Video Studentguy

Another week in PreProduction. We spent a whole class breaking down a script based on the Hemingway short story, The Killers. We analyzed the characters, locations, figured out props, camera and lighting locations. In a future module we're supposed to shoot this script. I think I've covered this ground already, so I'm passing on those details and keeping this show  shorter. I've included some information on how to cast for actors and also explain how everyone communicates with each other, in both preproduction and once the film goes into production. We're on break over Thanksgiving week, so there won't be journal entry, but I plan to post an interview with Howard Phillips, the Associate Director of the Film program at CDIA. It's pretty long, so I may break it up into two pieces a few days apart. Things are good with me, how's it with you?

This is the first week of the PreProduction Module. This is the class where we learn how things work, how to really make a film. I know I sound kind of bummed out by all the details raining down on us, but that was me speaking from the gut level. After so many weeks of practical classes, the change to straight classroom instruction was a shock, and the depth of the information was overwhelming. This stuff is dense and deep, but also greatly appreciated.J.P. Ouellette is our instructor, a director, producer and a great storyteller. His knowledge of the planning process that goes into preparing and shooting a film is outstanding. This is the first timein the program that we've gotten any amount of this kind of information. At first it seemed formidable, but we're starting to ease into a comfortable learning position. It makes us realize how big a responsibility it is to make a movie. It also makes the process more real and attainable.PreProduction - What is it? It's all the planning that goes into a movie befor

Last class in this module, where we quickly edit the footage we shot the previous Saturday and then review everyone's work in class on Thursday. Capturing to Avid was a lot of trouble, and this wasn't the first time. You need to pay close attention when you capture to your computer, if you want to share your media and project files with other people. Despite the fact that this was a great opportunity to look at filmmaking beyond the technical issues, there was barely enough time to take it all in. Some issues remain, such as how a director works with the crew. Everyone felt there wasn't enough time to work with the actors as well, or for discussing our experience in general, during class. I've tred to explain the reasons I think we're often cramped for time and feel we're not getting all the information we need. The most important reason is that there isn't enough class time in relation to the stuff we have to learn. Even with homework and whatever we can find time to do on our own between classes, there's

This episode of the Video StudentGuy is about the day I spent at Podcamp Boston last Sunday October 28. This is my first time attending a podcamp and I was really looking forward to it. Over all, it was a good experience. I'm sorry I couldn't have attended the previous day, I was in class There were a number of sessions specifically on video casting that I know would have been interesting. To top it off I was really tired, it was a busy busy week on all fronts. I never would have made it through the weekend if I attended both days. Next year I'll be done with school and I'll have a lot more time for user events like this.By the way, just after I posted this I found this link to a video recorded during lunch, Sunday I guess, from the sound of it. Fool that I am I went to the cafeteria and ate lunch! Anyway, its an ad hoc discussion about the value of the conference as the nature of new media and new media producers matures. I feel very strongly that those of us who are about to launch our careers in video sho

Podcamp 2 show coming up. Got me to thinking about how to make each show easier for someone to get into if they're listening for the first time.Actors in the scene we directed and shot are Hannah Barth and Ed Hoopman.Laura, John and I created a short film based on a scene from The Blue room. The class is about directing actors and I was the director, Laura the DP and John handled the sound. These soft skills are very different feeling from all the technology skills we've been learning. Its spinning around like a child in clockwise fashion, then reversing suddenly to a counter clockwise spin. You feel totally different, dizzy and yes nauseous.I had a great experience in this new role, but to be honest, I had a lot of problems figuring out exactly what the responsibilities of a director are and how he/she relates to the production crew.As always, there's never enough time, but in this module it seems everyone was frustrated by the compressed production schedule.

I forgot my pop filter and you're going to hear it. I apologize and promise it won't happen again, I just don't have time rerecord. I've used a limiter and have compressed it a little to save your ears, I hope that does the trick. If you find the popping too annoying, just pass to the next show, though I think it's worth the bother.The first week of the Directing Actor module. Our instructor, Steven Maler, Creative Director of the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company led us through several exercises that put us in the position of the actor, so we could see first hand what an actor needs from a director to deliver a great performance.I'm not ready to channel Stanislavski, but I get the point of method acting. Reading scripts in front of the class and improvising dialogs between characters shifted our focus radically from the technical aspects of production and editing. It wasn't that difficult and I think the teacher gets a lot of the credit.Another new idea we learned was the concept of the beat. Check out the li

I'm trying out a new, scaled down intro, whadya think?Here are a few podcast recommendations in the show:Canadian Podcast BuffetCovervilleMacbreak Weekly Podcamp Boston 2 is taking place Oct 26-28 at Boston Convention Center. Registration is free and there's a lot of seminars presented by regular people who have their own podcasts. During the sessions there's a lot of give and take between the audience and presenter, so everyone has the opportunity to contribute their experiences. I plan to be there on Sunday.The Avid Edit Lab module finishes this week and I've got the highlights. I also have some comments to make about editing and the rocky road Avid has led me on.We spent about 4 hours in our Saturday class critiquing the films we handed in. Nothing is ever finished, you just pick a point in time and stop. The critique was great, lots of useful comments and everyone was engaged. Two Film projects and eight people, so there was a lot of variations on how the same problems were solved.

