Tech issues

A couple weeks ago, a friend of mine brought up a concern about the way I was importing footage.  She's concerned that my exported final screening product might not be of the highest image quality.

Back when I was going to be working with someone else in Minnesota, the would-be collaborator uploaded all 28 tapes onto a hard drive as 28 avi files.  I have been editing by "importing" (not "capturing") these files and then taking segments from them using in and out points for the timeline sequences.  It plays fine in my computer.  I have thought, though, looking at some of the QT videos that I uploaded for actors to see, that the quality isn't great.  This friend is concerned that this is because avi files are "non-native" to Final Cut, whatever that means. 

So at her suggestion, I burned a DVD of a couple exported sequences (.mov files -- the same ones that I had put up on youtube) and then played them in my DVD player on my old TV.  Aside for the fact that the image was unexpectedly squeezed (not letterboxed, as it should have been, but squished into the 4x3 screen so that everyone is too skinny and tall), the image quality seemed okay.  I think.

For one thing:  it's my roommate's old TV and it's not the greatest image, regardless.  For another thing -- this friend of mine seems to be telling me that .avi is interlaced but other "codecs" (??!!) are progressive scan, and until I play the DVD on a newer TV that uses progressive scan, I won't really know for sure. 

Doing a little research online, it seems like playing the DVD in my computer would expose the problems, but I'm not sure.  The thing is, it's not the greatest image quality, but how do I know if the problem is in the monitor/export or in the actual footage?  How do I know, in other words, that Greg didn't need glasses?????? 

Plus, is this something that can be fixed -- if indeed it is even a problem -- by the way the final sequence is exported (changing settings), OR am I basically SCREWED because I've edited two-thirds of the movie this way, and now I'll have to GO BACK and capture all the hundreds of clips I've chosen FROM THE BEGINNING?? 

I am daunted and discouraged and afraid to edit. 

I suppose I have just two avenues open and I should just pick one: 

1) capture from now on because prior damage is done and we know capturing is good

2) keep importing because this is how I've become accustomed to doing it and I have a system and a rhythm so I'll probably be more likely to do it, and if I'm going to have to go back and do 2-3rds, I might as well have the whole film be the same quality, and go back and do it all at once.

It sounds like the first one is best -- but the issue of being put-off and intimidated by the capturing is real; it really might keep me from doing any editing at all.  ...Then again, the idea that what I'm doing is creating extra work for myself might keep me from editing as well.  Not to mention  all the other things that keep me from doing it, as well. 

ARGH.

Acting for Real (and trailer?)

Hi -
No, I haven't been editing, but I have been making notes for a trailer.  I think that will be my next task.  I'm considering using Kickstarter and I thought a trailer would be a good thing for that, plus a good thing to have in general

Does anyone have a moment that they remember as key, that they thought of as encapsulating of a character or a theme? 

In the meantime, read this article from actor Martin Donovan.  It's pretty great.  I hate it when people rag on actors as self-centered show-offs.  It can be such a profound and important thing to do.  I got some very brave moments from all my actors and I appreciate it immensely.  I hope I earned them. 

Martin Donovan Talks about Acting (and a Little about Directing)

Bummer!!

Harvard Sq. Cinema to CLOSE! (click here for article)

This is extremely disappointing.  This theater played a major role in my "development" as a cinemaphile and would-be filmmaker -- it's probably the last one left that did, in fact.  

I saw Casablanca from a front row (2nd? 4th?) in this theater because the room was otherwise PACKED.  I saw My Brilliant Career several times here, and King of Hearts (which it used to show annually), and my first John Sayles movies (Lianna and Secaucus Seven - a double feature - with Jack Martin) !!  Not to mention a hundred other movies since it was bought out by AMC-Loews and converted to a mainstream theater. Although it's been a kind of crappy first-run hole for a while, it's still a serious blow to the history of independent exhibition - another nail in the coffin. 

Sad!

I have a faint, faint hope that  another chain (Landmark?) will buy it and fix it up, but this is only wish-based, really.  

Up and Coming

Being done with Scene 28 means that I have made rough cuts of 57 pages, and have 40 pages to go. 

Unfortunately, my all-day sessions have basically come to a close, as I'm running rather low on gelt and will need to start whoring my time and brain Very Soon.  Plus, dont' tell anyone, but I am getting pretty darn sick of this movie.

Anyway...

The scenes yet to come:

• Sarah and Amy argue about the validity of their respective political positions (how do we see each other?  how do we see the world?  what do we believe about what we see?  how connected are we to what we see?  how connected are we to each other?  how do we see each other?)

• Marissa upsets Larry by insisting that they "play the game" even while Larry is clearly unhappy at the prospect and asks her to stop -- discovery of the dinosaur in the piano bench

• Down-and-out man screams at Marissa at the park

• Larry encounters Frank on his lunch break and they discuss "people watching" and being "people people"  and wonder what That Guy (known to us as the "low-fat mayonaise" guy or the "sex with monkeys" guy, depending on the day) is thinking about.  Jack gets his cameo in this scene as "Somebody" who wants to know what time it is.  

