Editors and other filmmakers are taking old and new movie previews, a.k.a. trailers and turning them every which way in their digital systems to create entirely new promos and mini-features and send them off to the Internet. You can take images from other films, add new graphics, VO, music, VFX, SFX – your imagination and time is the limit. To see examples organized by categories, go to the trailer mash

Here’s my favorite so far: The Shining re-imagined as a Rom-com.

But is it legal?
“A trailer is studio’s prayer, one that is answered on opening weekend. And everyone wants the answer to be yes.” Marshall Sella, NY Times Magazine, 2002.

Yes. Studios hunger for these spoofs as they help promote their movies. Some productions companies, notably Lucasfilms and Lionsgate, have even held contests and given out computers, tickets, and other awards to the winners. Curt Marvis, president of digital media for Lionsgate, explains it this way, “The worst thing that can happen (for a studio) is to have no one talking about your film. With millions of people viewing trailers and Twittering and chatting about movies online, it’s important to take that huge group and use them as an army of valid spokespeople and promoters of our content.”

Can a mash-up help your career?

It may get you any money but “Working on these projects is an absolute résumé builder if you’re looking to break into an editing, creative or marketing field,” contends Kelly Reeves, managing editor of Urlesque.com, an Internet humor blog.

So go ahead! Create one yourself and springboard your career. And let Joy know how it goes. I’ll definitely consider posting it.

admin Awards, Editing practices, Jobs

I came across an article based on an interview by Noelene Clark from the LA Times Hero Complex section on performance capture and acting. Since performance capture relies heavily on post production processes and the pairing represents once again the crossing of lines between production and post, I thought this was worthy of a Joy post.

Andy Serkis is performance capture pioneer who created Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and more recently, Caesar, the chimpanzee in Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

To get an idea of what Serkis does, watch this clip of him creating Caesar: (scroll down to see the video) http://herocomplex.latimes.com/2012/01/23/the-hobbit-andy-serkis-says-gollum-is-printed-into-my-dna/

Serkis on Performance Capture and Acting

Actors regularly ask Serkis “Are we going to be replaced by digital characters?” He does not differentiate between live-action acting and performance capture acting which he sees simply as technology – a liberating tool. “I am quite evangelical about it to other actors because I think…it’s a magic suit you put on that allows you to play anything regardless of your size, your sex, your color, whatever you are. As long as you have the acting chops and the desire to get inside a character, you can play anything. So I long for it to be accepted by the acting profession so that it can proliferate.”

Creating Caesar

Serkis spent time studying primate behavior for Caesar as well as for portraying King Kong in Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake of the same name, to establish their characters. As any actor would, Serkis thought about Caesar and pondered, “…what’s he going through? What’s he feeling? What’s he thinking?…You start to combine physicality with an emotional journey that you’re creating.”

Acting nomination and Awards

Serkis received a Critic’s Choice supporting actor nomination for creating Caesar and the movie’s main star, James Franco, campaigned for an Oscar nomination. (It failed to materialize.) This all brought on a slew of question Serkis has heard over the years regarding how to categorize performance capture acting for awards: “Should there be separate categories for live acting and digital acting? Should there be a hybrid award?”

Serkis thinks there should be one category – acting – because “My part in it, what I do, as say the authorship of the role, the creation, the emotional content of the role, the physicality up until the point of delivering that for the director, it is acting.”

He believes, “Getting that nomination for the Critics’ Choice is a significant leap, really, in understanding. Again, this is not taking anything away from the post-production process and what all of those incredibly talented people do, whether they be animators or visual effects artists…What was great about getting a supporting actor nomination is that it clearly shows, it defines an understanding within the industry that it is acting.”

admin Awards, Technical & process, Visual FX editing

Time for a change of voice! This is my first guest blog. Please welcome PJ Bruno, a producer at Grovo Learning Inc. It’s an internet company which provides a field guide in the form of two-minute videos for learning everything from how to use Twitter to netiquette training.

A Passion for Video

by PJ Bruno

I’ve had a love for video editing as long as I can remember.

Thanks to my parents, I had a well-documented childhood from birth all the way through high school.  Before they could afford a video camera they would rent one for a week at a time and capture as much footage as possible.

I grew up watching VHS tapes of my brother, my sister, and myself; by the time I was 14, I was shooting on my own. By age 16, I was editing video.

It was the complete control of narrative that inspired me; any small variation of timing or shot sequence would put forth a different motive, attributing to the filmmaker’s vision. But although I started early and worked often, I didn’t get an editing job until I was 25 (almost 2 years ago).

