Camping BTS #6

CLEANING UP THE EDIT FLOOR

Here are a couple of things that I do when I am finished with a project. First off, is to go catch up on sleep! Ok, seriously…

I put the finished video on a MiniDV tape and label it MASTER for use later if I ever loose my finished video. Cleaning up the scattered files is another way to make sure the project stays altogether (and of course that starts during production) some people even burn these project files to a CD for use later. Also, I go to the Final Cut Pro program files and delete the Video and Audio Render files for the project along with the Capture Scratch video files – AFTER I make a master first. ☺

I then get ready for the next project…..

Random Notes:
-Be careful when handling a camera around sprinklers
-Throwing leaves on the fire are a great way to make the fire brighter
-It is difficult to resist the urge of blowing out an ignited marshmallow
-Grandma is hilarious
-Camp food is really good (most of the time) and it is a good thing too, cause we like to eat ;)
-siblings don’t like paddling with their hands

That’s it for this project! I hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to let me know if you have other questions or if you have other areas that you would like me to cover in future BTS sessions.

Camping BTS #5

GRAPHICS AND TITLES
MOTION
I do most of my titles in Motion, because it has a better text resolution output. All the titles for the Camping video were designed in Motion and animated in Motion using a couple of presets. I didn’t do anything really complicated.
BLUE SWIRLY
The blue and yellow swirly thing that “revealed” the number for each point, was a free download from Digital Juice and is part of their Motion Design Elements Library - "Logo Revealer's."

SPECIAL EFFECTS

COLOR CORRECTION
I briefly touched on this in my last BTS, and I don’t have a lot more to add. One benefit I have found is to use a proper “production monitor” when doing color correction. These monitors can be rather expensive and range from around 7” to 13” in screen size. I bought an 8” JVC model off of ebay for under $200. My computer screen is VERY noticeably darker and different in color than my external monitor. A monitor isn’t a must, but if you plan on doing any serious CC work, especially if your finished movie will be viewed on DVD (thereby often using a TV screen) and/or your movie will be projected on a screen using a projector, I highly recommend some extra thought and care when doing the color correction. Most of the CC for this project isn’t very noticeable, and I hard a time finding a cilp that would show the differences very well. Because I shot at sunset and I shot on a couple of different days, some shots were warmer than others and I decided to CC to make all the narration clips a warm orange color……

Before

After

SPECIAL FX
Since my camera doesn’t do well when shooting at night, meaning the video doesn’t show up very well….the “night shot” is really the only shot with special FX applied, but I liked it so much I just had to tell you about it. Here are the stages I went through….

Original shot

Color Corrected using Magic Bullet Editor's "Night" preset, with a few custom tweaks :)

I then added several layers of stars that I created in Blender, and used the compositing option in FC to help them blend into the shot better. It isn’t perfect, but I was pretty pleased with the result.

[CLEANING UP THE EDIT FLOOR] coming next….

Camping BTS #4

If you haven't seen the "Camping 2007" video yet....you might want to watch it first.

EDITING

CAPTURING
The first step to editing is to get the video on the hard drive. Instead of capturing a whole tape at a time Final Cut Pro allows you to go through a tape and make “in and out points” which are then created into a “temp clip” to be captured/digitized later.

I like to give my clips names that contain project and "take info. For example “Cmp07 – 01” – “Cmp07 – 02” it just helps me keep it organized. When I am done logging all the clips, I can select them and choose “Batch Capture” and the computer automatically goes back through the tape and creates the clips for me.

ORGANIZING
When editing I prefer the “View as List” option for my folders and bins. On every project I basically have 4 main folders – VIDEO – FILES – MUSIC – AUDIO. (sometimes I have Sound FX or Power Point folders too) You can see a picture of my Camping Folders below (click to view it larger).

Also, for just basic project files I create a folder on my external Hard drive for each project. Inside that folder my files are organized very similar to my FC folders. This project is a little less organized than normal due to the smallness of the project and lack of files.

Projects such as Joel’s Journey and Call of Courage have a very large number of folders.

