LA Chapter Meeting Report

Hey Boys and Girls of the BYU Editors Group, Here's a summary of the weekend's festivities:

Matt Sweat was the only other attendant this time around. He is a BYU Grad from 2007, and was added to our Google Group by Bryce Randle. Some of you may know him, others, myself included, will become acquainted with him via this first interaction and subsequent post. Matt Sweat has been down here for a little over a year, and has been working regularly, mostly as a post-production PA, since he got down here. He is a very driven individual, and you should keep your eye on him.

We talked for a few minutes about the projects we're working on, and then I let him know that I am looking for work righ now. Matt shared some sage advice with me for working in the industry. I will only share the points that seemed very unique, since Jared just finished telling us about the proven core tips:

Get on unemployment so that you can quickly take the types of jobs you want, instead of having to take just any job*

Look seriously at temp agencies**

Do a lot of freelance, even freebies***

OK, some of this advice may cause you to have inner-conflict, I know it did for me. Here's a disclaimer specific to each of the three advices:

*A lot of people do this in the industry, but it could be emotionally draining, and damage your self-concept to be on unemployment of you do not feel honest about taking money from the government. Do what you need to (pray, fast, temple, etc.) in order to know whether or not this is a good option for you, regardless of the industry precedent.

** Temp agencies in LA get calls from studios of all shapes and sizes, for any number of temp jobs. It may be nerve-wracking to go from job to job, but that's how your life will be when you are working in live-action production or post, so it may be a good way to transition into how your 'real' jobs will be. At the very least, it will help you get cash while you are working on breaking in.

***Cream can't rise to the top if it's still in the cow: Get to work!

Yours Truly,
The Idiotic One

First Ever (In Recorded History) BYU Editors Group Meeting... in LA!

WHEN, WHERE, WHO, WHAT (see EXPLANATION for the WHY)
Bryce Randle has asked me to get the ball rolling (actually I think he said 'get the puck sliding') on a meeting down here in LA, so prepare to be amazed, awed, shocked, and dazzled beyond anything you've ever experienced before... Or just put the following date, time, location, host, and topic into your calendar:

10 AM Saturday, September 27th 2008

In-N-Out Burger
7009 W Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA (here's a map for your convenience)

This Month's Host:
Idiot Savant Productions

This Month's Topic:

"BYU Editors Group Rock Stars: Where Are They Now?"
A Group Reconnect/Light Resume and Demo Reel Triage event

EXPLANATION
Consider this meeting something like Jacob Hoene's CoNNECTiSSiMO group, only much smaller, and geared towards maintaining/growing the relationships we already have from BYU while we are in LA. This is an open invitation to BYU Editor's Group members, or their friends, family, and associates who would find this group beneficial. On a personal note, I am very excited to be done with school/internship and down here in this area, and especially excited to be sharing the 'just starting out' experience with y'all.

FAQ
"But In-N-Out doesn't open till 10:30!" you say. I know, I know, but we're not meeting up just to eat food, so let's get there a few minutes early to catch up, talk a little, and rejoice that we are still brethren (and sisters) in the Lord.

"But my job (internship/pro-bono projects/World of Warcraft group/wife) won't let me off the hook for that date/time/location/topic." That's ok, we'll be doing this every month, and you can pick the next date/time/location/topic if you volunteer to host the next one.

POST SCRIPT;
RSVP (that means give me an intelligible 'yes' or 'no', not 'respond if you plan on going') seth.estrada@gmail.com as soon as possible. Thank you.
-Le Idiot Savant

Darren Holmes Conference Call

Seth Estrada, aka the Idiot Savant, organized this conference call for us. Darren Holmes is an animation editor that has experience in live action, TV, and animation. He spoke with us on July 17, 2008. He was a great speaker. Thanks Darren! Thanks to Seth for organizing it for us.

David Broberg Conference Call

We spoke to our first alumni guest back in February of 2007. David has a great resume that includes Titanic, That Darn Cat, Squanto: A Warrior's Tale, and Father of the Bride II. He currently edits LDS themed films in his spare time while being a full time editor at Sony.

Ripping a DVD for a Project

Many times clients will come to me and say "Hey, I have this video. It just needs the sound changed and that's it. Well, I would like to change one or two things. I only have it on this DVD, but that shouldn't be a problem, right?"

No, it isn't a problem. But it is still something that I feel a little hesitant to do. I don't think anyone understands how compressed the project is when they give it to me. The real problem though is wondering if I am ripping, extracting, or un-compressing the best way possible. 

While there are my solutions to the problem, I would love to hear what other people have found to be effective. Here are a few different options I use. They are not in any particular order.

Option 1:

Programs needed: MacTheRipper & Toast (pretty much any version)

Approximate cost: MTR is free. Toast is roughly $80 I believe. 

Rip the DVD, either by title or chapter, in mac the ripper. It makes the file into another file, readable by Toast. Import the video into Toast and hit export. Choose the options you want. 

Option 2:

Programs needed: MPEG Streamclip
Approximate cost: Free. You may need to pay $20 to Apple to download an MPEG2 codec/reader though. 

Open MPEG Streamclip. Copy the video ts folder off of the DVD on to a hard drive. Open the recently copied file using mpeg streamclip. Convert to how you want it.

The nice thing about this program is that it repairs any timecode or other breaks in the media. It is also very easy to set up the file you are exporting to be what you want. I prefer using this method. 

Option 3:
Programs needed: Handbrake, Quicktime Pro. 
Approximate cost: $30 if you do not have FCP Studio. 
Convert your file on handbrake to be some sort of H264 item that will leave the piece at full resolution. Open the file in QT Pro and convert it to what you want it to be.