I was half way through my master’s degree in Media Studies at The New School in New York when I came across an editing job on Craigslist. The description read, “Unpaid Video Editing Internship with possibility for full-time employment.”

I told myself that all I had to do was get the internship and the full-time position would be in the bag.

The job was editing short video tutorials for an online education startup called Grovo. I won’t tell you how long I had to intern before I was made a full-time employee, but I will tell you that I learned more in 6 months editing at an Internet startup than I did throughout grad school. There really is nothing like working 50-60 hour weeks for a start-up with 20 other people working just as hard. The Internet’s permeation into pretty much all occupations has opened the doors of possibility wide. Not only do I get to edit video, but I get to be innovative with the format of our education. I toy with live action, animation, Camtasia video grabs, and more.

And on top of that, my co-workers have become my best friends.  I’ve never loved the art of editing more, and this is likely to be the most satisfying work experience of my life.

Grovo sample

Here’s a sample video PJ created:

http://blog.grovo.com/2012/04/grovos-tip-week-commandf-search/

admin Editing & life, Jobs

Ken Lee, VP and my book editor at Michael Wiese Productions, informed that as of April 1, my first book, Cut by Cut: Editing Your Film or Video, will cease being printed. Published in December 2004, it had 7.5 years of active printing and will be available online, as most things new, old, and outdated are! It makes me think of dog years. Is 7.5 years a long time for a non-fiction book that could be classified as technical?  Should I feel sad, glad, or proud? All three seem appropriate.

The drive to write the book was to pass on my knowledge of editing gained in the cutting rooms of Hollywood and the LA area. The book has helped people, I believe, (some have even told me directly.) And, frankly, it’s made me realize one of my biggest life goals: to be a published writer. I have (by choice) not birthed a child but I have labored to deliver 2.5 books to the world. What do I mean by 2.5? Read on. Or skip to the end.

Publisher’s words

“Write your book for where you want to take you,” Michael Wiese urged a group of his authors in 2010 at publisher MWP’s annual gathering in LA.

Cut by Cut has helped me get work, meeting new people and taken me a few places, including the annual UVFA (University of Video & Film Association) conference in Chicago in 2005 where professors meet and deliver their papers. This baffling ritual consists of the prof standing in front of a group of other profs (and other conference attendees) and reading the paper verbatim making little attempt to communicate with the audience and taking few questions before stepping aside for the audience to disperse and be replaced by a new audience and the next professor to appear to toss of their paper and check that box on their job “to do” list.

With editor Nimet Tuna (left) at Onk Agency in Istanbul.

More importantly, Cut by Cut has led to Michael proposing my second book, Film Editing: Great Cuts Every Filmmaker and Movie Lover Must Know which took me to Onk, a literary agency in Istanbul where I got a tour and spent an interesting evening drinking wine and having dinner with Onk’s head editor.

Equally important, Cut by Cut has begat Cut by Cut: Editing Your Film or Video, 2^nd Edition, which is being printed as you read this and will be available May 13 at Amazon and June 1 everywhere. You can pre-order it online now from www.mwp.com or your favorite online bookstore. Long may it live!

Yes, the second edition, while a third book, is an offshoot of the first, so it makes the total 2.5.

admin Announcements, Editing & life

My last post explained the 180° rule. It also stated that crossing the line can disorient an audience and that directors film shots from both sides of the line. How does the editor cut from one side of the line to another and use the director’s angles to tell the story without disorienting the audience? There are three main ways editors and directors routinely manage this.

1. Editors cuts to a close-up or other cutaway shot, then cut to the other side of the line

By cutting to another shot, the editor diminishes the disorientation before cutting to the line-breaking angle. Here are two examples of this frequently used ploy.

Example 1

From Finding Neverland ©2006 Miramax, All Rights Reserved.

Explanation of Example 1

Cut 1: A family audience watches a play with two actresses playing Peter Pan (L) and Wendy (R).

Cut 2: A cutaway to an audience member – the grandmother (Julie Christie) – creates a smooth transition to:

Cut 3:  A shot of the actresses seen from the audience’s POV with Peter Pan now on the right and Wendy on the left.

Eliminating Cut 2 would cross the line, potentially baffling the audience with the swap of the actresses’ positions.

Example 2

FromMunich ©2005 Universal Pictures, All Rights Reserved.

Explanation of Example 2

Cut 1: A potentially lethal confrontation intensifies as one man draws gun on another.

