Madman Al's Midnight Movie Mania

Things I've Been Up To...

In my previous post, I neglected to mention what I'd been up to. This is an omission I will now rectify.

I got a couple of new things edited and up on YouTube. The links are below:

Link to YouTube Movie   - Political Statement '08

Link to Second YouTube Movie  - Sunday in the Park with Deer (Revised Version)

Link to Third YouTube Movie  - Mama Muumuu

Link to Fourth YouTube Movie  - Batty Aunt Dotty

Try these on for size.

Cheers!

Al B.

Resultants

Well, I had planned to write something before the election stating my political beliefs.

The timing is now done, but the project may come about later on...

In the national results, the Democratic Party elected the first half-white, half-black president in Senator Obama, and consolidated its majorities in both the House and Senate.

Time will tell if this is a good thing.

If the Democrats can get the credit markets off the dime, there may be an increase in the film production slates of both independents and major studios.

Again, we'll see...

Cheers!

Al B.

Quicker (and dirtier)

It's an interesting thing when those whom you see on the Web actually contact you in person.

I have a YouTube page - not as active as I'd like it to be, but one does what one has the time and resources to do. I just got a subscription and friend request from the people behind Take Zer0 (www.takezer0.com ), whose podcasts and film reviews I've been watching for a while now.

Quite a thing.

Cheers!

Al B.

Am I Now, Or Have I Ever Been?

I've never been exactly sure if I can be considered "sane", in the psychological sense.

Can any of us actually be sure?

I can think of four guys (and a girl) who have no qualms about acting out the things that would classify you and I as "crazy". And what's more, they get paid for it.

Of course, I'm referring to Messrs. Hyneman, Savage, Bellaci, Imahara, and Mlle. Byron - better known as The Mythbusters.

Today was a marathon of episodes of the Discovery Channel series, including building a house in order to see if a malfunctioning hot water heater would destroy the house in failure… dragged one of their team behind a galloping horse to see if the denim jeans would reach ignition temperature… or sit one of their own in a tub of hot water in new unshrunken jeans to see if deep vein thrombosis (DVT) or compartment syndrome would occur from the shrinkage of the denim.

And then, there was the painting a seventeen-foot replica of the Hindenburg in thermite, diffusing hydrogen gas inside it, and then lighting it off, to see what would happen.

How did they think of this, and why didn't I think of it first?

Too bad, isn't it?

Cheers!

Al B.

ATTACK OF THE REAL LIFE!...

With the best of intentions, as always, I designed this blog to be set forth at regular (read: SHORT) intervals. Maybe two or three days between entries.

As you can tell, that hasn't happened... thanks to that unpredictable item called {dramatic fanfare} Real Life.

The need for activities that have nothing to do with writing, or blogging, or any sort of creative impulse at all... deplorable, but unavoidable.

I have a completed short screenplay - 25 pages - that I think I'm going to try to make soon. I'm working on another one that may be going feature length. I've been applying for extra jobs and crew jobs here in the Detroit area. I've also been looking for "real work".

Things are going such that I'm doing a difficult balancing act... if things go off-kilter, you'll know. {The noise will cue you, for one thing.}

Cheers!

Al B.

Truth - at 30i

"There comes a time in the affairs of man, my dear Blubber, when one must take the bull by the tail and face the situation."

William Claude Dukinfield (better known as W.C. Fields)

Said situation is the health - or lack thereof - of my wife, Megan, and me. Without going into details, which I'm obligated not to do under both the HIPAA law and the marriage vows we took, I'll merely say it sucks.

I am, and I can, however, keep doing what I can to fan the banked embers of whatever creativity I have left. I'm editing footage, writing a couple of screenplays, and looking for work.

There is also this blog, such as it is.

*

Thanks to an interview with Indy Mogul , I've learned of a project that came about a little over a month ago from Joss Whedon, the brain behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, and the movie version Serenity. It's called Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog , a three-episode web series starring Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, and Felicia Day. I watched it, and it was pretty damn good. I also learned of Felicia Day's other projects, such as her web series The Guild , and her being a producer on Kim Evey's Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show . The Guild was something I mostly liked; the Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine just left me cold. Peter John Ross and George Caleodis did better with Uncle Pete's Play Time, which can be seen on Sonnyboo.com , among other places.

