[Ian Johnson]

Is the problem with Gen-Y specifically, or is it just about being 20-something? I wonder if it seems like it’s “20 somethings these days” because you are now in a position to be hiring them and be confronted with the problem. Did you have a noticeably better experience hiring Gen-Xers 10 years ago?

I would think that the problem of lazy, entitled youth might be prevalent for any generation born since the 50s, with the growth of a middle class who can afford to pay their children’s way through college. Gen-Y isn’t the first to be able to graduate from college without needing to hold down a real job along the way.

They might have it better themselves though, when it comes time for them to hire the kids who are just now starting Jr. High during the recession.

[Ian Johnson]

Something that is essential to the chase is being able to understand where the characters are, and where they are in relation to each other. For instance, when the sniper outside is shooting into the garage, there wasn’t really a connection between them. As your protaganist steps into the open garage, you could suddenly cut to the sniper’s POV of the house with the open garage as he steps into view followed by an extreme CU of the muzzle flash. That would give a bit of shock to the realization that he just stepped into the line of fire, and give us a bit of a clue about where the sniper is in relation to the house.

There might have been some build up about the fact that a sniper is lying in wait out there, somewhere, and we aren’t sure where, a la Clive Owen stalking the farmhouse in Bourne. The packing sequence at the beginning was too much detail as cut, but if it were interspersed with POV shots of the sniper’s scope as the protagonist moved back in forth in front of the window, then it would have caused some tension as we wonder if he will get out of there before the sniper draws a bead.

During the actual chase, make sure there are some recognizable landmarks that they can both run past so we can get a sense of how far apart they are, and how much the bad guy is gaining. In between closeup action, get some wider shots with some common features between them so we can get some sense of place. As they run from place to place, we should be able to understand how those places are connected. If the good guy is trapped, and needs to get past the bad guy to the exit, we should see the exit, and understand what the obstacle is. If he knocks the bad guy down and escapes through a door we didn’t really know was there, it’s not as dramatic.

We can discover the setting with the characters as well. Rather than running and jumping into the middle of a stairwell, the good guy can run up, look down (cut to how high it is), look back to the hall he just ran out of as the bad guy comes into view, then jump down past the camera as the bad guy appears at the rail.

The Bourne style is high energy and exciting, but sometimes in the middle of Bourne’s action sequences I couldn’t tell what was going on. Use the CUs and camera moves to follow individual punches and moves here and there, but pull back to give us a frame of reference. A CU works best if it shows us something we already saw in a wider shot so we know what we are seeing and where it is. If we discover something in a CU, we should get a wider shot right away so we can get some context.

Also he handheld stuff will have a lot more impact if it moves with a purpose to follow specific action, rather than being generally shaky.

[Ian Johnson]

I’m using a Bamboo Pen/Touch as a mouse replacement for editing. I used to use an Intuos 3, but I actually like this one a little better. The small size is better suited to navigation, needing smaller movements. The surface feels a little like paper, which I like, and my Intuos tended to squeak when I set my palm on it, which got annoying.

The touch capability doesn’t apply much to Media Composer, and always uses relative positioning like a mouse, rather than absolute like the pen. I can still use my fingers to scroll the timeline, but I have to remind myself that I can do it.

[Ian Johnson]

Post production really is harder than Grampoo makes it look. Did you ever try editing with your nose?

[Ian Johnson]

So this is totally unrelated, but I happened to spend a good chunk of the last spring and summer editing Sophie promos for ABC Family.

A second display makes a huge difference when editing. You can do pretty well using spaces to flip back and forth between bins and timeline, but it’s not quite the same. You don’t necessarily need to make it a 30″ Apple. You might be able to get the more powerful laptop with and still afford a somewhat smaller, cheaper display.

[Ian Johnson]

I know this is a bit late, but I just saw it. I made a tutorial on editing music for promo a while ago, but haven’t gotten around to posting it anywhere because I hadn’t spent the money yet for the full version of the screen capture software. If you don’t mind a giant watermark, here it is-

https://www.iankjohnson.com/Music_Editing.mov

One thing that helps a lot is to find out how many frames a measure is. If you have a music edit that needs to move earlier or later, move it by even multiples of that amount and you will get within a frame or so of a clean edit on the first try.

Put markers on well defined downbeats. If one measure is 54fr, then + or – 54fr from those markers to find places where you can cut. You can also get by with 27fr intervals, or maybe even 13fr if you need to. It’s likely that your measure will actually be 54.5 frames long, so you might need to fudge the numbers a little.

If you have a cut in the middle of a measure that you can’t quite dial in, move the incoming clip to a different track and back the head up until it includes a solid downbeat or a drum hit that you can mark. Then scrub the outgoing clip around that area until you find a similar beat and mark it. Slide the incoming clip until the markers line up, then trim the head back to where you want the edit.

Have a look at the quicktime and let me know if you have any questions.

Ian

[Ian Johnson]

[Terence Curren] “[Ian Johnson] “It seems like it could be possible for Media Composer to handle something like this. It would need a kind of pulldown detection that will scan an entire clip and find changes in the sequence, rather than extrapolate from the first few frames. ”

You need to tell MC what the pulldown is. It assumes that 0 and 5 frame endings are “A” frames.”

I know it can’t do that now, it’s more of a feature request which I would think could be based on its current ability to detect pulldown (the fluid motion plugin does it). It’ll probably show up someplace like Premiere Pro first.

[Ian Johnson]

I tried digitizing from the digibeta at 23.98 in a 24fps SD project, but the Avid didn’t want to let me use that deck. Does the DVW-A500 have a setting that needs to be changed to allow this?

One thing I tried that almost worked was exporting a QT at 23.97. However even though the source had originally been shot in 24 and had a pulldown, it had apparently been edited in 30fps so the pulldown sequence changed every time there was a cut.

What I did was subclip every shot, and export them as QTs. I imported them into After Effects, detected and removed the pulldown for each one, then strung them out and rendered a single 1080 24p QT.

I know there is no easy way when the pulldown is jumping around, but I hoped there might be a simpler method if I am confronted with this problem again with 30i or something like a film daily where I can start on an A frame and know it won’t change.

It seems like it could be possible for Media Composer to handle something like this. It would need a kind of pulldown detection that will scan an entire clip and find changes in the sequence, rather than extrapolate from the first few frames. It might take some time to process, and result in a mixdown without source metadata, but it would be a start.

[Ian Johnson]

Some menu items are context sensitive, so you have to set up the conditions before you can map it. In this case, you need a sequence in the timeline with In and Out points set to make Render In-Out selectable for mapping. There are some others like this, such as Load Filler which needs the source monitor to be the current active window before you can map it.

Ian

[Ian Johnson]

Also, CMD-OPTION-H hides other applications, so hit that combo after you click an Avid window to get all of the others to come back in front.