My Experience With Keying

While I wouldn’t necessarily refer to myself is a “Green Screen Guru”, I have my share of experience with pulling color based keys. For me is started on a Grass Valley 200 switcher in the late 80’s with the little spinning knobs you used to select and finesse the color. I remember that little chirping sound it would make as you went from one limit to the other. Just thinking about that switcher really takes me back.

In later years I worked with a Ultimatte 45 external hardware box that allowed you to pull great keys using a component signal. At the time it was a $35k box and the place I was working at would only rent it when we had a project that required it. Sometimes I would run it as part of a studio shoot to check keys as we went, but most of the time it was setup in the online suite I was in.

The difficult part about using this box was that the first few times I used it I only had a few short hours to actually learn the box. As soon as it showed up I would pull out the manual and start reading so that I could at least appear to the client that I knew what I was doing!

Years later we have tools that are so much more powerful right on our computers, and they cost a small fraction of what the original Ultimatte did, or in some cases come free with editing and compositing software. FCP Studio has some ok keyers included, but Primatte inside of Motion is actually pretty good. And AfterEffects has KeyLight, which I find to be the best blue/green screen keyer out there for what I do. It’s rare that I can’t get a good key out of keylight regardless what I throw at it.

Why I Decided To Read It

So with my years of experience you might think that I’m great at pulling keys of all kinds without issue. In fact you may say the same thing about yourself.  While I can hold my own for sure, I have always felt there were holes in my knowledge. I learned on the job, and only learned about the things that were thrown at me, as opposed to any kind of formal training or even keying basics. We have a reoccurring job at Edit Creations that always seems to be more difficult than it should be. While the keys in the end come out pretty good, they’re not perfect. And while there are times that maybe you decided it’s “good enough” what you’re doing, I want to know that I can in fact pull that perfect key every time, no matter what.

So it was with great pleasure that I found Jeff Fosters new book, The Green Screen Handbook. The book’s only focus is green screen, and it’s a modern book that’s based on technology that’s available today, not from 10 years ago.

What The Book Is NOT

If you’re hoping that this book has tons of difficult keying examples with step-by-step detailed instructions on how to get great results, it is not. It does not get into what slider bar to adjust or which keyed is the best for which situation. This is what I was hoping it was. While I was disappointed initially, as I kept reading I realized it was much more comprehensive and covered the entire process, not just the post production part.

What Is Covered

The book starts out with a history of how we got to where we are today with travel matts, and what it was like in the early days. I actually found this part of the book fascinating and really enjoyed it. It gave me a good appreciation for what we have today and I couldn’t help thinking that the originators of the technology would really be amazed with what can be done now with relative ease.

Jeff goes on to explain the difference between blue and green screen (and when to use one over the other as well as when to use both at the same time), and hardware vs. plug-in based tools.

What I really ended up liking about this book is the way he covered everything from pre-production through post, as well as different budget levels. In other words, no matter where you are in the spectrum, if you do green screen work you’ll find something that applies to your part of the world.

One of the most important things I learned from reading the book was that the reason that some of my keys are difficult to pull, is that there are some issues related to the way they are shot. First, there would be a great benefit to using green bulbs to light the green wall (I didn’t even know you could do that). There are specific bulbs made just for this purpose. Second, and the biggest problem we’re having is the video we’re recording, while in HD and the P2 format, has too many compression artifacts, thus we are getting very noisy source footage to start with. There are some adjustments that can be made in the camera, but we are also considering recording uncompressed right out of the camera to ProRes 4444 on a Ki Pro. Our next shoot is coming up in a few months, and I look forward to implementing some of the new ideas.

There is a section of the book called “How the Pros Do it” that make my little head shot keys look like child’s play. It’s interesting to see some of the high end work with explanations on how they accomplished the scene.

Other topics covered include the importance of pre-production and storyboarding, testing shots as well as your workflow, having your talent interact with background elements and how to retain natural shadows from your subjects.

Overall I was very impressed with the work that went into this book and feel like I will be a better green screen artists having read it. It reminded me of when I took a motorcycle riding class years ago. Going into the class I thought I knew it all (or at least a lot). But once I was done with the class I realized how little I really knew, and was a much more confident rider.

Included DVD

There is a DVD that comes with the book (unless you buy the Kindle version, more on that later) that includes tons of goodies organized into folders that match the chapter numbers. You’ll find movie clips PS files and AE files that let you see first hand how some of the examples in the book were created.

Don’t Buy The Kindle Version

I love my iPad and the Kindle App, so when I realized I could buy the book and have it instantly I didn’t hesitate. However, a book like this probably would have been better in print. Here’s why.

Formatting on Kindle books is great, if you have a simple text layout with few images that can be shown in-line. Because this book is about visuals as much as the printed content, the formatting was just terrible. This is not the fault of the author, but of the Kindle book format itself. It just does not allow for free flowing organic looking layouts. I could have gotten by with this and still been happy with the Kindle version. The big problem was that you get no DVD with the kindle version, and that is a deal breaker for me. I was able to get a copy after making a few phone calls, but this was the exception. No physical book, no DVD.

Applying What I Learned

There are 3 main things I’m going to change in our reoccurring project based on what I learned in this book.

1) Shoot with green bulbs. This is covered in great detail in the book.

2) Record uncompressed out of the camera into a codec that is more “keyer friendly”, or at least to one of the higher bandwidth ProRes codecs. 

3) Try some slightly modified techniques in keylight to see if a different approach will yield different results this time around. Another takeaway from the book was that there is no one single technique that works in every situation, and I picked up a few new ones from the book.

The SuiteTake

I love learning. I love feeling like I have a challenge, I overcome it and have a new set of skills that I didn’t have before. This book really delivered that experience for me.

In my opinion if you are a video professional that either shoots or edits green screen scenes, this book is a must read to take you to the next level. I can’t think of anybody that I know that wouldn’t learn something from this book and improve their craft.

Another great resource is Alex Lindsay of Pixel Corps fame. He’s done some great web posting on the work that he does, with some real world examples. I’ve been really impressed with not only his process and what he has learned over time, but his openness to share what he knows to help others. We all improve when we help each other. Thanks Alex!

You can find some of his posts here.

]]> http://js-kit.com/rss/www.suitetake.com/p=4110 4 http://www.suitetake.com/2010/02/22/work-on-your-business-by-working-on-yourself/ http://www.suitetake.com/2010/02/22/work-on-your-business-by-working-on-yourself/#comments Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:00:52 +0000 Thomas Tomchak http://www.suitetake.com/?p=3885

I’ve been very fortunate in business. Since I first started Edit Creations in my basement in 2003 I’ve been blessed with having multiple clients follow me into business based on our work history together and friendships. And over those years, word of mouth has filled in the rest of the time. Within the first 5 years business grew from me working in my basement to having a 2000 sqft office with multiple edit rooms, vo booth, graphics, travel gear and 4 employees. Things were going great. Then, the fall of 2008 hit.

At the end of 2008 work dried up and 2009 was the most difficult year since the business was started. During this time a few things happened that changed the way I looked at my company.

First, I didn’t lose any clients. I still had the same clients that I’ve been working with for years, in some cases close to 15 years. The problem was that those clients were no longer getting the jobs they used to. Projects were being scaled back, rescheduled or flat our cancelled. In one case a job that was normally 4 weeks of editing in 2 suites (a job that we received every December running into January) just went away and has not yet returned.

Second, for the first time in my career I was faced with having to find new clients. Two years ago I would have said you were crazy if you told me to go out and find new clients. I was already working 10+ hours a day and the thought of looking for more work seemed like self abuse.

Third, I realized that you can’t count on jobs that are promised to you, even if you have a long standing relationship with those clients. For example, in 2009 there were no less then 3 major jobs (one a broadcast TV series) that were promised to us. In one case actually scheduled for the last half of 2009. “Great!” I thought, the year is covered! The pressure is off! And then, one by one the projects just went away, in large part due to the economy. So I was left with open edit suites and very little work to fill them, but the same overhead as if it was business as usual.

As this all started to unfold, the reality that I needed to go out and sell the business hit me, and hit me hard. But what also hit me was that I didn’t know where to start. I’m an editor, I’m a tech guy, I’m a creative and a Mac addict but not a salesman. That’s not to say I couldn’t sell, it’s just that I have never had to and don’t really have the knowhow. Yet.