• The "frazzled" scene -- Marissa's meltdown -- a tough scene I've mentioned before -- had to shoot it twice.  Fortunately it is six pages, not nine pages.  Six is still a lot, though, what with the crying.

• Marissa walks on the beach and has her "there is love in the world" epiphany, as evidenced by the "montage of humanity," much of which Katelyn is doing.

• Second dinner sequence - 7 pages.  This includes a long stretch of Amy and Sarah reading Marissa's story out loud -- I'm not sure what I'm going to do with that.  Maybe I should go for something like in _Tree of Life_ with dinosaurs and the explosion of the sun?  (ha ha ha!!  I was not a fan of that sequence in Tree of Life, FYI -- I approved of the intention but not the execution).  One of my favorite lines in the script is in this scene.  :)

• The showdown!   Greg's hand-held tour de force.

• The suicide sequence.  With the real-looking blood in way-too-small-and-polite quantities.

• "I'm gay."  "I know."  "You could have told me!"  (this scene will have tone challenges similar to Scene 28's)

• Visiting-Larry-in-the-hospital sequence (a challenge because I'll have to use the DAT for sound as the camera sound cut out in the hallway scene for some reason -- should probably use the DAT for all the sound, actually, but I don't know how to do that in the digital age -- synching mag stock and celluloid on a Steenbeck or Moviola I know how to do, but the 1's and 0's mean nothing to me.  Someone else is going to have to do that).  

And that's basically it!! (i.e., plus a couple long-take transition-insert thingies)  It's a daunting set of intense scenes -- but it WILL GET DONE, by gum!!

We definitely will have some structural challenges because a couple of the transition shots are, er, were not, I mean, were not exactly shot, per se.  Ahem.

La di da, la di da....

Scene 28 Revisited

Yayyy!!!!  Picture for Scene 28 is DONE.  

THAT is a LONG scene, as previously mentioned.  Nine pages.  I did manage to get it to seven minutes, though (and actually, the nine pages/seven minutes includes Scene 27, the "gay comedian" scene with Bill and Marissa eating Chinese crackers on the couch, watching TV, which is a page - these "scenes" really go together, as they follow each other temporally and even share some dialogue as the characters call across the apartment).  It really does contain three distinct parts - the discussion of their lame love lives, the discussion of the nature of attraction, and finally, Marissa's phone call with Larry and Bill's reaction to it. 

Having now spent several days re-familiarizing myself with the countless angles and takes, I have this to say as addendum to the previous post about tone:

In a way that was sometimes funny and sometimes troublesome (both of those things on set, as well, I now recall, prompted by hearing a snippet of between-take dialogue), Kevin (playing "Bill") thought the scene was long and dragging and so spoke his lines with increasing rapidity to try to pick the energy up, but Christine (playing "Marissa") wasn't responding the way he wanted her too, so he - i.e., both Kevin and Bill, are clearly irritated.  In editing, this was a challenge because not all takes are at the same pace or demonstrate the same kind of emotional relationship between the actors.  In the end, I tried to cut this for effect -- to "use it" as actors might say -- to show Bill's enthusiasm for his ideas and Marissa's comfort and familiarity with that enthusiasm.  That is, Bill may grow a little irritated to not be fully understood or appreciated right away, but Marissa remains unfazed by his irritation.

One thing that was hard, though, was to avoid a version where condescension comes into play.  That was unexpected because I didn't really sense any condescension, watching the takes whole, but cut up and re-rhythmed, if you will, it was easy to make either one of them seem sort of belittling of the other, and, indeed, to encourage a feeling in the audience toward belittling one or the other -- which was definitely unwanted.  That was kinda weird - I still don't entirely understand where it came from; I think it probably came from the way I sped up the pace -- the slower pace made them seem more relaxed with each other, or something.  Speeding it up may have looked at times like impatience on the parts of the characters, rather than simply like the "rapid fire" of an interesting conversation.  I hope I managed to keep it at bay.

As to other issues raised in previous post:

The eyelines are not great at times, but I managed to cut around the most serious breaks; it's not too bad.  I wonder, though, why we did it is as we did it.  Why did we not want Bill's "across the room" to be at the counter where he really, non-diagetically, was -- it would have been fine...  ??

Also, now having heard more of the little snippets of between-take comment from me, and seen more closely how the takes change as we go along, I see that I did not lose sight of the desired tone quite as much as I declared in the previous post.  I definitely was not always on top of it, for sure, but I think I was also unsure of how to communicate what I wanted in a way that the actors understood.  I had tried what I knew how to say, and was limited in my ability to get at it another way.  That's one of the things I have really taken away in good supply, editing this movie as a whole:  that I was under-prepared for not being immediately understood.  I hope that teaching has given me more skill in this area since 2002.  ALSO:  I do the slate for 28E, and I'm _clearly_ Very Tired.  When one's brain is not rested, one has fewer good communication skills - No Doubt.