Weddings:

Shot one, editing it a little bit. It turned into a surprise one-cam shoot, when it was supposed to be two. (Oops!) Thankfully I tend to over-shoot things and have some great footage that'll make this one-camera wedding look excellent!

QVC - BRoll Project.

Current work: QVC BRoll for jackclamp.com. Pretty sweet tool!

Also working on some pre-wedding video for a friend of mine in Spokane (short clips of 'how we met' similar to When Harry Met Sally). Finishing up on the drama sequence for Peacemaker's once JR sends me back the mastered audio! Basically I'll just be laying down the mastered audio and re-exporting at DVD quality. (OR something else, depending on what Mr. JR desires)

If you're in Spokane,

you should check out some of my friends there, specifically Mortimore Productions. I've been able to work with them on many occasions. Great people, Great video work! I'll be the first to admit that I've gotten much of my shot composition and set lighting skills from Dan Mortimore, the man behind the company.

I'll be heading back up to Spokane this wednesday for a week or so, to finish up on some personal projects in the area. I'll be taking my editing gear up with me so that I can finish a project I'm working on for Peacemaker Ministries. Its a drama production that's turning out quite well, and has been a blast to edit together.

I've been hearing rumours about a new FCP that may (or may not) be released when the new OS comes out, so I'm definitely wishing for that. I've also seen that Panasonic is releasing some much lower cost P2 cards, which is great. I love using the Firestore, but it's quite prohibitive in run-and-gun situations as the firewire cable is quite easy to unseat, thereby ruining whatever clip you were shooting. :(

Volunteer work

for the Special Olympics in Bozeman, MT. I'll be on the floor running one of the cameras for the opening ceremony.

ciao!

/rob

Still looking...

...for video work in Bozeman. I've dropped off my demo, gotten a couple nibbles but no big bites yet! I have a few possibilities next month (May) that are looking good. Both will involve some travel, but I'm definitely geared for that.

I've recently subscribed to TV Mole and Cynthia Turner's Cynopsis on advice from JR. They've had some advice on defining your idea and then presenting it to producers and backers. It seems like great advice for having all your ducks in a row before presenting ANY idea. There are also some help-wanted type ads, so I'm checking those constantly.

I'm hoping for a couple more Bozeman-area meetings this week that could lead to some work or at least to more networking.

During this down-time, I've been working on my After Effect skills through a couple websites that absolutely rock: Video Copilot and AE Tuts+. Both sites offer some great instructions on crazy-cool stuff and getting the most out of After Effects.

Distribution

Currently researching distribution strategies for feature length (108min) video. Documentary style, shooting in HD aiming towards end product being viable for blu-ray.

Any good 'sites I should know about?

The Camera behind the production:

Currently Using:

Panasonic HVX200
$6,310 list price

what I wish I used:

Panasonic HPX500 (interchangeable lenses and 4 p2 slots, not to mention 2/3" CCD)
$14,000 list price

"The" Editing System (Capital T)

First, just to set the idea behind all the equipment choices, I'll be basing the system off of Final Cut Pro. Yes, Adobe does make Premiere for the MAC, but I've been using FCP almost exclusively now for 5 years, so I'm a bit more proficient with it. (Although, I've been spending some time lately on After Effects and I'm definitely enjoying that.)

So, to begin:

_SOFTWARE_^^

Final Cut Studio 2 (although rumor has it they're releasing a new version in late April)
------ $1,299
Adobe After Effects CS4
------ $999
Adobe Photoshop CS4
------ $999
Roxio Toast Titanium 10 Pro
------ $129 (after $20 mail-in rebate)
NeoOffice (because its awesome & free)
------ $0
Celtyx (great script writing program)
------ $0

Now we get to the HARDWARE!**

MacPro 8-Core
------ $5,248 (added: 2x 2.66 Quad-Core, 8GB RAM, ATI HD video card, the rest: aftermarket)
4x Seagate 1TB internal drives
------ $360
2x 24" Apple HD Monitors (I'm going with the apple monitors because I know they're good)
------ $1,600 (I wish they still had the "old" silver ones.)
Aja IO HD
------ $2,769.95
HD Monitoring TV (For client monitoring & colour check, also has built in DVD player)
------ $735.90

**Need to add an audio monitoring system.
**Also a decent Printer for DVD labeling.
^^FCP Plugins are a good choice, too.