Late in 2009 I was invited to attend a local business leaders meeting at a new store in Naperville IL. I thought this would be a good opportunity to meet other business owners and possibly make new connections with people that were in need of editorial and creative services. Hell, any reason to go to the Apple Store is a good one in my book!

So I went to the event that was scheduled before normal business hours, and there were about 30-40 other business professionals there, snacking on donuts and drinking free coffee. I very quickly realized that I had a problem. I was, at least in this setting, a social misfit. Instead of walking up to people and striking up a conversation, I found myself avoiding all eye contact and just taking interest in the machines on display. I was nervous and genuinely uncomfortable. Was it really this hard to talk to people? It’s not like I don’t have years of practice working with clients, meeting new people at the office and giving tours of the facility (both Edit Creations and previously at a much larger facility). Driving back to the office that morning it hit me. How was I going to meet new people and convince new clients to do business with me, if I couldn’t talk to people?  This is a problem, and I had a knot in my stomach just thinking about it. I could no longer rely on business just walking in the door, I had to go get it. Yet, I didn’t have the most basic skills needed to do so.

Over the next several weeks I did some deep soul searching and came to the following conclusion. I needed to develop my social skills, and in a big way. My goal, I decided, was to get to the point that I could walk into a room of strangers (business people or otherwise) and not only feel comfortable, but be able to approach people and have a meaningful conversation. As if that wasn’t enough, I wanted to improve my public speaking/presentation skills.

If you’re already good at all of these things you’re probably wondering what the big deal is. But if you’re not, you know what a tall order this is. Just the though of taking this on scared me deeply. But at the same time I thought if not now, then when?

What really got me over the hump was thinking about the hours and hours of training I do every year to improve my editing and graphics skills. I will easily dedicate myself to doing whatever is necessary to learn a new software program or take my skill set to a new level. I’ll read manuals, 3rd party books, PDF files on my iPhone and do tutorials on Lynda.com until I fall asleep on my laptop. But over all of these years, what have I actually done to improve my personal skills? My interactions with the people around me have not been “upgraded” for years. When I started to look at it from this angle it became clear that this was something I had to do.

In my opinion the best way to find new clients is to first create new relationships, without pushing any type of business angle. Sure you want people to know what you do and what you could offer them, but that should be secondary to developing a genuine relationship and interest in the person. What’s key in what I just said is creating a genuine relationship, not a superficial one. Look at it like this. If you were a producer and needed a editor for your project, would you rather call up somebody out of the creative directory, run an ad to interview new people, or call the person you’ve already developed a trusting relationship with and that you enjoy being around? People like to work with people they like. If you’re going to spend several weeks working on a job, don’t you want to like the person you’re working with? Dare I say, even have fun on the job?

So, it starts with creating relationships, which is one thing I need help with. At least when it’s from a cold start. So I started doing research on-line and after a few weeks there was a clear winner. The Dale Carnegie course. The overall objectives of the course are as follows.

• Build greater self-confidence
• Strengthen people skills
• Enhance communication skills
• Develop leadership skills
• Reduce stress and improve our attitude

It’s everything I was looking for in a single course. The class meets once per week for 4 hours in the evening, and the class I’m in has about 20 people in it.

If you have not read the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” I highly recommend it. I’ve read it twice over the years and this course builds on those basics. Here is a list of the 9 principals they teach in reference to building better relationships.

• Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.
• Give honest, sincere appreciation.
• Arouse in the other person an eager want.
• Become genuinely interested in other people.
• Smile.
• Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
• Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
• Talk in terms of the other person’s interest.
• Make the other person feel important, and do it sincerely.

While the thought of taking this class scared the hell out of me, that’s the idea of the course. They want to push you beyond your comfort zone and have you face your fears, but in a nurturing and positive environment.

While I have already started the class, I had to miss the first one due a petrie dish of disease at my house (aka 2 year old twins). So my first class (class 2) included me having to do a 2 minute speech. Nothing like jumping right in! While I was nervous all day before heading to the class, by the time the class was over I was feeling a lot more comfortable and could already see a difference after only 4 hours.

The idea behind the 8 week course is that they teach you certain skills and give you new tools every week, and then you have a week to implement what you’ve learned in your work environment. This allows you to really practice what you learn before moving onto other lessons. In fact, part of each class is reviewing how everybody did with their past week.

This week (class 3) includes having to do 2 speeches. One that’s 2 minutes, talking about how you used one of the 9 principals in the work place to change or influence a situation, and a 1 minute one explaining how to do something that’s related to your job that others in the class might be interested in. It’s an exercise in breaking things down in a very concise manner to quickly communicate your core message. So for my 1 minute speech, I’m going to teach the class how to create a 30 minute HD video in FCP using the Log and Transfer Window, standard transitions, 3rd party plugins, color correction with Color, audio mixing with Soundtrack, 3D graphics in Motion and how to repurpose the final edit for everything from BluRay DVD to YouTube. I’m just hoping I can fill the full 60 seconds.

The SuiteTake

My main idea behind doing this post was to get others thinking about their social skills, and to ask themselves if there was room for improvement. Some people are naturals at this kind of thing and could probably teach the class, but many of us are challenged in certain areas. A class like this can really give you an edge and create new opportunites for your business.

Over the upcoming weeks I’ll post an update or two and tell you how it’s going. At the very least I’ll do a post once the class is over to give you my full review.

There are a plethora of resources everywhere to teach you how to be an editor. There’s training websites like Lynda.com and Creative Cow. You can buy assorted training books at some coffeehouse-bookstore hybrid, where some homely fellow is likely playing new age music on a grand piano for Ramen noodle money. You could even go as far as to attend a terrible, terrible place called film school… But I laugh at you for doing these things. Laugh right in your pathetic face! You know why? Because I’m an elitist. I am better than you.

I eat dinner with 12 different solid gold forks. I have have different solid gold forks for different areas of the $800 steaks I eat. I only drink the first sip of a glass of $6000 wine, because I’m only satisfied with the first sip of a full glass of expensive wine. Then I throw the rest of the glass away and request a new drink just so I can take the first sip again. It typically costs me $150,000 to get drunk. What?! You’d like the rest of the glass?! How dare you! I would never allow someone who learned editing at film school to have my unused wine. I would rather destroy an entire wine field than give it to you, which is something I normally do once a month anyway, just for the sport of it.

I’d apologize to you for such a berating of your character, but my servant is currently cleaning the wheels of my Lexus with a toothbrush, and I normally have him apologize to commoners. But the reason I yell at you is because I love you, we are fellow editors, we are required to love each other by United States law. And I don’t want another tedious lawsuit on my hands. I just wanted to let you know that everything you know about editing is wrong.

I’m about to retire, so I’ll let you in on my biggest industry secret, since I have nothing to lose. There is an unimaginable resource located in the nether regions of the internet FULL of brilliant ideas by brilliant people. I take these ideas, and compile them into the greatest workable resource known to post production. So sit back and enjoy infinite knowledge! All you have to do is type in www.youtube.com.

Continuity –

How do you recreate a classic train scene from A Hard Day’s Night with just two teenage girls? No, no, no, the correct answer isn’t “why bother attempting it?”, the correct answer is to slightly juggle locations in their seats and use plenty of name-tags for clarity. I’d like you to show me one person on this entire planet who doesn’t understand what’s going on in this scene. You won’t find anyone, I guarantee it.

Filters –

Brightening techniques and color correction are essential for fine tuning your final videos. Often times people will let their videos become too dark to see what’s actually happening clearly. But with plug-ins and filters, these ghost hunters truly show us how captivating an image can be portrayed on video in it’s highest possible clarity. I didn’t know there was an FCP plug-in for finding ghouls! I’ve got the chills!

And in this next thrilling video, we take a look at how proper color correction can accurately show how your backyard is actually on the bottom of the ocean. Living under the sea is fantastic. I have several underwater mansions, but this one is pretty good. He captured the feel very well.

Sound Effects –
Being a twelve time winner of the Academy Award for Achievement in Sound Effects Editing has its benefits. Let’s just say that not one, but TWO local restaurants have named ham sandwiches after me. Well, it was two, but one of them got shut down for unsanitary conditions. And the other one burnt down mysteriously two winters ago. But still, people often ask me two things about my brilliant sound effects work;

1. “I didn’t know they gave out awards for that, how long have they been doing that?”
After I hear this I usually ask the peon what they do for a living, then purchase the company they work for and fire that person.

2. “Where did you learn how to do that, oh mighty overlord?”
Well, that answer is simple. Cat videos. Obviously.

