Are we geting close to where mobile devices are serious moviemaking tools? Not yet – but the question of how do you rethink workflows for different interfaces is exciting! I’ve been using iMovie for iPad and iPhone to do quick edits of the family for awhile now – I’ll be interested to see what Avid brings to the table(t), and what trickles down to professional systems.
Written by Brent Altomare
When Apple released FCPx in June last year, the response from FCP users was universally (very) bad - well, almost universally bad. While I wasn’t thrilled with the new release, I thought the biggest problem was not with the software, but with how Apple presented it. This was, after all, something completely new and people have trouble with change even when the change is for the good – and whichever side of the fence you fell on FCPx, almost everyone knew that FCP7 was getting long in the tooth and needed a change.
What I said then was that if Apple had released FCPx as a free “time limited beta” – where they would gather user feedback and address problems in the final release, the response from the community would have been significantly different. Today, Apple released FCPx 10.0.3, and from what I’ve seen, this is the release that should have followed the free beta period. Many of the features that people have rightfully bemoaned losing in the 7 to X transition are back – most notably multi-cam editing – with mixed formats and mixed frame rates, media relink (thank whichever deity you wish to thank), broadcast monitoring (huzzah!), and perhaps most importantly (but far less sexy) XML support – which has allowed the big brains at Assisted Editing to release their FCP 7 to X conversion tool, allowing you to bring your FCP7 projects in to FCPX – I honestly think I heard a choir of angels sing when I read that.
Time will tell if Apple has also squashed the most persistant bugs, but 10.0.3 is, so far, is the first version that I think FCP users should have had to pay for. Better late than never, and I think FCPX now is a true contender for professionals.
If you haven’t tried FCPX yet because of all the negative press, I highly recommend it. Once you wrap your head around this new way of working (and you do have to forget almost everything you think you know), FCPX really is a powerful, professional editing tool – at least, NOW it is.
Written by Brent AltomareSo one of the things I struggle with is the business side of the business. Like many people in the industry, I got into film and video production because I enjoyed telling stories – not because I had any particular affinity for running a business. I have to make so many decisions that seem to have nothing to do with the art that I love:
That last one is particularly tricky – since we offer strictly B2B communication services, it’s hard to find a marketing outlet that gets us the right kinds of leads. If we do marketing that has even a whiff of a consumer target, we get inundated with “I have a great idea for a tv show” and “I need a camera guy to shoot my kid’s baseball team” types of leads. So we’re very (VERY) careful about where our marketing messages go. One service we like because it’s very targeted is Thumbtack – it allows us to create a really nice video production for business ad at no cost. In addition, they give us lots of neat little tools like a spotlight profile on the business, and the ability to create nice Craigslist ads with friendly reminders to renew. All for free!
Of course, no price is a good price if you don’t get the results you want. Thumbtack is a new(ish) service and we’ve just gotten started with it. We’ll see if ultimately it provides good value for Groovy!
If you’re a video or film professional, how do you market your services? Do you do any advertising? How about social media? Face-to-face conversations with established relationships are obviously our most effective sales tool, but how do you pave the way for those selling opportunities?
Written by Brent AltomareThe FedEx guy was a little taken aback by how enthusiastic we were at his arrival. I think I may have squealed like a schoolgirl.
However, I’ll get over the minor humiliation when I set our new beastie up for the first time!
Film Fading to Black is a really interesting look at the current state of film from the team over at Creative Cow. What hooked me is the first paragraph (emphasis mine):
While the debate has raged over whether or not film is dead, ARRI, Panavision and Aaton have quietly ceased production of film cameras within the last year to focus exclusively on design and manufacture of digital cameras. That’s right: someone, somewhere in the world is now holding the last film camera ever to roll off the line.
And by “film,” I mean the celluloid medium (as opposed to tape or a digital storage device). The last time Groovy Like a Movie shot on film was circa 2004 for a car commercial (when I was seriously considering purchasing an A-Minima), so while this has no real practical effect on us as a business, I think there is a mind-set that is different when shooting with film vs shooting with video – and I fear the loss of this way of thinking.