Howard Phillips is out for the next couple weeks, down in Washington, directing the fall program at the new CDIA campus. Good luck everyone. Filling in for Howard is Chris Bowan. Chris is an Avid editor and has a lot of tips for accelerating the editing workflow. He showed me a lot useful thing using key commands for editing. It can be awkward to use at first, but it makes a big difference in how quickly and smoothly you get things done. Eventually you can work entirely through the keyboard, with your right hand and the mouse in your left hand. Or vice versa, if you're a lefty. Between learning Avid and editing a dialog centered movie I have a feeling, shared by a few people in class, that this project is much harder. Rather than trying to create a completely finished final cut, I'm spending my time playing with different types of edits. Trying to keep the story moving ahead smoothly. I'm relying on straight cuts, no transitions and looking for shots that lead well into each other. The dialog is controlling

This week we begin the Avid Edit Lab module, continuing to learn how to use Avid as we cut a movie from footage we shot a month ago. I'm finding it very difficult to get this. I'm looking forward to actually digging into a project where I have to cut it from capture to export. Be forewarned, if you've already got experience with FCP, it's going to complicate your brain learning Avid.The film we shot for the Huntington Theatre demonstrated to me how awkward the color correction tools in FCP 5 are. I know, they're way better in the next upgrade of the Suite. Apple's Color app is a great deal, amazing deal, but I don't have it yet. I asked Howard, our instructor to show Laura and I how to use the color tools in Avid. Cool, powerful and intuitive, at least to someone who's been color correcting digital photographs for years. You use curves, not levels, not unlike Photoshop, only different. Of course I'm used to thinking in CMYK, from years of prepress work, so I'm sure it will be bumpy ride to the top.Scouring th

I've come to the end of the series of podcasts about the Digital Manifesto that Mike Jones posted on his blog, Digital Basin. That was earlier this summer and I try my best to explain why it's taken me long to post 5 podcasts. Throughout the series I've been using his ideas in the Manifesto as a guage to determine how current the curriculum at my school, the CDIA is. It did very well - 9 out of 13. Here are the issues, numbered according to the Manifesto followed by the episode they were reviewed in. Passed 03 Compositing #35 04 Distribution w/o hierarchy #3705 Owning the entire filmmaking process #3706 Software agnosticisim #3708 Screen Studies integrated into Production #3909 Succeeding despite obstacles #3910 Promoting the story ahead of production values #3912 Collaborative Learning #4413 Teacher as Facilitator #44 Not Passed 01 Composing Space #3502 Virtual Camera #3507 Immersive Sound #3911 Personal Stories #44 These episodes were different from what I usually post, they involved

I'm running to keep up again. I spent a lot of time recently on a non-class film project for the Huntington Theatre in Boston Mass. We did a promotional film for a play that is running through next week called the 39 Steps, a comedy based on the Alfred Hitchcock spy thriller. It was a lot work in a short time, but I, along with classmate Laura got it in on time and made the client happy, so it was good all round.This is the end of the Module on the introduction to Avid, but there's another 3 weeks of Avid that follows where we edit our own film. I'm going to spread my comments about Avid over the next few weeks. This week I'll give you a general overview of the program and talk specifically about the user interface and how important it is to organize your files properly in Avid, as opposed to to Final Cut Pro.We edited the 39 Steps promo in FCP, but it's really difficult to use one program on a job while you're learning a different one in class. There's a lot of lessons we learned, like how difficult it can b

I've finally gotten a handle on some of my recording tools, such as the Mbox2 mixer and my condenser mic. I hope you've noticed an improvement in the audio quality. I'm still working on production quality, but I got a helping hand from Erica at CDIA, who helps maintain the audio and classroom maintenance for the Recording arts program at school. She demonstrated that my problems were due to my incompetence and not the equipment manufacturers. She also gave me a quick but thorough tour of Pro Tools. Sometime soon I'll take a few trips into Pro Tools country to record a few episodes.Another problem I had was the absence of a mic stand and so I made one out of coat hanger and I used the leftover wire to create a pop filter which keeps the mic clean and softens annoying plosives.This weeks classes continues the module on learning Avid. Since we have already covered Final Cut Pro earlier in the program everyone was wondering how you work the two together in a single workflow. Avid and Apple don't make it easy, but

I'm sorry I you weren't there when I called. I'll talk to you next week.

