Anyway, back to acting. My limited knowledge on the subject has lead me to the following conclusions. I hope anyone reading this finds them useful.<br />
<br />
1)You can never truly experience anything as someone other than yourself. The best you can hope for is a moment by moment emotionally honest performance based upon your own experiences.<br />
<br />
2)Your character is defined more by what you do than by any intellectual notions of "who you are". Even psychopaths don't think of themselves as bad people, it is what they do which defines them. If you judge a character you will never be able to play him as anything other than a caricature.<br />
<br />
3)You should avoid anything that will result in you monitoring yourself. You have to give yourself up to the events around you. Don't think about the effect you have on the audience or the results you are striving for. Don't tell us what you are thinking, just think it and we will see it.<br />
<br />
4) Your costars are your most valuable resource, use them. Truly listen to the other actors and react to their energy. Fight for the ideal of staring your costar in the eye, even if they are ofscreen and the DOP says the eyeline doesn't look right.<br />
<br />
5) Don't push. We don't have to see it when we are at the back of the room, we have to see it when your face fills a 40' screen. Subtlety is everything. In a theatre you need a soliloquy, in the cinema we can read your mind.<br />
<br />
That is all.Andrew McKeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909081557550778323noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819788203880519906.post-28318789230288495372010-12-29T14:05:00.000+00:002010-12-29T14:05:30.412+00:00Organisation and Director EnvyHaving 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 <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Make-Cut-Becoming-Successful-Assistant/dp/0240813987/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1293630858&sr=8-2">Make the Cut</a> 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.<br />
<br />
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.Andrew McKeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909081557550778323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819788203880519906.post-33597801722791959892010-10-22T10:06:00.000+01:002010-10-22T10:06:52.038+01:00The Technical DetailsIts 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.<br />
<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
<br />
Now, I'm the first to admit that I spend too much of my time and effort exercising the technical side of my brain and not quite enough on the creative side. And I think there are a lot of people like me. The technical side is more black and white, there are right and wrong answers and as a result its a little easier for me to navigate. The creative side is all subjective. You can pour all your effort into a script or an idea and still some people are not going to like it. I have a hard time being wrong and that probably why I spend more time trying to understand things that I can be right about, than I do creating things that people are either going to like or dislike. But I'm working on it. I've written scripts and am writing another now, I write this blog, I take arty stills images when I get hold of a camera. What has really been getting on my nerves recently though, is the lack of effort on the side of the creatives. Even people who claim to be technicians aren't delving deep enough into the technology behind the equipment we are useing to make a living. An example of this I heard yesterday on the <a href="http://16x9cinema.com/digital-convergence-podcast/">Digital Convergence Podcast</a> over at 16x9 cinema. Jeff Regan, who sounds like a pretty switched on guy, mentioned that the main reason we get <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_pattern">Moire</a> on a DSLR camera is not because of the line skipping, but because the optical low pass filter (<a href="http://www.optics-online.com/lpf.asp">OLPF</a>) on the sensor is configured for high resolution stills rather than HD video. I thought this was pretty obvious and in fact had been teaching this to some students a few nights before. The other two guys on the show (supposedly pretty technical guys) suggested that this was something revelatory and no-one else was thinking about this in as much depth as Jeff. Now, this may seem like a pretty dull fact, but what it means in terms of digital convergence is that using present tech, we will not be getting a camera that works equally well for both high res stills and low res (relatively) video. So people waiting for the Canon 5d MKIII to come out and solve all the moire problems are going to be disappointed. What we need is a camera with a big sensor and an OLPF designed for video, and low and behold we have the Panasonic AF101 which has the 4/3rd inch chip from the GH1, with an OLPF designed for HD video. No you won't get the shallow DOF of the massive chips of the 5d or even the 7d, but you will say goodbye to moire and get a shallow enough DOF to control your audiences attention. So as we see, a very small technical detail will have a big impact on your images and this should concern you. Even if you are a creative.<br />
<br />
<iframe frameborder="0" height="300" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/16000333" width="400"></iframe>Andrew McKeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909081557550778323noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819788203880519906.post-91600737014327713062010-10-15T16:23:00.000+01:002010-10-15T16:23:05.044+01:00The Storyteller's FlickerI'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.<br />
<br />
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.Andrew McKeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909081557550778323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819788203880519906.post-50465322160945148172010-07-23T11:20:00.001+01:002010-07-27T20:26:37.799+01:00"This Time of Year" and GearNot 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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
