Images of Harvard University

This semester I took a digital photography class through the Harvard Extension School.  My final project is this video, which consists of three time lapse sequences and 60 still images from around the Harvard campus.  I shot everything using my Canon 60D, and used Photoshop, After Effects and Premiere Pro to edit.

Boston SuperMeet 2011

Last night the Boston Final Cut Pro User Group hosted the 2nd annual Boston SuperMeet at the Stuart Street Playhouse in downtown Boston.  It was a dark and stormy night, with the threat of the first snow of the winter, so it was a great night to be indoors with a bunch of other video production nerds.  My coworker, Kevin McGowan, and I arrived about an hour and a half before the show so we could walk around the exhibit floor and visit some of the vendor booths.  I don't have any hard numbers, but it seems like there were more vendors this year than last year.  It's a great opportunity to talk to some company reps and get some hands-on demos of gear and software.

Michael Horton and Daniel Berube hosted the evening

Around 7pm we all headed into the theater to start the show.  Hosts Daniel Berube and Michael Horton put together a great lineup for the Masters of Light and Illusion theme.  I'm sure there will be video from the evening posted on the FCPUG SuperMeet YouTube channel, so I'll just post some pics and highlights from the evening.

Alexis Van Hurkman and Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve

First up was Alexis Van Hurkman with a DaVinci Resolve demo.  I'm always reminded of how little I know about advanced color correction when I watch demos from pros like Alexis.  I think I'm finally motivated to download the free DaVinci Resolve Lite and try my hand at more advanced color correction.

Jem Schofield talking about the Canon EOS 1DX

A couple of weeks ago Canon announced their latest flagship DSLR, the EOS 1DX, and Jem Schofield was at the SuperMeet to talk about using that camera for video production.  Wonderful looking specs on that camera, but unfortunately I don't have $6500 to drop on a body.  My real takeaway from Jem's talk is that I'm now turned onto his great website/blog, theC47.  Some interesting tutorials on there.  He said he has achieved his goal of posting five video tutorials per week!  Jem closed by hinting that we should all pay attention on November 3rd for an important announcement by Canon.  A 4K video camera, or a 5D refresh?  We'll see.

Marc-André Ferguson with Autodesk Smoke

Our next demo was an Autodesk Smoke demo from Marc-André Ferguson.  This must be the seventh Smoke demo I've seen, and my opinion is still the same:  it looks like a very powerful program, but just too much for what I'm doing.  For those working in high end video/film production, I think this is a great program packed with features they will use.  As always, I'm still baffled about the choices Autodesk made for the user interface on Smoke.  Maybe once you use it regularly it starts to make more sense, but I just see it as a pretty uninviting interface to work with.

Corey Tedrow giving an Avid Media Composer 5.5 demo

With so many video production pros giving up on Apple because of the Final Cut X mess, Avid seems to be welcoming all Final Cut converts with open arms.  Our next demo was an Avid Media Composer 5.5 demo from Corey Tedrow.  Avid always does a great job of pointing out all the Media Composer features that people were wishing for in the new Final Cut X.  The statement that got the biggest reaction from the crowd was the announcement that you can now export ProRes files directly from the Media Composer timeline.  With a handful of discounts being offered by Avid, I'm sure many Final Cut users will find themselves trying out the free 30 day trial version of Media Composer.

Film editor Andrew Weisblum

The next presenter was an Avid sponsored talk from film editor Andrew Weisblum (Black Swan, The Wrestler, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Darjeeling Limited).  Andrew showed us the nightclub/drug scene from Black Swan and described how Avid products helped him collaborate with others in finishing that scene.

Walter Murch

Our final presenter of the evening was Walter Murch.  His resume is loaded with plenty of well known films, but some of the biggies he's edited are: Apocalypse Now, The English Patient, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Jarhead, and Ghost.  I was really pleased to hear that he edited what I believe to be the only acceptable 3D film: Captain EO.  I wasn't a film major, so this was the first time I had attended a talk from a major Hollywood film editor.  I was surprised at how grounded Walter is.  With all the major films he's worked on, and all the awards he's won, he could have easily turned into another Hollywood type with a major ego.  Instead I got the total opposite impression from him.  There was a kind of complex simplicity about Walter.  I started to forget that I was listening to a three time Oscar winner when he began telling us that it's important to put one foot on a stool while editing to reduce lower back pain.

Walter Murch and his latest Final Cut timeline from the HBO film Hemingway & Gellhorn, consisting of 22 video tracks and 50 audio tracks

I also liked the fact that Walter obviously has a wonderfully creative mind, but he's also very in touch with the technical aspects of editing.  He really enjoyed telling us about the Arri Alexa that they used on his latest film, Hemingway & Gellhorn.  I was very impressed with a picture of his Final Cut 7 timeline from that film (pictured above).  22 video tracks and 50 audio tracks is a project that I just can't wrap my head around.

