alex4d

[alex4d]

Super Dad.

[alex4d]

Porn Stars with and without makeup

[alex4d]

ASSIMILATE, the digital workflow tools maker, today announced the launch of SCRATCH Play™, the world’s first truly comprehensive, no-cost media player.

Another professional clip playing app, this time from Assimilate, and it's free with advertising. Perhaps they want more people to get to know parts of their colour correction UI.

[alex4d]

8 times normal HD: 4 x resolution 2 x frame rate!

#UHDTV

[alex4d]

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it

Upton Sinclair

[alex4d]

Doug Trumbull knows that panning across a star field at 24p doesn't work so well. Turns out the lessons apply for making your end credits.

[alex4d]

At the very least editors need to know enough about VFX to be able to use their timelines to communicate their intentions clearly with other professionals in the same way they communicate with sound editors and colourists.

"All science touches on art; all art has its scientific side. The worst scientist is he who is not an artist; the worst artist is he who is no scientist." Armand Trousseau

What does an editor do? If you ask someone outside of the film and television industry, you might get the...

[alex4d]

Alpha of iOS 7 running on an Incredible prototype iPad back in 2004

[alex4d]

I wish I worked at this edit shop

“Hootenanny: After Dark”

[alex4d]

OS X 10.9 Mavericks rendering boost

For many years people have connected multiple computers together to perform complex tasks. In post production more and more computing is being done using advanced GPUs.

Multiple computers combined to perform complex tasks together are known as render farms. The faster the connections between the computers, the better.

Current Mac Pros can have PCIe cards installed, and PCIe cards can be used with Thunderbolt-equipped Macs using an expansion chassis.

However current Macs don't have fast network connections. 

A feature of Apple's forthcoming Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks might allow many more Macs be used in simple render farms: IP over Thunderbolt.

Internet Protocol over Thunderbolt means that you can connect Macs via Thunderbolt cables and use the Thunderbolt cable as a network connection. Thunderbolt 1 connections have a theoretical maximum transfer rate of 10 Gb/s - which is similar to the speed of 10 gigabit Ethernet, which is a popular networking standard for render farms.

I assume IP over Thunderbolt is less efficient than a dedicated Fibre Channel PCI Express card, but at least Thunderbolt is available on a wide range of Macs.

With a little distributed rendering, my 27" iMac connected to a pair of Thunderbolt equipped Macs will get through QuickTime encodes much more quickly!

[alex4d]

This tumblr is an experiment I might return to. For now, I'll continue over at my Wordpress blog. Thanks for visiting!

[alex4d]

Matt Davis writes about the advantages of the Atomos Samurai SDI monitor and recorder when it comes to projects with complex audio setups.

[alex4d]

A Final Cut Pro X products and services guide

A few weeks ago I started unOrganazized as companion blog to my main Editing Organazized blog. unOrganazized is my place for links to Final Cut Pro X, pre- and post-production. More permanent than Twitter, more ephemeral than what I write and make for Editing Organazized.

After a few posts, I remembered that there isn't a single site that links to all products for Final Cut Pro X. I wanted to refer to the many effects, transitions, titles, applications and tutorials available. I hadn't seen a tweet mentioning or a link to a single place that lists everything.

The great thing about the internet is that in some cases if you cannot find something you need online, you can use freely available tools to create an online resource for you and others. I added 60 posts here, each being a paid Final Cut Pro product. Each post was simple, a link to the company product page plus an embedded video preview and a paragraph of text from their site.

My plan wasn't to create an ad-supported money making tool, but a site that would be useful for Final Cut Pro X users - including me. After coming up against a couple of Tumblr limitations, I decided to move over to Squarespace for my Final Cut Pro X buyers guide:

I then came up against the limitations of the Squarespace 6 search system, and had a vague plan to find out what their plans are for improving it to a point when it would be good enough for a buyers guide.

FCPXLand

Luckily someone else has already started a Final Cut Pro X products guide. It's the main draw of the FCPXLand site. Currently it lists 103 effect products (which they call plug-ins), 23 transition products and 13 title products.

Naturally they also host other content including news articles, tutorials and a forum. The orthodoxy up to a few months ago is that you make more ad money by making your site as sticky as possible. That means people come for one reason, and stay when they find out how much more there is to see. Ad space and promotional opportunities are sold on the proposition that there are hundreds of page views by thousands of Final Cut Pro X users. That means that FCPXLand feels the need to have a forum, news and editorial section - just like fcp.co - currently the default online destination for Final Cut Pro X users.

In practice, I would stick to doing well whatever no-one else is doing well. I hope FCPXLand leaves the news reporting and freefrom forum management to fcp.co. I hope they implement the features I was starting to think about for my guide.

I would suggest more fine-grained tags. This would help people find specific products, tutorials, tips and product comments. Combined with category tags for filtering would make searching more powerful. More everyday names for some tags would help those who don’t know what the solution is (an adjustment layer title) without knowing what to search for (Title? Effect?).

