audio capture – Journeys of a Hybrid

January 11, 2011

SB3 – Get Inspired

If you haven’t registered for the ASMP Strictly Business 3 conference yet, I would highly suggest that you do so. They will be held in three locations starting next week: January 21-23 in Los Angeles; February 25-27 in Philadelphia; and April 1-3 in Chicago.

There’s an incredible line up of speakers presenting workshops on pricing, estimating, copyright, workflow, strategic career planning, successful portfolios and branding and video production. I’ll be presenting two workshops: “Thinking in Motion” and “Shooting Video with the DSLR”.

Branding expert Colleen Wainwright will deliver her keynote “Making People Love You Madly: Selling Yourself in a Postmodern Marketplace”. Tom Kennedy, whom I’ve know since his days at the National Geographic Magazine will give a keynote “Learning New Skills for the Changing Media Landscape”.

This conference series is meant for everyone, not just photographers who are beginning their careers. In fact, I think that photographers who have been in business for many years will benefit equally, if not more than a shooter who is new to the business.

I have been in business for over 30 years and I have found that one of the most dangerous things that can happen to a creative person, is for them to become complacent, especially in a business like photography. It’s even more deadly to become complacent these days in our fast changing world of technology. We not only need to stay current with our skills, we need to keep our vision fresh.

When I got into video and motion more than a decade ago, I was looking for something to excite me. I felt that even though my business was successful and that I had accomplished many of my creative goals, the spark was getting dim inside me and at times I felt like I was reinventing the wheel. So, I set out on a learning curve and have been soaking up information ever since.

I love to learn and I have found that the more I wonder and grow, the better off I am creatively and the more successful I am in business. I’ve also found that networking and collaborating with my peers has opened my eyes to all sorts of possibilities that I never knew existed. I think that’s what makes the SB3 conference so powerful – the sharing of information with our peers. You don’t get that from online learning.

We live in a time where anything is possible. Come to SB3 in LA, Philadelphia and Chicago and be prepared to be inspired.

December 3, 2010December 3, 2010

How Do You Tell the Story?

I’ve said it hundreds of times – “the story is everything”, “without a story, you’ve got pretty pictures to a soundtrack”. So, how do you tell a story? How do you do it?

A friend called me the other day, struggling with this very question, of how do you tell the story? He was putting together a multimedia piece and he had captured sound and had taken photos during an event and was about to record an audio interview. I wasn’t sure at first, if he was asking about the mechanics of how to edit a story together in Final Cut– or was he asking me for guidance on how to tell the story? Those are two completely different discussions.

I thought back to when I was just starting to learn video journalism and had taken the Platypus Workshop. We had to tell our commitment or our story idea to an instructor, before we could start executing it. If the idea wasn’t delivered clearly and concisely, we went back to the drawing board to nail down the idea or the focus.

Every story starts out with an idea. Ideas have always come pretty easily to me, usually in spurts. All sorts of environments or activities can trigger ideas.

Seth Godin did a blog about a week ago titled, Where do ideas come from? Here are a couple of my favorites:

Ideas come out of the corner of the eye, or in the shower, when we’re not trying
Ideas come in spurts, until you get frightened. Willie Nelson wrote three of his biggest hits in one week
Ideas occur when dissimilar universes collide
Ideas fear experts, but they adore beginner’s mind. A little awareness is a good thing
Ideas hate conference rooms, particularly conference rooms where there is a history of criticism, personal attacks or boredom

Once I get the idea, I then start focusing it in my head. I play out the movie in my mind. What is the message? Whose message is it – mine? – the client’s? What is the motivation for the piece? A call to action? Once I get a pretty clear idea of what the story is that I’m trying to tell, then I start to put the pieces together. First I gather and capture all the assets that I’ll need, the interviews, b-roll, still photos etc. Then, when it’s time to edit the story, I’ll have a much clearer focus of how I will edit the pieces together to deliver the message.

Right now, I’m editing a feature length documentary, that is made up of ten different stories about ten different people in various corners of the globe. All together, the ten stories are unified by the theme of “the power of the individual in making a difference in the world”. Essentially the idea is, global stories about the power of one. That has been my underlying story from the moment of concept, to shooting it, to editing it all together.

So, how do you tell the story? For me, it’s focusing on the “idea” at all times and editing toward that purpose. There are hundreds of ways to tell the same story, but you need to know what the story is before you can begin to tell it.

November 22, 2010November 22, 2010

New Stuff

I haven’t done a lot of tech talking lately, but a couple of new items have me thinking that way. Here’s some interesting news about products, firmware upgrades and video delivery.

To start with, for all of you who own a Samson H4N Zoom digital recorder, and have been frustrated that you aren’t able to independently change recording levels on inputs 1 and 2 – you now can. Here is a link to the firmware download and instructions.

For all you “big chip” aficionados, Sony just announced the PMW-F3

camera with a 35mm CMOS imager. However, with a price tag around $16,000 for the body and an extra $7000 for a set of three Sony prime lenses, it seems more like a competitor in the RED market, rather than in the DSLR niche.