Those are my opinions. If you don't like them, I have others. (To misquote Groucho Marx.)

Cheers!

Al B.

Freedom - What It Means To Me...

Another Independence Day holiday gone by.

Our 232nd Independence Day, in point of fact.

As countries go, we're not that old, but we're not brand new, either.

What we have, the condition known as "freedom", is rare in this world, and we Americans don't always know or realize what it means.

We can criticize our government openly, without fear of official reprisals - the "knock on the door" in the middle of the night.

We can vote for the person we think will make a better President - or, at least, vote against the person we don't think will.

We can travel where we want, read what we want, think what we want, write what we want... there are no restrictions on what we can do.

Ideally, that is.

There are laws passed in the past eight years that restrict our constitutional right of free assembly (according to the Patriot Act, any gathering of three or more people who criticize the government are in violation of the law. Look it up.), free travel (the border restrictions on U.S. citizens traveling to and from Canada - in 2009 rules are scheduled to go into effect that will require all border crossings to show a U.S. passport, whether by land, sea, or air.), and the First Amendment guarantees of free speech (see the abovementioned section of the Patriot Act).

As citizens, we should be outraged. As filmmakers, we should be finding ways to shout from the housetops, decrying these unconstitutional, totalitarian edicts that chip away at the foundations of our freedoms.

Do we? Only a very few... and, I'm ashamed to say, myself not among them.

And I'm even more ashamed to say that very few of us are listening.

Benjamin Franklin said, "Anyone who trades liberty for security deserves neither liberty nor security."

Have we traded our birthright for a false feeling of security, a glamour that will blind our eyes to truth?

I would hope not, but I wouldn't bet the house payment on it.

Cheers!

Al B.

Tim Russert - Reflections...

{So this doesn't strictly adhere to my guidelines I laid down at the beginning. Well? It's my blog, and if I want to do this with it, then what of it?}

I hadn't had the noisybox on since we saw the putative weather front scheduled to come through town this morning. When I went downstairs for dinner, Megan had booted her computer up and seen the bulletin that Tim Russert had died suddenly.

This was something of a shock to both of us; he was only 58 years old, just a few years older than me.

I had seen his work on NBC's political coverage, and on his regular weekly stand, Meet the Press. He was tough, funny, fair, and when a politician or a figure in the news tried weasel-wording his way around one of Russert's questions, the lights would go on in Russert's eyes like the backplane of a pinball machine about to tilt.

I freely admit that Meet the Press was not one of my regularly watched shows; I prefer the deceptive bonhomie of CBS's Bob Schieffer, host of Face the Nation, with George Stephanopolous's This Week on ABC a distant third. (This is primarily because I think George Will is a pompous windbag, and I avoid him as I avoid door-to-door religious tract distributors, guys trying to sell wholesale meat from a freezer truck, and relatives trying to borrow money.)

In fact, one of my lasting memories of the show was back in the days of Lawrence Spivak, the founding host of the program. I always knew it was coming on by the opening chords of Beethoven crashing from the speakers on our old TV.

I do think that Russert was occasionally too combative, but that might be explained by his previous job working for Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the former Senator from New York, who was the consummate Irish politician. Russert learned well.

It's said, of speaking of the recently deceased, "De mortuis nil nisi bonum"; Of the dead, speak only of the good. Maybe that was true when the quote in question was first written, back in the days of the Roman Republic, but in these days of instant character assassination, nonexistent fact-checking, and no checks and balances on whatever someone wants to say, that's more honored in the breach than in the observance.

More's the pity.

Tim Russert didn't operate that way, and for that, I salute him. Ave atque vale, Timothy J. Russert, Jr.; we may well not see your like again, and that's a damnable shame.

Cheers!

Al B.

The Joy of Publishing...

Well, another milestone. (Not millstone, mind you... nothing hanging around my neck.)

No, I've been published in a Net-based filmmaking magazine. Huzzah!

The site www.microfilmmaker.com has published the series of articles on beginning filmmaking I wrote here in issue number 31 of their publication. My byline, picture, and everything!

Here's the link, just so you can see for yourself: The link. 

Cool, eh?

Cheers!

Al B.

