Dean Sensui
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John…
Congratulations in advance. I’ll drop you a line. I’m always willing to hear how others get it done in this business.
Mahalo!
Dean Sensui — Imagination Media Hawaii
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I turned 50 last year so here’s my two cents.
I wasn’t at all offended by the “young and hungry” comment. I took it for what it was worth. And, regardless of what federal laws might state, I certainly can appreciate what a particular producer might want in terms of someone they could relate to or work with.
The same might be said of someone who is looking for a female lead for a show. Gender discrimination? Technically yes. But how much sense would it make to hire Bob Smith for a show called “Women’s issues”?
As I get older I began to realize that age might become a factor in getting jobs. But in reality, the only time age actually affected my employability was when I was 28, and I could’t qualify to train as a helicopter pilot for the Army National Guard.
Regarding working, I recently took a couple jobs as a PA which was at fraction of my usual day rate as a cameraman. Because that’s what PA’s usually get paid. But because I’m relatively new to the business of independent production I thought that seeing another producer at work would help expand my knowledge of the business. It did. And, as it happened, the producer was half my age. The DP was a couple years older than I was. So here were two “old fogies” working for a young kid on her documentary — yes, a female employer.
I was absolutely overqualified, considering what I could do as a cameraman and editor, not to mention that I was a staffer and chief photographer for a major daily newspaper for 25 years. But seeing how others work — and especially working alongside this particular DP — turned out to be an eye opener and a good educational opportunity.
Recently I also spent almost a month working for free on an independent film project. We all worked gratis on that one. But, again, it was an experience that proved invaluable. It also led to other paying jobs and good business contacts. For me it was the first time ever working on a project of that type and something I had wanted to do for a long time.
One of the crew members from that project (who happens to be 15 years younger than me) recently agreed when we were discussing employability, especially in the very small production community we have here in Hawaii. It seems that there are a lot of very talented folks available for a wide variety of jobs. And a lot of them are already taken up, working with “Lost” and other productions.
When it comes to who gets picked, quite often it’s who-knows-who and the compatability factor that wins. Networking counts. And given two equally talented people, the one who is known for working well with others often gets the nod. After all, even though a particular individual exhibits more talent, they’re not likely to get a call back if they’re known to be an absolute pain in the a** to deal with.
Of course there are employers who will hire young because young usually equals “cheap”. Older, experienced people demand higher salaries or rates.
But consider this: if a company is willing to hire cheap, inexperienced people who provide low-quality work, do you really want to be a part of that? I know of at least one producer who hires only those who will work at cut rates and that’s how it looks in the end product. The producer couldn’t care less, as long as the bottom line works out in his favor.
Dean Sensui — Imagination Media Hawaii
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By the way, when filming a samurai movie, “Cut!” means “Action!”.
🙂
Dean Sensui — Imagination Media Hawaii
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How about the closing line from Mystery Science Theatre:
“Push the button, Frank”.
One of the producers I work with generally says, “Ready?” And I reply, “speed.” Usually spoken quietly to avoid distracting the talent.
Dean Sensui — Imagination Media Hawaii
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[mortimer heathcliff] “we mounted a little Canon HDV palmcorder on a shotgun barrel, pointing at the shooter, and pulled the trigger. the glass of the lens didn’t break, and the puppy kept rolling.”
You pointed the camera at the shooter or the barrel of the shotgun? 🙂
If your camera has an analog out, then try making a copy via the analog connections, then capture the copy.
Next time you might want to have the actor fake the recoil of the shot and save your camera from the sudden acceleration stress. Make sure the weapon is unloaded and the action is open. Then have an assistant give the barrel a sharp, short shove.
On a somewhat related note, I recall seeing some training videos for skeet shooters where a camera was mounted on a shotgun to give novice shooters an idea of how much to lead each target. I don’t know what was used for that. Perhaps a camera wired to a seperate recorder. But it looked pretty cool and it did help as a teaching aid.
Dean Sensui — Imagination Media Hawaii
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Use FCP to do the basic editing. Get all the elements in place, then move it over into After Effects with Automatic Duck.
Do all the final compositing and rendering in AE.
Keylight is very good. Another plugin that I use is Primatte. It solves some problems that Keylight has trouble dealing with.
AE — the professional bundle — also has the ability to take advantage of multiple machines to render a project. The result is usually a series of seperate frames which can then be read as a movie file by Quicktime. QT can also convert these discrete frames into a single video file.
Dean Sensui — Imagination Media Hawaii
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I’ve been using Wacom graphics tablets since 1997.
Right now I have an Intuos 2 on my G5. A Kensington Orbit track ball is used for those times when more precise movements are needed. As for the mouse, it’s sitting behind the monitor. I don’t think I’ve touched it since I bought the computer.
Dean Sensui — Imagination Media Hawaii
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Here’s the basics on multicam setup:
— Select clips for each camera angle.
— Find “slate” points and cut the clips there.
— Move clips to a bin.
— Highlight clips.
— Go to Modify dropdown menu and select Make Multiclip
— Select “Sync using in points”.
— Check “on” all clips.Your multiclip will then be created and can be found in the bin.
Drag this multiclip into a sequence.
— In Viewer: Show Multiclip Overlays; Show Source Angle Effects should both be “on.”
— Go to View dropdown menu — Playhead sync — Open
— Go to View dropdown menu — Multiclip Active Tracks — Video + Audio
— Go to View dropdown menu — External Video — All frames (not sure if this is essential)When you click on your sequence and hit the space bar, you should see all camera angles in the viewer playing simultaneously and the “program” or selected camera angle should be playing in the canvas as well.
To select a camera, just click on the angle in the viewer.
At the end your multiclip will be cut into their respective camera angles. You can go back and fine tune the cuts, too.
Dean Sensui — Imagination Media Hawaii
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The usual sage advice is never upgrade in the middle of a project.
It’s probably doubly important to not upgrade in the middle of capturing media for a project.
If you absolutely have to do this, create a backup boot disk with Super Duper and do your testing with that. Should the worst happen — and hopefully you also kept backups of your older projects — you always have the original system to fall back upon.
Dean Sensui — Imagination Media Hawaii
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The work I’ve done with AE & FCP on DVCProHD material looks great at the end.
If you have to do several encoding passes on a particular task then you need to re-evaluate your workflow. Perhaps find ways to combine several tasks into a single integrated procedure and hold off on the final render until all the components are in place.
Dean Sensui — Imagination Media Hawaii