The Importance of DSLR (“Idiot with a Tripod”)

“Idiot with a Tripod” by Jamie Stuart shows us the importance of DSLR video.  With so many people screaming about how “film” (video) shot with digital SLR’s is becoming the downfall of motion pictures, this simple 3 and a half minute montage shows us that 7D’s and the lot are giving us tools that make beauty more accessible… that DSLR’s are bringing us a revolution in the world of motion pictures.

“Idiot with a Tripod” by Jamie Stuart

 

Roger Ebert calls the clip “Oscar worthy,” stating:

This film deserves to win the Academy Award for best live-action short subject. (1) Because of its wonderful quality. (2) Because of its role as homage. It is directly inspired by Dziga Vertov's 1929 silent classic "Man With a Movie Camera." (3) Because it represents an almost unbelievable technical proficiency. It was filmed during the New York blizzard of Dec. 26, and Jamie Stuart e-mailed it to me with this time stamp: December 27, 2010 4:18:18 PM CST.

So many cinematography and film message boards and forums are filled with veterans whining about the fact that now "any schmuck can grab a camera and shoot a 'film.'" While I agree that the field will be littered with more garbage, the accessibility of motion picture equipment puts tools into the hands of people who previously were not able to share their skills and talent.

For a while I lamented the same thing in the music field: now any fool with a computer can record their awful ballads to their girlfriend, and we have to sift through all the schlock trying to find decent tunes.  However… it also means there is more good music out there (because it’s not only the elite with access to major recording studios who can put out quality recordings).  The same is becoming true with film.

Just because the tools are becoming accessible to everyone, doesn’t mean everybody has talent.  Ebert reflects this sentiment as he goes on: 

You can tell from the cinematography he knew exactly what he was doing and how to do it. He held the Vertov film in memory. Stuart must already been thinking of how he would do the edit and sound. Any professional will tell you the talent exhibited here is extraordinary.

In no way am I saying big-budget productions are dead.  I of course still want to see my Lord of the Rings and Broke Back Mountain shot on glorious film.  I NEED my giant sci-fi movies to have an $80 million-plus budget.  But DSLR is an important part of an equation that can keep cinema in the theater from going the way of the dodo.  There is a time and place for everything, and DSLR is definitely coming into its own.

While studios continue to spend ridiculous amounts of money on overblown situation comedies (Little Fockers, $100 million :: Sex and the City 2, $100 Million :: How Do You Know, $120 Million), tools like DSLR are making it possible for creative leaders and revolutionaries to create wonderful motion pictures at a fraction (and I mean super-fraction) of the cost of these hilariously budgeted films.

While Hollywood scrambles to make sense of the VOD and motion picture iPod revolution, thankfully there are talented individuals leading the way, making beautiful, enjoyable films without being shackled to the bloated and tired old ways of studios trying to adhere to the “rules” that died quite a while ago.

There is still a long way to go before the dust clears, but I am certain that the benefits that DSLR lend to “filmmaking” (cost, portability, size, etc.) are going to be a very important part of how films are made in the coming years.

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Ebert quotes from:

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/movies-1/man-in-a-blizzard-by-jamie-stu.html

My Feature Wish List for Adobe Premiere CS4

For the past two months I have been editin a feature film in Adobe Premiere CS4.1.  While I still think Premiere is the right choice for editing a feature shot on RED, there are definitely some things lacking from the program.   A few are minor things, but a few are MAJOR shortcomings of the software.

I should have been putting this together over the course of the entire project, but I just thought to do this now.  And I guess late is better than never.  Hopefully I can remember most of the things I “wished” for while working with the program.

I submit “feature requests” to Adobe all the freaking time.  I assume my pleas fall on deaf ears, so I’m at least going to put a list together just to document my needs.  Perhaps some of these are actually already implemented, and some kind soul who stumbles upon this post will leave a solution to one of these wishes in the comments.

I will keep adding to this list as things come up.  Please feel free to cut and paste any of these wishes to Adobe Feature Request.

SOUND SYNC via TIMECODE
For some insane reason, Adobe has decided to completely ignore time code synchronization of sound/video in Premiere CS4.  This means if you record your audio to an external source, as ALL professional shoots do, you have to MANUALLY sync your audio and video.  And by manually, I mean line your waveforms up with the slate clap visually.  We recorded our audio (24 bit, 48KHz) to an eight track digital recorder.  We had a time code smart slate.  In regard to Premiere, it doesn’t matter, because Premiere won’t chase audio time code.  I can’t get over this.  This is like making an editing program that won’t handle video.  INSANE.
The work around is to sync all your audio via time code in Final Cut Pro, export the footage via XML, and then import the XML into Premiere.  When doing this, there are some very important things to remember.  You MUST place the footage on a timeline in FCP before exporting the XML.  Premiere does not link audio and video in the bins (stupid, stupid, stupid –see next wish list item) so the audio/video MUST be on a timeline to remain synced when it’s imported into Premiere.  Also, we found that FCP 7 would not work for this process.  We actually had to use an older copy (FCP 6) for the XML export/import to work.

