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Join Us In London For The Guardian Media Academy

By Michael Rosenblum | Published February 18th, 2012

Come and join us in London for the Guardian Media Academy video bootcamp at the end of February.

Lisa and I will be running this personally and you’ll have the hands-on experience of a lifetime with one of the best (if not the best) journalism organziation in the world – The Guardian newsaper. These are the same folks who broke the Rupert Murdoch News of the World scandal.

If you have a penchant for journalism and video or just London for a week, come and join us!

There are a few places still open, but not for long.

And, nyvs members will get a 20% discount.

We can help with hotels and transport.

But time is running out.

Email me directly with any questions. We’d love to see you.

How To Use Final Cut Pro X – A Different Approach for Editing

By Michael Rosenblum | Published February 17th, 2012

“We shape our tools and afterwards they shape us”, or so wrote Marshall McLuhan.

McLuhan may have known how to turn a catchy phrase, but when it comes to editing software, the opposite proves to be true.

The tools we have before us are incredibly powerful, but most of us barely use 10% of what they can do.

That is because we tend to use new tools in old ways, even if the new tool was meant for a different way of working.

This proves true whether you are a solider in World War I being ordered to march in a very straight line directly into machine gun fire or you are an editor using FCPX.

Let’s stick with the FCPX and leave the sheer stupidity of First World War tactics for another conversation.

Final Cut Pro (and any non linear software for that matter) is an extremely powerful tool. Its greatest advantage is that it is non-linear. That is, that you can dip into and out of it at random any time, any place.

That’s a pretty amazing thing. It is phenomenal at manipulating video and sound with incredible plasticity.

Yet how many of us, sitting down to edit, start at the beginning of the piece and laboriously work our way through to the end? Would that be justa about everyone?
More often than not we end up using FCP and other non-linear edits as though they were linear edits – in a linear fashion, from start to finish.
This is crazy. But we do it

We do it because we have a 70 year history of linear editing and about a 70 minute history of non-linear editing. And history wins out.

Even worse:

How many of us sit down and write out a written script – on a piece of paper! – and then proceed to ‘translate’ that written script to video by way of FCP?

That is really crazy.

My 85-year old father in law sends text message. We taught him how to do it and bought him an iPhone. He’s pretty good at it. But before he sends a text message out, he sits down and writes out the text message longhand on a legal pad, then re-reads it, corrects it, and when he’s got it right, proceeds to type out the text message on the iPhone and hits send.

Crazy, you’re thinking. Well, in fact no crazier than your writing out your scripts and then transposing them to video on your FCP timeline.

He has a certain anxiety about the technology- it’s a kind of powerful thing and he wants to make sure he gets it right and doesn’t ‘break’ anything. You are no different. You want to make sure you get it right on paper before you approach the FCP for fear you don’t ‘mess something up’.

Be bold!

Go nuts!

Throw that stuff all over the timeline. Start in the middle. Jump to the end. Move the end to the beginning. You can’t break it and you can’t ruin it.

We tend to treat editing as though it is building a delicate house of cards It isn’t.

We should treat non-linear editing as though it is a block of clay and you are the sculpter.

Use your hands.

Get them dirty.

Cut. Shape. Smoosh. Jam it around. Then try again.

Go ahead.

Nothing bad will happen.

Why Making A Film Is Like Flying A Plane

By Michael Rosenblum | Published February 11th, 2012

Lisa and Delta Pilot (and NYVS member) John Roberts plan his shoot

As I am in the middle of reading UNBROKEN, I am in a very pilot oriented mood.

One of our NYVS member is Delta Airlines Captain John Roberts. (I sent him a copy of the book).

When pilots take off, they don’t just fire up the engines, take the plane up and ‘see where it goes’.

But fimmakers (and video makers) do this all the time.

The results are as catestrophic as if a pilot took off without a flight plan.

Fortunately, no one dies if your career crashes.

But it hurts all the same.

Yesterday, I screened a piece by one of our VJs.

It was an unmitigated piece of crap.

She had gone to cover a music performance festival, had put the camera on the tripod and pretty much shot the performance.

