Andrew Rendell
Forum Replies Created
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I sometimes use iDVD to make a DVD by exporting my timeline onto the desktop as a Quicktime, then choosing “OneStep DVD from Movie” from the file menu in iDVD (then just follow the instructions). This can take a little while as the iDVD programme has to transcode the movie into MPEG2 (which is what DVDs are encoded with).
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That comes from using a fish-eye lens (ultra wide angle) it’s called barrel distortion.
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Air conditioning – it is very important that the room has good fresh air circulation as well as temperature control.
Have a second computer for internet, scripts, etc. Putting it on a second desk is a really good idea, and have a second telephone for the room next to it.
Sound monitoring – remember that the purpose of the speakers is for you to judge the sound objectively and the requirements for that are completely different to enjoying music. LS3/5a’s aren’t popular because they sound great (because the don’t, particularly) but because they give a good representation of what’s on the recording in all sorts of odd acoustic environments (so you don’t have to spend a lot of effort getting the acoustics of the room right, which you would with ported cabs).
I like 2 level desks, particularly the adjustable ones (as you can change the height of the monitors to suit different people), but as long as you pay attention to getting the screen heights, keyboard position, etc., it’s not necessarily a big deal.
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In London (UK) a lot of facilities companies closed down around 2008-9, but I wouldn’t say that there’s a decline in the industry. My opinion was, for several years, that a lot of facilities were playing the “cut price” game, investing lots of cash in kit but not much in staff (either salaries or training) and relying on the fact that people had to come to a facility if they wanted to do professional level editing. Those guys were running in the region of 3% to 5% profit so when the technological and economic environment changed they couldn’t cope. The places which continually invested in kit and their staff, putting their abilities and expertise at the forefront of the business didn’t run into the same problems and several have expanded in the last couple of years (not to mention the opportunities for freelancers going into places that own their own Avids and FCPs but need to bring in skilled and experienced editors).
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It’s not really an answerable question without knowing which pieces of equipment these cables are going to connect and what functionality you’re expecting to have.
I don’t know if this is of use to you https://www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~shahnam/CLSPEC.pdf
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That’s how FCP works, and I found it very irritating at first, but I have 2 workarounds:
1: (this is a bit of a bodge) open a finder window looking at your renders folder in the background. When you render a section, you can grab the render file and drop it into a bin in FCP, then place it on a video track above the clips that it’s a render of. That way you can build layers of effects shots without spending so much time waiting for renders, then when you’re done take out the render layers and re-render it for real.
2:(this is much better) send your clips to Motion and do your effects there. Motion will do a lot more layers/effects in real time than FCP and the Motion project slots straight back into FCP.
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I’ve been using NTFS-3G without any problems. I see that it’s been updated several times in the last year, and that the fixes in the newer releases were for things that would have caused problems in older versions of it.
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Not only is balanced sound, through XLR cables/connectors, much better quality than unbalanced/consumer wiring, you also need the phantom power ability of the balanced system to use the great variety of professional microphones available. Selection and positioning of the various sorts of cardioid, hyper-cardioid, figure 8, omnidirectional, shotgun, etc, microphones is an art in itself. And then you have to know when not to use the phantom power – 48V can kill the occasional very fine (and very expensive) microphone that isn’t designed for it.
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I don’t think you should worry too much about having the latest kit. Camerawork is about framing, focussing, exposure, getting the stuff recorded in a range of conditions, editing is about assessing pictures and sound and putting them together in ways that are meaningful, etc. In some ways, having “yesterdays” kit and learning how to get the results you’re after from it is better training than having the latest stuff (as every advance tends to make things easier) – once you’ve learned how to shoot, record sound, edit or whatever, it’s actually quite easy to transfer your new found knowledge onto new kit when the time comes.
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What exactly do you mean by “become an editor”? I know it sounds like a dumb question, but staff or freelancer, major broadcaster or independent film, these things can make a difference. I’m freelance and my work is a mix of regulars and new clients – the regulars don’t care about qualifications because they know me and the new ones only care about my resume and a couple of phone numbers of people I’ve worked with so that they can ask about me before engaging me on a project.
I don’t have a degree. I dropped out of college with no idea what I was going to do and got a job as a runner at a small TV production company, thought “this is for me” and badgered the biggest broadcaster in this country (I’m in the UK) until they gave me a position as a trainee in the technical department, which gave me a brilliant mixture of classroom and on the job training to become an online editor in tape suites. I eventually left the broadcaster, but that training has been vital to my having a career as an Editor, even though I don’t have a piece of paper to prove it.
Doing it this way is tough though and even a persistent b*st*rd like me would have a hard time getting started now – I came into this twenty odd years ago, when you couldn’t do a degree in anything to do with media and the companies were interested in wider experience than just educational qualifications. The situation is different now, it seems like everyone and their dog have a degree and without one you’ll have a real hard time getting those first couple of jobs that will give you enough experience for formal qualifications not to matter anymore. I can only recommend that you go to college and get that degree.