Quintessential Studios' Weblog

I attended two events last night: Mocha training by Imagineer at New Media Hollywood and the Los Angeles Post Production Group meeting.

I happened to be only one of two that attended that particular session of Mocha training.  I guess people don’t like to go outside in the rain!

New Media Hollywood seems like a chill place.  They have a foosball table in the front waiting area, if that is any indication.  They are your basic post production provider/reseller.  You can get systems, software, editing bay rentals, etc.  After an decent hands-on Mocha class, I decided to tell others about their discounts and took some flyers to LAPPG.

I’ve been impressed with Mocha and Shape ever since they demoed at LAFCPUG a while back.  Mocha is a planar tracker, so it’s very accurate.  It is more accurate if you define more areas to track.  Then you can adjust the “surface” for a clean export of tracker layer data.  It seriously has a lot of “smarts”.

I also learned about another Imagineer product, Mokey.  This one actually tracks and replaces the hole with what should be there.  Pretty cool.  We went through removing a sign from a yard, as a car drives by.

Props to Ross Shain for an excellent training session.

LAPPG

Later, at LAPPG, I met some nice “new” people including a photographer who proclaimed “Stills are dead… Be prepared for millions of new video people.”  I posted that claim on Twitter and it inspired this post: http://blog.jayfriesen.com/2009/10/millions-of-new-video-people-my-take/

Being early to the meeting I was one of the lucky ones who got a $5 gift card to Showbiz Store & Cafe.  I also partook in some coffee, cookies, a piece of pizza and some brownies.

Woody who founded LAPPG said he’s on a panel for “http://backpackfilmschool.com/” which sounds cool.  Check that out.

Jeffrey Way from AJA went on to talk about the AJA KiPro.  I’ve already been aquainted with the KiPro but I did learn some new things.  One, is that the Sony V1U is a small camera, small like JVC GY-HM100 small.  I learned this because one of the LAPPG members brought one and they used it to hook up to the AJA KiPro.

I also learned that Apple’s Pro Res (HD) is 220Mbits/sec.  Random fact, I know, but here’s some more: The AJA Xena card is the same as the Kona card but it’s for a PC and it just uses different drivers.  So I guess that means if you want to use your Kona card on a PC, all you have to do is download the Xena PC drivers.  There are also some ports on the AJA KiPro that aren’t usable yet.  They are for future upgrades.  You can also use your KiPro like an IO HD.  It’s basically the next gen of that product.  Cross, up and down convert to your heart’s content with this little unit.  It also works as a monitoring unit.  By that I mean a hook-up-your-monitor-to-see-your-footage, type of monitoring unit.  (I’m really not hip to that whole side of things yet but those of you that are should appreciate that.)

Then, the best for last, I learned that Philip Hodgetts wrote a book called The New Now.  And in this book, there are lots of pieces of information on how to grow your video business.  His talk was very inspirational, at least I know it was to two people for sure, myself and one friend, Chris, who sends out a newsletter-type email every month or so.  We talked about how we are going to use information from Philip’s talk in our own businesses, after the meeting.

Chris’ website is here: www.chrishartedits.com Hey! He’s done a comedy short that’s winning lots of awards that has that kid from Glee in it!

Philip talked about some things: the clue train manifesto, H.A.R.O. (Help a Reporter Out), caring about the customer and to install Google Analytics on to your site.  I know I’m being random with this post and my facts, I think I’ve been on Twitter too much lately!

If you get a chance to see Philip Hodgetts, do it.  And if you like what he has to say, maybe you’d want to buy his book. It’s available here: http://proappstips.com/TheNewNow/ and I’ll be reviewing it here later.

First Signs of Problems

If you’ve ever been on a film shoot, you know one thing for sure. There is a lot of waiting
around!

One of the first “two-hour film projects” we did was called “Berlin Metro“, not at first but it came to be known as that eventually.

This practice shot was mostly arranged by our Production Manager. Our Production Manager was very good at finding locations and support for our crew as he was “connected”, being a lawyer and all. The first shot was at an empty warehouse that one of his friend/clients had just rented and was currently empty.

The goal of this meeting was to go through the whole process, from random genre, character, prop and line of dialogue selection to writing to shooting to editing.

The basic idea we had was that everyone would be included in the brain-storming process and then after a basic story idea was formulated, the writers would spend time by themselves writing the story. This basically is a good idea and as long as you keep your roles heavily defined, this works.

“Defined roles” are the key words in this case. Who does what and who listens to whom? During the first few meetings leading up to this “dress rehearsal”, we talked about who wanted to do what. I felt it was best to try to let people do what they were most interested in doing, first, then add to that as needed.

What hats were given out? Well there was the “Production manager-writer”, the Producer, the “Director-writer”, the “Assistant Director-writer”, a “Grip”, some “Sound Guys”, an “Editor”, a couple of “Actors (who ended up wanting to be writers)” and a couple of just “Actors”. Oh! And, my two “Writers”. It was all a little up in the air at this point, ’cause you never know who’s going to be with you at the end and I was a little unsure how it would all settle down and sort itself out.

The “pre-production” meeting is still a little fuzzy to me, as it was while it was going on (just because it was a bit chaotic) but I do remember some details and the production and the post pretty vividly! There was some talk about a character and a prop and an escaped killer and the writers started to put it all together. During that time, we started setting up lights in the warehouse and stuff and our production manager kept “writing” with “the girls” (the writers). (more on this later)

While setting up, one of the crew says, “this looks like a subway” and thus the subway shot came into being.

While the girls were writing, our director-writer was doing some writing of his own. He kept popping out and telling the writers, “Okay, this is the story!” He would add, “Oh, but don’t let me mess you up.”

I recall one of the writers saying, “Oh but I like that idea” and eventually they just went with his idea.

INT. WAREHOUSE - NIGHT

Camera blocking, lighting and actions were being set. The first signs of problems weren’t even apparent to me but they were occurring. The 1^st AD had set up a way that the lights and fan should be run (for a subway effect) and had someone set up to run them. Then our “creative” production manager, who was running the b-camera decided that he could run the lights instead, to solve a problem of our director wanting more people in the shot. (This would cause effects problems, more about later, but was just another example of his not being able to think outside the box.)

During the setup of the lights, I had my first personal indication of future problems. One of the actors (that really wanted to write too) came up to me and said, “Who’s in charge? I mean who should I be listening to?” She went on to tell me that we were doing a lot of standing around doing nothing and that this was all taking too long. Basically, she was right in her observations but to me it was her attitude and delivery of said communication that rubbed me the wrong way. I felt like, “You know, you just don’t go up to your producer and say those things!” I suppose it was my lack of initiation in “running things” that led to these attitudes but inside, I also felt I should let these things shake themselves out at this stage of the game.

As we shot, and shot and shot, the night became longer and longer and attitudes were starting to show themselves. The production manager kept stewing and saying loudly under his breath that we had to wrap things up. The feisty “actor” kept mentioning how late it was. Our director just had to get another take of that shot. And, I eventually had to say, “Okay, THIS will be the last shot.”

We wrapped and everyone was pretty beat. I thanked everyone for their time and work and the “post-production team”: director, production manager and I went off to “edit”.

Later, I would discover that my 1^st AD was very happy with “his experiment” of seeing how people would react under the continued stress of an unorganized situation. That, I would immediately decide was a good idea and continue on with. The 1^st AD, the director and I would have many meetings as to what worked and what didn’t and, believe it or not, these personnel “problems” would eventually sort themselves out.

What I learned: Defined roles are defined for a reason. Stick to them!

To be continued…

(Next 48 Hour Installment: The Assassination at India Palace)