Mind Blowing Graphics -

Did you see that??? This show must cost $50 million to produce, they just blow through intense visual effects like they are nothing, simply because they know they can! They have what appears to be a virtual ladybug crawl across the screen! I’m not 100% sure if it was fake, I’ll have to do frame-by-frame, but that was borderline brain melting! I’d like to see the render bar on that intense composition…! Weta Digital better watch their back, because these girls are only 10 years old, imagine the future potential…! I’ll have to e-mail them on which program they used because I am SO getting that. Though, it was a little hard to listen to the content because my eyes were being dazzled beyond belief, but I’m sure Jenna and Kristi had a show full of rich social commentary and thoughts on how to improve the American economy.

Here’s an even better example of blowing your mind, using the Michael Bay theory. As we all know, Michael Bay is the greatest and richest filmmaker in the world. His winning formula = Explosions. Lots and lots of explosions. Though, no one is better at explosions than the one and only DR. EXPLOSION!! He has a PhD in explosions!! From Dynamite University!!

While we’re on the subject of Dr. Explosion, he also teaches us two other great post production tips that we should always abide by no matter what;

1. Always make the credits to your video nearly three times as long as the actual story. You can never give yourself enough credit.

2. If the credits song is too lengthy for the 5 lines of text you had planned, just play the song out over black so people can keep listening to it until its over. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used the first 30 seconds of “Stairway to Heaven” for a credits sequence, then just played the remaining seven and a half minutes out over black. It just works.

Pacing –
Pacing is very important when it comes to editing. Perhaps the most important. Observe how well this patriotic spy thriller flows from scene to scene, keeping us guessing what our duster-clad hero (or villain…?) will do next. I felt this got snubbed at the Golden Globes. Behold the intensity of Subversion Interface! It hack.exe’d right into my soul.

Stunning Action Scenes –
I saw the new Star Trek film, and to be honest, I was very underwhelmed. I’m not sure, it just seemed like the overall look of the film was, what’s the right word…? Ah yes, amateurish. I laughed out loud in my private theater at some of the action scenes in that film, but that was only because I saw this much more intense video the night before:

Greenscreen Technology -
Everyone knows that green screen technology was invented sometime around 1875 (prove me wrong; historical records of that era are shotty at best), but not until recently has the technology surpassed what the human mind is actually capable of comprehending. I often find myself wondering not only how these people are able to blend in so well to their environments, but also are they even using green screens at all?? That’s how good they look!

I don’t know how they do it, they captured the mood perfectly, I mean they are dancing so intensely that they are literally disintegrating! What a stunning visual effect! They should do a tutorial on how to do this human vaporizing.

This young, female soon-to-be George Lucas did a spectacular job keying around the green blob on the right side of the screen. I would think it would be hard to key around a green blob against a green screen, but she must have spent all night on it. I bet she has an advanced copy of the next version of Keylight. I probably would have ended up just keying the green blob out, but she apparently has the skills to key around it. I know when I am bested. Kudos.

Word of advice, if you’re going to use super powers on camera like this, you should probably hide your identity with a costume, I mean you don’t want any super-villains to know who… wait, what?! This is FAKE??

Why We Post -

People often forget about the most important part about a video. The message. There is no point in doing any editing tricks at all if the overall message of the video isn’t worthwhile. The main point of putting a video out there to the public is to show the world that your video is the best. Every video that goes out there should never have the intention of wasting anyone’s time. I mean we all shoot video of our daily lives, little “ha ha” moments that occur to us, but we save those videos in our personal homes in order to watch them amongst friends and family, remembering the good times, sharing fun memories.

SURELY, no one would ever post a video on YouTube, one of the most popular websites in history, if the message of the video wasn’t important. Surely, every video doesn’t need to be uploaded for the world to watch, only the important ones. The one’s with real stories to tell. Messages to convey.

You see, now everybody knows how awesome Trevor and Sedore are. Thanks Coady! I’m sure their antics will land them an ABC Family sitcom in no time, thanks for getting their big video out there for the world to see. This won’t waste anybody’s time, as it did nothing but enrich my life.

Ah yes, Devon, have you consulted the Guinness World Record people on your amazing jump yet? I felt riveted the entire time I was watching, the element of danger was enthralling. Thank you for uploading this, it didn’t waste my time at all, it actually gave me a shot of adrenaline to the heart!

Thank you so much for uploading this for everyone to see. Now I know what true love really is. I hope the story you were trying to convey in this video poem of love, that you wanted complete strangers to see on the internet, gets you all the credit in the world for being the opposite of a waste of time.

Oh.  Oh, sorry.  That one was actually a waste of time…

The Ultimate in YouTube Video!
I’m not sure why I didn’t just show you this from the beginning. Just follow the formulas of this next video and you too can become the next Winston Randall Montgomery IV. Though I probably would have thrown a fish eye effect in there, maybe some inverted sepia color effects too, but I guess that’s what separates a super rich successful editor like myself from the 15 year old girls.

The SuiteTake -

***Author’s Note: In an effort to not sound too mean-spirited regarding this entire post, I used to make movies 5x worse than any of these back in junior high/high school. Everybody starts somewhere, and usually it sucks. I actually commend YouTube on it’s spirit. And its “When Animals Attack” videos. Those are just hilarious. So to be fair, I’ll upload a video of mine on YouTube from 7 years ago, that is as “awesome” as anything in this post (and I made it in iMovie…!).

No longer do I have my routinely standard nightmares about homeless people dressed as clowns doing dental work on me at the bottom of the ocean while being chased by radioactive super sharks. No folks, they have been replaced by nightmares of what I’m doing in Cinema 4D! Wait, maybe nightmare isn’t the right word. Maybe I mean dream, yeah, dream is the happy one, right? Sorry to potentially mislead you with the whole nightmare thing. I’m actually having decently pleasant dreams about my future in the 3rd dimension. For those of you who possibly read my first post on getting started with Cinema 4D without any previous morsels of knowledge of any 3D program, this is simply a followup of some of the progress I’ve made, and whether or not I’m on my way to be working on Pixar’s next one-word-titled movie, or if I failed horribly resulting in an enormous amount of embarrassment causing irreversible damage to my relationships of my family and friends.

So as the title obviously states, here is an update of my top 5 recaps of advancements I made in Cinema 4D during 2009. This is part 2 of 17 posts I will periodically make throughout my life time. Part 17 will come on my deathbed, and will focus on trying to do a pre-visualization of my upcoming funeral. I expect my last words before I die to be something in the area of “god damn these splines!”

5. Turning a Real Life Object Into a Cinema 4D Object
So after all my initial messing around in the program, I realized that a standard practice that I would probably need to do for jobs would be to turn an object in real life into a 3D computerized object. I’m cool with creating random stuff from scratch, no one has any expectation on what an imaginary object should truly look like. But creating a replica of something requires, well obviously, that it look just like it…

So I thought I’d start simple and just try and recreate a product box. Going into it I figured the first thing I’d have to do is create the shape of the box. So out of what appeared to be logical thinking, I got a ruler and measured the Tiffen UV Protector box I decided to make, resulting in some dimensions of each side in inches. But there aren’t any places to input inches into Cinema 4D… So I just plugged the inches into new photoshop documents for each side of the box, converted the inches to points, and hooray!, I can input points into the dimensions of the box in C4D.

Then I just scanned the sides of the box at high quality, and put them into the photoshop sides I created and imported them as materials. Cool beans! I have a 3D version of a box I’m holding in my hand! Slap on a camera zoom with motion blur, and I now have a product box animation. I know it’s just a box (big deal, right?), but it was still cool at my amateur level of expertise. If I keep trying to recreate things, I’ll be well on my way to making a surrogate to clean my house in the near future.

[See post to watch QuickTime movie]

4. Being Able to Actually Render Stuff

One of the biggest problems I was having when I initially started learning C4D was that I was able to do some neat stuff, but I didn’t know what to do with it after I created it! I was very happy to finally learn how to render and output things, so that I can actually use them. They don’t make it very obvious to someone unfamiliar with the program how to do something as simple as export a quicktime movie. I was definitely doing it wrong initially, while trying to figure it out. I was just doing a “Make Preview” quicktime.