The Power of Sharing and Networking

I’ve always been an independent creature, starting with a year long backpacking odyssey as a 19 year old traveling solo, following the “hippie trail” around the world. That sojourn led me to pursue a career as a still photographer, using my camera as a tool to gain access to people, their cultures and their stories.

I’ve had a great ride these past 30 years shooting assignments for high profile magazines that have taken me to all parts of the globe. For the most part, I was a solo act, spending hours, days and weeks observing people, then becoming more intimate as I proceeded to get to know and tell their stories and share them with others.

When I started shooting motion and in particular digital video, eleven years ago I embraced the notion of collaboration. Video production has a lot more facets to it than just the shoot and I knew that even though I knew how to capture reasonably good sound and edit a respectable rough cut with Final Cut Pro, I also knew that working with professional sound people and editors would raise the bar on the quality of my projects.

This past weekend, the value of collaboration, networking and using social media to get my ideas out to the universe, really hit home. I had been asked to speak at the Photocine News Expo in Hollywood, CA about my latest documentary that I was working on, Opening Our Eyes. I had gotten to know two of the organizers of the event, Michael Britt and Lou Lesko, through social media. They had taken notice of my blog and my project, which I had decided to shoot with the HDSLR cameras and had written about it in their blog, PhotoCineNews.com.

I was honored and humbled to be speaking at the same event as some pretty heavy players like Vincent LaForet and Shane Hurlbut. I was a bit intimidated at first, but I knew that I was there to share what I knew and that is how to get a passion project from just an idea – to a reality. So, after returning from my 99-day journey, with just a couple of weeks to prepare a sample from some of the 145 hours of footage that were shot, I flew out to LA.

Here’s a rough cut of that 10-minute sample: Opening Our Eyes – Tease

I suppose I can legitimately say that I have had a theatrical showing of my documentary in Hollywood. True enough – but the real value for me this weekend was in sharing with my peers and making connections with people who I will work with in the future that will help me grow as a filmmaker and storyteller and more importantly who will bring their expertise to my film.

It’s an incredible time that we live in with a realm of possibility. Literally anything is possible. When you share and put things out to the universe – you just never know what you’ll get back. I’ve learned that I share because it makes me feel good – not because I have expectations for an immediate or monetary return. But each and every time I do share – I get back so much more in return.

September 20, 2010September 20, 2010

My Love/Hate Relationship – Shooting Video With a DSLR

I’ve just spent the last 2 weeks intensely editing my footage shot on my 99-day journey around the world, shooting my passion project, Opening Our Eyes. I wanted to get a trailer ready for the PhotoCine Expo that I’ll be speaking at this weekend in Los Angeles. I knew that I couldn’t possibly go through all 2900 gigabytes of content (145 hours), let alone cull it down to a finished sample in two weeks time. So, I took a friend’s advice and decided to focus on only two of my ten subjects that I interviewed and shot b-roll on.

Even with going through only 20 percent of my footage has been a grueling and exhausting two weeks. But it’s also given me a much better sense of working with and analyzing the files that come out of the Canon 5D Mark II and 7D.

Some of my loves:

I love the picture quality
I absolutely love the picture quality
You can’t beat the picture quality

It’s true, the picture quality is stunning and worth putting up with SOME of the workarounds, depending on what type of job I’m working on. If I’m shooting a corporate event and I need to record longer than 12-minute intervals, which is the case when someone is giving a talk, then I would opt not to use a DSLR because of the limitations on the duration of a clip. And, regardless of the type of job I shoot, editing the files from these cameras is tedious because I need to transcode them into a file that will play well in Final Cut Pro.

Some of my hates:

12 minute clip duration – this really needs to change in the next generation of these hybrids in order to make it a more workable camera
Audio – Canon really needs to come up with a more professional solution for capturing good audio with the video on one card. I have used a JuidedLink pre-amp with a gain disabler on it but it’s still not as good as the audio I get when I capture it to a separate digital recorder – in my case the Samson H4N Zoom.
Having to transcode all the files into a codec like Apple Pro Res so that I can edit in FCP without stutters, stops and drop frames.
Stabilization is an issue but a solvable one thanks to rigs from Zacuto. And of course you can always use a tripod – and really should if the situation warrants.

I’m sure I’ll come to other conclusions as I dig deeper into my content and I’ll share my thoughts as I continue to immerse myself in the post production part of this film.

September 13, 2010September 13, 2010

Editing and Workflow for DSLR’s – The First Steps

In the Field
Depending on how you are working in the field and what you are shooting, your workflow and the way you organize and manage your media will vary somewhat. If you have a crew and are shooting a scripted video, then you will probably have a computer and technician on site, downloading media as it is shot, backing it up and checking it for focus.

If you’re working solo or with just one other person, which is how I have been working for the past 3 ½ months on my project, Opening Our Eyes,

GailIMG_2946 — Gail at the Kopila Valley Primary School, Surkhet, Nepal

then you don’t have the manpower to work that way. I downloaded all my footage, audio and stills at the end of the day. I rarely had the time or even the battery power on my computer (electricity was scarce at times) to look at what I had shot but I did do spot checks occasionally.