DRAG AND DROP
Next, I go through the clips and pick the ones I like (I kind of did that when I captured the footage, but I still have multiple takes to choose from) I drag the ones I like into the timeline and arrange them by group “B-Roll” – “Narration.” Sometimes, depending on how much video I have to work with, I will even create a separate sequence just for the B-Roll. It simplifies my main timeline and keeps it less cluttered. ☺

SWAP IT AROUND
This is the part that is really hard to describe…. For the camping project, the next step was to start putting the B-Roll that went with each point together and interspersing the narration in a chronological format. In the following picture you can see the whole FC screen. In the Timeline I have my "faded black border" on the top layer, some special FX and b-roll in the next layers, and the bottom layer is my main narration and main b-roll.

FASTER, FASTER
The bane of videographers is that the video is too long or the shots are too long. (Now I am NOT advocating MTV style editing – got it?) It is best to get into the shot late and then leave early, especially for comedy. This is a good technique for movie outtakes too ☺ I tried to cut the shots rather quickly and to keep the pace moving. Some people have still told me that the video is too long in general, and yea…there are a few places that adding some more dialogue would have helped. We live and learn right? ;)

ADJUST THE CUT
Normally I stick to straight cuts and fades, the amateur star wipe or paper airplane are not in my typical set of transitions. :P However, different styles call for different transitions and I wanted the transitions to compliment the comedy effect I was going for. “Swish transitions” are often used in movie trailers for comedic impact, so I decided to try applying it to my short video. One thing to remember when applying Special Transitions (this applies to any transition really) is that you must use it sparingly and for a reason, meaning that if you place it correctly then the audience will expect it and associate with a specific element of your video. EXAMPLE: Camping ’07 – the “swish transition to the right” meant NEXT POINT and “swish transition down” meant THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF THE POINT JUST GIVEN. I added a few other fun and funky transitions to try and keep the pace moving. Note: SoundFX for the "swoosh" were from Digital Juice's SoundFX Volume 1.

SPIN YOUR WHEELS
After I have my video edit finished I take my color wheels for a spin! There is a lot of thought that goes into correcting the color on a shot and there is a lot of information out there on how to do it. One training video I found useful was by Digital Juice. You can view it here. (also, more on CC and special FX coming later)

MAKE THE MOVIE
Once the video is done, and the audio has been adjusted, I export the clip as a QuickTime Movie.

Some projects are now ready to be compressed using Compressor, such as Camping ’07 outtakes, while for other videos I still need to create some special titles and graphics. Camping 2007 called for some specialized titles, and since I don’t like Final Cut's title feature, I fired up Motion…but I am getting a little ahead of myself, that’s a subject is for next time….

[GRAPHICS AND TITLES] coming next….

Camping BTS #3

This one is out of order, but I didn’t want to put two major posts right next to each other. So here it goes for audio….

NOTE: I use Apple Final Cut Studio to edit with, so key commands are from the Mac OS.
NOTE 2: You can click the pictures to view a larger version.

AUDIO

CUTTING THE FINAL AUDIO
-First of all I actually finish the edit before I mess with the audio (more on editing in a later post). Sometimes I don’t need to adjust the audio at all, other times it requires a lot of time and work (Joel’s Journey). Since I recorded on two audio channels, I have a high volume audio track and a low volume audio track, and I was able to capture the high volume track without any clipping. I duplicate the high volume track (option-click the track) and then drag it over the low volume track to replace it. I then adjust the volume as needed and sometimes that requires some manual keyframes of the audio level. I didn't end up needing to keyframe for this project though.

Once I am happy with the basic video edit I begin to apply the audio filters. Final Cut has lots of audio filters that I normally use for audio needs. However in this case I needed some extra tweaking control, so I used Soundtrack Pro. Next step is to turn off all other audio layers and export just my dialogue to a WAV file. Importing that file into Soundtrack Pro I am then able to take out background noise and add filters.

SOUNDTRACK PRO
-SP has a “background noise reduction” feature that I applied to this project and I also applied a Low Pass audio filter, which limits the amount of high frequency levels and allows more Low frequency levels. I didn’t apply this filter very much because I found that if I cut out too much of the “high” the dialogue became hard to understand.

