Final Cut Pro tips: Here Comes Mr. Jordan

I started noodling with Final Cut Pro soon after it came out (ten years ago!) and taught myself how to use it. By taught, I mean that I learned to hack my way around and accomplish what I needed. But it wasn't pretty or fast. After a few years, I really started feeling the limitations of my abilities, so I decided to dig into some tutorials. For whatever reason -- probably because I'd seen a few for free online -- I chose Larry Jordan's Lynda.com video tutorials. These helped me immensely with everything from media management tips to techniques that greatly reduced the time I'd spend fumbling through FCP's interface.

Even if you don't need to teach (or re-teach) yourself Final Cut Studio, I highly recommend that you check out Larry's free Monthly Newsletter. Among the tips this month:

Startup Mode Selector, a free application that helps Snow Leopard users learn more about, and harness, 64-bit technology without use of the terminal...

Ken Stone's excellent iChat Theatre tutorial...

and Apple's substantial (40pages) white paper on Customizing Final Cut Studio Blu-Ray Disc Templates.

Enjoy.

For Memories' Sake, pt. 3: Organizing Content

Once I had completed the most basic research and transferred Angela's movies to video, I had to figure out how to keep track of the content of her collection. Though I only later learned about the importance of metadata and the availability of online archivist classes, I began simply and naively with a system that has served me well. I created a basic Filemaker Pro database with screengrabs from the home movies and just enough data to let me quickly find movies by persons featured, keywords, and/or their location on specific film reels or transfer tapes. I think this screen grab is somewhat self-explanatory:

As you can imagine, the keywords tend to be most useful. The beauty of using Filemaker Pro (as opposed to a library-designed data management software or, even worse, paper-based finding aid system) is that I can create ways to look for and quickly find what I want in a way that make sense to me. It's also one of the most affordable solutions I've found.

Of course, I quickly discovered I would need hard drives and backups of those hard drives for all the data and the video files, and when you're dealing with hundreds of hours of footage, it's quite an investment. I've found this brand to be especially reliable and affordable. As part of the "best practices" I've adopted, I always keep one copy of master tapes and hard drives with data in a separate, secure, climate-controlled location (e.g. not in a basement, attic, or anywhere subject to big temparture fluctuations or humidity). I also set alarms to remind myself to power up and spin the heads on the harddrives at least once every six months. Failing to do so can mean a total loss of data.

**

Even for filmmakers who aren't interesting in shooting small format or working with family archives, home movies have a lot to offer. As opposed to much archival footage that comes with hefty fees (my searches online yielded rates ranging from $25 per second to $350/second and up), home movies often come free for the taking (with attribution) or for a song at garage and rummage sales. More than that, I believe there's something inexplicably beautiful in these smaller than life versions of everyday scenes. Maybe it's because small things distill life to its essence...or maybe it's because the world seems so big and wonderful when things appear so small. Whatever the reason, if you come across orphan or neglected home movies, I hope you'll consider preserving and using these beautiful artifacts or donating them to an archive near you.

In the next making of For Memories' Sake post, I'll share how I scanned and catalogued 30,000+ photographs without taking too many years off my life.

Still from Angela Singers 8mm home movies.

For Memories' Sake, pt. 2: A Smattering of Super-8 Resources

Paul Harrill here. What follows below is Ashley Maynor's second post about For Memories' Sake, her forthcoming documentary. (I am the film's producer.) If you missed Ashley's first post, you can catch up with it here.

As you might guess if you read my first post, I soon found myself overwhelmed with the task of caring for Angela Singer's massive and chaotic collection. While this preservation project has finally come together in the form of a movie (more than three years since it began), I had to first learn to work with and care for her diverse and problematic assemblage of photos, films, and video. As a first generation college student, I majored in the not-so-versatile area of French Literature. I came to filmmaking late in my academic career, so it was without any formal photography training and during my first year of film school that I set out to learn best archival practices, digitization techniques, and the ins and outs of small format filmmaking.

While there's no substitute for learning hands-on through trial, error and frustration as I did, the following is a collection of websites and online resources that most helped me as I stumbled through the first phase of preservation:

Working with Home Movies

General Interest & Footage Sources

Home & Amateur - A blog about home movies and amateur film, whose contributors hail from the Center for Home Movies.

Lost in Light - The documentation of a (now complete) free home movie transfer project, including home movies, categorized by topic, many of them available for Creative Commons remixing.

Prelinger Archives/Archive.Org - A collection of home movies includes amateur films and videotapes from the collections of the Center for Home Movies, the Prelinger archives, other home movie aficionados. Many of the movies are public domain or available for use under Creative Commons guidelines.