Once while shooting video, I heard a director say “just keep rolling – the tape is the cheapest thing on set.” While this “just keep rolling” mentality may catch some happy accidents (unintentional moments that are good, but couldn’t have been planned for), I think overall it is bad for a production. When shooting film, every movement on set is choreographed. Everything is planned. Everyone is careful. There is artistry – there had to be – because making a mistake when shooting film could be costly.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not pining away for the good-ol days of changing bags, maxing out at 8-minute takes, and not knowing for days if you actually had the shot you needed. Digital is an improvement in almost every way over film. However – the artistry – That’s hard to achieve when everything is so easy. People get lazy. It’s in our nature to do the least amount of work necessary – conserve energy whereever possible!
That’s part of why I like working with our RED ONE (and soon our RED EPIC). These cameras have all the benefits of a digital workflow, but many of the trappings of working on film. Because they’re not simply point and shoot cameras, it brings the necessary artistry back to production. Crews and directors take their time; We carefully choreograph moves, but we can instantly call up the shot* and make sure we have what we need. And if we have to improvise, it can be done!
So a moment of silence for the passing of film – not tomorrow, and maybe not soon – but with no major manufacturers building new film cameras, it is now inevitable.
Film is dead – long live film-style production!
*OK – Epic playback isn’t “instant” yet – but a few minutes at a DIT station is much better than 48 hours at a film processing house!
Written by Brent Altomare
Glad to have the great team from Ron Kilby Creative in the studio shooting a spot for Pacific Marine Credit Union. It’s always fun when we bring vehicles into the sound stage. Notice the huge reflector being used to create smooth, soft shadows on the vehicle, as well as really nice highlights. Making a shiny car look good is a real art!
Written by Brent AltomareWe have often struggled with the concept of renting our equipment – particularly our Mysterium-X RED ONE system. Because we’re not a rental house, we didn’t necessarily have the resources to tech out a rental, nor provide service and support during a rental. This meant we were always hesitant to provide our RED to the local filmmaking, commercial, and corporate community. Now, thanks to our friends at Video Gear®, that has changed.
We are proud to announce that Video Gear is the exclusive rental provider of our RED ONE camera system. With three packages, and discounts for multiple day rentals, the power of the RED One is now available for productions at nearly any budget level.
Finally received our new business cards. And as usual, they look fantastic!
I made this comment on Twitter the other day (retweeting the entertaining and insightful tech columnist David Pogue):
#facepalm RT @Pogue: Did you hear about this? Google’s Chrome browser won’t play H264 videos anymore. Idiotic… http://bit.ly/fBTNIL
I received an interesting reply via Facebook from one of the smartest people I know, Robert Mason of Doghouse Productions:
This is interesting. Sounds like it might mean short term pain, but long term, high quality Open Standards CODECS seems like a good thing. In my audio class we have been discussing Vorbis and FLAC, which are the audio equivalents of Theora. Interesting times…
This led me to a little (semi)rant, that I thought might be relavent for the Groovy audience.
Written by Brent AltomareI understand the sentiment, but the problem is the current open standards are measurably (even with an untrained human eye) not as efficient as h.264 (similar bitrates produce noticeably different results).
While Vorbis compares favorably with .mp3 (in many cases being even more efficient), the same can not be said for VP8 and Theora vs h.264.
As much as it can be hard to swallow, sometimes private industry does it better than the open source community.
On top of that, this decision has a tremendous impact on professionals – like… oh… say… me. All of our video is distributed in h.264 format (granted, not everything is html5 compliant, yet). So now I’m faced with a decision both for my company’s website, as well as every client I’ve delivered media to in the las 24 months or so – either their website (potentially) now doesn’t fully support the Chromium Browser – and that means possibly the Chrome browser, or we’re going to have to re-encode every piece of video and deliver in 2 formats (because while a browser may support VP8 or Theora, the client’s laptop may not).
And on top of that, none of my professional software provides adequate tools for encosing VP8 or Theora – which means I’m having to rely on shareware or open source tools with very little official support mechanism behind them. Which means if something goes wrong, I need to rely on the wisdom of the crowd to save my ass when I’m on deadline. And the crowd is, in my opinion, a little hit-or-miss.
I’m generally agnostic when it comes to tools a person uses. I think you should be able to utilize whatever makes you fast and efficient. Where I get frustrated is when people place roadblocks to me using the tools that work best for me. And in this case, Chromium (and I have no doubt that this decision is being driven by Google – aka private industry – even though Chromium is technically a separate organization) is putting up a potentially huge (and expensive) roadblock!