Finished at last!

Nothing dramatic on my big video project for the past couple of weeks, but I finally finished the time-consuming task of printing it to tape for high-quality archiving. After some cajoling, I agreed to make two copies of everything. This required eight tapes (about $20 worth of tape), but the whole point of archiving is to make sure you can retrieve your material if needed.

The project I've been talking about was the ordination and installation of a pastor at my church (short version here). The ceremonies took place on successive days in June 2007 and were shot continuously with two cameras. Each came out to nearly two hours. I captured the tapes (one camera produced hourlong tapes, the other 40 minutes) and synchronized the audio manually. Then I cut between the cameras every few seconds. None of this was very hard once I figured out how to do it, and I'm glad I had the time and opportunity to work it out for myself.

For example, at first I looked through the entire first video and made copious notes about which camera's footage was good at a given time and where I should best cut from one to the other. It turned out that was largely unnecessary, because I could just follow the main camera for each scene and check the other camera's footage for good (or bad) cutaways.

Synching, by the way, involved finding sharp, distinctive sounds that were picked up by all four microphones -- such as coughs -- and lining up the clips on those sounds.

The thing that perplexed me at first about printing to tape was that my tapes are 60 minutes long (for high quality) and each video is much longer than that, with no obvious breaking points. But all I had to do was block out a different part of the video for each tape. This was done easily In and Out points. I actually included some overlap in case some frames at the beginning or end got lost. So, if I need to bring the videos back into Final Cut someday, I'll be back to audio synching by hand. But it probably won't come up. I do have complete images of the DVDs for each one, which I can burn onto a disc with just a few clicks.

So with the project finished at last, I got to delete the various captured clips and scratch files off my external hard drive: 214 gigabytes. It's great to have them gone.

Quick take: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly walks a very fine line between inspiring and depressing. Visually inventive, well written, based on what sounds like a very good book, and featuring Max Von Sydow in a great supporting performance that makes up for all the heavies he's played in mediocre movies. But ultimately it came down on the depressing side for me.

The movie is certainly thought-provoking. I think it actually has something to say about the moviegoing experience, too.

The long opening sequence is seen totally through the eyes of the main character, who is lying in a hospital bed, trapped in his paralyzed body. Doctors and friends have to wheel him around. Like the character, the audience can only watch what's in front of it and can't talk back.

Immersion is what sitting in a darkened movie theater is all about. A friend of mine says he likes seeing a movie on the big screen because it's like an act of God. You're at the mercy of the projectionist. In my case, I saw The Diving Bell and the Butterfly on DVD. At the same time, I was drinking coffee, copying a video onto tape in the other room, and trying to ignore the street noise outside. My partner was looking at his laptop while watching the movie. It was very hard to watch that opening sequence.

A glimpse into the 19th century

This film was made in 1898 by G.A. Smith, who amazingly predicted our YouTube attention spans of 2008. There is no sound. Happy Holidays, everyone!

Fruit Fly and Final Cut

Well, a lot has happened in the last eight days. Involving meetings, parties, and trial and error. My friend helped out with outputting my video project from Final Cut to DVD, which was good, because it took a dozen or more test encodings. At an hour or more each. So since I have to go to work every day, essentially there wouldn't have been any DVDs without his help. Or, maybe, DVDs with no chapters. (By the way, the only way we could make it work was to encode the video three times in three different applications.) But now the chapters are on there, and we are on to archiving the project back onto tape. It looks like we've found a setting that will work!

Last night was one of the more fun things that has kept me from completing my video project. We saw a screening of Fruit Fly, the latest film by Colma: The Musical writer-composer H.P. Mendoza. It's a similar combination of humor, social observation and music. The songs are phenomenal and the cinematography by Colma director Richard Wong is excellent as usual. Like Colma, it's a deeply personal film in a crowd-pleasing style. More on the movie later. Probably hitting the festival circuit next year.

"All the leaves are burnt sienna ...."

Criterion does Chungking Express!

DVD woes

I've been having the most puzzling problems with my big video project. I'm at the stage of burning it to DVD, and I can't get the audio on to the DVD. My basic workflow was

- edit in Final Cut with chapter markers
- export from Final Cut as Quicktime movie, audio and video included, with chapter markers
- bring into iDVD
- create disc image using iDVD (saves time on each burn)

It's this final file, the image (or disc) where the program audio isn't audible and probably doesn't exist. My technically proficient friend is helping me work this out. So far we've identified or heard of these potential problems:

- iDVD can't include the audio because my hard drive is too full (it is....)
- chapter markers mess it up
- my version of Quicktime doesn't work with my version of iDVD
- the sound track doesn't come through because it's 1/100 of a second shorter than the video (it is)
- there's a problem with the five-second slug appearing right at the beginning before the opening credits (there wasn't on the last, basically identical project).

So far, only one thing has worked while keeping chapters. Using iMovie, under my friend's account on the same iMac, stripping out the opening credits and adding several new chapter markers throughout the video.

Looking at that result, the problem may be with the opening credits or slug. So I may be able to go back into Final Cut, redo those elements, export it, and add the chapter markers in iMovie.

But what a nightmare. I just want to get this thing out there and get all this footage off my hard drive!!

Traffic

I have a friend in LA who does traffic at a local TV station. What that means is, he handles the commercials. For one thing, he schedules them. You know how those somber Memorial Day segments on the news are always followed by quiet, gentle ads instead of Mountain Dew? Thank the traffic people for that.

I don't know whether it was deliberate, but if it was, there was a great bit of traffic art tonight on "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles." A teenage girl who's been turned into a hardened warrior against the terminators by a few harrowing months on the run slapped a clip into her pistol and pulled back the slide, ch-chunk! A second later, Jane Seymour started talking about her "Open Hearts Collection" at Kay Jewelers.

"If your heart is open, love will find its way in!" Jane said.

On the other hand, if a cyborg is after you, your best bet is to keep the door closed and wire up the knob with a high-voltage line that'll fry the robot's chip. Then you can make a cup of tea and paint little watercolor hearts.

Indie film posters

No, not all my posts are about flogging my friends' work. Really! But this is such a fun little link, I just had to share it. Michael Kang, director of The Motel, posted it on Facebook. (No, he didn't design the poster for his own movie.)

It's so hard to decide what's the best poster of the bunch. Maybe the Red Road one, because it has that postindustrial starkness and it makes me want to find out what the movie's all about. On the other hand, the typography on the Brick poster is just exquisite. I know that style's a couple years old. I still love it.

Take Out nominated for Independent Spirit award

I saw Take Out several years ago at SFIAAFF, and it just took a while to get out to theaters. The movie's still working its way around various cities, but things may start moving faster now. It's earned a well-deserved nomination for an Independent Spirit award.

Specifically, Take Out will be competing Feb. 21 for the John Cassavetes Award for the best feature made for less than $500,000. It's a scrappy film that looks at the underside of Chinese food delivery, with drama, heartbreak, suspense, and a little bit of humor. Now, the star happens to be a friend of mine -- and knowing him, I know how much work he had to put into the role -- but I was genuinely impressed by this movie. If it comes to a city near you soon, check it out.

I Want to Vanish

This is about as basic as moving pictures can get. The moon enters the frame on the right, moves across, and exits on the left. Goes well with the song, too. And note that as the large disk of the moon goes from right to left, the small disk on the progress bar goes from left to right.