Walter Murch and his famous standing editing station

Walter also showed us a photo of one of his famous standing editing stations.  He really attested to the idea that standing opens him up for a more creative workflow, rather than losing creative energy sitting at a desk.

Walter concluded his talk with mention of the new Final Cut X.  He described it as a child that doesn't play well with others.  He said that in June he sent Apple a letter outlining why he wouldn't be able to use Final Cut X on his projects.  Walter's biggest complaints were the restructuring (aka lack of) audio tracks, no external monitoring and no SAN support.  He admits that they're slowly resolving those issues, but he was also concerned that Apple essentially killed off Final Cut 7.  If you would like to read a more detailed blog post about Walter's SuperMeet talk, Chris Portal wrote a nice post. 

The evening concluded with the famous SuperMeet raffle with over $50,000 in prizes.  Unfortunately, just like at the Vegas NAB SuperMeet, my coworker and left empty handed.

Once again, Daniel Berube put together an enjoyable Boston Final Cut Pro User Group meeting and SuperMeet.  If you live in the Boston area and you're into video production, you should really attend the monthly BOSFCPUG meetings.

Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 lens: first impression

50mm, f/1.8, 1/60, ISO100

I'll preface this post by saying that I'm very new to the world of professional photography.  If you're looking for a professional, comprehensive review of this lens, this isn't the blog post for you.  This is the worst review of this lens, but I figured some beginners might appreciate my first impressions of it.  Consider yourself warned.

My Canon 60D came with a 18-135mm lens, but I decided that a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 lens would be my first lens purchase.  After reading many nice reviews about the lens, I shelled out the measly $104 for it and brought it with me to Sunday River ski resort in Maine for a test.  I was very impressed with the results.

50mm, f/1.8, 1/8000, ISO100

I'm having lots of fun with the impressively shallow depth of field I can get with this lens.  The photo above of my shoes was taken indoors with natural light coming in through a window.  No flash, low ISO, and a normal shutter speed for handheld.  For $104, this seems like a great lens.  I'll post more photos and opinions about this lens as I use it.

50mm, f/1.8, 1/640, ISO100

Sunday River ski resort - summer 2011

My wife and I spent a weekend at Sunday River ski resort in Maine, and I had a chance to really give my new Canon 60D a nice test run.  In addition to the 18-135mm lens that came with the 60D, I had just purchased a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 lens.  All in all, I'm very pleased with the 60D and both of the lenses.  Click here to see all of my photos from Sunday River.  Warning:  I'm still new to DSLR photography, and I also love chairlifts.  Prepare yourself for an onslaught of chairlift photos.

I warned you

New York State Fair 2011

Cow grabbing a drink on a hot day

I visited the New York State Fair last weekend, and found it to be a great place to try out my new Canon 60D.  I'm new to the world of advanced photography, so I had fun constantly adjusting shutter speed, ISO and f-stop to try and capture some interesting photos.  Click here to see the rest of my NYS Fair photos, and keep an eye on this blog to watch as I learn my new Canon 60D and work my way through my first photography class at the Harvard Extension School.

Boston Final Cut Pro User Group meeting recap: 7/21/11

The EP Levine store and location of this month's BOSFCPUG meeting

Last night's Boston Final Cut Pro User Group meeting was an enjoyable evening of guest speakers, product demos, and on a 95 degree day, robust air conditioning.  The event was held at EP Levine in Waltham.  EP Levine is a camera store with many goodies for still photographers and those that shoot video with DSLRs.  The also have a nice studio space, where the BOSFCPUG event was held.  My coworkers, Kevin and Geoff, enjoyed digging through the cases of used lenses.  Geoff couldn't pull the trigger on a tilt shift lens he was eyeing, but Kevin ended up making a purchase.  As he mentioned, EP Levine's prices were comparable to what he found online for the same lens, and he has the piece of mind of buying from a local retailer.

One piece of news jumped out at me:  Daniel Berube mentioned that the Boston SuperMeet is tentatively scheduled for October 20th, but the date may change to accommodate the schedule of a "special guest."  Who could it be?  Maybe Larry Jordan, or Kevin Smith (who was bumped from the Vegas SuperMeet), or maybe Apple executives begging us to stick with FCP X.  We shall see.  Last year's Boston SuperMeet was a very fun evening, as was this year's SuperMeet at NAB.

As usual, Daniel Berube worked very hard to put together another action packed evening for all of us.  The evening's speakers started with Jay Ignaszewski from AJA, then Charles Roberts from Fitchburg State University, followed by Gary Oberbrunner from GenArts, and Steve Martin wrapped up the speaking portion of the event.  The evening ended with a screening of DSLR shorts, and a raffle.  Unfortunately, my coworkers and I needed to duck out after Steve Martin's talk, so I have no details about the screening or raffle for you. 