Regardless of how you work in the field,

Nepal_MG_5899 — Children at the Kopila Valley Primary School

it is essential to create redundant backups of all your content. I backed everything up to two portable external hard drives, after downloading the media to my laptop via card readers. There’s a nice software application called ShotPut Pro that lets you make up to 3 copies to different drives at a time, which speeds things up quite a bit. For the most part, I had organized my media by destination and subject with each folder containing the contents of a card. Whenever I shot an interview, I put a fresh card in the camera so that the content was automatically sorted out from the b-roll. Some shooters I’ve talked to who are used to shooting tape, archive each tape or card by making a disk image (DMG) of each which can be mounted on the computer, emulating the original card.

Back in the Editing Suite

The first thing I did when I returned from my 99-day journey, was to make two backups of all my material. After my media was backed up, I started to organize it. Everything had already been separated as far as destination and subject, but I needed to separate the stills from the video and the interviews from the b-roll – if any cards contained both. I also needed to match up the interview video footage with the audio files that had been captured by a separate recording device.

After getting all my media organized and sorted by destination, subject and file type, I renamed the files and added any relevant metadata – copyright and creator info etc. This can be done in Adobe Bridge. You can also look at the video files in Bridge to preview before transcoding them. Another way to preview your video files is by using QuickTime player. Because the files coming out of these hybrid cameras are compressed H.264 files, they do not play smoothly in Final Cut Pro, so they need to be transcoded into a codec like Apple Pro Res, before editing them. This can be done in Apple Compressor which comes with the Final Cut Pro Suite or MPEG Streamclip which is a free application.

You can choose to preview your video files first using Adobe Bridge or QuickTime player or another software tool, and then make a folder of “selects” and transcode just those files before importing them into FCP, or you can transcode everything and then import everything into Final Cut Pro.

After I organized my assets (stills, video and audio), I chose to transcode ALL my video files and import everything into Final Cut Pro. That way, not only could I preview everything smoothly, but I could also start adding information to the clips and organize them into bins within FCP. And with everything transcoded, I won’t have to leave FCP if I wanted to look at content that hadn’t been previously marked “selects”.

Getting to the Fun Part
Organizing, sorting, logging and transcoding is tedious work but it’s essential in order to be able to find things quickly when you need them, when you start laying down your storyline and want to keep focused. There’s nothing worse than having to break your train of thought while you’re editing and have to leave the program to find assets or prep them. Organizing is key – it’s not fun, but a necessary step in the process.

I will continue to slog through this initial process this week, in order to get through some of my content so that I can put together a sample for the PhotoCine News Expo that I’ve been asked to speak at this month. I have way too much material to go through everything, so I’ve decided to tackle the content from two of my subjects, which will make the task more manageable. It will also provide me with the reward of working on the “fun part” of editing by crafting a short story before moving on to daunting task of assembling the entire documentary. Check out this quick sample that I put together within 24 hours after getting off the plane. http://www.vimeo.com/14645594

Little by little things will come together and I’ll keep you posted as I go along.

September 7, 2010September 7, 2010

Post-Production – Overcoming Inertia and Getting Started

I returned back to the United States a couple of days ago and before I even did my laundry, I sat down to edit a quick behind-the-scenes interview video clip of my daughter and I discussing the documentary we had just finished shooting, traveling around the world. I was motivated by a deadline where I needed to provide a video clip from the project, right away.

I was fortunate in that we had just shot interviews of each other talking about the making of the film, while the experiences were still fresh in our heads. So it was relatively easy for me to pull a couple of soundbites from the interviews, sync the audio which had been recorded separately and add relevant B-roll. Within less than 24 hours after stepping off the plane, I had a 5 minute behind-the-scenes short. Nothing fancy, mind you but in addition to providing an opportunity for the film to get awareness, it forced me to start thinking about the overall structure of the piece.

The hardest part of editing is getting started – figuring out how the story will be told. In my case, I’m facing the daunting task of looking through 3 months of material – interviews, B-roll, still images, and behind-the-scenes footage that I need to figure out how I will put it all together. There are a dozen different directions where I could take this film in the editing process. I could choose to make each subject’s story an independent video, with the full length documentary being comprised of them all. Or I could weave the stories together – structuring the piece more thematically. Or I could include the mother/daughter aspect in the film and add some interview footage of the two of us talking about the project.

Just in putting together this quick sample, I have forced my mind to start thinking about the next step – crafting the story. My next deadline is to make a trailer for this film that hasn’t even been edited yet. I will be speaking at the PhotoCineNews Expo in LA in a couple of weeks and I’m motivated by this opportunity to present the workings of this project to a live audience.

As it turns out, jumping right into it was the best thing to do. I overcame the inertia that’s always present, and started focusing on how I was going to tell the story of not only our subjects but the experience itself.