Edited by Robert Grigsby Wilson. No shit. Check out the reviews here and info about the building here.
What I'm Working On - CLAIRE Rides.TV Interactive Experience
A quick note to update everyone on a "transmedia experience" I edited last month. The project is an interactive video that includes you in the story through emails, phone calls, and texts. It was a collaboration with fellow Emerson alums Landon Zakheim and Justin Gurnari the great crew at Fourth Wall Studios. It was a blast to work on and a lot of fun to experiment with the medium. Check out this LA Times article written about the company.
Click this screenshot to take you to the site.
If you want to check out the trailer for their other project Dirty Work, you can watch it below.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=421So0gGpoY]
What I'm Working On: Iron & Wine - "Flightless Bird, American Mouth" Music Video
When I was in New York in September, I met with the amazing people at Dig For Fire. I've admired their work for years, from the fantastic live in-store performances they shoot at Other Music to an awesome Band Of Horses video and now to their relationship with Spotify. I have been wanting to work for them for a long time. Finally I had the chance. They had just gone into the studio with Iron & Wine to film the re-recording of his classic tune "Flightless Bird, American Mouth" for the new Twilight: Breaking Dawn soundtrack. To add to it, Marketa Irglova from The Swell Season came in to sing harmony on the the track. They asked if I thought I could cut the video in the two weeks I was in town. I said ABSOLUTELY!
Currenlty, Wordpress.com doesn't support VH1 embeds. So if you wanna see it there here it is. The VH1 link has over 70,000 views already!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIHaNh3jRXg]
Why FCPX getting lobotomized means job security for editors. Yes, I'm serious.
A quick thought before I get into my rant: don't you just hate it when your day job takes you away from something you really want to be working on? Right after Apple's well-documented, well-staged NAB presentation of the new features of FCPX, I went right to Wordpress and started drafting an article with the title: "What if FCPX is not awesome?" I then proceeded to go right back to my 60-hour-a-week gig with little time to think about blogging. Smart, Rob. That was months ago. Now that I'm back to funemployment, all I can think is how I wish I had finished that article. Instead, I'm here with my late-to-the-game opinion.
The thoughts I wanted to get down on paper the internet were a few musings on how big a gamble it was for Apple to completely re-write FCP and how many changes it could create in our industry if it was a flop. I wanted to talk about how, if indeed FCPX was indeed not awesome, it was going to tarnish Apple's reputation as a company of not only great consumer apps like iPhoto but also high-end professional ones like Final Cut Pro and Logic. I was going to prognosticate that Adobe and Avid would be jumping for joy, but I was also going to say how worried I was if suddenly our entire post-production ecosystem is devastated.
So now I say, with no great joy and without getting into too much more hyperbole: FCPX is not awesome. I won't go into listing out how FCPX has major problems. Chances are, if you ended up here, you already know most of the issues. If you need a refresher, check here, here, here, here, and here, and read a simple list of what it simply does not do anymore here. Or you can just watch this video made by Conan O'Brien's editing team (shouts to @robtheeditor and @ddandthecups) which basically sums up everything you need to know about the consensus opinion:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxKYuF9pENQ&w=400&h=260]
So then where does this leave us? Well, for starters, disappointed. I have been using Final Cut Pro since 1.0, the very beginning. It was my first real introduction to non-linear editing. Hell, I did ten times my film school projects in my dorm-room on FCP than I ever did on any of the school's editing stations. I certainly knew more about FCP then Avid or Adobe when I left school. FCP was a welcomed addition to the marketplace because it was relatively inexpensive, easy to use, and robust. To see it now neutered, that's a hard pill to swallow.
But we're here now, so eventually we must reach the last stage of grief: acceptance. We must accept that now there is one less professional-grade editing software on the market. Our baby has been put out to pasture. But lo-and-behold, part of me actually feels relieved and excited about the future of post-production. Could it be that Apple has actually helped us? "But Rob, whatever do you mean?" you say. The key is this: barriers to entry.
About a year ago, I wrote a two-part piece on getting into the Motion Picture Editor's Guild (Part 1, Part 2). In it, I wrote about inexpensive non-linear editing systems and the problems that poses for making a living as an editor:
Experience aside, one once needed access to extremely pricey equipment to be able to hone one’s skills and practice as an editor. This provided an extra barrier to entry for anyone trying to get into the business. With the introduction of [Final Cut Pro], it has become easy for any person with about $5000 to be able to create a broadcast-capable editing system. [...] That has made it easy for young kids in high school and college (I’m speaking about yours truly and many following after me) to learn the skill of editing quite easily.
