Ukraine Project: Salt & Light

As many of you know I went to Ukraine this summer for three weeks, interviewing pastors and documenting their stories about growing up under the Soviet Union up through their current ministry. For more information about the trip you can read my earlier blog post here and here is a link to see pictures of the trip.

The past few months I've been busy editing and putting the stories together. This is the process I've been using:
1) Match the translation to the correct interview clips. Often I had the translator do two takes for each interview clip (and there are 5-7 clips that are 3-5min each) so I have to decide which parts are better and match it sound like all one clip.
2) Cut the translation down and down to around 13 minutes for each pastor, so that the story doesn't drag but still includes needed information.
3) Cut out all the "ums" and stammers and stutters from the translation and still make it sound natural and smooth
4) Make sure the actual visual part of the interview (handmotion, face expressions) matches what is being said by the translation
5) Start adding b-roll, and pictures that enhance and/or demonstrate what the pastor is talking about. I have footage I shot with each pastor of them at their church, Bible studies and just following them around for the day (approx. 30-45min), and then I also have over 3 hours of what I call "Ukraine B-roll" of misc. life, society and culture that I captured while traveling around.
6) Next I start adding music.
7) After a video is approved, I work on finalizing the audio and do the color correction.
Here's a screen shot I took the other day, you can click it to view a larger version.
The little sliver of a window in the very top left has the full list of video clips, music and other elements that I am using for the project. Next to it is the video window where I can add filters and customize the length of clips I want to use. (Each timeline is where I drag the clips I want to use and arrange them, fix audio, and actually do the editing.) The other three video windows are showing me clips from each of the three timelines down below. The beer bottle correlates with the top timeline of "Ukraine B-Roll," the church clip is from the middle timeline of "Pastor's B-Roll," and the clip of the interview is from the very bottom timeline where I am putting it all together!

I don't usually have that many windows open when I am editing, but for this project it helps save time from clicking back and forth when I'm trying to look through that much footage.
Share

Tons of Tips for Filmmakers

The 3 Steps of Production
"I haven’t made a lot of films but I have witnessed the witless as they go down in flames on their own sets enough times. The key is to learn from their mistakes. You have three opportunities to completely mutilate your film and pile heartache and unnecessary work on yourself. We call these preproduction, production, and post production. Three lessons for each stage. While these may seem like common sense it still amazes me how uncommon sense seems to be." Read the full article here.

12 Tips for Better Film Editing
"I’m currently cutting a digital feature and this has made me think about editing styles. Here are an even dozen tips that I feel will make any budding film editor better at this craft. I’m sure not everyone will agree with all of these points, since they come out of my own approach and style. Nevertheless, I hope they offer some takeaway value for you." Read the full article here.

10 Tips for a Better Final Cut Experience
"Many experienced editors making the transition to Apple’s Final Cut Pro often struggle with some of FCP’s core operating features. This is especially true of many Avid editors who view working in Final Cut akin to learning a different language. Here are 10 quick tips on how to run and organize FCP edit sessions that will hopefully ease your frustration." Read the full article here.

Dealing with a Post Production Facility
"The do-it-yourself filmmaker might view the traditional lab or post facility as a place of last resort. That belief stems from a fear that – like a visit to a doctor or lawyer – every minute is billable. Most finishing facilities are actually easy to deal with and have the producer’s best interests at heart."

"Sometimes, clients simply don’t know where to start, what to ask, or what’s expected of them. I posed some of these questions to a roundtable of post professionals, including Terence Curren, owner of Aphadogs (Burbank), Mike Most, chief technologist at Cineworks (Miami), Brian Hutchings, freelance colorist (Los Angeles) and Peter Postma, US product manager for Filmlight." Read the full article here.

Christian Film Makers Workshop - Bryan, TX

This past weekend I had the opportunity to help teach at a film making workshop in Bryan, TX!

The Jones family who hosted the conference has been working on a 25 min. (approx) short film called Bessie about the story behind "When the Roll is Called Up Yonder" - they used a lot of examples of location scouts, costumes, lighting and story boarding from their experience. I have to tell you, I am very impressed with the amount of work they are putting into this movie and I'm looking forward to seeing the final product! Visit their website to watch a trailer for the movie.

The goal of the training workshop was to encourage Christian young people who are interested in film making by providing a two day training course covering the basics of film making and then providing an incentive for them to actually make a film by hosting a film festival at the end of the summer with a $100 Grand Prize!

I got to teach about editing and color correction, and had an absolute BLAST!!

Quick review of my presentation

Stacie and I were the main presenters

"These are the basics of an editing program"

Me having fun :)

Doing some live editing for the group

My bro Caleb, me, Kayleen and Sarah (from DCFM) and Stacie Jones
I had a lot of fun working with this group!

You can see more pictures from trip on the ReelCast Facebook page

!

Editing Transitions

DJTV has a new "Cutting Class" episode up today. Watch it here.