LINK AUDIO/VIDEO IN PROJECT BINS
I cannot believe you can’t link audio and video files in the project bins.  This means you can’t use the bins to select clips for your edit.  You have to cut and paste EVERYTHING from a sequence/time line.  This makes me so angry that I can’t even write about it any more.  Moving on…

EXPORT LIST OF EFFECTS OR CLIP CHANGES
I am currently having to go through my project files to manually find each and every clip that has been manipulated by scale and position (keyed/cropped/scaled clips).  It would be phenomenal if I could simply generate a list of all the clips in a sequence that had been manipulated.  Same goes for effects.

When you generate an EDL for, say, color grading, any information regarding anything but in and out points is completely lost when the EDL is imported into wherever it’s going.  In order to recreate any changes you’ve made, the person importing the EDL will need a list of any clips that have been changed.  Thus, you have to go through each of your sequences manually to find any changes you made to each clip, and then give those changes to the person who is opening the EDL so that they can re-implement your changes.  Being able to generate a list of these changes would save an incredible amount of time.

XML EXPORT
You can import an XML, why the hell can’t you export one?!

BETTER (UP TO DATE WITH THE REST OF THE WORDL) EDL FORMAT
RED cameras generate 16 digit file folder names.  The EDL format that Premiere uses (CMX3600) only handles 8 digits for the file folder structure.  Thus, when the color house imported all our files, they had to go in and manually add the missing information.  I can’t imagine they were happy about this.

CUT/PASTE INFORMATION FROM THE “INFO” PANEL
Believe is or not, you can’t copy/cut any text in the clip “info” box window.  What in the FREAK?!  Why would such a thing be disabled?  Since I’m having to let my color guy know the file name, instance number, and in/out point of the clip he needs to manually scale and adjust, I am constantly in need of being able to copy the information regarding a clip, but I have to manually type out all the information, because you can’t select any text in the “info” box.  Infuriating.

NUMBER THE CLIPS IN A SEQUENCE
There is no place to find a clip’s instance number.  In an EDL, each clip is referred to by it’s instance number… simply which clip it is in numerical order.  In order to determine the number of a clip in a Premiere sequence, you either have to count the number of clips up to the clip in question (unacceptable in a sequence with hundreds of clips), or search an EDL you’ve generated for the clip’s file name (and then make sure you’ve got the correct instance if that file has been used for multiple clips).  How easy would it be to simply put the number of the clip in the “info” box?!  Grrrrrr.

SAVE “STATE” (expdanded details) IN EFFECT CONTROL PANEL

Since I’m having to go through and manually find each clip that’s been resized and/or cropped, I need the “motion” line in the Video Effects Panel to remain open.  Since it doesn’t, I’m having to go through hundreds of clips, click on them, then click on the little triangle next to “motion” to expand the details to see if any changes have been made to scale and position.  If I could set the “motion” line to remain open for all clips, it would save a LOT of time.

EXPORT OMF IS PRETTY WORTHLESS
That’s it.  Not much more to say here.  OMF export performance is spotty at best.
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New Topic: Editing RED Footage in Adobe Premiere CS4

Alright... I've been gone for a long, long time. Before my blogging hiatus, the major topic of discussion was hacking up the Samsung Omnia i910, and while I will continue to tinker with that toy (nay, superior smart phone) my new topic of choice is video editing and post production for "film!"

I am getting ready to edit a feature film in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4.

"Really? Shouldn't you be editing in Final Cut Pro, like everyone else?" you might ask.

Well, we shot our film in full resolution (4K) RED. Final Cut hasn't addressed the format as well as Adobe, so I'm going with Premiere. Premiere is simply at the forefront of editing native RED footage.

The new version of Final Cut Pro released last week touts the ability to edit RED better than it's previous version, but FCP still forces you to wrap the .r3d file in a Quicktime wrapper, thus you aren't really accessing the RED files natively (you have to go through that workaround).

The RED plug-in for Adobe Premiere is just the best way to go in my book.

So much of post is done in After Affects (no matter what platform you're on and what software you're using), and the integration and flow of Premiere and After Affects is superior (vs. FCP or AVID) to say the least.

Yes, there are issues with editing in Premiere (not the least of which is Adobe's apparent REFUSAL to address syncing and linking audio and video files --more on that later). But each leading platform (FCP and AVID being the two others), have their issues as well.

Other than sound, the biggest problem with Premiere (and it's admittedly a big one), as that it's a youngster in the field. Pretty much anybody who's been doing anything with film on a serious, professional level, has been using either AVID or Final Cut Pro. Thus, the knowledge base for Avid and FCP is much more vast. Finding answers for your problems with Premiere takes a lot of work. Hopefully my posts on the topic can help people find the same answers I was looking for a little quicker (a couple issues we had took weeks to find an answer to --some of the problems we still haven't found answers to, which leads me to believe that there might not be answers yet).

Bottom line, you're going to have problems (big or small) with any program you go with, so you just need to make sure you're doing what's best for you and your particular project.

Next up, the build (what I learned from researching for weeks before putting together a computer for the specific purpose of video editing).