This Is My Life... (And Welcome To It)

As you can tell by reading the dates on previous postings, it's (again) been a while since I last added my thoughts to this amalgamation.

Oh, well... [stuff] happens.

I have been quite busy... and I also have a new short test film done, which I'm putting up on my website. You'll see it there when I'm done tweaking the delivery.

My Beautiful Wife Megan and I have been acquiring things to try and make some money... like a T-shirt transfer press, a cap press, and more button equipment. (You can see more about this on our sales page. )

Much to do... so little time to do it in.

Ah, well.

Cheers!

Al B.

Inchoate Longings and the Curse of Mental Vaporware...

I don't know how everyone else writes, or creates, or does whatever they do.

Most of my creative endeavors start as a sort of vision, a disconnected series of ideas, or images, or phrases, that seem to pop forth from nowhere.

They roil in the agitator of my subconscious, accreting form, structure, and heft, until they then burst forth ready to be noted down.

After these initial inspirations arrive, it's the job of the virtual construction crew in my head to erect the structure around these foundations, put up the façade, finish the detail work, and get it ready for the main event - occupancy by the public.

Jeez, am I torturing the metaphors in this post...

It doesn't always happen that way.

I get stuck, or I get just vaporous visions that lead nowhere... This is hardly fun, but is a part of the process.

Just a few thoughts...

Cheers!

Al B.

It's Always Something...

Now that I'm busy up to my *deleted* with things that have to be done, more things are coming up that I want to do...

I've applied to, and had an interview with, a local municipality for a computer/video technician position, and I think the interview went well. "Three to five weeks," they said, and it hasn't been that yet, so I have hopes.

I found out, from a friend noting it on the Michigan Film Office site, that an independent film is going to be shooting for 18 days here in Detroit next month (is it only three days or so until the first? Wooo...), and I've put in resumes for positions.

The weather's getting <somewhat> better, so I'm getting the itch to shoot a little...

I also have less than a week to get our storage unit cleaned out to avoid paying for another month's rent.

Sleep? What's that?

More later, friends.

Cheers!

Al B.

Now And Then, I Have An Idea...

There are times, I think, that what I do is not worth "a bucket of warm spit", as John Nance Garner said of the Vice Presidency of the United States. (By the way, this quote has been Sanitized For Your Protection™…)

I get that way, sometimes. I have always been someone who does not have a high sense of self-esteem, despite the attempts to inculcate a sense of superiority in me. So, during most of my times on this spinning mudball in a remote corner of an unremarkable galaxy, I have been laboring along with delusions of adequacy. Sort of like a '72 Honda Civic, the kind with no fuel pump, trying to make it over Rabbit Ears Pass on U. S. Highway 40 in northwestern Colorado. (I knew a guy who had one, and did that very trip almost every weekend - but that's a story for another time, perhaps.)

It can be done, you understand... it often is done. It isn't very easy, requires a great deal of motivation, and sometimes means you go over the top ass-end-to.

But then, in the midst of the chaos, panic, despair, and outright lunacy that highlights the mileposts of my life, I come upon a glimmer of shining Hope; a Sign that things just might not be as bad as they seem.

Putting up 96 feet of privacy fence in a little over six hours, with help, and proving that I'm not as fumblefingered a klutz as I had thought myself.

Utilizing a bare-bones design for a stylesheet to make new pages on my film website look good, and seeing that they do look good.

Watching, amazed, as words actually flow from brain, through fingers and keyboard, onto phosphors on the screen before me. And the words actually make sense, and flow reasonably well.

'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Maybe it's the slow adding of sunlight as the days get longer. Maybe I'm eating better. (Don't bet the house payment on that one, though...)

Maybe it's just my time.

Who knows? Stranger things have happened... even to me.

Cheers!

Al B.

It Isn't A Dirty Word...

Commerce.

It's not the root of all evil in the world. (According to the Bible, it's "the love of money" that's the root of all evil. But that's another story.)

Buying and selling, making and spending money, is how we get by in this society. It may be wrong, it may be inherently evil, but it is what it is, and we have to deal with it.

Why this mini-screed on filthy lucre? Well, it's an inducement to have you throw some my way. If you check out the new SALES PAGE on the Alexander Film Works web site, you'll find some peachy-keen stuff I designed just to get you guys to spend a little coin.

