[Chip Johns]

[person] use the titles you wish. it really doesn’t matter in the end. i was just trying to make the point that a ‘film editor’ should not have to physically cut the film to have this title. in my opinion the ‘film’ in film editor means ‘movie or feature’. that’s it.

Good Point person. Do “film” editors even touch film anymore? Except for maybe in a small production that doesn’t have the resources, the editor may take care of this, but as things have changed I would venture to say that at this point he is really wearing another hat.. Even in the feature film market, isn’t the Director of Photography taking care of most of the DI?

[Chip Johns]

[person]… many films are cut on NLE by many great film editors. if i’m a photographer, and start using a digital camera, does this mean i am no longer a photographer?

I do see what you are saying here person, but if we take this scenario all the way it sheds a bit of light on this too.
Is the subject of an editor here compared to the photographer or is the editor more compared to a darkroom technician. I have spent many hours in the darkroom, but when I use digital i may be able to use the theory behind darkroom development but I need to learn Photoshop. On the flip side, I know plenty of photographers who shoot competely digital and couldn’t even roll film onto a canister reel to develop it.

An editor using NLE that is going to be outpout to film has to understand film. He needs to know what type of film he is coming from and what type of film will be output to as well. Attention to focus is highly critical when editing for film output, getting NTSC color is nothing like getting the color correct for output to film, on and on and on.. The talent of laying out a scene is only part of the equation. A film editor has many, many more things to consider…

Of course, I have never edited for film, all of my information is only coming from what I have read. So what I say is only second hand, I realize this..! But, in the past I have spent enough time in the darkroom to understand that digital output is nothing like negative or print film.

[Chip Johns]

“…if i’m a lead guitar player in a band, does the title shift when i change over from an electric to an acoustic?…”

I’m not sure I agree with this analogy. Your still playing the same instrument. It would be more like comparing using a drum machine to actually playing the drums. It takes real talent to program a drum machine to make it sound real. And, just because you may do it well will not make you a good drummer, and vice-versa, I do my share of editing but if you asked me to touch film, well, I think that you would be very disappointed.

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Personally my take is that you are an editor. What kind isn’t less important, but secondary to the title. What are most job postings or RFP’s asking for? A film editor or a spot editor? Or do they ask for an editor for (whatever.) I’m not saying definitively here because I haven’t seen an RFP lately. What do they say?

Really its all semantics though isn’t it? Your reel and knowing what you can do is what its all about. The personal title you give yourself is just that. What would Walter Murch say if you asked him his occupation?

[Chip Johns]

We technical people watch the credits more than most that is for sure. Just to keep up with who is doing what. But isn’t the real value of the credit how it pertains to our personal resume? A listing on the movie credit is worth much more than the screen viewing. That just makes it official.

Isn’t it amazing how some of the Bigger Stars have built into their contract that the credit must show for a certain amount of time. Amazing, these guys don’t even need head shots anymore and they’re worried about how many seconds their name displays on the opening credits.

—

Chip Johns
chip@chipjohns.com
http://www.chipjohns.com

[Chip Johns]

Usually when there is an incredibly long scene shot in one take, isn’t this usually a decision by the director? It had to of been shot that way!?! I know that sometimes a scene isn’t edited like it was inteneded, but usually when a scene is incredibly long one the decision was made long before it hits the edit..

I’m not posting this to be a smart@$$. Just curious.

[Chip Johns]

Pacing is an art that needs to be developed no question.. However, in just discussing it well, I think we can over-dramitize this as well…

STAR TREK IV – (Act 2, SCENE ?)

(Lead in …McCoy infers to Spooks Death

[Chip Johns]

You can’t tell in advance but you can see when your pages were last crawled. It google type in

site:www.yoursite.com/

The pages that Google has crawled will show. If there is a link nest to a listed page that says cache you can click on this and see the page as it currently is in Google’s index. at the top of the page you can see when they last looked at your page. If you look at your pages once a week or so you can begin to see how often they are crawling the pages and kind of predict when the are going to next..

Backlinks and inbound links are the same thing. If I link to your site from my site then you have a backlink from my site. We also call them external links..

As far as the link biz on the internet, Whitehat seo specialists all feel that Google PageRank (PR) isn’t what gets you to the top of the search engines. paying for links based on PR is a waste of money. Build a site that people want to link to. It sounds like hard work and it is. But in the long run it is a lot less work then constantly trying to stay ahead in the “links game.”

I would rather a site with a PR of 3, that has something in common with my site, rather than a site with PR 8 that has nothing in common with my site.

[Chip Johns]

I think of pacing as the flow of information.

Pace is determined by the AMOUNT of information and the RATE at wich it is presented.

To give the perception of overwhelm, sometimes we can provide the information at a rate that is hard to keep up with, or we may provide more information that can be digested. Each of these techniques would simulate the feeling of being/feeling overwhelmed.

This is just one example of how we can use the AMOUNT (of information) and the RATE (of speed) at which it is presented to the audience… to incite, excite, move, and lead the audience where we want them to go…

[Chip Johns]

Hi mills_mg,

PR is not necessary to have a good ranking in Google. There are many instance of a page with PR of 1 or 2 ranking better than a page with PR 5 or 6.

The best thing for you to do is build a site that is worthy of links, getting people to want to link to your web pages. Make sure you are using the best key word phrases and make sure your pages use these properly. And, make sure that your site can be crawled adequately by the se spidders.

Google PageRank shouldn’t concern you. When people tell you that it is important, don’t listen to them. Run..Run..Run

[Chip Johns]

HTML Code!

That is the big problem with Front Page. It generates what I like to call Microsoft code. Basically the same engine is involved that runs Word. Type some text into a word doc and then save it as html file. After you save the word doc as an html document, open it in notepad and look at the code that it generates just for a simple page. And, the more elements on the page, the more complicated the code that it adds. The time that it takes you to strip out the unnecessary code is massive. This is one of the biggest problems with FP. And, if you open an existing html page in FP it will add the code.

Dreamweaver adds a little bit of header code to a document, (but you can turn this off so that it doesn’t happen,) and, what it adds isn’t usually a big deal, just doc-type info.

There is no option -not to add the code- in FP. As an html editor, its pretty much useless. You will drive yoruself crazy. If my only html editor option was FP, I’d use notepad, and, I’d get the job done quicker…

—

Chip Johns
chip@chipjohns.com
http://www.chipjohns.com