Jay Ignaszewski started the evening with information about AJA's products interacting with Final Cut Pro X.  There was a good deal of concern from the other BOSFCPUG members about external monitoring and exporting out to tape.  This AJA document does a much better job than I can do of summing up what Jay talked about.

The next speaker was Charles Roberts, a faculty member at Fitchburg State University that teaches video production.  I found Charles to be a very engaging speaker, with lots of enthusiasm for teaching.  One comment that stuck with me is something that he stresses to his students:  don't lose out on jobs because you only know one piece of NLE software, or because you're fiercely loyal to using only one NLE.  Expand your knowledge so you're ready to step into any job and use any piece of video production software that they throw at you.  As he said, there's many ways to get the same job done, and most times you don't get to choose what tools you have to use.  The meat of Charles' talk focused on using FCP 7 to inject DSLR footage, send it to Avid Media Composer for edit, send it to Apple Color (with the help of an EDL) for grading, then complete the roundtrip back into FCP 7 for final export.  I personally couldn't imagine me having the need to do this, but it was interesting to see the process.  All in all, I hope to hear more from Charles at future BOSFCPUG meetings.

Next up was Gary Oberbrunner from GenArts demoing their Sapphire Edge effects package.  GenArts is located right down the road from me in Cambridge, MA.  They make some very impressive effects packages used by major film and video productions.  Gary focused on the Sapphire Edge plug-in package, which, as he described, is 15 transitions and 4 filters.  Even though that seems kind of limited, each transition and filter has numerous presets and settings that can be changed, giving you hundreds of pre-built looks.  I was very impressed with the effects Gary showed us.  Gary focused on using these Sapphire Edge plug-ins in FCP 7, because, as he showed us, they're still working out the kinks of integrating these plug-ins into FCP X.  He showed us how FCP X unexpectedly quits when some of the plug-ins are used, so it's still very much in the beta testing stage.  The Sapphire Edge package is $299 and includes a one year subscription to their FX Central website.

A crummy cell phone pic of Steve Martin presenting to all of us

The final speaker of the evening was the keynote speaker, Steve Martin.  Steve is an Apple Certified trainer, founder of Ripple Training, and was one of the first to get their hands on FCP X.  In addition to speaking this evening, he is also teaching an eight hour FCP X workshop on 7/22.  Sorry to say, if you're reading this recap, it's too late...you missed it.  Since my employer doesn't have plans to switch to FCP X anytime soon, I opted to not attend the workshop.  Steve is an excellent trainer, so I'm sure that those attending the workshop are finding it valuable.  I was first introduced to Steve when I took Post Production World classes at the NAB Show this year.  I didn't take a full course from Steve, but he did pop into a couple of the classes I took to contribute.  He really knows his stuff and knows how to teach it, so if you have the chance to catch a talk or class from Steve, don't miss it.  I would love to see him back at a BOSFCPUG meeting very soon.

Steve's talk focused on common myths surrounding FCP X, but really just turned into a very helpful collection of tips and tricks to get us acclimated to the new interface and features.  Since I have yet to install and use FCP X, this was a nice way for me to get motivated to start using it.  I'll summarize some of the key points that stood out to me, but keep your eye on the BOSFCPUG webpage, since Daniel arranged to have Steve's entire talk recorded.  I'm sure they're editing the video and will post it ASAP.

• FCP X and DSLR footage:  Steve showed us the process of transcoding DSLR footage to ProRes in the background as you work.  The "create optimized media" check box in the import window is your friend, if this is what you're looking to do.
• Turn a stereo audio clip into two mono tracks:  control click on the stereo audio track and select "break apart clip items" to split into two mono tracks
• Steve showed us FCP X's ability to edit sub frame audio
• As goofy as the labeling is, Steve's demo of the "Ken Burns" button looks like a painless way to pan and zoom still images.  Just a more user friendly method than doing it with keyframes.
• Steve showed us that when you paste effects in FCP X ("paste attributes" in FCP 7), you can't pick and choose which effects/attributes you do and don't want to paste.  That was a nice feature of older FCP versions that has been eliminated from FCP X.  You now just have to paste all the copied effects and turn off those you don't want in the inspector window.
• During the Q&A portion of the evening, someone asked Steve about preserving Photoshop layers when you import into FCP X.  Unfortunately, the answer is that it won't do it.   You can do it in Motion, just not directly in FCP X.
• Someone asked Steve about FCP X's multicam editing support, and he confirmed that even though it doesn't currently have that feature, it's something that Apple will integrate into a future update.  No word on when, though.  This is one of many reasons why we can't currently use FCP X for our projects.
• Steve ended his talk by presenting the idea of using the AirDisplay app on your iPad to wirelessly create a second monitor with your iPad.  He said that there's a very slight, but hardly noticeable bit of lag on the iPad.