Check it out.

Flip some folding green my way.

You'll help an impecunious indie filmmaker, and maybe get something you'll treasure for a while.

(They also make GREAT GIFTS!) *Courtesy of the Acme™ TV Pitchman® Kit - Pat. Pending*

Cheers!

Al B.

Vagaries, Vagrancy, and Vacancies...

Despite what today's date implies, this is no foolie...

I've been a bit busy over the time since my last entry, trying to both corral the inspiration to work on more things, and the will to exploit the seven-part primer you read here first.

A couple of places are considering it, and a friend of mine who publishes a science fiction "fanzine" - a fan produced magazine - will be publishing it this summer. I'm not sure yet if he's going to divide it into seven, or shoot the whole wad at once; it's his decision, since it's his zine.

At any rate, this month of April will be somewhat busy... I'm a judge in a screenwriting contest, and the deadline was yesterday. Any moment now, one hundred twenty scripts will be passing before these bloodshot eyes.

I also have a tentative order for buttons from a committee member at Penguicon, the science fiction convention/Linux open-source festival being held just after Tax Day, as well. The production is easy enough; it's just getting the lead time to produce them all properly.

Speaking of taxes (and I was, tangentially), I still have ours to do.

The less said about that, the better…

In addition to all the above, I've been taking seminars from our local MichiganWorks! affiliate, to qualify for the No Worker Left Behind program, and I've also been applying for jobs.

Fun, eh?

And, on top of that, I've been listing things on eBay. My seller ID is ajlb99, so if you go there, look for me.

(I do try to keep busy.)

Sometime again!

Cheers!

Al B.

24 Frames, 4.2.2, and $0.00 - Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Just Shoot It

Here's the thing...

Back when I started to make movies, umpty-mumble years ago, it was much more important for me to plan things more closely than I do now. (I still plan closely, but not nearly that closely.) After all, a 50' cartridge of Super8 film was only 2 minutes and 30 seconds of film (at 24 frames per second), or 3 minutes and 20 seconds (at 18 frames per second). There was the price of the film, the processing, the recording of a soundtrack (usually a cassette tape, roughly synchronized with the film), and if it took more than one roll, the costs added up.

That was a daunting economic model for an 18-year old, living at home, with no regular job, no car, and virtually no money.

Today, the camera equipment is roughly as expensive as it was before, when you compare the prices of those days to today, and the raw stock prices are about equivalent (MiniDV tape to Super8 cartridge); the thing is, one MiniDV cart holds approximately 60 minutes of footage, at standard speed. Compared to Super8, I'd have needed 24 cartridges of 50' each to match the run time. (We're assuming "sound speed", 24 frames per second.) Sound is included on MiniDV, where I'd have had to use a more expensive single-system sound camera, more expensive pre-striped sound cartridges, and more expensive processing options.

Editing is about the same, I'm judging, only because I'm already over the learning curve from the computer editing software (for my Wintel machine, it's Adobe Premiere Pro; on my Mac, it's Final Cut Pro.) Special effects? For a STAR TREK film I did back in the day, my "phaser" effects involved putting my original footage on a light box and scratching the phaser beam frame by frame with the point of a hobby knife. For the "transporter" effect, I scratched the frame again where the people were beaming in. Today I'd be using some kind of compositing footage like After Effects to produce my visuals.

Is the meaning in this that today's paradigm is superior? Not necessarily... In those days, we had an idea of what we wanted to shoot, a rough script, a bunch of us together, and a 400' (or so) film was shot in a day. Today, with all the activities (work, family, et cetera) that we're involved in, it's difficult to get people together in one place long enough to do much of anything, it seems.

However, that was then... this is now... and I'm going to get some things shot real soon.

You damn betcha!

Cheers!

Al B.

Okay, NOW What?

Well, it's done.

You planned out your script.

You wrote it.

You cast it.

You shot it.

You edited it.

You put titles on it.

A couple more things to talk about: music, for one.

If you're just going to burn this to a DVD and show it to your friends, and that's as far as it's ever going to go, then grabbing the theme from Superman or Raiders of the Lost Ark and putting it under your dialogue track is fine.