Then output it as a decent quality preview, and when it finishes I just do a “Save As…” in quicktime and I have a new, incorrectly outputted movie. I guess it worked for saving a quicktime of the project, but it wasn’t of the highest possible quality, and would probably be scoffed at if I attempted to use it for anything real. So then I finally figured out that you have to set all of your settings before you even consider rendering in the Render Settings, such as dimensions (I did an entire animation in the wrong dimensions, and tried to change it after the fact, yeah, I had to re-do almost the entire thing, OOPS, lesson learned), and which format of quicktime you’d like, where to save it, as well as how many frames and whether you’d like motion blur, etc. You could spend a good several minutes just going through the settings before you render each project.

After all of that it’s actually extremely simple to make a quicktime movie, because once all of your settings are set, you just click on “Render in Picture Viewer”. That title doesn’t make sense to me for making quicktime videos, but well, that’s exactly what it will do. In full resolution.

And in reference to my first post on this subject, I wasn’t able to make a quicktime of the crappy slap animation I created on my first day of messing around in Cinema 4D, but now I’m able to! Here it is in all its crappy glory!

[See post to watch QuickTime movie]

3. Creating Abstract Still Photo Art
In addition to making neat animations, I was happy to learn a little about how to make cool still images as well. Photoshop is one of my favorite programs to mess around in, and it was fun to learn how to insert 3D objects correctly into still images using camera mapping, which seems similar to doing Vanishing Point in ‘shop. This just gives me another option to do cool things with still images that I might have trouble doing in Photoshop. Like making a client’s logo hang out in the desert for some reason, or giving a family on a picnic a pair of pet cubes.

2. Being Able to Bring in an Illustrator File and Animate it
One thing I was excited about was being able to bring in Illustrator vector images and play around with them in 3D. It’s more complicated (or annoying) than it would initially appear, but it makes sense how it works. For instance you can’t just flat out import a complex Illustrator logo and expect it to work perfectly. You have to separate the layers first, then re-assemble them in Cinema 4D, followed by creating and adding materials to give it some colors. There is a great tutorial I watched early on (located here) on Creative Cow on how to go about separating Illustrator files correctly and doing basic camera moves. I took the logo of our friends over at CBH Video, and jazzed it all up 3D-style. I surprised them with it and their reaction was “This is pretty cool, but I’m on a conference call, so please stop yelling in my ear…”

[See post to watch QuickTime movie]

1. Moving Cameras on a Spline and Creating a Scene With Stage Objects
Splines are frustrating to me. I’ve tried to draw them freehand and then straighten them out by making them B-Splines, but that only works to a certain degree. It’s hard to get them perfect. But I do realize that it’s even harder to just smoothly freehand animate a camera movement. It’s nice to have a visual line representing where the camera is heading.

Then having another camera starting at the end of the first movement and continuing in a new direction by using a stage object adds another dimension of animation. I’ve never really been that good at After Effects (I get lost somewhere when expressions come into play, then it’s like freshman year math class all over again) but I was amazed at the ease of using cameras in Cinema 4D.

In my opinion it just seems more fluid and intuitive than using cameras in AE. But I was just happy that I pretty much grasped the concepts of a basic animated scene, which points in good directions for the future of scene making. It’s harder than it looks to pull it off smoothly. Or I guess it’s easy if you’re good at C4D and you want to be a jerk about it…

[See post to watch QuickTime movie]

The Suite Take

I’m still learning, I’m not all around that great at Cinema 4D yet, but I’m looking forward at getting better! I know one sure sign that I’m not that great is when I go to the C4D Forums over at Creative Cow, and the way they talk about stuff makes it seem like they aren’t even using the same program that I’m using. Then I realized I was in the MAYA forums. But then I went back to the C4D forums and it was still relatively confusing. But I tend to understand more of it in each passing week.

I’ll let you know what I do next in part 3 of 17, which will be written entirely while skydiving! (Note: part 3 may only be two sentences long and full of typos).

Isn’t it annoying these days that there seems to be a new “how to” or “tutorial” blog about the video industry popping up every other day? Places like SuiteTake.com, those guys think they know everything and are the Steve Jobs’ gift to mankind…oh wait….

But seriously, these days there are a ton of free and very useful sites out there that offer a wealth of education about all things audio and video. And ok, I’ll admit that here at SuiteTake there are a few things we don’t know. (One writer, who shall remain unidentified for now, was railed by readers for not knowing what the “extend edit” button does, sheesh.) Whenever we have some down time here at SuiteTake worldwide headquarters I always cruise the tutorial sites looking for new ideas and techniques. But, it’s one thing to watch a tutorial and just think to yourself “wow, that was cool. I should try that sometime.” and another to actually advance you skill-set and knowledge through the tutorial. Here are a few things I do when watching or reading tutorials to get the most out of them.

Read between the frames

To begin, a few of my favorite tutorial sites are: VideoCoPilot.net, CreativeCOW.net, and AE Tuts+. They all have a wealth of video and written tutorials on how to make all kinds of way cool stuff written by a wide variety of contributors.

After watching a whole mess of AE tutorials I realized that I was still creating the same old stuff project after project despite having seen so many new techniques. I wasn’t effectively putting into action the concepts I was seeing in the tutorials. So I began to watch them with a more critical eye determined to expand my skill-set. One of the first things I noticed is that the author would routinely apply effects or filters over and over again to enhance the look and motion of the animations he was creating but only mention them as an aside. For instance, Andrew Kramer at VideoCoPilot almost always adds a contrast curve (using the curves effect) on an adjustment layer at the end of every tutorial to just give the image a little more punch. However, he barely mentions it and usually just slaps it on there without saying much about it. If, the whole time I was focusing my concentration on the main lesson of the tutorial, like how to setup his Sure Target preset, it was easy to not pay any attention to those more subtle details. Furthermore, it seems as though the author is usually so accustomed to adding these effects and finishing touches that they breeze by it too, taking it for granted.

I learned to read between the frames and pay the most attention to the small details that they were blowing off. It’s these many small details and enhancements that distinguish the real pro’s from the wanna-bees and by catching these little tricks that usually sneak by you’ll lean a lot more from each tutorial.

Always follow along, but experiment too

Many tutorials provide the project file and sample media so you can follow along at home and it’s obvious that that is usually a good idea. In the past I have been lazy and a just sat back and watched them like a re-run of Three’s Company, but recently have made it a habit to fire up AE and follow along with the tutorial as it goes. I quickly found that just watching the tutorial and actually hitting the keys myself is a whole different experience. And, just as quickly, I found that it’s even better to not only follow along but to experiment with my own ideas as well.

When I’m watching something throughout the whole video I am constantly thinking “how can I apply this to the kind of projects I work on every day?” Sure, blowing up a 3D model of Mars and morphing that into a glowing image of Miley Cirus that evaporates into a cloud of particles is cool but probably not appropriate for my video of the keynote speech at XYZ corporation’s annual conference. So during the tutorial I’ll often pause it and first re-create what the author has done but then go on and experiment with the parameters to get a look that would be practical for the type of work that I usually do. But it is always fun to just crank up the parameters to see how far you can take something too.

Use it in a sentence

Your 3rd grade teacher may have told you this way back in the day. Whenever you learn a new word simply making an effort to use it in a sentence the next day helps a great deal with making that word a permanent part of your vocabulary. The same is true with tutorial techniques. You’ve watched the tutorial through and experimented along the way, the next step is to actually use the new technique in a real world project as soon as possible. By taking what you have learned and actually applying it to a real project where you’re on the clock and achieving real results will lock those new tricks into your video vocabulary permanently. On several occasions I have watched a tutorial one day and used it in a project the next, making real money with it.

Also by using new techniques in real world situations you’ll be forced to become more flexible and creative with them. Chances are that your client will have some thoughts about what you have created and you’ll be obligated to address them. This will likely force you to delve into the technique deeper and with more control to achieve the exact look that was requested. You’ll probably have to employ a lot of creative problem solving to get what you want because you’ve never done it before and are unsure of what parameters to change to get there. This will lead you to a much deeper understanding of the technique and allow you to apply it in the future to a much wider variety of projects.

It’s about the techniques, not re-creating the project

The ultimate benefit of tutorials are the concepts you take away from them. Just re-creating what the author made does little good but for practicing keyboard shortcuts. Remember that “R and D” stands for Research and Development, not Rip-off and Duplicate. If you see something you like it’s best to take it with you and make it your own, not just remake the project and change the text to fit your client. It’s ok to be inspired by others work, but it’s always best and most rewarding to add as much of your own unique creativity to your projects. Besides, there’s always that chance that you’ll be called out by a fellow editor. And that’s just embarrassing.

