music videos

last friday, before me and paul were heading up to new york for the christmas holiday, i took a few hours, and worked on capturing a couple of music videos that i really liked, and i converted them and dumped them onto my ipod. first off, i have to say that trying to put videos onto an ipod is a complete pain in the ass - i had to convert the original mp4 files several times into a format that the ipod would finally recognize. anyhoo, after a few hours, i was able to put a couple of videos that i really enjoyed an dumped them onto the ipod (a couple of videos by everything but the girl, doves, and crowded house). on the train ride back to dc, i was able to watch the videos over and over.

i think it's absolutely amazing to be able to carry around cool music videos on an ipod and to watch them whenever you want. granted that the resolution may not be perfect, it's still pretty damn good for something so small. i remember, years ago, i would always have to wait to see a video for something that i only heard about. now, i can watch them over and over again.

i also found that watching the videos was very inspiring. it gave me a lot of ideas, and i think that i would enjoy directing music videos if i had the opportunity to do them more frequently. they're kind of visual collages of images, in such a short format. anyhoo, i totally dig watching videos, and i hope to watch them more often.

so the trip to new york was awesome: got to catch up with tom and andrew, and have a few drinks at the savoy, which is the restaurant where tom works. i'm glad to hear that they're both doing real well.

i'm a little disappointed that i haven't been able to do that much filmwork this past weekend, but hopefully, i'll be able to put in a couple of hours this week. i have a bunch of music stuff that i have to send to bob massey, and i want to get that stuff out to him as soon as i can.

let's see how much i can get done before the new year begins...

milestone

over the past weekend, i hit a major milestone in the post-production of the film. i was able to sub-rent the digital betacam deck from a local dealer, and i spend most of the weekend digitizing the footage into the avid: roughly six and a half hours worth of footage that used between 500-600 gigs worth of space. fortunately, i had plenty of hard disk space: 1.5 terrabytes on the avid system, and a terrabyte worth on a backup external hard drive. i captured all the footage into the avid as uncompressed 1 to 1 .omf files and .aiff files, which are the native file formats for the avid. needless to say, the footage looked incredible, and i'm excited that everything worked out this past weekend relatively without any problems.

i guess that i can finally say that i'm in the final stages of the film's post-production. over the next couple of months, i'm going to on-line the film footage using the off-line edit that was created using adobe premiere. i'm also fine-tuning any effects using after effects, and finalizing the music for the film as well. and i can tighten up any scenes that need a little tweeking.

up until now, i was essentially working with a lo-res dvd version of the film, which is like watching a fourth generation vhs copy. now i'm working with uncompressed super16 digibeta footage, and i think everything looks incredible. it's given the film a brand new life, and i think the final product will look incredible on the big screen. the footage still needs a bit of color correction, but fortunately, everything was transferred well enough that this won't be that big of a deal.

so the plan for the next couple of months is to finish the fine cut of the film on digibeta, fly out to l.a. and meet up with bob massey to finish up all the music, and plan for a local private screening for cast and crew and any press/production contacts.

in the meantime, me and paul are head-up to new york for the x-mas weekend.

guess, i better finish this film soon, yeah?

digi beta weekend

this coming friday, i'm picking up a digital betacam deck and spending the majority of the weekend capturing all the footage of the film into the avid for the final on-line. i'm confident that it should all be fine. of course, i'm working with about six and half hours of footage to digitize, so i've got my work cut-out for me.

the past few weeks have been rather hectic, and i haven't been able to work on the film as much as i like. tho, i was able to work a little bit on re-doing the opening titles using After Effects. as much as i like using the program, as with all effects, it can get a little overly complicated. the program gives you a ton of options in manipulating pretty much everything. but if you're not careful, you can get a little lost in being able to do simple effects. so, i'm trying to keep it simple. so far so good...

me and paul are heading up to new york for the x-mas holiday, then up to philly for new years, then in late january, i'm headed out to l.a. to meet up with bob massey. lotsa traveling...

so, hopefully, in the time in-between, i'll find the time to work on the final editing of the film.

let's keep our fingers crossed.