Supplies & Small Format Filmmaking Resources

Film Shooting - A great online source for news about all things home movies and small format filmmaking based in Norway. Given that two major print publications (Super8Today and SmallFormat) have shut down their presses in the last year, this online news pool is essential.

On Super 8 - This site bills itself as "impartial and comprehensive resources for today's Super 8 and 8mm small gauge film makers." It's all that and more; based in the UK.

Pro8mm- The only movie house I know of in the US that specifically specializes in Super-8 film stocks and transfers. In 2008, they added a Milliennium II Scanner with daVinci 2K color corrector to their transfer menu, capable of SD or HD scans. It's the premier scanning system for small  gauge film.

Super 8 Site - A German Super8 site. The "links and addresses" page is worth a look.

Urbanski Film - Though the website screams 1990s, I've ordered and been very pleased with film cleaning supplies, projector bulbs, and other hard-to-find small format equipment.

And though it goes without saying, eBay is an immense (if risky) resource for finding old Super 8 cameras and projectors, as well as professional VHS decks for digitizing old videocasettes.  Before purchasing the unknown, I've found the folks on the AMIA Small Gauge/Amateur Film Interest Group listserve to be incredibly helpful and willing to share their expertise.

Preservation & Care Information

Brodsky & Treadway -The transfer house for rare, valuable, and fragile home movies. Their companion site, Little Film, contains detailed, downloadable tips and instructions for caring for home movies.

Home Movie Day - A major project of the Center for Home Movies, Home Movie Day is an international celebration of home movies. The site contains lots of information about film handling and care as well as links to home movie day events across the country and the globe. Home Movie Day also keeps a running list of home movie transfer houses.

National Film Preservation Foundation - A clearinghouse of film care basics and resources for more advanced users. Be sure to download their extensive film preservation guide.

It started with a tattered box...the making for FOR MEMORIES' SAKE

Today begins the first postings by Ashley Maynor on our film For Memories' Sake. (She's the director; I'm the producer.) Take it, Ashley.... It's Christmas 2005 and I've begun the crazy whirlwind of travel that results from being part of a Southern, Catholic family and a child of divorce. My grandmother, Angela Singer, who always gives the most unique (if utterly bizarre) gifts, often salvaged from garage sales or Dollar Store specials, surprises me with a tattered cardboard box. Within the box is a ratty paper bag, and within the bag a treasure trove: 79 3-inch reels of 8mm and Super8 home movies.

I had begged Angela for months to see if she could find her home movie collection, which I knew must have been buried in her house in Cheatham County Tennessee. What once housed nine children and all their things (most memorably for me: potato guns, slingshots, and dirt bike helmets) is now a cluttered mess of papers, mementos, newspaper clippings, and photographs that document time gone by and its slow, continual creep.

Having deciphered Angela's handwritten labels, organized the reels as best I could, and researched home movie transfer houses, I sent the films off in late 2006 for a low-cost telecine transfer. The films came back to me in digital form and I began to cut up and reconfigure these celluloid relics of time immemorial using a Macintosh Powerbook and Final Cut Pro.

After expressing such a fervent interest in the home movies, Angela keep digging and presented me, piecemeal over the next year, with more and more documents: over 130 VHS-C tapes of home video, dozens of photo albums from the 1990s, her latest photographs on CD-rom, baby books, photo collages, and so on. In sum, what began as a modest attempt to preserve a few precious films turned into an unexpected discovery of the immensity of Angela's film and photo stockpile and an involved (if unintended) campaign to protect and preserve as much of her archive as possible.

My next post will discuss how I learned (taught myself, really) to preserve Angela's "archive" and how I began shaping this raw material into something that I could use to create For Memories' Sake.

New Final Cut Studio released: Yawning and Gnashing of Teeth Ensue

Apple announced a major (i.e., "you have to pay for it") Final Cut Studio upgrade yesterday. It doesn't have a flashy name like "Final Cut Studio 3" or anything like that. They're just calling it Final Cut Studio. Kinda like The Velvet Underground calling their third album... The Velvet Underground. As most readers know, I'm a fan of Final Cut, so it's a big deal to me when a major upgrade of the software is released. This new FCS has a lot of changes and new features. Like the upcoming Snow Leopard operating system many of the new features strike me as time-savers, not game changers. But after looking over the changes....I'm a little underwhelmed. Are there improvements? Sure. Am I going to stand in line for this release? No.