The SuiteTake:

The things I find most beneficial from tutorials is that they often show me things that effects are capable of that I never knew existed. Once I know an effect is capable of something in general I can then use that to make all sorts of new and creative projects. Also, as you watch more and more the knowledge accumulates. You can take ideas from one and apply them to the next and on and on. By reading between the frames to pick up all the little tid-bits, experimenting on your own, applying new techniques to real-world projects and adding as much of your own unique creativity – you’ll be getting the most out of every tutorial you watch.

And hey, it’s also a great way to pass the time on a slow afternoon.

It’s been quite some time since I was really excited about a business book, but I just finished reading one that I thought I would share. The book is called “The Knack:How Street-Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up“, and is written by Norm Brodsky, Bo Burlingham, both writers at Inc. Magazine.

The book is written in an interesting way. Throughout the book, between different topics/chapters, questions from business owners are read and answered by Norm. By writing the book in this way a diverse number of topics and questions are covered that are not necessarily covered in the book otherwise.

Topics covered include how to decide if a new business is worth pursuing, how to raise capital to start a business, non-traditional ways to compensate your sales people, ways to detect unhappy customers and make sure you don’t lose them, the decision to grow or not to grow your business and when to ask for help from other business professionals.

One of my favorite parts of the book is when Norm discusses business plans, and says that before you put any effort into a business plan you need to first come up with a life plan. Ask yourself what you want out of your life in the next 5 or 10 years, and be very detailed. Maybe it’s more money, more time for vacation, the ability to travel with your family, or maybe it’s to reach a certain milestone in your company. The point is, you can’t decide what you want out of your business until you know what you want out of life. By planning one without looking at the other you run the risk of moving further and further away from the things that actually make you happy in life. I found this especially powerful and I reflected on it for several days.

While nothing in this book is specific to the media industry, like many business books the lessons learned can easily be applied to any business. And even if you’re not a typical “business owner”, you are still in business for yourself in one way or another. Even if you have a staff position, you are still the President of your own personal company. You still need to market yourself, continue to grow and improve yourself, and at some point move onto another staff position and sell yourself again.

If you are a freelance editor, this is even more true. You don’t need to have your own facility and staff to learn and apply valuable lessons from a book like this. As a freelancer you really are out there selling yourself and your skill set everyday. Books like this one can give you an edge over your competitors.

If you’re like me and have a hard time keeping up with reading, this book is also available as an audio download from Audible.com. If it wasn’t for my iPod and Audible, I would not be able to consume as many books as I do now.

I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did, and look forward to your comments and emails.

A decision was made by the high council of elders, at their shrine resting on the peak of the volcano, that I would be the chosen one to learn how to use a true 3D program. But I have no experience whatsoever in this area. This is my first job in this industry out of college, and to be honest, I didn’t even use something as basic as Photoshop a single time while I was in college! Let’s just say the most experience I had working on 3D was when I watched WALL-E a couple months ago. So I was nervous at the thought of learning this program, but at the same time excited at the possibility of what I could potentially do. I suppose the purpose of this post is to show you what it’s like to first delve into a 3D program if you have no idea what you’re doing, and possibly how it’s not as scary as one may think.

To help guide me along this journey, I enlisted the help of a tutorial on lynda.com by Larry Mitchell, titled “CINEMA 4D R10 Essential Training”. It’s actually not as complex an interface as you’d think by just looking at it. I’ll go into the details of that in a minute, but first I’d just like to note an occurrence that happened on my first day ever working in this program. Mr. Mitchell, in what seemed like he was possibly saying it in passing while talking about the content browser, mentioned something about accessing human models for use in in the program.

I shifted my eyes back and forth, as perhaps the computer was trying to tell me something, or someone was playing a joke on me, by giving me this glorious information now. Then Larry said “So, if you hit this Inverse Kinematics button, you can start to animate this human, but we are getting way ahead of ourselves here, back to the content browser.”

HOLD UP LARRY MITCHELL. You’re telling me that by just clicking this one button I can mess around with this human figure, make it do whatever I want? I’m sorry, but I am going to have to take a break from this tutorial, as I now feel obliged to mess around with this. So it wasn’t long before I figured out how to use the dimensional arrows and scaling tools to simulate the fake woman kicking the fake child.

And with a third human figure at my fingertips, how could I not add in the grown man doing a leg sweep…?

Through just futzing around in the content browser without any supervision, I figured out how to add texture to objects and even a sun!

Then as I seemingly finished amusing myself with this, I started playing the tutorial again, and not a minute later, Larry is saying “Oh, just press THIS button RIGHT HERE for quick easy animation keyframes.” …Really, Larry? Do you even want me to watch this tutorial? Next thing I know, I’m going through the content browser like a madman, building a house from basic shapes, adding grass, making brick textures, and animating a 90 frame woman to man slap for the ages (I’d have exported a real movie of it, but I don’t know how yet!)

I guess I wanted to show these displays of polygonal violence, because I came from no experience whatsoever in 3D, and I was able to do all of that while just messing around with stuff just 2 and 1/2 hours after I opened Cinema 4D for the first time! Not that any of this could be used for a real job around here or anything, but I learned a lot about how to move objects, and how to use the interface just from playing around. I got much more comfortable. (And if you’re wondering why I instantly resorted to violence, let’s just say I played a lot of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas my junior year of college, so I have a natural urge to harm people made of polygons)

After all that fun, I decided to resist the temptation of messing with the human figures anymore, and decided to continue with Larry Mitchell’s tutorials. Up next on the list was to create a spoon out of a cube. …OK? I like the idea, but even that seems strangely overwhelming to me, as morphing a cube into something of value is something that you would have to know what you’re doing in order to complete. But I guess it all starts with selecting a cube (and again, you can credit Larry Mitchell for this, I didn’t come up with it on my own).

OK, so now that we have a cube just sitting there, what’s next? That will be a spoon at some point…? Well, if you move those arrows on the cube with the scale tool, you can make it better, stronger, faster bigger, longer, flatter.

The four screen display was frightening at first glance, because I figured it would involve some insane complexity to use them. But they are actually pretty useful, as they obviously give you a top view or side view look at the 3D object, sort of simplifying it into 2D. And maneuvering between them is easy as pie, you just click the button in the top right corner of whichever screen you’d like to work in, and click it again to go back to the four screen display. Or you can just work in the four screen display if you’d like.

There is still a vast list of tools that I have no idea what they do yet, but I do know one thing, it takes a knife to make a spoon.

The knife seems like the most basic and useful tool, as its purpose is to segment polygonal shapes into, well, segments. And it works just like a real knife, just cut it across the shape while dragging the mouse.

And don’t make the same rookie mistake I did when working in a 2D viewing screen, and make sure you are cutting all the way through:

Cutting creates points in which you can select, and making new shapes becomes a very simple matter of selecting those points with the live select tool, and scaling them using the big colorful directional arrows with the scale tool.

So it was pretty simple to turn the cube into a lamp or a jousting stick or something, but a sweet little feature called HyperNURBS makes it unbelievably easy to turn a lamp into a Q-Tip. By clicking on the cube in your layer menu (which is comfortably similar to that of Illustrator or Photoshop) and then option clicking on the HyperNURBS icon on the top menu bar (which looks like a cube trapped in a cube prison) and all of the sudden you have instant curves, that work in a great way.

Then it’s just a matter of scaling and adding depth to the, i don’t know what it’s called, the “food” part of the spoon. And then I end up with a pretty good metal shovel.

Of course after some more fine tuning, cutting with the knife, scaling, and trying out some wood swatches (just for the fun of it all), I have a pretty good giant wooden 3D spoon.

If only I had a giant 3D metal pot so I could use my giant 3D wooden spoon to stir some 3D spaghetti meat sauce with polygonal sausage and peppers, I’d have a fantastic fake meal in the works! (don’t forget to HyperNURB the diced mushrooms!)

The SuiteTake Take?

I know making a spoon and animated violence with pre-made human models may be no big deal to someone who uses 3D programs a lot, but to someone with no idea what their doing in Cinema 4D, I just wanted to show how easy it is to start working in 3D, and it’s not as threatening as it may possibly appear to a novice. Just look at me, I made a wooden spoon out of a blocky cube 4 hours after my first opening of a 3D program!

In the future I’ll do a follow up post to let you know how my training has progressed. 

I’ve been an editor for a while now at several different shops. Through those days and places I have mostly been self taught until I ended up here with SuiteTake. At SuiteTake training and skill development is not just encouraged, it’s part of our daily responsibilities. Therefor, in the recent past my learning curve has increased dramatically.