As long as that's as far as it's ever going to go.

If you ever decide to enter it into a contest, or upload it to YouTube or Google Video, then you have a problem. Because, under copyright law, you don't have permission to use that music.

You could get your video yanked from YouTube or Google Video. You could get a "cease and desist" letter from the law firm representing Paramount Pictures (in the case of Raiders), or Time Warner (in the case of Superman). You could get sued.

Don't gloss this over... Disney/ABC, for one, is VERY protective of its trademarks and copyrights, and has gone after a small day care for having "unlicensed" likenesses of copyrighted Disney characters as outside decorations on their building.

My solution? Royalty-free music.

Most music for films requires licenses: A "performance license" is an agreement between the filmmaker (you) and the performer for a flat fee, a percentage of any money made with the performance, or both. "Sync rights" means that the filmmaker (you) is agreeing to a license to use a musical composition in a "timed relation" (it's going to be the same each time it's seen) in a visual presentation. If you're talented enough to make a new recording of a piece of music, you need "mechanical rights", which is a license from the copyright holder, and means paying fees and royalties.

Royalty-free music, on the other hand, is either acquired (in the case of totally royalty-free music) or purchased from the composer. That purchase price gives you a license with all these rights with no further payment involved.

If you Google® "royalty-free music", you'll find any number of sites that offer original compositions for reasonable prices. However, if you're downright stingy, like me, there are places where you can get royalty-free music FOR FREE. Peter John Ross, at Sonnyboo.com offers a selection of pieces he wrote (he's a musician, too... when you got it, you got it) for free, with the only stipulation that he gets a credit line in your film. Kevin MacLeod at Incompetech.com also provides free music, under the Creative Commons license. This basically means, as they explain it on their website, that this is their way of maintaining their copyright, but releasing some of the rights of their work to the public use. They see it as a midway point between copyright (all rights reserved) and public domain (no rights reserved).

Either way, this is something to keep in mind... you don't want a lawsuit, because they never fit properly.

Sorry... I'll try to keep the "puns"manship under better control...

Now, when you burn your final edit to DVD, don't forget to make one you can do on the Web... Google Video, YouTube, and many others use Flash Video format, from Adobe, and they convert your video of 100 megabytes or less into Flash Video to play on YouTube. Here's a neat trick... if you convert it to Flash Video before you upload, you have better control, and the video can be bigger! There are all sorts of freeware and shareware programs to convert video files to Flash Video, so I leave that exercise to the reader.

You can also, as I do, post your own videos to your own website... that's an advanced topic we'll go into some other time.

As for this miniseries, it's a bit longer than five posts, but I believe I've covered all I said I would... More once again, and whenever that is, I'll talk to you then!

Cheers!

Al B.

After The Party's Over...

Last time, I said I'd go into more ways to make your movie better. Well, here we go... and I want to thank Peter John Ross of Sonnyboo for the inspriation. (Even though he didn't know he did it...)

I told you about basic "straight cuts" last time; one scene ends, and the new one begins. There are many effects in most editing software now that have "transitions" (a two-dollar word for a four-bit concept: cuts) like you've seen in Star Wars, or some European films, or things like that.

You don't need to play with those transitions. [I don't need to play with those transitions.] Those aren't the effects you're looking for. [Those aren't the effects I'm looking for.]

Sorry... I couldn't resist the Obi-Wan Kenobi schtick.

What you need are a few simple things... Cut On Motion, Matching Action, and Ell-Cut Audio.

No need to look so puzzled... I shall explain.

Cutting on motion is simply cutting the scene when something is still moving... Say, in our hypothetical film, you want to cut between the geekyhero running out to search for the dog, and the less-than-savory sort sitting somewhere else with a dog. As the geekyhero runs, you CUT in the middle of a run; when you bring in the next shot, of the LTS sort with a dog, start the shot on LTS doing an action.

Here's a (very poorly drawn) sample storyboard to try and show you what I mean:

Now, my drawing skills on the computer are something less than breathtaking, but I hope I'm getting the point across, at least.