When I was done with the audio fixes I exported it back out. Now the default SP audio export is AIFF and for some reason FC doesn’t really seem to like that format so I used iTunes to change it to a WAV format. After importing the WAV file back into FC I was ready to adjust the music.

MUSIC
-The music I used for this video is from the Digital Juice Stack Tracks library, specifically the HOLIDAY and SPOOKY stacks. I like DJ’s music because they allow you to take out any instruments you don’t want. Normally I would have had the Morris brothers compose some music for it, but I didn’t really have the time and they were busy too ☺ (they composed the music for Joel’s Journey)

I won’t go into all the monotonous details of adjusting all the music to fit and match correctly, but you can look at this picture of my timeline and see what I did.

Stay tuned for the next BTS article – [EDITING] coming next….

Camping BTS #2

If you haven't seen the "Camping 2007" video yet....you might want to watch it first.

VIDEO AND ACTING

B-ROLL
-The hardest part was to make sure I got all the needed footage WHILE camping. I mean my family wasn’t real excited that I was always video taping them. ;) Also, because they didn’t know my whole plan, some of them thought that the stuff I was taping was kinda strange ☺ In the end I had about 45-55min of footage to edit from. (editing will come later)

NARRATION
-Location
first I had to find a location. Thus to find ‘just the right spot’ meant I had to spent quite a bit of time traveling around and around our yard. I settled on a spot in the front yard that would allow me to have trees with “fall” leaves for the background and it also gave me sunshine for a backlight (since I wasn’t using any lights.)
-Lighting
I did use a reflector though to bounce the sunlight and fill some of the shadows. I used the gold side of a 5-in-1 reflector that I have.
-Audio
Well, it wasn’t by choice, but I ended up just using the on camera mic. So I set one channel to be an expectable level and then set my second channel to be slightly lower, to accommodate for any “spike outs” from the audio. The biggest problem (which you can probably tell) is the outside “background” noise, and the passing cars/trucks ☹
-Assistants
I enlisted a couple of siblings to help me with the video shoot. Maggie held the reflector for me and Carinna held onto the script so it wouldn’t blow away. Thanks to the twins for their wonderful help!!
-Re-shoot
I shot the opening line for the video and then got reports from trusted sources (family) that audio wasn’t clear enough. Soooo, we reshot it and I moved the camera a little closer to the main talent (Benjamin). The “walk-up and put on the hat” was added the second time. In short, the 2nd time was MUCH better ☺
-Tapes
For what it is worth, when labeling tapes I like to include: The title of the project "Camp Trip 07," the tape number "01" - "02," and what is included on the tape, "Video footage" - "Narration." AND I also flip the save/rec tab to SAVE when I am done shooting.

CASTING
“Benjamin are you busy? – Let’s go shoot some stuff for the camping video.”

EXTRA VIDEO
-I wasn’t able to attend the grand water ski adventure due to the premiere showing of “The Call of Courage” and “Joel’s Journey.” Special thanks to my siblings who captured some priceless footage via the video function on their still cameras. ☺

[AUDIO EDITING] coming next...

Camping BTS #1

This is the beginning of the BTS for the Camping 2007 video. I know y'all claimed "uninterest" in most of the BTS sections...nevertheless, I am going to post them in a somewhat video production chronological order. However, I will give more info on the "interested" sections. :)

SCRIPTING

The Idea
After doing a camping video last year, I knew I wanted to do one again this year, but of course I didn’t want it to be the same. The idea of “Camping tips” came to me right before we left, so me and my brother Caleb worked on the script on the way down to the camp spot. Some of my other siblings could hear us laughing and thought we were having WAY too much fun in the back seat (which we were)!!

The Narration
The narration script was written the day I taped it. :P I scribbled it out on a piece of paper and then read off a line to Benjamin and we would tape that section, and so on. I guess it turned out alright.

BTS pics can be seen from my old post.

You can watch the video and outtakes on my website.

[VIDEO AND ACTING] coming next....

Camping BTS

I am working on the BTS info, and it would help me out a lot if you would vote for what you want to hear about :) I will post a little about all of those things, but I can spend more time on something that I know would be of interest....

There is so much to talk about that if I can narrow it down some, you won't have to read 3 pages of stuff :P