Disappointments? Sure. The biggest one is that there is still no fix for QuickTime's gamma problems. (Google page count for: quicktime gamma problems: 3.2 million.) Supposedly the gamma problems will be fixed with the release of the Snow Leopard later this year (and, honestly, that's probably the better place to address it -- system wide). But it is distressing that it's not even mentioned in Apple's 66 page "product overview" discussing the new Final Cut Studio features.

Another disappointment -- and one I've come to expect: DVD Studio Pro is not upgraded whatsoever. For anyone counting, DVD Studio Pro hasn't had a true upgrade since 2005. Obviously, this means no Blu-Ray support.

The kicker?

Compressor now includes a setting that allows you to create Blu-ray–compatible H.264 files that can be imported directly into third-party Blu-ray disc authoring software.

So, Apple, you want me to buy Final Cut Studio so that I can compress footage and prepare it for Blu-Ray burning... but you want me to buy some other company's video software suite so that I can actually author a DVD that takes advantage of Blu-ray's capabilities? Sigh. Thanks a lot.

It's no secret that Apple's business model (e.g., iTunes store, Apple TV, etc.) is built around the premise that DVDs will soon be dead. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. But one way or another this is the clearest indication I've seen that DVD Studio Pro is marked for death. It makes you wonder why they even bother including it with FCS.

**

For a brief list of the changes, here's Apple's webpage regarding the new versions. If you want the full 66-page overview of changes, Apple has a PDF for you.

This one's for the graduates...

Reader (and former student) Jonathan Poritsky writes in:

I've replied to enough "your-dad-said-you-work-in-film-what-should-i-do-now?" e-mails that I got tired of it and decided to write the response to end all responses. It seemed relevant to SRF, and also in part inspired by what you do on your site. So here's the link, do with it what you will...

I will link to it. Here it is: Starting Out in Film, Now What?

How to make a screenings map with Google

After my recent post, which mapped out the past and upcoming Quick Feet, Soft Hands television screenings, some folks at ITVS asked if I wouldn't mind sharing how I made the map so that they could encourage other filmmakers they work with to do the same. Though I'm far from the first person to do this sort of thing, I was, of course, happy to oblige. It's a great way to visually communicate with your audience about when and where they can see your work.

How to create a screenings map using Google Maps:

1) You'll need a Google account, like a Gmail account. If you don't have one, sign up for one.

2) Once you have logged into your Google account, go to Google Maps.

3) In the upper left hand corner, click on "My Maps", then click on "Create new map."

4) A new window area appears on the screen.

Title the map, and describe it. Obviously, you can make this map for TV screenings, festival screenings, a theatrical release, whatever. For my television screenings, here's what I wrote:

"Quick Feet Soft Hands" TV Screenings Upcoming and past screenings for "Quick Feet, Soft Hands."

In some cases, the film will be showing on multiple streams (i.e., regular and Hi-Def), so double-check with your local listings to confirm the details listed here.

If the film is not available in your area, contact your local station to request it.

To find your local station, visit: http://www.pbs.org/stationfinder

For more information on "Quick Feet, Soft Hands" visit: http://www.lovellfilms.com or search "Quick Feet Soft Hands" on Facebook.

5) Immediately under the text box where you'll type your description, select whether you want the map to be PUBLIC or UNLISTED. You may want it unlisted while you develop the map. Then, when you're done, make it public.

6) Now, start adding your screenings:

Begin by searching for a venue (say, a film festival or television station) in the Google search bar at the top of the screen.

a) If it shows up on the map, click on the link and a small "dialogue bubble" will appear. In that bubble click on "Save to My Maps."

Follow the prompt and select the name of the map you're creating.

Clicking "save" will make a new "dialogue bubble" appear. Here you can add information of your choosing. For my "Quick Feet, Soft Hands" map I added the screening date(s) and time(s) for each station.

This is also where you can choose the icon you prefer. I went with some blue thumbtack looking icons. There are several to choose from -- you can even make your own.

b) If searching for the venue does not produce the results you want, you'll need to add the venue yourself. Start by finding the approximate location on your map for the venue, then click on map "pin" in the upper left hand corner of the map. This will change your cursor into a "pin" which you can then place where you like.

Once it's placed, click on it again to add information. (See 6a above for instructions.)

7) As you add your venues, be sure to intermittently save your map. Saving is accomplished by clicking on the "Save" button to the left of the map.

8 ) If you haven't already done so, make your map public by selecting the "Public" radio button after it's done.

9) Finally, you need to share it! To get the URL of your map, click on the "Link" button in the upper right hand corner of the map.

This will show not only the URL for your map (which you can email to all of your fans and supporters), but also the HTML code so that you can embed the map in other web pages (like a blog).

Enjoy!