<update> Pics as promised.</update><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyvWuGq9M4yIcL-uvmVrP74sWN6LLVGs9BlB-sVx0HBjqW_Ilbxm6bOD1WH6qYlJWBe613mHfFiixhcG-U42cgdqUW_pTxeINAm4w25yUlHsRfLH8rNd3zDu1umMCxizKBI5V5gU-NfUKH/s1600/Family+and+Egg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyvWuGq9M4yIcL-uvmVrP74sWN6LLVGs9BlB-sVx0HBjqW_Ilbxm6bOD1WH6qYlJWBe613mHfFiixhcG-U42cgdqUW_pTxeINAm4w25yUlHsRfLH8rNd3zDu1umMCxizKBI5V5gU-NfUKH/s320/Family+and+Egg.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga2fY05hcKjTFK9QiozTKtTHQvc-8MRyA1sSJLeevS9q34uRNiac09qUbGxRC20Ov3JaYrL9L-urJH8HUSGkNGrPTtb55QS73LRLztp_skkXK5xkO6BiE3ygRhwMghnoew8nXXlzJbiKsD/s1600/Family+and+Egg+Graded.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga2fY05hcKjTFK9QiozTKtTHQvc-8MRyA1sSJLeevS9q34uRNiac09qUbGxRC20Ov3JaYrL9L-urJH8HUSGkNGrPTtb55QS73LRLztp_skkXK5xkO6BiE3ygRhwMghnoew8nXXlzJbiKsD/s320/Family+and+Egg+Graded.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHe1DPKTSABsj3kwdnVHf9AXN66nNQf4vfduQioOrYI7PlRA9Chvqg1tNRkqIZvwowHL_YTAI6FLLMKQz4Pomiit4_hQUDy75gwngI0rlLleMeG1TYlUDpqF2hmXVn8coamMEKeN1BHvNg/s1600/Drunk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHe1DPKTSABsj3kwdnVHf9AXN66nNQf4vfduQioOrYI7PlRA9Chvqg1tNRkqIZvwowHL_YTAI6FLLMKQz4Pomiit4_hQUDy75gwngI0rlLleMeG1TYlUDpqF2hmXVn8coamMEKeN1BHvNg/s320/Drunk.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5X7ryD461ksAoCeDXVw4hZv0EXXmFttR0pDhms6VIfwszH3SGf5u-67GzWzllTI0cVljKTWieNP4K__xxl6mip24u52R08SlurebVFXBASU_X63WnsXvKLc7uFggF4oLdJKX1S_ZEu5DP/s1600/Drunk+Graded.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5X7ryD461ksAoCeDXVw4hZv0EXXmFttR0pDhms6VIfwszH3SGf5u-67GzWzllTI0cVljKTWieNP4K__xxl6mip24u52R08SlurebVFXBASU_X63WnsXvKLc7uFggF4oLdJKX1S_ZEu5DP/s320/Drunk+Graded.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipZRtOuItUcCkixt-VQkOZd27wDsLN-TtU61a-8_uLfQH3abF-6CIXd8DDeD7ZzwNkb8I8ccBiqdf0QNvSqVxfFpAxVJSY1W8VRIUMmDIOnMyssbNLxGvAhIIb00K2Ivx0TYJ5BNbCNlFx/s1600/Toilet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipZRtOuItUcCkixt-VQkOZd27wDsLN-TtU61a-8_uLfQH3abF-6CIXd8DDeD7ZzwNkb8I8ccBiqdf0QNvSqVxfFpAxVJSY1W8VRIUMmDIOnMyssbNLxGvAhIIb00K2Ivx0TYJ5BNbCNlFx/s320/Toilet.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidokLVx72tW_kRcWWzRa5jNCf6CgWodm1IUZ941L21HJXo11EX9OmIadyYXuU4lMDiXMK0b-eljGYujZXv2hOFcEsXHfKIrEPoHeZ3la8qwQvkoNDX3dpqI9JpK4IhQjOMh2VyXRQWgiYX/s1600/Toilet+Graded.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidokLVx72tW_kRcWWzRa5jNCf6CgWodm1IUZ941L21HJXo11EX9OmIadyYXuU4lMDiXMK0b-eljGYujZXv2hOFcEsXHfKIrEPoHeZ3la8qwQvkoNDX3dpqI9JpK4IhQjOMh2VyXRQWgiYX/s320/Toilet+Graded.jpg" /></a></div> 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.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Andrew McKeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909081557550778323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819788203880519906.post-8900205520507596322010-06-11T09:48:00.000+01:002010-06-11T09:48:12.914+01:00Digital SnowI'm currently working on some effects and the grade of a short film by David Schofield (see his last film The <a href="http://pixelwizard.blogspot.com/2010/01/most-important-things-in-life.html">Most Important Things in Life</a> 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.<br />
<br />
<object height="300" width="400"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="movie" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=12452394&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1" /><embed src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=12452394&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="400" height="300"></embed></object><br />
<a href="http://vimeo.com/12452394">Snow Test 1</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user694404">Renegade Films</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.Andrew McKeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909081557550778323noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819788203880519906.post-30844870983100262672010-05-28T09:13:00.000+01:002010-05-28T09:13:42.940+01:00Avatar DaysJust 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.<br />
<br />
<object height="300" width="400"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="movie" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=9157869&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1" /><embed src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=9157869&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="400" height="300"></embed></object><br />
<a href="http://vimeo.com/9157869">Avatar Days</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user3065875">Piranha Bar</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.Andrew McKeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909081557550778323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819788203880519906.post-88891269265335122962010-04-25T11:37:00.000+01:002010-04-25T11:37:19.922+01:00Update on the Alexa and AvidJust 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.<br />
<br />
<object height="300" width="400"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="movie" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=10831418&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1" /><embed src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=10831418&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="400" height="300"></embed></object><br />
<a href="http://vimeo.com/10831418">ARRI Alexa World Cup</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/stargate">Stargate Studios</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.<br />
<br />
<br />
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.Andrew McKeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909081557550778323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819788203880519906.post-74673899116576508502010-04-10T15:49:00.000+01:002010-04-10T15:49:42.729+01:00RED KILLER!!!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ7C2vjfNM4A2zX7WGQGmTCxet81Ovi_s0sWDhz56YHC68k31hWIIArkT9kiiGG7lSbD9jFR6UVEt3Ieg9GvadJ9fMXnMWKFO507y4rcvwGGvCcwBU90zGthGl52gijvZ_6YvzWwgeGdui/s1600/alexa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ7C2vjfNM4A2zX7WGQGmTCxet81Ovi_s0sWDhz56YHC68k31hWIIArkT9kiiGG7lSbD9jFR6UVEt3Ieg9GvadJ9fMXnMWKFO507y4rcvwGGvCcwBU90zGthGl52gijvZ_6YvzWwgeGdui/s320/alexa.jpg" /></a></div>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.Andrew McKeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909081557550778323noreply@blogger.com0