The Top Ten things I wish I knew:

10. Shift and option dragging

9. Quick Ken Burns effect

8. QuickTime vs Quicktime Conversion.

7. The Black and code button.

6. Option 1,2,3 for transition alignment

5. Esc, tab, spacebar to navigate windows

4. Apply normalization to audio in FCP

3. Disable dropped frames warning.

2. Disable rendering with caps lock.

1. Map your keyboard.

The SuiteTake Take?

If you’re an experienced editor you probably know most of these already, however, if you’re just starting out like me so many years ago you’ll be putting yourself ahead of the game by learning these tricks now and not 10 years from now.

The following video tutorial demonstrates a list of 10 efficiencies and workflows with Final Cut Pro that I wish I had known from the start. If I had these often simple tricks in my pocket from day 1 I would have saved myself countless hours and heaps of frustration.

Oh!  Hello!  I was not expecting thee so soon!  I assume thou art one of my many peasants, and I have a strict rule forbidding peasants to look me in the eye under penalty of death  but I will make an exception for thee today.  So thou have probably never actually met me before, I am King Reginald of Shropshire, and I am your King.  Some of my hobbies include slaying dragons, drinking mead, and grilling up some hot dogs on the beach.  But recently, I had the local wizard MerMac create your mighty King a device which he has called a “computer.”  It has the light of a thousand candles!  My favorite thing to do on this “computer” is spend all day browsing FaceParchment.com, hooking up with some old warriors from knight school that I have not talked to in like FOREVER! (btw, Sir Gallahad has gotten faaaaaaat…!)  But MerMac only conjured up two programs for me, Minesweep and Ye Ole Photoshop.  Having gotten instantly frustrated with Minesweep, I then focused my attention on Ye Ole Photoshop, WHICH I FELL IN LOVE WITH.  Let me show thee what I’m up to today.

I’m going to start this crusade of creativity by taking a painting of my bitter rival, King Westbury of Killingham, into Ye Ole Photoshop:

Pretty stupid looking isn’t he?  Well, last month he sent me a roasted boar, cuz I finally thought he was being cool FOR ONCE…  But when I bit into it, it was filled with hot tar…  It took a fortnight to pry thy royal jaw back open.  So now I’m going to get even with that scoundrel.  I’ll start by using a Lasso to isolate his jerkstore face.  This is the same Lasso that I’m sure you use to round up my many royal livestock to prepare them for my mighty feasts, so you should be good at using it, you lowlife knave!

If thou art a skilled artist in thou’s spare time, thou might be able to use thee regular Lasso, but my hands are often shaky after a night of drinking grog, so I must resort to thy polygonal Lasso.

Since we only have to do a rough job right now, because I will show thou unworthy self how to clean it up later, you could also use thy very interesting magnetic Lasso.  I have been trying to get my alchemist to work with magnetics for months now, but he keeps saying, “I’ll do it tomorrooooooowwwww…”  I think I’ll finally have him beheaded.  But thy magnetic lasso is righteous because thy Lasso will intelligently conform to thy edge of what thou are trying to draw around, at least getting thee very easily and very quickly in thy joust park.

So now that we have his ugly face selected (you can tell by the magic ants that will be circling his face), it is now the hour to do the evil deed for which we set out to do.  I carefully selected this painting from one of my 3rd wife’s gossip scrolls:

Now select thy bow and Arrow tool and drag King Westbury’s face onto the painting of the traveling actors. It won’t be the correct size, so type in the magic spell “CTRL T” which will cast a Transform enchantment on his face.  Then adjust it so it roughly fits over the face of the fair maiden.

If you noticed, the large bulbous face of that jerk has covered up the front portion of the maiden’s golden hair.  So now it’s time to go back to the original painting of the stage folk and Lasso once again, this time the front portion of the hair.  You must be somewhat precise this time in your Lasso, at least on the front strands, the back can be rough if you’d like, since it will end up covering similar areas.

Once you have finished your trace, go back to the bow and Arrow tool and drag the hair of the maiden from the original painting onto the new painting with King Westbury’s face, BUT, before you get too hasty, make sure to cast a doppleganger spell by holding down SHIFT whilst dragging.  Since both paintings are the same dimensions, thou can make it so the hair lands in the exact same place in both paintings.

Now his forehead is protruding like a mongoloid, so cast an Eraser spell on that area of his face.

Thou could also do some work to the lower portion of his fat face as well, thou could.

Then you could cast a zoom spell on the painting to get a closer look, and try to match the skin color of Westbury’s face on the visible neck of the maiden, using the Paintbrush.  Thou art a regular Michelangelo!

Now it’s time to take care of the second ear splurging out of his neck there, that actually belongs to the lass.  Use the sorcery known as the Clone Stamp, and type in an OPTION spell on the hair above the ear, then magically grow hair over the spare ear.

Bwahaha, much better!

Now to make things smoother, cast a 15% Blur spell over the front part of the hair, where it connects with Westbury’s terrible skin.  And between you and me, I wish I could cast a blur spell on my 5th wife’s face, IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!  AM I RIGHT FELLAS, AM I RIGHT??

Now that the hair looks alright, it’s time to focus on his jaundiced skin, I mean maybe go to Ye Ole Dermatologist sometime buddy, AM I RIGHT?  We will fix it for him by conjuring up the Image menu, then casting an Adjustment spell, followed by the wizardry known as Hue/Saturation.

Cast a -10 Hue spell to create more of the correct color, then cast a -42 Saturation spell to make him look more human.  Sometimes I wish I could cast a +100 Saturation spell on my 9th wife’s meat loaf, could it be any MORE dry?  AM I RIGHT FELLAS??

Then to make him seem more in the painting, change the sun itself by casting a shadow spell.  Click on the Layer Style box in the bottom right corner of the computer image, and cast Drop Shadow.  Change the angle of the sun, and the size of the shadow, to make it seem like Westbury is actually there!

Alas, we are complete!  Bwahaha!  Now it not only looks as if King Westbury is dressed in women’s garments, but it also appears as if he is having personal relations with the famous Irish jester Colin Farrell…!  Just wait until the other guys at the Round Table see this!  They will be up in arms!  (grabs belly with both hands) HOHOHOHO HAHAHAHA!

(door flies open)

Prince Jacob of Killingham – “Yo yo yo, what’s happening this side of da castle, King Reggie?”

King Reginald of Shropshire – (quickly covers computer screen with arm) “Oh, oh, nothing, nothing at all…”

Prince Jacob of Killingham – “Wow, MerMac made you a magic wizard box as well?  Oh man, I’ve got to show you this ThouTube video of Lancelot trying to do a 1080 on his carriage, but thusly ends up injuring his genitals!  It’s royally hilarious!”  (starts to walk over there)

King Reginald of Shropshire – “No, don’t come any closer!”

Prince Jacob of Killingham – “HEY!  That’s my father’s face!  But the body of a maiden!  And this clearly indicates personal relations with Colin Farrell…  I mean he’s a big fan of Mr. Farrell, but not in that kind of way!  How dare you disgrace my bloodline like that!  You shall not get away with this!  HIIIIIIYYYYYAAAAAAAA!”

King Reginald of Shropshire – “Pffffffft.  Really?  You call that an attack?  One color of blood?  No spray?  The knife is coming in at a horizontal angle?  Look at the hard edge of the incision…  There isn’t even any internal bleeding or change in my expression…  Where did you learn to stab…?  …Microsoft Paint?

Let me show you how it’s done.  HUUUUUUYYYYYYAAAAAAA!”

King Reginald of Shropshire – “Bwahaha, now THAT is how you stab, the Ye Ole Photoshop way!  I really showed you!  Now I need to make some copies of this painting on my weave to show off to my bros.  Then I need to — ”

(door flies open)

Wife #7 – “Oh my lord, look at this mess!  This will take me all night to clean up!”

King Reginald of Shropshire – “What are you doing here?”

Wife #7 – “Oh, sorry, I was just going to tell you dinner was almost ready…”

King Reginald of Shropshire – “Wife #7, let me explain something to you.  Whenever thou come in here to thy royal home office and interrupt me, you’re breaking my royal concentration. Thou art distracting me. And it will then take me many hourglasses to get back to where I was. Thou understand? 