Camping BTS #6

CLEANING UP THE EDIT FLOOR

Here are a couple of things that I do when I am finished with a project. First off, is to go catch up on sleep! Ok, seriously…

I put the finished video on a MiniDV tape and label it MASTER for use later if I ever loose my finished video. Cleaning up the scattered files is another way to make sure the project stays altogether (and of course that starts during production) some people even burn these project files to a CD for use later. Also, I go to the Final Cut Pro program files and delete the Video and Audio Render files for the project along with the Capture Scratch video files – AFTER I make a master first. ☺

I then get ready for the next project…..

Random Notes:
-Be careful when handling a camera around sprinklers
-Throwing leaves on the fire are a great way to make the fire brighter
-It is difficult to resist the urge of blowing out an ignited marshmallow
-Grandma is hilarious
-Camp food is really good (most of the time) and it is a good thing too, cause we like to eat ;)
-siblings don’t like paddling with their hands

That’s it for this project! I hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to let me know if you have other questions or if you have other areas that you would like me to cover in future BTS sessions.

Camping BTS #4

If you haven't seen the "Camping 2007" video yet....you might want to watch it first.

EDITING

CAPTURING
The first step to editing is to get the video on the hard drive. Instead of capturing a whole tape at a time Final Cut Pro allows you to go through a tape and make “in and out points” which are then created into a “temp clip” to be captured/digitized later.

I like to give my clips names that contain project and "take info. For example “Cmp07 – 01” – “Cmp07 – 02” it just helps me keep it organized. When I am done logging all the clips, I can select them and choose “Batch Capture” and the computer automatically goes back through the tape and creates the clips for me.

ORGANIZING
When editing I prefer the “View as List” option for my folders and bins. On every project I basically have 4 main folders – VIDEO – FILES – MUSIC – AUDIO. (sometimes I have Sound FX or Power Point folders too) You can see a picture of my Camping Folders below (click to view it larger).

Also, for just basic project files I create a folder on my external Hard drive for each project. Inside that folder my files are organized very similar to my FC folders. This project is a little less organized than normal due to the smallness of the project and lack of files.

Projects such as Joel’s Journey and Call of Courage have a very large number of folders.

DRAG AND DROP
Next, I go through the clips and pick the ones I like (I kind of did that when I captured the footage, but I still have multiple takes to choose from) I drag the ones I like into the timeline and arrange them by group “B-Roll” – “Narration.” Sometimes, depending on how much video I have to work with, I will even create a separate sequence just for the B-Roll. It simplifies my main timeline and keeps it less cluttered. ☺

SWAP IT AROUND
This is the part that is really hard to describe…. For the camping project, the next step was to start putting the B-Roll that went with each point together and interspersing the narration in a chronological format. In the following picture you can see the whole FC screen. In the Timeline I have my "faded black border" on the top layer, some special FX and b-roll in the next layers, and the bottom layer is my main narration and main b-roll.

FASTER, FASTER
The bane of videographers is that the video is too long or the shots are too long. (Now I am NOT advocating MTV style editing – got it?) It is best to get into the shot late and then leave early, especially for comedy. This is a good technique for movie outtakes too ☺ I tried to cut the shots rather quickly and to keep the pace moving. Some people have still told me that the video is too long in general, and yea…there are a few places that adding some more dialogue would have helped. We live and learn right? ;)

ADJUST THE CUT
Normally I stick to straight cuts and fades, the amateur star wipe or paper airplane are not in my typical set of transitions. :P However, different styles call for different transitions and I wanted the transitions to compliment the comedy effect I was going for. “Swish transitions” are often used in movie trailers for comedic impact, so I decided to try applying it to my short video. One thing to remember when applying Special Transitions (this applies to any transition really) is that you must use it sparingly and for a reason, meaning that if you place it correctly then the audience will expect it and associate with a specific element of your video. EXAMPLE: Camping ’07 – the “swish transition to the right” meant NEXT POINT and “swish transition down” meant THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF THE POINT JUST GIVEN. I added a few other fun and funky transitions to try and keep the pace moving. Note: SoundFX for the "swoosh" were from Digital Juice's SoundFX Volume 1.

SPIN YOUR WHEELS
After I have my video edit finished I take my color wheels for a spin! There is a lot of thought that goes into correcting the color on a shot and there is a lot of information out there on how to do it. One training video I found useful was by Digital Juice. You can view it here. (also, more on CC and special FX coming later)

MAKE THE MOVIE
Once the video is done, and the audio has been adjusted, I export the clip as a QuickTime Movie.

Some projects are now ready to be compressed using Compressor, such as Camping ’07 outtakes, while for other videos I still need to create some special titles and graphics. Camping 2007 called for some specialized titles, and since I don’t like Final Cut's title feature, I fired up Motion…but I am getting a little ahead of myself, that’s a subject is for next time….

[GRAPHICS AND TITLES] coming next….