Matching Action is showing people in one shot performing what looks like a continuation of the same action in two separate shots. Say the crying girl had received a mysterious note; she crumples it up after reading it, and throws it down onto the sidewalk. Next we see a crumpled note on the sidewalk, picked up by a hand... which is not hers, but the geek's, and he deposits the paper into a trash receptacle. This changes scene on the audience, but they don't notice as much as they might.

Ell-Cut Audio has the picture from one scene, say the one ending, overlap with the audio of the scene coming in. Say, as an example, the girl puts her head in her hands and begins to cry inconsolably. On the soundtrack you hear "I swear, you cry like a girl!" The picture changes to the geek and say, his father. The father's voice, which was over the previous shot, continues: "I never saw any real man who could cry like you do!"

There are other techniques, of course... like using something blocking the camera to switch scenes... say, a cab pulls in front of the girl on the bench, and when the cab pulls away, it's at another house, with a new character in view.

Or, perhaps, using a letter, or a newspaper, or some other thing of that sort to be the intermediate focus point in the scene shift. Say Hero writes a letter to Girl, with whom he's had a fight. He's trying desperately to make things right, and he pulls a copy of the letter off the printer, and reads it. When we pull away from the letter now, Girl is reading it.

These techniques aren't good to use indiscriminately. Just because a pinch of salt makes your soup taste better, you don't put a cup of salt in to make it even better still. Use these techniques in moderation - a pinch, or a dash, here and there, once in a while - and it'll make your film better to watch.

Okay, next time, we'll talk about distribution - for the sake of this series, we'll limit it to DVD, and YouTube/Google Video/FaceBook/MySpace. (Festivals are a topic we'll talk about at a future date... I promise.)

Cheers!

Al B.

Don't Worry, We'll Save You In Post...

Well, everything's shot, and you now want to edit it.

First thing you'll need to do is get your footage onto your computer to edit.

"On the computer?" you may ask. Yes, on the computer.

Modern computers have enough power to edit, render, and add special effects to footage that would make mainstream filmmakers from even ten years ago drop their jaws in wonder. What used to take a Cray Supercomputer now can be done with something you can pick up at Best Buy or Circuit City.

And NLE software - the sanctified "Non-Linear Editing" of a few years back - can be yours for a few hundred bucks instead of the five figures you used to need to buy an Avid system.

Of course, it's what you do with it that counts, and that's what I'm going to tell you about here.

The most common way to get footage shot on digital camcorders onto a computer is by using a FireWire cable - also known as IEEE 1394 cable, or iLink. Most editing software has provisions for controlling an attached camera by the cable, rewinding it, playing and capturing the footage on the computer's hard drive, and stopping the camera when either the tape is finished or the footage ends with nothing after it.

Most analog camcorders, while lacking the FireWire output, can send the audio and video messages through the A/V outputs (the RCA plugs like on a stereo system or a VCR). If you hook up your analog camcorder to the audio and video "in" jacks on your VCR, you'll record a straight "dump" of what's on the camcorder. Great for home movies, or those vacation pictures of Junior getting dive-bombed by the seagull flock, but not too useful for editing.

There are attachments you can buy in your local computer store (again, Best Buy, Circuit City, Fry's, Micro Center, CompUSA, or whatever), that can hook up your analog camcorder's A/V jacks to your computer, digitizing the footage. I have one, an older model from Dazzle (bought by Pinnacle Systems, which was swallowed by Avid). This hooks up to a USB (Universal Serial Bus, a newer-fangled way of getting information in and out of computers) port, and the footage is digitized and stored on the computer.

There are also other ways... many are much more complicated, and if you can get them to work reliably, me 'at's off to yer, mate.

So... the footage is now on your computer, ready to edit. (However it got there.)

First, you probably want opening titles. (It's the traditional thing, you know.) Most software applications have what they call a "Titler". You select the color you want, the background (if any), and whether it's still or moving. You type in the information, and voila! The title is a "clip" in what is usually called "the bin".

Don't worry about these terms... they're hangovers from the "old days" of shooting on film, and editing with scissors and glue. A "clip" is a piece of footage. That's all. "The bin" is a place to put clips, because they had (and still have) large, cloth-lined laundry baskets with frames sticking up, from which you can hang clips you're using. The end of the clip that's not attached spools down into the bin, which is why you have the cloth lining. (Dust and scratches on the film are Not Good Things.)

