Student Films Suck

Absolutely compulsory reading for all students -

D.U.M.P.S.: Directing Unsuccessful Motion Picture Shorts

This article Flags the most common cliche’s and crimes committed by student filmmakers.

Be brave, conduct some honest self-evaluation, are you the perpetrator of any of these crimes…..?

Read the List here…

RED ONE has arrived

At long last the IFSS RED ONE 4k digital cinema camera has arrived. The brave new world this camera represents will soon be a working part of IFSS. That is of course once we work out how to put it altogether. Out of the box the RED ONE looks much more like a lego set than a camera. The pix below tell the story of Christophe’s dismay….

Camera Reports

Any post production process can only be as smooth (and therefore freely creative) as the quality of the paperwork produced in production. Its the paperwork that informs the edit, that guides the editor. its the paperwork that means more time can be spent cocnentrating on makign good editign choices rather than wrangling files trying to work out what belongs to what. Camera Reports owe much of their importance to the rigors of handling film stock from camera to lab but in the digital age the notes, annotations, comments of the DoP are just as crucial for being able to track what choices were made on set.

Cinematographer, Ryan Patrick O’Hara has compiled a super article about the importance of camera reports and examines different approaches to keeping camera dept reports.

You can read the full article here and I have included it in the prescribed readings for Cinematography students on the READINGS page of ifssproduction.net. Which is not at all to say that everyone shouldn’t be reading the article!

IFSS Showreel Trailer

Behold the new International Film School Sydney showreel trailer. Not only is it a pretty sexy bit of production (with all editing, effects and music by our own Ric Shields) but it’s also a great template example of your own showreel. 30sec-1min, punchy, dynamic, clever, a trailer that screams Show me More.

Adobe Audio Redux

With the discussion of late turning to Audio production – particularly for Tiers 1 and 2 as they wrestle with final post on their latest shorts, i thought I’d post this article which i wrote recently for DigitalMediaNet which takes an overview look at the new Adobe Soundbooth CS4 and in particular their new audio format called ASND.

When a new software version is released there is an unavoidable decent of vultures to pick at the bones of the young software hatchling and uncover the newness. Such pickings invariably focus on either big new features or previously unknown additions or dwell on the implementation of long awaited fixes or missing components. When the software release is as big and multi faceted as Adobe CS4, undeniably the most comprehensive and application rich software suite on the market, it is inevitable that such picking and scrambling over the features are long winded and detailed.

But when the dust settles it is often the small things, those that don’t make the top of the New Features press release, that prove to be among the most interesting and forward thinking.

In Adobe CS4 there is much discussion of improved integration between applications, expanded metadata handling particularly in Premiere Pro, and a host of workflow improvements in apps such as After Effects. Likewise among the younger/newer apps in the suite such as Soundbooth, the focus falls to its multitrack options that move it beyond the basic waveform editor it used to be. But there is something else in Soundbooth which hasn’t gathered as much immediate attention but heralds some great options for integrated post production.

Read the rest of the article here.

Copyright

As a filmmaker dealing with issues of copyright is core part of the job description. Whether it’s the use of music by a band or singer in your film, the signing of release forms or exertion of your own copyright over the work you make, a grounded understanding of copyright principles is crucial as part of professional practice.

The Australian Copyright Council is a non-profit organization setup to provide copyright information and advice, particularly to artists. Their website http://www.copyright.org.au/ is a fantastic resource of clear and concise info on Copyright principles and how they effect you. On the site you’ll find a wide range of downloadable documents that spell out specific considerations on copyright and particular contexts. It’s a site well worth knowing about and having bookmarked.

In particular one of the things I have been asked about a number of times is ‘how’ you exert your copyright over your film. The answer is simple, you don’t need to. This from the Copyright Council site:

• “You do not apply for copyright in Australia, and there is no system of registration here. Nor are there any forms to fill in, or fees to be paid.
• You do not need to publish your work, put a copyright notice on it, or do anything else before your work is covered by copyright – the protection is free and automatic, from the time a work is first written down or recorded in some way. For example, as soon as a poem is written, or a song is recorded, it is protected.”

So putting the words ‘Copyright Joe Blogs 2008’ at the bottom of a script or the end of a film has no bearing at all on the legal copyright and is unnecessary. But as the site also says “it does remind people that the work may be protected. It also lets people know who is claiming copyright.” So it’s not a bad idea, it’s just not a legally binding one. Your copyright exists fully regardless of wether you put a copyright notice on it.

Of course then the question becomes how do you protect your copyright? And there are some simple guidelines to follow detailed on the site.

• If you are concerned that you might at some stage need to prove you own copyright in something you have
• created, any of the following procedures might help you ensure that you have some relevant evidence:
• • keep dated drafts, plans, and outlines of the work;
• • keep dated records of research done in creating the work;
• • keep recordings of different stages of development (for example, with songs, music or choreography);
• • discuss the work with others, and/or show drafts or finished versions to others;
• • keep written records of any agreements you make concerning creation of material or ownership of copyright
• in material.

Of course for non-Australian students Copyright law can vary. Most developed countries recognize each other’s copyright parameters and there is a great deal of consistency from one country to another but you should defiantly check with similar organizations in your home country to be clear on specific issues.

Noise Reduction and Soundbooth

Noise is a fact of life. Its all around us and much like in the Pant world the defintion of ‘weed’ is simply any plant you dont want to be there, so to is ‘noise’ a very broad catagory. Some sounds can be simply cut out, excised from the soudntrack. others are burried in multiple sounds and so are harder to isolate. One of the most annoying and common is simply Hiss and Hum. All these kinds of noise have a chance to be dealt with by digital audio editing tools but its important to also remember that the best form of noise reduction is to avoid it in the first place – good mic technique, wind sheilds and quiet shootign environments.

But even with the best of Mic technique there will stll be times when digital clean up is required. This is where Adobe’s Soundbooth comes in. A relatively simple audio tool Soundbooth CS3 is designed almost pruely for waveform editing and cleaning and tweaking. Soundbooth CS3 is not a multitrack system like Soundtrack Pro (although the newly relased SB CS4 is, but thats another story) Think of SBCS3 as a tool for preparing, cleaning and tweaking audio before it goes into a multi-tracker like SoundtrackPro or your NLE.

One of the core processes in Sb for noise removal is Noise Printing, a process where you are effectively taking an audio snapshot of what the noise ‘looks like’ and then instructing SB to remove that wave pattern. tis process allows for a selective removal of noise even when there are sounds around the noise that you want to keep. Most commonly hiss around dialogue.

We shall go over this process of noise removal in class today but to re-inforce the idea and for reference there is an excellent Video and Text tutorial online from Adobe which gos through step by step how to use the noise removal tools in Soundbooth.

The video tutorial is available from the excellent Adobe Design Centre. just select Soundbooth CS3 from the list of apps on the left hand side and then underneath choose the tutorial “Cleaning and Restoring Audio”.

There is also a text and image version of this tute here -

http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop/html/vid0245.html

I also spoke today in class about Soundbooth’s bigger brother Audition. if you’re starting to take you audio seriously this tool is about as comprehensive as it comes, covering all abses from loop multitracking and loop sequencing to in-depth audio manipulation and audio physics. Whilst ProTools has lots of great big expensive hardware you can strap it to, Audition leads the way as an incredibly powerful software solution thats fast, effcient and inexpensive. Audition has long been popular in Radio and audio broadcasting and is icnreasingly seen a solid video production tool.