But today, it seems the tide as shifted back somewhat. Not completely, but somewhat. At the time I wrote that, the $5,000 number came from my loose budgeting around a Mac laptop, a copy of Final Cut Studio 3, some extra RAM and peripherals, and maybe some hard drives to boot. I was not considering the $2500 price-tag for Avid Media Composer or Adobe Master Suite. It seems now, though, that my math should be adjusted, because I would never call the current version of FCPX broadcast-capable. And given that math, it seems that a broadcast-capable edit suite just went up in price.
In the past, many new post houses and editors chose Final Cut Pro over Avid or Adobe because of budget. There were always small arguments to be made for which fit the required workflow the best but, in truth, all three basically provided the same functionality. The exception to this was that FCP cost much much less. Since the release of FCPX, though, the paradigm has changed. Now, I'd be willing to bet that the average beginning filmmaker will spend their money on the new FCPX while most professionals and production companies will focus on Media Composer and Premiere. And why shouldn't they? FCPX is easy to use and does a lot of thinking for you, while Adobe and Avid provide support for nearly every type of production and the architecture of the software is scalable up to the largest projects. But, because not every level of editor requires the same software, us professionals can breath a sigh of relief about some young kid with a Mac and FCP asking for half our rate and thusly eating our lunch. It's not that easy anymore.
Before, someone could buy FCP7 and cut their home movies on it while reading the press about how Walter Murch and the editors from The Social Network used the same software to edit Oscar-winning films. (Side note: has anyone interview these people about for their thoughts on FCPX? Can someone please get on that? Send me a link!) While that was great to imagine, believing that was simply drinking Apple's Kool-Aid. Not all editors need the same software. Here's an example: in-the-field documentarians and journalists don't need a particularly robust editor. They just need to get their footage in, view it, tweak it, and spit it out fast to Youtube, CNN iReport, and so on. They don't need advanced media-management tools for dealing with terabytes of footage. They don't need power-windows and secondary color-correction effects. They don't need the ability to export data and sequences for Pro-Tools, Resolve, or Smoke. And now there's software to serve their needs. This is good.
But this new version of Final Cut Pro is also good for editors who need more advanced tools, in the way that it pushes professionals to harder-to-reach software. There used to be two levels of software: consumer and professional. Now, though, Apple has created a new class of software that requires an intermediate-level knowledge of editing and post, but not a mastery. And so, for those of us out there who are required to be masters, the talent pool just got smaller. And that's also a good thing. Now, I don't need to look over my shoulder as much, wondering when the next development is going to take away the need for an Assistant Editor, or whether some new hotshot film director is just going to cut out the need for an editor entirely and cut their projects themselves. Apple is revolutionizing the prosumer market, and there's no shame in that. From where I sit, the more prosumers we have, the more it separates me from everyone else.
PS: Just caught this as I was writing this, from the ever-excellent Revision 3 show Film Riot. It's another good primer on the good and bad of FCPX, and recommends it exactly to who the software is targeted to: the beginner. Please let me know what you think in the comments. I'd love feedback on my thoughts. Also thanks to @therealjimhall for his feedback.
One other small post-script: I fear for the life of Aperture and Logic. If I use those programs on a daily basis, I'd be very afraid of this trend.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JBZXQV7hTI&feature=player_embedded&w=400&h=260]
Quick Avid Tip: Rename your MXF folders!
Okay folks. A quick tip here about ways to organize your media when you're working on different projects on the same hard drive. It requires a little maintenance, but it will work just as well as your current system and provide for an easy ability to manage media at the Finder level. Let's review by establishing the common Avid MediaFiles folder structure: Hard Drive/Avid MediaFiles/MXF/1
On every hard drive where you're currently carrying Avid media, your media lives in this folder labelled "1". But did you know that you could rename this "1" folder to something more project-specific? Apparently, as long as the folder is within the Avid MediaFiles/MXF folder structure and there are Avid Database files in there (those two MSM files in the folder with all your media), you can name your folder whatever you want.
But when would this come in handy? If you're managing multiple projects, or multiple phases of a project, such as offline and online on the same drive, this will be truly helpful. That way, if you ever need to consolidate, manage media, or do anything when you only want to affect one project's media and don't want to manage it in the Avid Media Tool, you have set yourself up to do this very easily.
