September 2006

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Now it’s been almost a month since I started blogging. What do you think so far?

After having been about 2 years in art school, I was quite tired of all the arty types, arty lingo, and arty clothes (you know, everyone has to show all the time how creative and different s/he is from all the rest of the creatively different bunch.).

But today, while browsing the Jeriko One blog, I found a very inspiring website, by a british artist named Banksy. Jeriko wrote about how Bansky put 500, ahem, edited versions of the Paris Hilton CD into british stores. I loved that one, and had a look at the original website.

There I found some magnificent political art, where Bansky had visited the illegal West Bank barrier, and left his paintings there.

About 3 years ago we (which means either the company I work for, or me and my wife) set upon making a documentary. A film, which was big in ambition and – being an unknown production company – small in budget. Now, we are finally drawing to a close. After numerous re-edits, re-shoots and re-thoughts, tomorrow we’ll show a sort-of final cut to 2 financeers.

The last weeks have been quite, er, busy. For me that meant a lot of graphics work, mixing, finding music, finding sounds, finding stills, clearing rights, finding archive footage, clearing rights again, transferring everything into FCP, colour correcting, chosing colour schemes and filters, making backups, fixing hardware hic-ups, and so on. My wife did, as always, a glorious editing job.

The other day, after a day of fixing some glitches in the footage, I came home to my lovely daughters. When Eva (1 1/4 years old) showed me her tongue, and I saw some white stuff on it, my first thought was “now which filter do I use to fix that one?”. I knew I needed a brake.

Long hours over a stretched period of time and creativity just don’t mix. Even though it may be tempting to work “just one more hour” (which usually means working till afer midnight), it is better to resist and get some off-time. Ease yourself with the knowledge that your brain will keep working on the problem anyway, and the next day you’ll easily find a fix for a previous impossible problem.

Sometimes it just does happen. A far away production company needs some pictures from Norway. They find and book us. The shooting day comes nearer, and still I have not received details as to where and when and what. Internal warning lights start flashing, if slowly. Then, the night before the shoot, an e-mail arrives with a “sorry, but our client has cancelled”.
That means cancelling (on very short notice) equipment I had planned on renting. Which is not the smartest move, reputation-wise. But it also means a day off. Well, let’s rephrase that one. A day that is suddenly awailable to do some of the things that have been waiting to be done, but were pushed to the to-do-list instead.
So the question is, how do I charge the far away production company? I know how it is to be in their shoes. They probably feel a bit embarassed as to having cancelled so late.
Since the cancellatin came less than 24 hours before the shoot, we would usually charge our expenses ocurred (but no less than 50% of the job quote). Do you feel this is too much / too little / just right?
Comments welcome.

Sometimes the position of the camera is locked, but more often than not, I like to look around the location before setting on a place to put the tripod. I try to avoid the usual shot - an eye-like focal length shot from about eye-height. I prefer using a longer or shorter lens, and sometimes it gives very nice angles to go to extreme positions. That can involve a bit of physical labour - like getting all gear up on a ski jump, climbing up to the roof of a house (never forgetting about safety), kneeling down in the mud, or, as pictured, going into the pond.

I try to give my audience a point of view that they are not used to.

Just got some news that Final Cut will get an update within the next 30 days. Among the improvements is support for a couple of more cameras, plus

• Scope and Monitors. Improved accuracy; scopes can now sample every video line. Scopes will also update in real-time during video playback.
• BWF compatibility
• Improved edit-to-tape accuracy for D5
• Compatibility with insert editing to audio channels 5-12 on decks
• Now compatible with some FxPlug filters
• Gamma control for imported graphics
• Media Manager is now more reliable
• EDL and Cinema Tools lists
• XML for developers
• Metadata preservation in QT files

Love the fact that the scopes will finally be reliable.