This is the first week of a new module where we learn how to use Avid Xpress Pro, in preparation for editing the footage we shoot a few weeks ago. Avid doesn't have the mind share among would be filmmakers as Final Cut Pro does, so I spend a little time talking about it's place in the filmmaking world.It is the premier NLE and there's always talk about how it measures up against FCP, so I've included 1, 2, 3 different articles comparing the two. A very significant difference is that the companies that produce these programs have very different missions. Apple is all about bringing the professional media experience to the consumer, Avid is focused on the production needs of professional media makers thru it's own post production systems and the many companies it has acquired, like M-box, Digidesign and Softimage.I've got some details about a project I'm involved in along with Laura, who I've worked with in the past on the genetic fingerprint documentary. We're going to shoot audience reaction to the play, The

This is the last week of the Film Project II module, which is to say the last week where we can shoot footage that we will edit in 3 weeks. We don't have anything more we plan to shoot right now, but we may. This week we reviewed our footage and talked about it in light of what we already learned in previous classes and this project. We had problems lighting, but the final footage looked quite good. There's also information about how to log video, before you capture and I explain how the camera sees compared to how our eyes see. Next week is another new module where we learn how to use Avid.

This is the last post that where I discuss the 13 proposals in the Filmmaking Manifesto from Mike Jone's blog, Digital Basin from earlier this summer. I've learned a lot, have you? During these episodes I've tried to stay focused on Mike's ideas and how CDIA measures up against it from my narrow perspective as a film student.I plan one more show on this topic where I talk about what I've learned personally. It's not a recap or summing up, though I will probably spend a few minutes doing discussing just that. What I'd really like to do is reflect on some things that were a little too far off topic to include previously as well as some actions I want to take.This week I'm going to cover the following items:11 - Creating Personal Stories12 - Collaborative learning13 - Teacher as facilitator As far as personal stories are concerned, I'll elaborate on the writer's block I've experienced. Happily in the previous post in this podcast I believe I have beaten off. Look at #43 for more details. I haven't read much on h

This week our team hunkers down and puts in long days of shooting the scene for the second film project. The team consists of Jonathan, Dennis, Mike, John and myself. Despite difficulties, all the effort pays off. I hope I'm not spoiling the suspense for you.In process of learning my lines and and other performance skills, during an impromptu acting bootcamp, I have a story writing epiphany that releases me from the curse of writer's block.There are a few technical details I include, such as a production breakdown list, a shot list or storyboard, a master shot, blocking and what is a C47.I also try to describe the the wonderful feeling that you get after you stop banging your head against a wall, also known as success.Finally there's a fair bit of talk about the satisfaction that comes from working as a team. I admit that my description is a little over the top, particularly where I invoke a few lines from Shakespeare's St Crispen's day speech as delivered by Henry V. But I do mean it. I love that speech by t

Very short post this week. We're preparing ourselves for a multimodule film project. This week we're choosing our script  and team members. Have to shoot the script and show some footage in another two weeks. Following that we're learning how to edit in Avid, then another three weeks of editing.

This episode is all about Saturday's class where we diagram the movie Manhunter, by Michael Mann. This is the precursor to the Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal Lektor is just as scary in this even though he is a minor character.Using scripts of The Village, by M. Night Shyamalan and Heat, also by Michael Mann, we looked at how to do the formatting. Writing the content of a movie is a whole other matter which we didn't get into. The first step in the door is the actual format of the script. People are very particular that it look a certain way, all the letters are crossed and dotted, headings are just so. Also I pass along some tips for things to avoid when writing for visualization.Here is a list of items for formatting the page:LocationAction BlockCharacter NameParentheticalDialogTransitions Lots of software you can use, Final Draft we're using in class, Movie Magic Screenwriter is another app available. Demos are available. There's a free, opensource screenwriting software called Celtx that I have downloa

Due to a change in the curriculum at CDIA, this module was broken into two parts, the first two were about production audio, this one is called, well, you can see what it's called in the title, and it's about film studies, history and what we call film grammar, which is the construction of the story through camera frame, sound, editing and everything else that goes into creating a film.There's a great deal that we covered, but of course I'm going to talk about all the interesting things. Genres are discussed briefly, we review some films, such as Manhunter that demonstrate how to build suspense, not as easy as you think.For some reason I use an analogy of Impressionism vs Jackson Pollock and then from there move into the horror genre, specifically zombie movies such as Night of the Living Dead, Shaun of the Dead and 28 Days Later.There's a number of guidelines for judging the value of such movies as Heat and Memento like intention, 30 degree and 180 degree rule, misdirection and the concept of filmmaker as Au