Growing up I hated reading. I hated reading worse than broccoli and flossing. Somehow over the past 6ish years I have fallen in love with it though. I’m still a slow reader but I’m usually reading at least two books at all times. My most recent endeavor is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It’s not a book about tuning engines. It’s “an inquiry into values.” I’m only ~50 pages into it but already really digging it (a term that’s been stuck in my head because it’s in every other paragraph in the other book I’m reading). The other night I came across a few pages that focus on focus and an idea struck me. I realized this is something I’ve been slacking on and thought we could try out an experiment together in the edit bay to see if it helps us edit video faster.
It’s 8:30pm on Tuesday night and up until about 30 minutes ago there was a different post scheduled to go out tomorrow, my regular posting day. Like many nights I found myself winding down with a few minutes of Twittering while watching the Nats game. That was until I saw an interesting retweet: If you're … Read more
Today I decided to take a step back and look at what’s been going right for me in post production lately. I gathered some hardware essentials, software tips, productivity hacks and more for you in this post. After reading it this make sure to tell me what is working for you right now in post production. The first thing that’s working for me is literally by my side all day, everyday.
Fantom Drives
I absolutely love these external hard drives. I’ve used them for the past five years. I got introduced to Fantom Drives when my old production manager started buying their GreenDrives for deep storage of projects and shipping media to remote freelance editors when shop got too busy.
Still trying to figure out what to write as a caption for this picture. If you think of one, tell me in the comments section. Photo by Jay Mantri
Last week I had a three-day shoot in New York City. It’s been a few months since I’ve shot anything of substance on a location and I could feel my “cameraman muscle” atrophying. During the shoot I did something I’ve been doing outside of shooting entirely on accident. Afterwards I realized I improved the quality of the video, lessened time spent in post and made the client happier.
Lately I’ve spent a lot of time writing posts and editing videos rather than shooting. An approach to writing, and content creation in general, is the Tell, Tell and Told method. I’m going to go over with you what it is, how I used it on my shoot and where it fits in in post production.
Honestly I have no idea what this is actually called. Someone help me out in the comments section if you know!
Tell, Tell and Told – Explain this, please.
Tell, Tell and Told is simple – tell the audience what you will tell them, tell it to them and then tell them what you told them.
Tell the audience what you will tell them is the basic introduction. I did this above when I said “I’m going to go over with you what it is, how I…” Tell it to them is what we’re doing now. I’m telling you the information I want to give you in the post. Tell them what you told them is a recap. Ex: Today we went over how to change point text to paragraph text in After Effects.
You should do this in any sort of informative product (written, video, other). Think about most of the non-fiction programming you watch. There’s a short introduction that says what’s going to happen in the show. That introduction teases something big that you always have to wait until the last 5 minutes to see. Then the meat of the show happens. Finally there’s a recap of everything that was covered in the last 45 seconds that the editor squeezed in before the credits get squished over to the side to show the start of the next show.
The Shoot
Day 1 of my shoot was wrapping. We had a solid non-talent talent and were actually done early. This was an amazing feeling after getting up at 3:45am to catch a train to NYC. But since we had some more time, and despite of some sleep deprivation, I decided to stop everyone from packing up and leaving when we thought we got everything done on the shot list. Together I guided us through everything we shot and our notes. This turned out to be tremendously helpful.
We realized that 1) we skipped a shot 2) two of our notes were wrong and 3) we should shoot these couple quick items that weren’t on the list.
Procrastination. In the first few months of this website I’m trying to publish at least once a week, preferably every Wednesday. This past week I had a shoot out of town Monday-Wednesday. I knew I had a (self-imposed) deadline to hit but procrastinated the days before the trip and ended up not getting a post written. I waited to take action until it was too late.
The same happens in the edit bay. We get an important, large project or task but hold off on it until it is too late. We end up rushing or put it together 5 minutes at a time alternating with 5 minutes of Facebook. Sometimes you just have to stop everything and focus on the most important task at hand.
This morning I could have easily held off writing this post until Monday. But once I took a step back from my day and looked at everything I was doing (messing around on Twitter, taking a class on Lynda, debating about going to the dog park) I realized this post is the most important thing for me to do. So I stopped what I was doing, which was learning Japanese (we can talk about that in a different post!), put on my favorite song of the moment, opened up Word and started typing.
Parkinson’s Law states that, “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” If we are given three weeks to complete a project we’re usually going to wait until there’s five days left to start on it. Instead of looking at three weeks to complete a project why not break down all the steps – import, log, string out, etc. – and give yourself mini deadlines.
I’m actually in this scenario right now. I have about three weeks to complete editing my most recent shoot. I know I could crank it out in five days, but it wouldn’t be my best work and I’d be super stressed. Instead I’m breaking it down into these mini deadlines. Yesterday’s goal was to get everything imported. Today it’s to organize all my shots and go through my notes (I haven’t done it yet but have a couple hours blocked off later this afternoon!).
My first big mistake as a professional video editor came quick. It’s October 2009. I’d been at my first job out of college for a couple weeks. My post production experience consisted of a handful of school projects. And Avid Media Composer? The software was still completely foreign to me. I had been using it a bit and reading the manual since starting my job but still didn’t understand why NOTHING MOVED WHEN I CLICKED IT ON THE TIMELINE! All that FCP7 training for nothing…
There are a couple things you should know about where I was working. First, we created training videos for a specific industry. Second, we were a non-profit. That means we kept as much as we could in-house. When we didn’t have to hire out for a professional voiceover (VO) artist we used one of our people. And third, we captured our VO into Avid Media Composer through a mixer into an Adrenaline.
So there I am. It’s 8:30 AM and I’m in “Avid 5” (my glorified closet) running an XLR cable from our sound booth (another glorified closest). The senior editor asked me to record a script with our VO person while she was off that day so she could start on it first thing when she got back. She ran me through the drill the day before. Plug XRL cable into the mixer. Turn on phantom power. Turn off speakers. Plug in headphones. Open Avid. Open VO bin. Ctlr+7 to open the Capture Tool (I was on a PC back then). Name the clip. Pull up faders. Mic check. Okay, I can hear the VO person. The levels on the mixer are lighting up. Hit record. Check for blinking red light in the Capture Tool. Wow…I did it!
Fast forward some two hours and 50 pages of script later.
Our VO person finishes the last line. I stop the capture. The master clip appears in the VO bin. I quickly save the bin and take a deep breath in relief. I wrap up the cable and put away the “Quiet Please” signs. I grab my second cup of coffee and settle back into my edit bay.
I double-click the master clip of the recording session to start editing out the bad takes. I press the spacebar to play the clip and silence…