*****************
Oh, and the total on that setup is approximately: $14,139.85
(ordering from montana = no sales tax!)
Since I already have the Adobe CS3 Suite, I could save almost 2k.
I also have Roxio, so that's $129.
AND I have one 24" Apple HD monitor already, so that would save another $800.
All bringing this package down, personally, to $11,210.85
*****************

Adobe After Effects

Classroom in a Book for Adobe After Effects now belongs to me! I figure its time I really start to delve into this program, I've seen it used in so many ways and I've been really impressed by its versatility. The first few lessons have been really easy as I've already used the program to a degree and I'm looking forward to things getting more complicated.

GFX FTW!

Quick word of advice:

#rant

If you have any sort of mac that has been at ALL keeping up with the OS updates, do NOT.. I repeat, do NOT buy Sans Digital, (Specifically the TR8M in this case) or expect an e-stata card with a Silicon Image 3132 chip to run your RAID system. (Have tested both the one that comes with the TR8M and a LaCie SATA II card) It crashes continuously. Oh, and PS: The fine print says "Works with mac osx up to 10.5.1" .... any updated system is now up to 10.5.6

#endrant

Heading back up to Spokane

I leave today for Spokane for a month and a half to work on some projects with Mortimore Productions. Not to mention working on the house and finishing up the bodywork on my production vehicle. ('94 4Runner) I'm picking up an advanced Final Cut Pro book for "fun reading" and to see what little tricks and tips I can pick up. I also need to develop my After Effects skills. Some of the 3-d titles I've seen recently are impressive and I'd love to be able to kick those out.

I'll be posting some :30 / :60 commercials in the next week or so. I'll make another demo DVD that will have those on it. I'm still relatively unsure what the niche in Bozeman would be. Longform videos or Commercials or a mix of both, perhaps?

Longform Demo complete!

I just finished putting together a longform demo, which has about 6 of my 4 minute + spots on it. No, I don't expect anyone to watch all of the videos in their entirety, but they give enough diversity in style and topic that I think it will at least give someone an idea of my versatility. I need to work with Mortimore Productions in Spokane to get some of my commercial projects off of their system. Over the last 5 years I've been doing this, most of my :30/:60 commercials have been done while working with/for them. Now that I'm moving to Bozeman relatively soon, its time to network!

The shoot with Jay went well, and has now been completed to satisfaction. He spent the last couple days making Timecode DVDs for editing. You can see the ending vlog there. We had every intention of doing more...

/rob

Timelines, Continuity and Sweet Marketing Buildings

You can take a short click over to Jay's blog to see a little vlog we did on the first day of production. The building we're shooting in is owned by G&G Advertising, a pretty sweet looking outfit based in Billings. As you can see in the video, the wall is old-school brick and some pretty thick plaster. We pimped out the set in what we all consider to be non-boring / industrial. Setting up the lighting was pretty easy, camera positioning was a little tricky because of a column located almost dead centre of our set. Setup overall was easy, and the first day of shooting was also mostly-partly-kind of seamless. When we got to the capture part we had a little "it would be nice if..." moment regarding FCP / Adobe reading internal timecode on .dv clips. We know the TC is there, as we've been writing down timecode and notes in between shoots/pauses/retakes, but the "read timecode" option isn't quite working the way we'd like it to. There are a couple way around it, but all involve laying the clips down on a timeline and then re-exporting as a video and then re-importing as a single clip... weeeeee... right? I'd give you more details on it, but we're leaving in 5 minutes so as to make it into the studio by 8. (and pick up some coffee on the way!)

more to come...

Lightweight Backpacking

I'm currently working on some projects for BackpackingLight Magazine. They put up video podcasts and sometimes they need to be either stitched together or just sponsor spots added. Here's one I pieced together from video submitted by staff regarding coffee on the trail last month. Thankfully, Final Cut Pro digests and renders pretty much anything I can throw at it! (Even though I'm currently using an older version, 5.1.4) They're also in the process of beginning classes for this year's Wilderness Trekking School, so I'm putting together a teaser video to get people fired up about the program and participating in it.

You'll start to see more videos show up on the Vimeo-gadget soon. I'm re-exporting a few older projects so that I can have them uploaded there and show-case them through the blog.

Next week I'll be working on a project in Billings, MT on a Production B shoot.

Ok, the rendering is complete, time to get back to work!