Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Ok, catching up a bit. Been rocking a series of web vids for Progress Energy, but I wanted to put up a link to a few songs from a Bon Iver show I taped for the Independent Weekly in Durham earlier this year.
http://www.indyweek.com

SOOTS

Taped a show for the SOOTS (Sustaining Roots Music) Project from Raleigh Charter High School a few months back. Now finally have a bit of time to cut it together. Actually, my dad, who helped with the taping of the show and some off-the-cuff interviews with faculty and students at RCHS, is going to be editing it.

Today I have to fix some problems Final Cut is having with my clips. It seems to have randomnly re-assigned footage within my project, and now I'm going to just redigitize the entire bunch of tapes to avoid any confusion. My first clue things were wrong was that my dad played 2 different clips with different timecodes that had the same content...



And from the looks of the footage, I'll need to do some color-correcting to help things along. It was seriously dim in that church. Maybe I can get involved earlier when they do another show and get some lighting donated from some a AV company. Ideas, anyone?

The Whistlestop

Back at work, after taking some days off, then some half-days, since the birth of my son, Vaughn. How bout that? Now I have two kids!



Also working on an episode of Jon & Kate Plus 8. Funny to watch kids all day on your computer screen, then come home to your own.

And of course, also editing some of the CD release party Dallas & I taped a few weeks back for the Whistlestop. Good show, good energy, and now I have to do it some justice and give these guys some nice clips for their website, so they can get booked more. Really love this stuff.

April 16, 2008

After a long stint of nose to the grindstone, I've emerged! Had some work to do for a local agency, Capstrat. Here's a quick clip of some AfterEffects work I did on the project, put to music the budget wouldn't allow us to use for real.

Also had another opportunity to listen to the Whistlestop play this past Sunday at the Pour House. Took more photos. You can look at em here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/steadyfilm/sets/72157604543241163

Also gonna catch some more live music tomorrow night; buds the Whalewatchers are playing at Tir Na Nog's 'local beer, local music' weekly event. Might be taking more photos, but more importantly, my dad's going with me to the show. I'm glad that I'm getting to see more of him lately.

March 24, 2008

Lots of stuff going on lately. Had a quick edit for McKinney at the end of last week that ran into the weekend a bit. They're in pitch mode, which means that they've found a client (who I can't say, since it's still in pitch mode) and they're throwing a bunch of time and talent into this huge process involving print, video and people from the agency (mouthpieces) that culminates finally in THE PITCH.

I did a few customer testimonial pieces, and a quick 'Luxury' video, that highlights all of McKinney's past work, with the focus of course being on class and style. Basically a montage cut to Moby, who, if you aren't aware, is the artist behind the soundtrack to playing in every Creative Director's head. When in doubt, use Moby.

And of course last Thursday was the first time I had the opportunity to hear The Whistlestop playing an actual gig. I've followed them into the studio and shot tons of footage of them recording their songs, but this time they actually had a gig at Tir Na Nog in downtown Raleigh.

I covered the whole show with 2 video cameras, and was shooting as many stills as I could. Here's a link to the stills: The Whistlestop at Tir Na Nog.

Should be able to get a cut of most of the show (depending on how the footage looks, coverage-wise) to Mike & Co. soon, and hopefully they'll put it out and get some more bookings. They're a great band, and a really great group of guys, and I know once people hear their music they'll be able to play everywhere. I think that last sentence may qualify as gushing.

Ok, last note: I'm a producer/shooter on a documentary about Tift Merritt that Distillery Pictures producer Aninda Valentini is heading up. This past Saturday she played a homecoming gig over at Carolina Theater in Durham. After every new album of hers comes out, she does a type of homecoming show, and this one was memorable. She and her band were tight! They have a new lead guitarist, Scott McCall, who's really fleshed out their sound. 

We ran 4 cameras on her the entire show, thanks to the generosity of Kevin Wild and Drawbridge Media, who loaned out 2 cameras and sticks, as well as a couple of mics and a disc recorder to capture sound, so I think we'll have some great coverage.

March 18, 2008

Well, back to shoot some video of The Whistlestop at their last scheduled mix day at Overdub Lane. Since there's not a lot of drama going on in a mix session, at least not at this one, it turned out to be a good time to do some sit-down interviews with Rob, Mike and Pee Wee in the studio while John Plymale laid out some mixes.

Decided to try just having Dallas (my assistant editor/camera/jack of all trades) take some stills while we all sat around a mic and talked. It really seemed to help everyone loosen up, because I only had 3 or 4 questions, and I got about 45 minutes of audio to go through. Not too happy with the stills because of the low light, and we'll see how the shutter sound came through on the mic, but content-wise, it was a good way to go. If the stills aren't really useable, I'll just bump the audio underneath other studio footage, and throw up a title for whoever's talking.

This Thursday should be great. Dallas and I are handling video coverage of the Whistlestop's CD release party (well, I think that's changed, since the mix isn't quite done) at Tir Na Nog, downtown. Going all out even though it's a low-budget project. Using up my Drawbridge Media favors to borrow 2 cameras and 2 mics and an audio disc recorder for the venture. I think I'll owe Kevin (owner) a couple of stints as a camera operator after this.

The Whistlestop CD is really going to be incredible. Just the temp mixes I got to listen to really blew me away. Can't wait.

March 10, 2008

Finished up work a couple weeks ago on a reality television pitch piece for Distillery Pictures. Was editing with producer Matt Hightower, on a show about Mark Tarbell, a chef in Arizona. Tarbell is a top-notch chef (he won 'Iron Chef!') who owns a restaurant committed to sustainable business practices. He drives around in a converted Mercedes that runs on used vegetable oil.

The show is basically Mark driving around the country going on adventures and in general being the charismatic dude he is. Could be a fun show; hope it gets picked up.

This still is from a stills sequence I shot for some of our driving montage. The beginning of the sequence show Mark driving on the highway, while a Mark's VO talks about getting his car started in the morning ('Veggie oil gets a little gooey when cool.') and leaving L.A. Then this sequence of Mark writing in his diary is superimposed over the driving footage, as if he's just reading one of his diary entries.

The diary would play a pretty large part in the show. Basically, that's the way the entire story would be told: Mark reads his diary entry about whatever adventure he's on, and the camera follows him.

I shot the diary at 3-5 fps with the Nikon D40x, then converted the RAW images (DNG, then Tiff) to image sequences for import into After Effects, where I interpreted them at 3 fps. Then, and this is the important part, I used Frame Blending mode set to 'Frame Mix' to get a really nice effect; after I did that, and composited the sequence over driving footage, it didn't really look like stop-motion anymore. It didn't look like straight video of a diary entry either, though, which is why it looked good.

Here's a quick sample:



I got the idea when I watched this great doc on the NY Subway system on PBS; a lot of the bumpers consisted of modern-day subway footage that looked like it was shot with still cameras and then frame-blended to create a really interesting effect. It was a modification of the ever-popular time-lapse effect that is so over-used in docs. Definitely gonna keep this technique in my back pocket and use it in the future...