Maybe I am making this harder than it really is, but this is how I do it. I know there are not a lot of specifics here, but we can hit tutorials later. 

If I should change something, let me know. 

Gina Aarniokoski Conference Call

In November of 2007, Gina Aarniokoski from the Walt Disney Studios was kind enough to fulfill our request to talk with someone about the Summer Associate program. Gina was very informative and helpful. Gina is a recruiter with Disney and is in charge of the Summer Associate program. 

This phone call should help anyone who is looking for more information on the Disney College Program at the Studio in Burbank. 

Theory: Pacing

One of the most common theoretical questions we run into as film/video editors is how long we should let a clip play out before applying a cut to another shot. Walter Murch believes the appropriate cutting location occurs in sync with the blinking of the viewers' eyes, because blinking is theoretically representative of the mind's subtle shifting of ideas.

Murch poses that, when watching a single video clip several times over, he could repeatedly mark where the cut should naturally occur -- based entirely on his mental reaction to the material -- and be accurate within a margin of a few frames every time. In an editing theory class I took from Jerry Stayner at the LDS Motion Picture Studio we tried this out with several editors, taking turns to see if we would all feel the cut was at the same place, but I don't think we were quite as precise as Murch would have had us naturally be.

My personal theory in this respect is that frequency should generally reflect the mood you are going for. When I watch a film with very fast editing, I tend to get a sense of chaos or impending danger, or I feel like it's trying to rush through the material. Slower editing allows me to better ponder on what I'm seeing in the frame and better piece together the message of the puzzle. Mind you that this is a general rule -- clever editing will work with the subject matter and footage and can completely pull the wool over the eyes of the audience.

For example, "Batman Begins" is one of the most well-edited movies I can think of in recent pop culture cinema, yet the speed with which the edits occur is mind-blowing. When the film opens with the brief story of young Bruce falling down a shaft into a bat cave, the extremely quick cuts are always jarring to me at first. There is little time to dwell on what's happening -- it just moves and I have to run to keep up. However, after about ten minutes of this, my mind adapts and what was once super-fast to me is now naturally flowing. I think this is a tricky thing to pull off, because it risks sloppiness and losing your viewer, but Nolan & Co. are talented enough to make it work here. I think any of us would be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of shots in the entire film that lasts more than 4 seconds -- and when they do occur, think of the effect this has on us. This does wonders for the storytelling and tone-setting. What generally would be seen as an average-length shot, or even a relatively-faster shot, in any other film becomes one that commands pensive consideration.

With the obvious exception of "Batman," my personal preference, generally, is longer shots. I think the move in contemporary filmmaking toward faster storytelling is reflective of society's viewpoint of our generation's inability to sit down and focus on one subject for longer than half a minute. Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, the prominence of this mindset in our arts forces many of us to lose our attention spans more than we perhaps already had.

Yet classic Hitchcock films such as "North by Northwest" do a fantastic job of building suspense without changing the camera angle every other heartbeat. I refuse to agree that faster cutting is necessarily always better. I know several young filmmakers who think that faster is better no matter what, and I think this mindset is dangerous and, frankly, cliche.

The last major project I edited was "Journey to Temple Hill," a 12-minute documentary on permanent display in the new alumni building on BYU campus. The topic of the piece is the history of BYU in its early years as a struggling academy, with a major emphasis on Karl G. Maeser. In my collaborative efforts with the producer/director, I found that she wanted cuts to be at least every four seconds, if not faster. This was against my natural instinct -- in a piece that focused on getting to know dead personages, I felt it was important to be able to gaze at their images a couple seconds longer and look into their eyes, try to gather a sense of who they were in each shot. We played this seemingly-endless game of tug of war throughout the post production process, but what resulted was a better film based on both of our arguments -- she was able to tell a more complete story because she kept the pace decent enough to move things along, and I was able to include brief pauses (natural "breathing spaces," if you will) so the viewer could have some time to take things in before going to the next scene. While the end product was still a tad too fast for my taste, I admit that our collaboration produced a better film than if either of us had worked on it solo.

In the end, I don't think there is a standard we can set for everything as far as pacing in our works goes. I would warn all of us, however, to steer clear of the common mentality these days that our cuts always have to be faster than not. I think it would be wise to strongly consider what we communicate by cutting too quickly (or slowly, for that matter), and whether we want to devote our attention to moving the story along or allowing a few brief moments more for the viewer to take in the mise-en-scene or to at least have a breathing space here and there to keep up with what's been said by the filmmakers.

Who Won the Avid?

Here is the infamous video of the Avid contest. 

Avid sent us a copy of Avid Xpress Pro to promote attendance of our group. 

Jayne Armstrong Conference Call

Jayne Armstrong was Bryce Randle's mentor at Walt Disney Pictures during his time as a Summer Associate in 2006. She placed him on Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End and taught him a lot about the world of post production, especially the Los Angeles aspect of it all.

Jayne was kind enough to have a call with the BYU Editors Group back in the fall of 2006.

Jayne is now the executive in charge of post production on High School Musical 3, the Hannah Montana feature, and she past work includes on Enchanted and College Road Trip.

Conference Call: Matt Davis

Matt Davis is a post production supervisor with Sony Pictures Animation. He was kind enough to do a conference call with our group in March of 2007. Listen to this "exclusive" interview here. 

Matt Davis is the Post Production Director at Sony Pictures A

nimation
where he oversees Editorial for all SPA releases. Before joining Sony in
2003, he was a Production Supervisor at DreamWorks Features Animation.
He graduated from BYU with a BA in Film.

 

Introduction

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