Wife #7 – “yes…”

King Reginald of Shropshire – “Now, we’re going to make a new royal decree. When thou come in here and thou hear me casting typing spells,

(makes sarcastic face while doing over-exaggerated typing motions)

or whether you DON’T hear me casting typing spells, or whatever the ORC you hear me doing; when I’m in here, it means that I am working, THAT means don’t come into thy royal home office. Now, do thou think thou can handle that?” 

Wife #7 – “yes…  sorry my liege…”

King Reginald of Shropshire - Good. Now why don’t thou start right now and get the orc out of here? Hm?

(Wife #7 leaves the room)

Wenches…  Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em…  AM I RIGHT FELLAS, AM I RIGHT??

Shropshire Out.

Last week I did a presentation a the Chicago Final Cut Pro User Group (aka CHIFCPUG) that I titled “Inspired Editing”. Overall I think it was well received so I wanted to post the video of that presentation here for those who may have missed it.

This presentation not only gives you good tips and trick on where you might find inspiration and ideas for your projects, but walks you through a promo/pre-roll trailer that was created for a large DVD project. From starting with an empty timeline to the final version, you’ll see how the trailer was created and what the thought process was. There are also some tips for using Google Earth in your project.

Your feedback is always welcome so shoot me an email or post a comment on the blog if the mood moves you.

There was this heavyset kid in my high school who constantly had stains all over his shirt.  It was disgusting; it was as if he never washed his shirt.  Food stains, drink stains, dirt stains, indescribable stains, whatever they were they were all horrifying.  One day someone started calling him The Venus CrapTrap.  Then everyone started calling him The Venus CrapTrap.  Then rumors and jokes started to form around him being able to statically attract filth to himself, as if he were able to walk into a room and all of the garbage in the room would fly across the room and stick to him.  I’m sure it didn’t make his life very easy, as everyone had this unfair perception of him based on his filthy shirts.  I happened to eat lunch with him a few times, and he was an all right guy.  He was just unimaginably lazy.  But he was really smart, interesting, and an all around likeable chap.  But he had the label of being a horrifying beast based on his external appearance.  Now you see where I’m going with this?  DVD labels are the same way, the content on the disc may be awesome, but if the label is trash, it will put people off from the whole thing.

By the way, Mike (The Venus CrapTrap) now works in a warehouse.  I know you’d like me to say he’s now better than all the people who used to put him down, but he is seriously one of the laziest people I’ve ever met.

I make a lot of simple DVD labels for clients around here, in a program called Discus.  There are a few do’s and don’ts, and I’d like to share a few tips to make sure no one is giving your label a bad label.  

Tip #1:  Keep It Simple

I would strongly insist that you try not to clutter up your label with mishmash and too much information, make it look simple and elegant.

DO:

DON’T:

Tip #2:  Keep It Appropriate

Despite the subject matter of the video, if you are going to include a picture on your label, make sure that the end result is a disc that you would hand to your grandmother.

DO:

DON’T:

Tip#3:  Keep It About the Client

I know you think that because you’re making the label it all the sudden becomes about you, but remember that it is about the client, not the assistant editor in the long run.

DO:

DON’T:

Tip#4:  Keep It Relevant

Some subjects may not be interesting enough to make an awesome DVD label.  That doesn’t mean that you should try and jazz it up with something that has nothing to do with anything.

DO:

DON’T: 

Tip#5:  Keep It Professional

I would highly suggest if you’re handing your million dollar client the disc for the video that he spent a month working on, you should make it on an actual label making software, like Discus.

DO:

DON’T:

Tip#6:  Keep It Real

You should only put information that a client has actually specified on your labels.  You don’t need to spice it up with your own hype.  That’s what the client’s marketing team is for.

DO:

DON’T:

Tip#7:  Keep It Consistent

I know there are a lot of crazy fonts that you’ve always wanted to use, but your client’s DVD label isn’t the place to experiment.

DO:

DON’T:

Tip#8:  Keep It Legible

You should probably use colors that work together.

DO:

DON’T:

Tip#9:  Keep It Unbiased

It doesn’t matter if you object to the video that the DVD is based on, you shouldn’t voice your opinion on the label.  Just do your job!

DO:

DON’T:

Tip#10:  Keep It In the Realm of the Business

I know your a creative, artistic person.  And I know you love painting avant-garde artwork in your spare time.  But your artsy fartsy style doesn’t belong anywhere on a corporate DVD.

DO:

DON’T:

Well I hope that helps you do the right thing when you make those crucial choices in your DVD labels!

This is the second of a two part series on the Quantum A-Series LTO drive. You can find part 1 here.

Once Quantum released the unbelievably fantastic Version 3 upgrade three months ago, any minor inconvenience we were having with the tape drive seemed to disappear. They really did a great job listening to client comments and fixed virtually every problem that needed to be addressed. The interface is more fluid (you used to not be able to adjust the size of the windows), and there is no longer a self-destruct button next to the eject button. There is now an automatic preventative measure in place to no longer lose the table of contents (a problem we had early in its use, it appeared worse than it actually was). We can fill the tapes up as full as we want (we used to need to add a cushion of space to prevent filling the tapes “too full”). I can now let my pals < and ? into the drive without concern. Oh, they can invite the rest of their friends as well, the blacklist is lifted! There is still only a 97 character limit for filenames, but only once in a blue moon do I export FCP movies titled…

“Saturday_Conference_With_Rebecca_and_Steve_Morricone_ Featuring_the_Brilliant_Antics _of_Reggie Montgomery_Which_Occurred_at_9AM_Eastern_Time _or_8AM_Central_Time_Which_Would _Make_More_ Sense Because_We_Live_in_Illinois.mov”

The actual process of putting (small named) files on the tape is an easy, 5 step process. It’s so simple that I was able to teach it to my cousin Eric in just a couple of minutes (FYI he sniffs a lot of glue, it’s hard to teach him things).

1. Organize everything you want to put on the tape into a folder, name it appropriately. We use a date coded folder based on the day of the backup.

2. Insert a tape with enough free space to hold your folder.

3. Open the drive’s server interface, and connect to the tape on the right side.

4. Locate your folder on the left hand side (which is the local side).

5. Drag it to the right side.

That’s it. It really is that easy. And that’s one of the best parts about this drive, it’s so incredibly easy. You can then watch the progress in the bottom part of the interface.

And it will let you know when it is done.

Taking things off of a tape is just as easy. Just drag the files from the right side to the left side!

Now I know what you’re thinking. “Hey Scott, I just backed up multiple terabytes on these LTOs, now I need to pull stuff off of them, but how do I know where anything is on these tapes???” Well, my amigo, that answer comes in the form of a sort of mashed together single word, CDFinder. This is a spectacular cataloguing tool that we used back for the IDE drives that still carries over to our tape use. We now have (at the time of this article posting) 46 archive tapes/drives. CDFinder helps us sift through all 46 places that a file could potentially be. The way to put a new tape into the catalog is unbelievably easy.

Just load the tape onto the desktop by going to Go > Connect to Server.

Then open CDFinder, and drag the tape to the left part of the CDFinder interface.

Hit “Create New”. And it will start to catalogue your tape.

This is sort of a buggy process, as the tape drive will claim to disconnect every few minutes or so, but it’s just an illusion, as it will eventually catalogue if you just let it do it’s thing. Then just rename the catalogued tape whatever it is you’d like to call it, as I’m sure you won’t want the sever number as the name of your tape (though, I do plan on naming my child “10.1.10.70 Roberts”. It works for a boy OR a girl!).

Then the process of finding things just requires that you hit “Find”.

Type in what you want to find.

And it will search ALL of your tapes, and find what you seek. This whole process it relatively intuitive, and as stated many times, abnormally simple.

I think I saw this once on a math test in 7th grade...

Now I know no one likes to hear it, but the A-Series isn’t exactly cheap at $8000. But hear us out here! Before we had the tape drive, back in the IDE external drive days, we archived everyone’s projects as a common courtesy. Just for our own well being knowing that projects come back from the dead after a while, that’s just how it goes. But with the longevity of the LTO tapes, backing up our clients projects has now become (in addition to a way to easily access old projects for use in current projects) a way for our clients to have long term storage of their valuable work. So we now charge our clients for each project that they have archived. Pulling things off of the tapes is free to them, but the initial archiving now costs them a small fee. This is a win-win for us and the clients, as they will have their projects safe for several decades, and we will pay off the expense of the drive in the near future, and even start making money on it! It’s an investment!

Sadly, the cashier at Target wouldn't let me buy an Xbox using LTO tapes instead of money.

