Andrew Rendell
Forum Replies Created
-
Some good stuff in there from Oliver.
I might just recommend those somewhere else if you don’t mind 🙂
-
[vineet das] “(in terms of aesthetic).”
There are unlimited ways to approach the aesthetic aspects of a doc, but it’s safest (until you build up experience) to keep things simple. Well timed cuts and a uniform grade, rather than chopping about or loading up with effects. In general, effects tend to distract from the storyline unless you’re using them to illustrate a particular point.
Try to respond to your material and cut the film that exists in the rushes, rather than force the material to deliver something that isn’t really there. I had a doc go out a couple of weeks ago and talking to viewers I found that the part that was most highly regarded was a section that was edited very simply and allowed the contributors to express their emotions without interruption. [TBH, I had expected that to be the case. Despite the apparent simplicity of the cutting, it was the part that I had thought about how to cut the most carefully. Being “without interruption” from the viewers’ point of view was “very carefully selected” from mine.]
Don’t assess shots or music by their superficial appeal, assess them by what they add to the storytelling. Last thursday I removed the “best” shot in my current effort because it distracted rather than added to the flow – you have to be brutal sometimes. I know a director who uses the phrase “killing your babies” when you sit in the edit and find that something that he’s spent time and effort on, and therefore has an emotional attachment to, doesn’t work.
-
“A good opening and a good ending make for a good film provide they come close together.”
Fellini… and a lot more, as well
I suppose I asked for that 😉
-
The most important things are structure, structure and, er, yes that’s it, structure.
Be absolutely clear with yourself (even if you aren’t with anyone else) what exactly it is that you want to convey, i.e., what particular thing(s) you want the audience to remember the day after they see it.
[Hope that first sentence doesn’t come across as glib; pace and timing are incredibly important but if you don’t get your narrative sorted you’ll be in big trouble.]
-
It won’t make any difference to the amount of hiss whether you import as mono or stereo. I’d be inclined to listen to each track individually to see whether the hiss is on all the tracks or whether one or more tracks are worse than the others (in which case only use/ boost the cleaner ones).
-
What’s the pixel size? FCP doesn’t like anything over 4000 pixels along a side (doesn’t usually crash it out though, usually gives an “Out Of Memory” error).
Resave the pngs as tiffs, perhaps. (Odd though – FCP is usually better with pngs than with jpegs).
-
I’m in London, UK (I actually work in other parts of the UK from time to time, but basically London). TBH my experience of kit exactly matches Neil Patience’s (although I do more “cutting” than finishing these days).
I’ve been using both Avid and FCP7 for the BBC, mainly Avid with the odd bit of FCP7 for ITV, Channel 4 and the rest. No one’s asked me for anything else yet.
[If you’re the same Neil Patience that worked at Arena Digital back in the ’90s, I’m the chap who replaced you when you left… I went freelance in 2002]
-
I haven’t tried the PIX 240 but I have used the NanoFlash, which does a similar job. The higher bit rate recording is a very useful improvement in quality there, so I’d expect a similar result for the PIX 240. So that’s a plus 🙂
The other thing that I notice in the specs is the mic inputs. IMO the EX1 isn’t the greatest sound recorder in the world as the limiters kick in too early and the audio level monitoring isn’t particularly intuitive (YMMV, this is very much a personal opinion), so I’d be very interested in trying the PIX 240’s mic inputs.
-
That does make it clearer.
AFAIK one would normally achieve sync for that kind of thing by feeding the click track to the musicians’ using earpieces, so that the musicians play in time with the video, although I guess that’s not always going to be practical.
Google finds stuff like this…
https://www.audiovisualizers.com/toolshak/vjprgpix/flowmotion/flowmotion.htm
quote: “With this controller you can sync every video to the internal looping sequencer which in turn can be synced to MIDI Clock [*] or Tap Tempo (tap the spacebar to make it sync to the tempo of your tapping).”…but as I indicated, I haven’t used that stuff so I couldn’t say which of the various software available would work best for you.
-
What I think you’re after is vari-speeding a video feed. That’s a tricky thing to do, requiring rendering to maintain quality. I know a couple of ways of doing it in post (Avid, Adobe and FCP can all do it) but not “live”, as it were.
I think what you need to do this kind of thing live (or “as live”) is “VJ” software. Not really my area, so I couldn’t say which software might work for you… sorry
good luck in you search