This doesn’t work

And it doesn’t work becuase, like a bad pilot, she had not filed a flight plan for the shoot.

What do I mean by that?

If you know you are going to shoot a performance, you have to say to yourself, ‘what are the elements of a good film about a performance?” In other words, what should my FINAL PRODUCT look like? Plan the final product, not the shoot, and you’ll have a target, as opposed to simply tryhing to keep up with reality ‘as it happens’.

Well, in any good film about a performance, you are going to have the following elements:

1. People arriving for the performance – ticket sales, checking in. milling about. a few soundbites in anticipation. getting your seats.
2. The actors getting ready behind stage – makeup. costumes. practice. anxiety. a few sound bites.
3. The technical people preparing the room.
4. Everyone is seated. The opening.
5. The performance itself. (this is the easy part)
6. The audience reaction. Applause. Close ups on faces. Wide shot from the back and so on.
7. Anticipation in the wings.
8. The end of the performance. Applause
9. Lights up, people leave. Soundbites. How did you like it?
10. Actors back stage. Interviews.

OK
Those are the ten elements you are ‘shooting for’ so to speak.

Needless to say, if you got all of them you could cut a great film every time.

Even if you only get 7 or 8, you are in great shape.

And you knew this before you even left for the shoot.

Now, when you get to the shoot, YOU are in control. Instead of playing catch up and hoping for the best and seeing what happens, you have filed a flight plan.

Stick with it, and you’ll always have a happy landing.

Should You Pay People To Be In Your Documentary?

By Michael Rosenblum | Published February 10th, 2012

I have been in the midst of a multi-person discussion this week with about a dozen people I never met.

It’s taking place on the Film and TV Professionals site on Linked In.

Actually, although I always accept Linked In requests, I almost never use the site.
Personally, I can’t figure out what it does, exactly.
I am much more for Facebook
(Feel free to Friend if you like)

In any event, I became intrigued by a discussion on the Film And TV Professionals page about whether to pay participatns in a documentary.

The original poster, someone named Alyn, asked whether it was ethical to pay someone, in this case a homeless person, for their participation in a documentary he was shooting.

I was pretty astonished at the outpouring of responses.

The vast majority of people (not all however) were not only in favor of paying the homeless people, but the discussion soon digressed into whether it was better to pay them or give them sandwiches, or vouchers, or clothing.

So here’s my take on this.

If you are a documentary filmmaker, you NEVER pay anyone for participating.

NEVER.

If you are making a commercial release fiction film or entertainment this is a different issue.

But a documentary takes us into the world of journalism, and journalism has certain rules and standards.

One of these rules is, you never pay people to participate.

Why don’t you pay them?

You don’t pay them because paying them changes the nature of the relationship. If you pay them, they are working for you. And as your employees, it is their job to do what you want them to do. As soon as that becomes the nature of the relationship, the faith that the viewer has that ‘everying you see is absolutely true’ is shattered. If these people are working for you, if they are now, in fact, actors in your film, how can I know that what I am seeing is real.

It’s the same reason we actively discourage directing in docs and news. It undermines the trust.

And in undermining the trust the viewer has in your film, it undermines the trust that people have in the entire genre of documentary films

There is no National Board of Documentary Films that certifies that THIS FILM IS A+ FOR INTEGRITY.

We police ourselves, and as such, it is imperative that every documentary filmmaker strive to mainting the creditibility not only of their own work but of the entire genre.

Sometimes people will indeed ask you for money before they will participate. If they do, walk away. Find someone else. (Often that is enough to change their minds anyway). Personally, I can count on one hand the number of times I have paid for someone to be in a doc or news piece (on two fingers, actually). They were both mistakes.

What I am astonished by is the number of people on the Film TV Professionals discussion site who seem to confuse being a filmmaker with being a social worker. They are both important jobs, but they are radically different ones.

Join Us In London For The Guardian Media Academy

How To Use Final Cut Pro X – A Different Approach for Editing

Why Making A Film Is Like Flying A Plane

Should You Pay People To Be In Your Documentary?

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