I guess the underlying point of this was to let you know, if you happened to have doubts about LTO tape based archiving, you were right to perhaps have doubts in the past, but it all seems to be good now. The Quantum A-Series is a fantastic machine for archiving large amounts of media. I recommend the Quantum A-Series tape drive NOW, because it works good NOW. It is definitely faster to actually pull things off of it or put things on it compared to the IDE drives. It also importantly comes with the assurance that bad data blocks won’t get copied over, giving us very comfortable levels of security. I think what we expected it to do when we first got it, is finally happening ten fold in recent times. Bail on the hard drives, this is a good time to be tape based archiving. And you should make it an A-Series.

Our ever growing collection of filled LTO tapes.

In a future article we will look at how we use the LTO drives in combination with tapeless production cameras. Having a good workflow is the key to everything.

For more detailed specs on LTO technology in general, check out Wikipedia.

But due to the progression in technology and the drastic drop in prices, nearly anybody can open a little boutique of their own. And in fact, more and more editors are opting to leave their full time job to pursue freelance editing, while also having their own system setup in an extra room or their basement. For many post houses, filling a senior editor job has become a difficult task, with so many of the talented editors deciding to make their own path.

Have you been tempted to go this route? Have you been tempted to start your own production or post production company? It’s not for everybody, that’s for sure. Chances are you know in your gut if it’s not for you already. While on the surface it sounds great and you have visions of building your own room and keeping all of that hourly rate for yourself, there’s so much more to running a good (and profitable) business. If you want to set something up in your house and just work the room yourself, maybe there’s not much more to it, but I’m talking about the editor that wants to get an office, have more then one room, maybe a VO booth, graphics work station and so on.

Here are just a few things to consider.

• You’ll need to secure office space. Location is key, but so is the monthly rent. Will you need to sign a lease (probably) and if so for how long?
• Will you need to build out the office at all to fit your needs? Painting? Will you have to pay for this or will the landlord?
• How much furniture and office equipment will you need? What will that cost, especially if you like those Herman Miller chairs.
• You’ll need at least one phone line, two or more is better.
• How much cash will you actually need to lay out for all of the necessary gear? Sure, you can get a mac and Final Cut Pro for around 6K, but add to that a capture card, tape deck(s), audio board, speakers, lots of cables, edit monitor, client monitor, machine room rack and some really fast hard drives and suddenly you’re more around 25-100K.
• Do you have that kind of cash, or will you need to buy on credit? If credit, where will you get it? Credit cards, bank loan? What type of interest will you need to pay?
• After you’ve spent all of this money, you had better have some business insurance.
• At this level, you probably will want to incorporate your business. That will cost anywhere from $500 to $1,200 depending on who does it and to what level that handle the details. On average expect to pay about $800.

Let’s say you get past all of the hurdles above (and this is just a partial list). You now have your small little company ready to go and generate some income. And let’s say you’re the worlds best editor and being booked is not a problem (this is usually not the case if you’re just starting, even if you do have some long time clients that you’ve edited with). What do you actually know about running a business? If you’re busy editing all the time, who is actually running the business? Who handles the accounting, finding new business, keeping the equipment running, doing research on new trends? Do you need to hire an assistant editor to help out with all of the extra duties associated with editing?

One of the main reasons that so many businesses fail in the first 3 years is that they were not well designed from the ground up. In many cases, small businesses are built around a single person doing everything. But no matter how passionate you are about what you do, you WILL burn out if you don’t have a better plan going into it.

And by now you’re probably asking yourself “where’s the book Tom, I thought this was about a book”?

A few years back around the time I was starting Edit Creations I read a great book called,

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It.

The book is very good at breaking down how to design your business in a way that you will have control over the business, instead of the business having control over you. While the book does not cover post houses specifically, the lessons taught can easily be applied to any business. For me it answered the question of how I go from one man editing, to a business that can sustain itself without me (something I’m still working towards, one step at a time).

The book is available on Amazon.com in paperback, and as an unabridged audio recording on Audible.com. If you’ve already read it yourself, I would be interested in hearing your feedback.

But due to the progression in technology and the drastic drop in prices, nearly anybody can open a little boutique of their own. And in fact, more and more editors are opting to leave their full time job to pursue freelance editing, while also having their own system setup in an extra room or their basement. For many post houses, filling a senior editor job has become a difficult task, with so many of the talented editors deciding to make their own path.

Have you been tempted to go this route? Have you been tempted to start your own production or post production company? It’s not for everybody, that’s for sure. Chances are you know in your gut if it’s not for you already. While on the surface it sounds great and you have visions of building your own room and keeping all of that hourly rate for yourself, there’s so much more to running a good (and profitable) business. If you want to set something up in your house and just work the room yourself, maybe there’s not much more to it, but I’m talking about the editor that wants to get an office, have more then one room, maybe a VO booth, graphics work station and so on.

Here are just a few things to consider.

• You’ll need to secure office space. Location is key, but so is the monthly rent. Will you need to sign a lease (probably) and if so for how long?
• Will you need to build out the office at all to fit your needs? Painting? Will you have to pay for this or will the landlord?
• How much furniture and office equipment will you need? What will that cost, especially if you like those Herman Miller chairs.
• You’ll need at least one phone line, two or more is better.
• How much cash will you actually need to lay out for all of the necessary gear? Sure, you can get a mac and Final Cut Pro for around 6K, but add to that a capture card, tape deck(s), audio board, speakers, lots of cables, edit monitor, client monitor, machine room rack and some really fast hard drives and suddenly you’re more around 25-100K.
• Do you have that kind of cash, or will you need to buy on credit? If credit, where will you get it? Credit cards, bank loan? What type of interest will you need to pay?
• After you’ve spent all of this money, you had better have some business insurance.
• At this level, you probably will want to incorporate your business. That will cost anywhere from $500 to $1,200 depending on who does it and to what level that handle the details. On average expect to pay about $800.

Let’s say you get past all of the hurdles above (and this is just a partial list). You now have your small little company ready to go and generate some income. And let’s say you’re the worlds best editor and being booked is not a problem (this is usually not the case if you’re just starting, even if you do have some long time clients that you’ve edited with). What do you actually know about running a business? If you’re busy editing all the time, who is actually running the business? Who handles the accounting, finding new business, keeping the equipment running, doing research on new trends? Do you need to hire an assistant editor to help out with all of the extra duties associated with editing?

One of the main reasons that so many businesses fail in the first 3 years is that they were not well designed from the ground up. In many cases, small businesses are built around a single person doing everything. But no matter how passionate you are about what you do, you WILL burn out if you don’t have a better plan going into it.

And by now you’re probably asking yourself “where’s the book Tom, I thought this was about a book”?

A few years back around the time I was starting Edit Creations I read a great book called,

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It.

The book is very good at breaking down how to design your business in a way that you will have control over the business, instead of the business having control over you. While the book does not cover post houses specifically, the lessons taught can easily be applied to any business. For me it answered the question of how I go from one man editing, to a business that can sustain itself without me (something I’m still working towards, one step at a time).

The book is available on Amazon.com in paperback, and as an unabridged audio recording on Audible.com. If you’ve already read it yourself, I would be interested in hearing your feedback.

TT

Since late last year when Adobe announced the next version of Flash player would support H.264 video playback, people have been excited at the possibilities. Finally, it looks like video on the web is becoming standardized to the point that you don’t need to worry about the end user being able to play your video or not. While the last few versions of flash video have made great strides in image quality and file size, it still does not compare to H.264.

But while the quality of H.264 has been great, the chances of your clients being able to play it back on-line has been hit or miss for many. That has all changed with the marriage of Flash player and H.264.

But now that Flash Player 9 (Update 3) is out in the wild, the big question is how exactly does it work? David Hassoun of RealEyes Media has written a great in depth article on all of the nitty gritty details. He really gets into the meat of it and provides not only downloadable sample files, but several useful links along the way.

You probably read the title and thought I was talking about working an edit room. But you would be wrong.

Part of being an editor, freelance editor, or small post house owner is selling yourself and your skills. Who will know how great you are or what you have to offer if you’re not getting the message out there?

Over at Found Read they have a series of articles on how to “work the room” when at a party or other social event. While some may view this as purely social, I believe it’s critical that you poses these skills on some level and continue to improve them over time.

They offer some very simple and practical tips that you can immediately put to use. The good news is that with enough practice, anybody can go from wall flower to life of the party.

How to work the Room