NOTES:

- If you wish to allow others to edit your map, you can click on the "Collaborate" link near your map's title.

- If you wish to add other venues after later, just log into your Google account, select "My Maps", choose the map that you want to edit, and click on the "Edit" button. Remember to save your work.


View "Quick Feet Soft Hands" TV Screenings in a larger map

Moved. Moving. Moves.

I took a blog-holiday for a few weeks while my lady and I moved out of one house and prepare to move into a new one (this one with some land). Since the second place is in need of some renovation before we can really call it home, all of my computers, files, and thoughts have been scattered. Today, catching up on my reading I found this week-old piece of blogged advice from John August that speaks well to my current status, and I wanted to share it with you (and with myself, for posterity's sake). The following is in response to the question, Which project should I write?

If you have four ideas, all equally viable, I’d recommend writing the one that has the best ending. That’s the one you’ve thought through the most, and the one you’re least likely to abandon midway. But whatever you do, just pick one and write it without delay. If you have great ideas for your other projects, absolutely take some notes, but don’t switch. Finish what you’re doing, or you’ll have a folder full of first acts.

The full post can be found here.

Scott Kirsner's ITVS Case Studies

A few weeks ago Scott Kirsner blogged about a series of case studies he recently authored regarding independent filmmakers connecting with their audiences. Commissioned by ITVS, the case studies focus on, as Scott puts it,

indie filmmakers who are pioneering new ways to: - Open up the production process to more audience participation

- Find and connect with new audiences for their work

- Distribute their finished film in new ways.

While all of the case studies focus on documentaries, there are a lot of insights here that are not limited to any one genre. In fact, I've made these case studies required reading in the Movie Business class that I teach at Virginia Tech. If you read this blog, chances are they should be required reading for you, too.

Read Scott's introductory blog post. Or go straight to the case studies.

Back to School Textbooks

Whether you're a student gearing up for the start of the semester, or someone who's just looking to develop your talents, a good textbook can come in handy. Amazon.com is running a promotion via their Textbook Store, so I thought I'd link to some of my favorite books. All of the books below are books I've either personally assigned as a textbook in my classes, or a book that I've recommended multiple times.


Please note: I do get a few pennies for the click-through if you end up purchasing something. Amazon links are my way of keeping this site advertising-free. And remember: If you're broke you can always try to find these at your nearest public or university library.

On the Utility and Futility of Year-End Lists - Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone. I wish you nothing but peace and happiness in 2009. In keeping with the holiday spirit of 'out with the old, in with the new', here's a link to indieWIRE's 2008 Critics Poll '08.

Since many of the films are year-end specialty releases and art house films, one hopes that, at some point in 2009, these movies will find their way into more provincial cinemas and onto DVD so that the 290 million (or so) people in the United States living outside New York and LA (of which I am one) have the opportunity to judge these films for ourselves. In effect, the 08 poll essentially becomes a "to-watch" list for those of us out in the hinterlands. I am thankful for it.

That said, a survey of this list also exposes the increasingly problematic nature of assessing and classifying films by their release date. Take film #35, Ronnie Brownstein's Frownland. This would have been made my "Best of 2008" list this year... except I saw it at its premiere at SXSW in March 2007. Similarly, the best film I saw in 2008 was There Will Be Blood. Of course, TWBB was not released widely until January, yet it made many critics' Best of 2007 list. Should I include Frownland or Blood on my best-of? Does it matter? Not really. It only highlights the fact that, now more than ever, time and memory are the true arbiters of what lasts.

Enough hand wringing. Of the films I saw in 2008, these are the ones that have stayed with me the longest:

Favorite doc, favorite studio film, and favorite american indie: At the Death House Door The Dark Knight (or There Will Be Blood, if you want to count it as 2008) Frownland

plus two foreign films... Chaturanga In the City of Sylvia

three shorts... Merrily, Merrily (short) Second Egyptian (short) Voda (short)

and four Microbudgets.... Medicine for Melancholy The New Year Parade Wellness Nights and Weekends

And that makes a dozen.

Happy New Year!

Best Film List, By Alphabet (x 2)

Chris Cagle at Category D tagged me for the Alphabet Meme. Here are the rules:

1. Pick one film to represent each letter of the alphabet.*

2. The letter "A" and the word "The" do not count as the beginning of a film's title, unless the film is simply titled A or The, and I don't know of any films with those titles.

3. Thanks to some clarification by The Siren, movies are stuck with the titles their owners gave them at the time of their theatrical release.

4. Films that start with a number are filed under the first letter of their number's word. 12 Monkeys would be filed under "T."

