PSD files in Premiere

Masks in Premiere Pro CC 2105

Nauman, Warhol, Wegman

Robert Rodriguez Film School

Pipilotti Rist

Miranda July Short

Body Issues

John Berger's Ways of Seeing is a wonderful book and talks specifically to commodification of our gaze.  If you are running low on time, just read Chapter 7.

Kon's editing

Satoshi Kon - Editing Space & Time from Tony Zhou on Vimeo.

Wired story on how tech is changing Hollywood

A bit simplified, but an overview of how tech continues to drive Hollywood

Air BnB ad and how did video

Projection ideas

Creative Cow article on editing

Here is a great article on editing the Vampire Diaries.  Nancy Forner does a great job of describing the work of an editor.

Guidelines to be a good storyteller/editor

1.  Read at least one story a week...short stories, books all count just as long as it is one a week.

2. Watch films twice.  The second time actually pay attention to how it is put together.  Think about the scenes from the cutting room perspective.

Using MPEG Streamclip for best web uploads

Find your copy of MPEG Streamclip, or download it here, and load your video you wish to compress and go to FILE, Export to MPEG-4

There are a whole bunch of considerations here.  I like to know how the clip was edited and what codec was used for the edit before I proceed but I will try to walk you through a DV Cam to H.264 conversion.  You will do things differently if you shot HD or if you know you edited in Pro Res or in progressive mode...

1. Make sure H.264 is selected

2. Set your quality slider to 100 percent

3. Set your Data Rate to 8 Mbs

4.  I said, "Mbs" not the alternatives.  This means "bits" not "Bytes."  You DON'T want Bytes, that would be super big and would be re-compressed depending on which service you are using.

5.  I shot and edited at 29.97.  For some reason I always compress at the same rate that I shot and edited.  It works for me that way.  Check to see what your frame rate of the file you are converting is and then type that frame rate here.

6.  The Frame Size will differ depending again, how you shot and edited.  My video was DVCam 4:3 so I will use the slightly smaller 640x480.  I could also use the 720x480 DV-NTSC without problems.  If you shot 16:9 you will want to make sure this aspect stays the same.  If you shot HD and want it to play back in HD then you would want this to be one of the 2 HD sizes...if you shot 720p, keep it at that.  The same for if you shot 1080.

7.  Again whether you check the deinterlace box depends if you edited in "i" or "p."  DVCam is "i" so I will want to deinterlace my video (essentially changing my video to be progressive, or "p").  For playback on a computer it will always look better in progressive mode as computers monitors (well almost all) are now progressive.  If you shot/edited 720p you will not need to deinterlace.  If you shot/edited 1080i, you will need to deinterlace.  If you shot/edited 1080p you will not need to deinterlace.

8.  Finally, select Make MP4.

Name it something you can understand and select Save.  Now look at the file.  Does it look good?  If it does not then you will need to mess with the settings.  If it looks strange first check the data rate, then the interlace/deinterlace option, then the frame rate and then the frame size.  Resubmit and evaluate again.  When it looks good, upload that to your favorite video service and be amazed at the quality!

A GREAT piece on Creativity from the Radiolab folks

The podcast is here. About mid way through they talk about the idea of being visited by genius (creativity) as opposed to "being" a genius. Ideas are all around!

The new FCP

So it was announced Tuesday night at NAB. Here is a summary by CNET. I am excited, in part because I think it will handle h.264/MPEG 4 without a problem, but also because I am now being forced to re-think cutting. It has been 11 years working with the same interface. I know it so well I think about constructing programs based on the architecture of the software. Though "re-learning" a tool can be frustrating I do think these kind of challenges help to spark new connections in our heads. There is a lot of static about whether or not this is "pro" and I'm not quite sure what that means. I think about editing and what we really are doing is cutting together stories. Pros tell good stories. I cut film with a razor with none of the fancy tools the most basic editing programs now include. (Well, I never got anywhere with my films so maybe this is a bad example). I will have to use the program and get over the initial hump of being lost until I figure out the UI. This will be my summer project. Everything is going to depend on if the program "works" or not. I remain hopeful and excited to see how well it does work.

Just open up your own studio

Now is the time to just make your own tv and become a mogul. Why intern when you can just be the studio? From the NYTimes

A story from NYer about helping with Writer's Block

This is a great article on therapists who work with screen writers with writer's block. A key treatment is to keep writing!

Photoshop in 15 minutes

MPEG Streamclip save as a preset

It is helpful once you figure out the right "recipe" for your video exports to save the settings so you don't have to re-do the settings each time you export a new video.  MPEG Stremclip provides an easy way to do this via presets.

In your exporter window select Presets and a new window will open.  In that window select New.

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You will be asked if you want to create a new preset, here you just select Yes.

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You will be provided an opportunity to name the preset, make it make sense (unlike my name I use!) and select OK.  From here you can then select Make MP4.

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The next time you use MPEG Streamclip you just then select Presets and then select the preset you set then select Load then Make MP4.