Since Steve's livelihood relies on people wanting to be trained on Apple software, he made sure to throw a few "don't give up on Final Cut" promos in his talk.  I don't think anyone denies the fact that FCP X has a bunch of great new or redesigned features.  It's just lacking features in some really key areas, and video professionals can't wait around for future updates to address those issues.  With Avid and Adobe offering discounts on Media Composer and Premiere, it'll be very interesting to see how all of this plays out.

As I mentioned, we weren't able to stick around for the screening and raffle at the end of the evening.  All in all, it was another informative and motivating BOSFCPUG meeting.  As usual, I look forward to next month's meeting!

Follow Friday: video production blogs

In keeping with the Twitter theme of "follow Friday", I figured I would write a post about all the video production and post production blogs that I read.  I use Google Reader (a RSS reader) to keep up on all the updates to these blogs.  If you don't use a RSS reader, I highly suggest you read up on them and give one a try.  It thoroughly speeds up the process of keeping tabs on many different websites and blogs.

There's so many great video production blogs out there, so if you recommend some others I should check out, let me know in the comments.


Philip Bloom
He's a filmmaker that often uses DSLR cameras to shoot video.  Very creative and entertaining guy, and seems to love to share his knowledge with others.

Philip Hodgetts
I've talked about him before on this blog, and I'll say it again: he's one of my favorite personalities in the video production world.  I took a class taught by him at NAB's Post Production World and started to follow his blog.  Very knowledgeable and entertaining to read.

Richard Harrington
I was introduced to Richard by seeing his posts on the Creative Cow forums and hearing him speak at a Boston FCP User Group meeting.  I get lots of Photoshop and Adobe CS5 tips from Richard.

Gary Adcock
You've probably seen his posts and tutorials all over the Creative Cow forums.  After hearing Gary speak at a Boston Final Cut Pro User Group meeting, I started following him.

Larry Jordan
Producing a podcast, blogging, training and hosting webinars, he might be one of the hardest working guys I've ever seen.  He's a great source of FCP insight.

Walter Biscardi
Walter owns a production company in Georgia and has a very entertaining Twitter feed.  Has great insights about FCP and the video production business in general.

Todd Kopriva
Todd works for Adobe and writes two great blogs that I read regularly:  his After Effects blog and his Premiere Pro blog.  I even took a Post Production World class taught by Todd. 

Shane Hurlbut
Very creative cinematographer that's also into using DSLR cameras to shoot video.  Plus, he was born and raised in the same town I'm from:  Ithaca, NY.

Vincent Laforet
Another filmmaker that likes to use DSLR cameras to shoot video.  Very creative guy and also has a nice page listing the gear that he uses. 

Jason Konoza
An Avid editor working north of the border for CTV, and all around nice guy.

Eric Wise
He's a FCP editor that writes a great blog called Splice Vine. 

Scott Simmons
He has the Twitter username editblog, so how can I not follow him?  Very active editor and great writer. 

Kevin McGowan
I can't leave him off the list...he's my coworker!  He's a DSLR lovin' guy and the first person I call when I have a camera related question.

Triple Exposure
After reading Philip Bloom's blog, I started to get interested in time lapse photography.  In April, Richard Harrington and Scott Bourne started this interesting blog talking about time lapse, HDR and panoramic photography.

Philip Bloom's "24 Hours of Neon"

Over the past month I've made an effort to learn more about shooting video with DSLR cameras.  Up to this point, I've only really had experience using video cameras.  As I navigate the web to learn more about DSLR cameras, I keep finding myself reading Philip Bloom's blog and Tweets.  For those of you not familiar with Philip, he's a filmmaker that is a big fan of using DSLR cameras to shoot video.  His blog has been a weath of information in my quest to learn more about DSLR cameras, and I also enjoyed Philip's DSLR Basics series of Vimeo videos with Andrea Allen.

During the 2011 NAB convention in Las Vegas, Philip shot a series of time lapse videos from his hotel room's balcony using DSLR cameras.  He edited all his footage and the result is his film titled 24 Hours of Neon.  In some of the scenes, Philip used a technique called high dynamic range (HDR) imaging to capture some amazing looking shots.  I throughly enjoyed watching this time lapse film.  Of all places, Las Vegas offers some of the best scenes for time lapse.  In keeping with his theme of spreading the good word on using DSLR cameras, Philip also recorded an audio commentary track that you can play along with his video.  He gives some great insight into how he shot each scene, and what kind of planning went into the shoot.  He also created a behind the scenes video about this shoot, which was also a great watch.  All of this can be found on his blog, which I highly suggest you check it out:  http://philipbloom.net/2011/05/07/24hoursofneon/