5. Link back to Blog Cabins in your post so that I can eventually type "alphabet meme" into Google and come up #1, then make a post where I declare that I am the King of Google.

6. If you're selected, you have to then select 5 more people.

I have rejected Cagle's new guideline that with foreign titles one should "rely on the original title if in Roman alphabet, the translated title otherwise." This rule had me making even more tough choices than I wished, so I threw it out. I've cheated, in fact, by using foreign titles or translations whenever it helped with difficult letters, tough choices, etc. My guilt is nil.

And to make the choosing even less painful, I have created two lists: One satisfies the theme of this website, the other lists more general favorites. Of course, MANY of my favorite films -- a ridiculous number of them beginning with the letters "M", "T", and "G" -- are left off of both lists. And if a film got listed on one list, I tried to list a different film on the second list.

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Fassbinder) Black Ice (Brakhage) City Lights (Chaplin) Dance Party USA (Katz) Edvard Munch (Watkins) Frownland (Bronstein) The Gleaners and I (Varda) The Hours and Times (Munch) Isle of Flowers (Furtado) Jo Jo at the Gate of Lions (Sjogren) Killer of Sheep (Burnett) Last Chants for a Slow Dance (Jost) Meshes of the Afternoon (Deren) Night of the Living Dead (Romero) O Dreamland (Anderson) Pather Panchali (Ray) Les Quatre Cents Coups (Truffaut) Rome, Open City (Rossellini) Shadows (Cassavetes) Thirteen (Williams) The Unchanging Sea (Griffith) Les Vampires (Feuillade) The Whole Shootin' Match (Pennell) Xala (Sembene) Zorns Lemma (Frampton)

Harrill's list:

The Awful Truth Best Years of Our Lives, The Chinatown Diary of a Country Priest Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind The Fly (Cronenberg) Grand Illusion The Hours and Times Isle of Flowers Jacquot Killer of Sheep Love Affair The Mortal Storm Night of the Living Dead Ordet The Parallax View Les Quatre cents coups Ruggles of Red Gap Starship Troopers Tender Mercies Unforgiven Vivre Sa Vie Woman Under the Influence Xanadu Yi yi Zero for Conduct

Finally, I want to hear from David Lowery, AJ Schnack, Darren Hughes, Alison Willmore, and Karina Longworth.

Dallas Video Festival

Quick Feet, Soft Hands will be screening at the Dallas Video Festival this evening at 7pm. Details for my screening are below, but the main reason I wanted to post about this was to draw attention David Lowery's fantastic trailer for the festival:

Quick Feet, Soft Hands @ Dallas Video Festival Screening as part of the "Don't Give Me No Grief" program of short films. Sunday, November 9 @ 7pm Angelika Film Center (5321 E. Mockingbird Lane)


Wet Dream (DVF 2008) from David Lowery on Vimeo.

The Election: How Filmmakers Can Help

If you're reading this, you're probably a filmmaker with access to a video camera. Video The Vote needs people like you and me on Election Day. What's Video the Vote? From their website:

Video the Vote is a national initiative to protect voting rights by monitoring the electoral process. We organize citizen journalists—ordinary folks like you and me—to document election problems as they occur. And then we distribute their footage to the mainstream media and online to make sure the full story of Election Day gets told. Watch our 2006 highlights and join us as we Video the Vote this November.

If, like me, you find yourself in a swing state this year, you might feel like it's especially important to be a part of this.

It takes less than a minute to sign up, and you can volunteer for just part or all of Election Day. So get involved. And spread the word to your filmmaker friends.

Finally, if you're not sure why such an organization even exists, check out this interview between Bill Moyers and NYU professor Mark Crispin Miller. Warning: Viewing this will keep you up at night.

True Story (for those suffering from writer's block)

From an email that I recently wrote to a student suffering from writer's block:

Have I told you my story about William Stafford, the poet? He made it a habit to write a poem every day. (A great poet, he won the National Book Award, etc.) Anyway, I saw him read his poetry shortly before his death. A budding writer stood up after his reading, during the Q+A and asked, "You said you write a poem every day. What happens on the days when you're not feeling inspired?"

Stafford replied, "I lower my standards."

I think that about sums it up.

Matte Box and Filters - An Intro

It's a few days old, but B&H Photo/Video has a nice introduction to Controlling and manipulating the light (that enters the lens of your camera). The article describes the functions of a follow focus, mattebox and filters. If you're convinced you need these tools after reading the article, you might check out DV Magazine's Matte Box Roundup and Follow Focus Shootout, two fine articles by FresHDV's Kendal Miller and Matthew Jeppsen.