Cut 2: Cutting to an overhead angle sets the geography of the many players in this scene, keeping the audience oriented and enabling the editor to freely cut to any angle.

Cut 3: The actions and reactions of other plays are revealed.

2. A second way to observe the 180° rule is for the director to tell the actors to move.

This breaks the 180° line and establishes a new line. Here’s an example is The Constant Gardener ©2005 Focus Features/Universal Pictures, All Rights Reserved.

Explanation of Example

In Cut 1 and Cut 2: The husband (Ralph Fiennes) moves from left to right. His movement lines up:

Cut 3: where, in an over the shoulder shot, he faces his wife (Rachel Weisz).

The circling movement of the characters as well as the camera in this scene underscores the underlying tension between the couple.

3. A third way to avoid crossing the line is for the director to have the camera move.
With this method the camera breaks the 180° line and creates a new one once it stops moving.  The roving camera keeps the audience riveted to the action and allows the editor to cut in other shots, as the scene below demonstrates. It’s from Lust, Caution ©2007 Focus Features/Universal Pictures, All Rights Reserved.

Explanation of Example

The top and bottom cuts are cutaways. The middle cuts show the camera circling clockwise around the mahjong table. The stealthily moving camera punctured by cutaways of reactions shots accentuate the deadliness of the real game that beings played between the women.

admin Editing practices, Editor’s role, Technical & process

The slide show embedded in my last post that used examples from Hitchcock’s Rear Window to so thoroughly cover continuity, discussed the 180° rule, a.k.a. crossing the line. Here’s a clever, concise explanation in five short cuts (frames) from Paprika, an anime feature named for its red headed heroine, a young girl who is unclear on the concept.

Explanation of Paprika cuts:

Cut 4 crosses the line and breaks the 180° rule. Why? Because the girl (Paprika) appears to be on her director friend’s right side when she’s clearly on his left side in cuts 1-2.

Cut 5 correctly observes the 180° rule: Paprika appears to be on his left.

Notice that the characters do not change positions or eyelines: Keeping their geography clear relies on filming according to the 180° rule.

Risk

Today’s MTV-style cutting patterns regularly ignore the 180° rule. If you cross the line when you make an edit, you can disorient the audience and risk losing its engagement with your show, especially if you’re working on a 3D flick, which, by its nature, immerses viewers more deeply than 2D movies.. Disorientation is acceptable – and often called for – in war and other chaotic scenes. However, in most directors and crew observe. And they shoot footage from both sides of the 180° line.

So how do editors and directors take the audience from an angle on one side to and angle on the other of the line? Stay tuned for my next post.

admin Editing practices, Editor’s role, Technical & process

continuity. Maintaining the physical relationships, performance, action, and narrative flow of the filmed scene from cut to cut (or during filming, from shot to shot).

Maintaining continuity from cut to cut is part of an editor’s job and entails, primarily, matching action (movement), screen direction, eyeline, camera angle and framing. Secondarily, editors match props, sound, weather, wardrobe, hair, make-up, lighting, and color (Lighting and color can and usually are improved during color grading).

I’ve talked about mismatches and continuity so I won’t repeat myself. Here’s a link to a slide show which exposes Hitchcock’s masterful directing and editing in Rear Window to illustrate many principles such as the 180° rule of matching and continuity.

Before I sign off, however, let me repeat one huge principle: Continuity isn’t everything. Driving the story, plot, and them of your show and keeping the audience engaged is the first rule of editing. Director-editor Edward Dymtryk said it best in his book, On Film Editing, published in 1984 and still in print (emphasis added):

“If it is necessary to correct a fault, or if it is possible to improve the dramatic quality of a sequence, and the proper material is not at hand, explore all possibilities or invent a few. The odds that some workable solution can be found are so overwhelming that one should never stop trying, no matter how difficult the problem. Always remember that film is the art of illusion, and the most unlikely things can be made to seem real.”

admin Editing practices, Editor’s role, Technical & process

Happy April Fool’s Day. Enjoy this video on continuity from “Rob the Editor”, who creates and edits the opening titles for Conan O’Brien on TBS.

admin Editing practices, Fun & games

This post completes my two-part series on “The Digital Dilemma 2,” AMPAS’s 135-page report on Indies (independent filmmakers) and the preservation of digital media.

What Indies Say

The report quotes them as stating:

We need archives that make it easy for independent image makers to donate their work. And those archives need to have the wherewithal – finances, storage space and staff – to preserve the work and store it for the very long term…I’m really terrified that once I die, all the work I’ve created will vanish with me.