Tags could include Split Screen, Light Leaks/Lens Flares, Grunge, Retro Film Look, Colour Grading, Compositing, Animation, Blur, Distortion, Keying, Light, Looks, Stylize, Tiling, Object (for transitions), Wipe, Build In/Out, Bumper/Opener, Lower Thirds, Credits, Backgrounds, Solids, Textures

Categories would then refine which kinds of content a search for a tag would find: Paid, Free, Plug-in, Effect, Transition, Title, Theme, Generator, Application, Tutorial, Tip, Comment

This means I could search for all items tagged ‘Split Screen’, but limit the search to ‘Free and Transition and Tutorial’

Becoming the best product and services guide would change the ad-sales pitch a little. Instead of 'We have many visitors' it would be 'when people come to us, they are deciding what to buy.'

What do you want from an FCPX products and services guide?

[alex4d]

Spitballing a logline

@milesmaker: umteenth logline change @1lastHuman: The mother of civilization is awakened by science and must delete her DNA to save mankind.

@alex4d: @1lastHuman Not understanding 'must delete her DNA' = no relatable task to help me anticipate many act II actions

@milesmaker: my research & prep for loglines emphasize the need to convey the premise, situation, irony without giving away too much (Act II)

@alex4d: People use the premise element to propose seeing the film "Let's see the film where a someone… …deletes their DNA/does battle?

@milesmaker: I get what you're saying but her ultimate objective is to delete her DNA which concludes the movie if/when she succeeds, battle won.

@milesmaker: my previous logline: The mother of civilization is cloned from ancient DNA to rebirth the conspirators who eradicated earth.

@alex4d: 'A clone of the first human must prevent the birth of her brothers and sisters to save civilisation' what about the antagonist?

@milesmaker: describing the antagonist as 'science' is subtle simplicity Lol! A collective consciousness of Earth's wealthiest & brightest minds.

@alex4d: is science personified in an individual? e.g her hubristic/proud/arrogant 'father'

@milesmaker: man's posthuman invention. Humanoid, but not flesh & blood. One McCloud is the singularity personified. The superhuman antagonist.

@alex4d: 'A clone of the first human must battle the ultimate cyborg to save our future'

@milesmaker: I like its simplicity, but the word 'battle' is misleading. She maintains her faith until she's saved by an unexpected miracle.

@alex4d: 'resist the advance' or just 'resist'. You'll need to disguise the non-movie (more novelistic) activity of 'maintaining faith'

‏@milesmaker: flipped through my thesaurus for the word 'battle' :-) the verbs 'face' and 'defy' don't imply equal, 'defies' is compelling!

@alex4d: 'hey let's see that movie where we can witness someone's interior world staying the same. With a deus ex maxina resolution'

@milesmaker: now I only want to add the implication here--the stakes re: our future, so...

@milesmaker: logline: cloned from ancient DNA, the Mother of civilization defies the first transhuman to save mankind from subhuman enslavement.

@alex4d: No need for 'subhuman' - space for pro/antagonist adjectives and a deadline?

@milesmaker: cloned from ancient DNA, the Mother of civilization defies the ultimate transhuman to save mankind from enslavement.

‏@alex4d: now to make the script match the logline - not vice versa!

@milesmaker: I was just thinking that. This forces me to up the ante in terms of conflict, FX (shock & awe) while keeping it character-driven.

‏@alex4d: to externalise 'maintains faith' on a low budget you could have fantasies where her subconscious confronts her with dilemmas

@milesmaker: I'm gonna revisit my title too. A more relevant tone popped in my head, I'm gonna DM it to you. Thanks for the logline workout!

@alex4d: good luck from London Zone 2, 9 hours in your future…

@Transhumania: Thanks. Human.

#film producing #screenwriting

[alex4d]

There are 423 commands in the Final Cut Pro command editor. 279 have default keyboard shortcuts. This post on my blog has a link to a PDF of all 423 commands with keyboard shortcuts if available plus a sentence describing the command.

If you have Apple's official user guide open, clicking a command in my PDF will scroll the guide to the relevant page.

#Editing organazized #Final Cut Pro X

[alex4d]

Graphic artist and poster designer Olly Moss provides insights into creativity while telling backstage stories of the production of some of the coolest designs of the last few years.

#creativity #disintermediation #posters

[alex4d]

Monica Daniel on how to become a more valuable editor

Here are the tweet notes I took during a recent @MoviolaOfficial webinar:

Valuable broadcast editors... by @monica_edits 

1. …know onlining + colour correction.

2. …have assistant editor-level technical skills.

3. …can composite in NLEs.

4. …know storytelling.

5. …make changes to stop the executive note repeating.

…find inspiration…

1. …by finding the interesting element in a project.

2. …by learning something new from the workflow.

3. …from great colleagues.

...can enhance story…

1. …by figuring out the ending and working towards it.

2. …including elements of non-narrative creativity.

3. …in conjunction with other editors.

Valuable broadcast editors…

…take calculated risks, knowing how extreme experimentation can be given the nature of the clients.

…work on a variety of show types, monitor story problems.

…work on earning trust, therefore aren't replaced.

…are calm, pleasant to work with.

…are respectful of writers, sensitive that the edit is the last rewrite of their hard work.

… communicate well with motion graphics artists, their artistic direction comes from others.

…work well with other editors. They are nice, well organised, respect other's creativity and recognise their skill level.

Replay the webinar for $15 on the Moviola site

Short podcast on iTunes

Monica's Tumblr

#editing profession