You then take the pieces of footage you shot and place them in order on what is called "the timeline". The timeline starts at 0 hours, 00 minutes, 00 seconds, and 0 frames, which is shown in the following format:

00:00:00;00

The semicolon between "seconds" and "frames" is used to highlight the difference.

Now, you may have always heard that "film runs at 24 frames per second". That's quite true... for film. Video, on the other hand, runs at 30 frames per second - 29.97, actually, but we round up to thirty because unless you work in broadcast engineering, you don't need to worry much about that three hundredths of a second.

The frames counter will therefore run between "00" and "29"; when it passes "29", it goes back to "00", while the seconds counter increases by 1.

Have I confused you yet?

Don't worry, you'll get the hang of it.

Oh, and don't forget to SAVE YOUR WORK OFTEN!!!!

Put the first clip (the girl sitting on the bench) after your titles. Then put the next clip (the geek walking up) after that. Continue putting the clips in order, until you reach the end. When you put your end titles (like the stuff you see at the end of a movie, when people walk out of the theater), make sure you save your work. You can then look at what you've assembled.

<<pause>>

Kinda sucks, doesn't it?

Most first efforts will.

You need to go back to the start, and remember the editing maxim near and dear to all of our hearts: "Enter Late, Leave Early". Basically, what this means is you don't want "dead space" where nobody's doing anything important to the movie. If the girl hesitates a second before starting to act like she's crying, that second of hesitation comes out. Maybe even the first little bit of her starting to cry, too... you want it to look like she's been crying for a while.

Also, when the geek boy walks up, start your shot of him in the middle of a step. Don't make it look like he's waiting for his cue.

Don't cut things too tightly; you don't want to lose any information. Just leave enough to show where you are and what's going on.

Now, once you trim things down, it'll probably look better. This is natural. So you're tempted to just save it again, and burn it directly to a DVD to show everybody.

You should resist that temptation for now. Because there are more things you could do to make it even better.

I'll go into that in the next entry... I've been running on a bit here.

Cheers!

Al B.

Additional Production Credits By...

Okay, then, I may have rattled some of you with last entry's recountings of problems involved in production... especially with one as fast and short as what we had in the sample script.

Understand, things like that can and do happen... but there's no saying it will happen.

Now, on to some things I didn't discuss last time...

On a larger crew, the director (you) usually tells the cameraman (you) where to put the camera, and how he wants the action "framed"(positioned in the picture). The gaffer (you) rigs the lighting (sun) to best effect for the picture, helped by the key grip (you) and his chief assistant, the best boy (also you).

The sound recordist (you) places the boom operator (sometimes you) to get the best sound in the external microphone while keeping it out of frame. The assistant director (you) gets the actors to their marks for perhaps one, and maybe more, rehearsals, at the whim of the director. (A point to note: Some directors can be very whimsical; this is not necessarily a Good Thing.)

When all the technical side is prepared, the director will call "Camera," at which point the cameraman will start rolling. The sound recordist will report if they have sound, and the director will call "Action." The actors will go through the scene, and the director will call "Cut" when the scene is over. After checking with the technical side, to see if they have any objections, the director will either accept the take ("Print", coming from the old days of making a print of the good takes to show later) or reject it, and repeat the procedure above.

Sounds really dull, doesn't it?

Well, it can be... except when your nerves are on edge because you're doing an effects shot that is not repeatable. (You have two cantalopes to stand in for an actor's head being run over by a car tire; using the actual actor is not an option.)

For something as short as our sample script, it could probably be shot "in sequence"; that is, filmed in the order you see it on screen. For larger productions, with many locations, costume changes, and other logistical issues to consider, scheduling is usually done to shoot all scenes in a particular location at one time, then all scenes at another location... Tearing down a setup and moving it to another location can be time consuming, so the most efficient utilization of time and personnel is used. This is the job of the Production Department (usually you). There are shareware programs to help you; I use a few myself.

The theories behind lighting for mood and effect are something I'll go into another time, just as I'll explain (one of these days) camera angles, "Dutch tilts", and the 180 Degree Line, among other things.

For now, let's just take our footage, get back, and GET READY TO RRRRRUMBLE!!...

(Sorry.)

Cheers!

Al B.