The work we do becomes part of our collective history, even when it was not initially intended to be.

It’s essential for every filmmaker to pay attention to preserving their work for future generations, as well as for future revenue options.

Challenges

The main hurdles indies face when seeking to preserve their work digitally cost, lack of standards (e.g. what file format should be used), and the absence of established preservation entities and repositories to perform and store the files.

Terms and Concepts

Archivists use the terms “digital preservation,” “digital archiving,” and “data curation” to describe their mandate to preserving digital media which includes workflows beginning with the shoot with perhaps a DIT (digital image technician) on hand and concludes with the storage of the digital data and a set of clear, documented guidelines for its continued preservation. In the report an archivist observed, “Previously, preservation meant that the physical object or item was preserved. With digital preservation, it is the content and not the carrier that must be preserved.”

Conclusion

The report concludes:

The digital dilemma is far from solved. Unless preservation becomes a requirement in planning, budgeting and marketing strategies, it will remain unsolved for independent filmmakers, documentarians and nonprofit audiovisual archives alike. These communities, and the nation’s artistic and cultural heritage, would greatly benefit from a comprehensive, coordinated digital preservation plan for the future.

admin History/research, Technical & process

In 2007, AMPAS (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and bestower of the Academy awards), published “The Digital Dilemma” about the preservation of studio-made motion pictures. With “The Digital Dilemma 2” a three-year study released in 2011, AMPAS teamed with NDIIPP (the Library of Congress’s National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program) to probe the preservation situation for independent filmmakers (including documentarians) and non-profit audiovisual archives.

Fact: Indies account for 75% of exhibited features and include such recent Best Picture Oscar winners as Slumdog Millionaire, The Hurt Locker, and The King’s Speech.

While this short blog cannot possible do justice to this 135-page report, I will try to hit the major points of interest.

The Dilemma

• Most indie filmmakers are occupied with selling their films and moving on to the next project and pay scant attention to archiving.
• If an indie film doesn’t secure major studio distribution, its preservation is uncertain and content loss is most likely.

• Consensus among users is that recorded digital data will not last 30 years. No archivists surveyed by AMPAS trusted storing digital data tapes for that long because data storage hardware and software become obsolete in five to seven years.

Preservation of moving images and recorded audio takes place at the hundreds of archives, libraries, universities, studios, TV stations, and homes around the U.S.

How are these images and sounds being preserved?

1. On film:

The major studios are creating film separation masters which employ the OCN (original camera negative) to generate three B & W (black and white) copies, filtering each one for one of the RGB spectrums. After development, these copies are inert and deemed the most stable for long-term archival, preservation, and restoration purposes. They are vaulted in climate controlled rooms with passive deterioration detectors and straightforward inspection protocols. For indies, this route is financially prohibitive. Also, as digital cinema and cinematography increases, there will be more .DPX and .CIN files to contend with and less photochemical film.

2. On analog tape:

If stored properly in a cool room, this material is relatively simple to preserve and will last for decades, as long as the necessary recording and playback systems are retained.

3. On digital tape:

   Similar method and longevity to analog material.

4. As digital data on digital storage media

As editors well know, much digital tape, film, and analog tape are being converted to digital data in the post process. So dealing with digital data presents a huge challenge. This is due to digital data’s many potential failure points (computer, disk or hard drive, network, software, the actual media itself, etc.) and its short cycle of technical obsolescence (file formats, drive, data readers, etc.).

Digital storage systems range from off shelf, portable hard drives overseen by the filmmaker to complex data centers maintained by archival institutions’ IT departments. Both systems are typically accessed by a desktop computer and necessitate records keeping and tracking via a database software which can be as basic as FileMakerPro or complex as a DAMS (digital asset management system).

Cold storage isn’t enough for digital data which includes files, hard disk drives, DVD, etc. Digital data demands active management on a continuing basis to ensure access to the data. Active data management includes backing up the data to several drives in several locations, routinely verifying (inspecting) the data to make sure it’s pristine, and transcoding it to new formats and drives as they appear to have some staying power.

Summary

The AMPAS report states:

There is no escaping the fact that digital technologies enable independent filmmakers to explore and extend the art form in ways that are simply not possible with motion picture film. The price to be paid for these new capabilities, however, is either the loss of content to digital decay, or accepting the responsibility of working with technology providers to articulate and satisfy industry requirements for the long-term preservation of digital data, achieve satisfactory backwards compatibility and implement standards.

The next post will look at what indie filmmakers say about preservation and give the report’s findings for the future.

admin History/research, Technical & process