As a example, I was recently editing a music video on my laptop. The media was stored locally on my internal hard drive. Another project came up and I wanted to be able to keep the other media on my hard drive too. So I took my current "1" folder, which I knew was only media from my music video, and I renamed it "Music Video". Then I imported the media from my other project. When there isn't a "1" folder in the Avid folder structure, Avid will automatically create one for you when creating new media, so when the media was done importing, I simply renamed the newly created "1" folder to the name of my other project. And bang, two folders, two projects. This came in handy when I wanted to take the music video to online on another system. Without needing to consolidate or manage media at all, I just grabbed my "Music Video" Avid MediaFiles folder and copied it to a new hard drive. No Media Tool necessary.
Here is an example of how I have my current work set up:
PS - Just a note: this only works to my knowledge on versions of Avid that use the MXF folder structure. I have not investigated this on old (but still perfectly useable) OMF-based systems.
File-Based Basics (c/o Splice Here)
The ever-brilliant Splice Here blog (soon to be Splice Now) by Steve Cohen lays out the perfect list of questions that every production should answer before they shoot one frame. If you or someone on your production team can't answer this question before you start shooting, STOP! and get it answered. Not knowing the answer can get you in to trouble. Original link: File-Based Basics « Splice Here.
- Production Which camera(s) are you using? Which audio recorder? What kinds of files are you creating? What frame rate, sample rate, timecode rate, raster size are you recording?
- Dailies Who’s doing them? What do you need for editing, review and conforming? Who syncs and how will they do it? Who backs up and when? How are drives being moved around; where are they stored?
- Editing What system will you use? What kind of drives/raid? How will you output cut material for review? What are you turning over to sound and music?
- Conforming Will you roll your own or have a post house do it? How do you handle visual effects created in your editing room? And those created by the vfx team? What kinds of files will you use for color correction? And for television, a crucial question — when do you convert to HD?
Thanks Steve!
Radical Friend Yeasayer Homage in Janelle Monae's video?!?
Maybe I'm just seeing things, but check out this Janelle Monae video! They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Could it be there's a distinct homage to Yeasayer's Ambling Alp, directed by Radical Friend and edited by yours truly?!? You be the judge. (Note: JUST AN EXCUSE to publish this awesome Janelle Monae video. You know what I can't do? Dance like the people in this video. Although I wish I could.)
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwnefUaKCbc]
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/7835527 w=600&h=350]
robgwilson is also a cinematographer...
In light of some potential work as a cameraman and my impending purchase of the new awesome Canon Rebel T2i, I've decided to do a post about my previous camera work. Here is a sampling of some of my camera work over the years... --------
Freddy & Francine - Live @ The Mint 2009
Directed, Shot, and Edited by Robert G. Wilson. Additional camerawork by Adam Deyoe and Katharine Goldschmidt. Read the full post here.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjJwI0ZaNgc&w=480&h=300&fmt=18]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2f8Utr8ZOA&w=480&h=300&fmt=18]
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Untitled Sketch Group - FunnyOrDie Internet Comedy Series. Cinematography by Robert G. Wilson. Episodes 2 & 3 edited by Robert G. Wilson. Read the full post here.
At the time of uploading to Funny Or Die, they didn't support HD uploads. So, here are HD versions with links to the FOD originals.
[vimeo 10341264 w=520h=300] USG Episode 2: FOD Link
[vimeo 10343758 w=520h=300] USG Episode 3: FOD Link
[vimeo 10343769 w=520h=300] USG Episode 4: FOD Link
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Milo - Emerson College BFA Thesis Documentary
[vimeo 4190218 w=480h=480]
What I'm Working On: "Ambling Alp" by Yeasayer
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/7835527 w=600&h=350] WOW!
About six months ago I was introduced by my friend to the awesome directing duo Radical Friend to talk about some projects they were working on and about possibly helping them out as their editor. We got through one as-yet-unreleased project and then set forth on their biggest project to date: a music video for Yeasayer's song "Ambling Alp." The job was nothing close to simple, due to an accelerated schedule and incredible creative and technical needs on the part of the crew. I can't say enough about how everyone was to work with.
The project was shot with the RED camera and I managed the complete workflow through editing and into coloring and VFX. After production wrapped, we transcoded our almost nine hours of footage using RedRushes into Quarter-Res Debayer ProRes HQ Quicktimes at 1080p. In retrospect, the right thing to do here would've been to encode to 720p quicktimes, because for some reason Final Cut Pro doesn't play nicely with 1080p on external monitors.
I then copied our offline media to two separate external FW800 drives and gave both the same name. Radical Friend then received one drive and I retained one for myself, setting forth on the editing process. After logging, syncing, and grouping were completed, RF and I both took a stab at creating our own videos. We would email each other cuts back and forth, exchanging ideas fluidly by simply exchanging FCP project files that linked to the media on each of our computers. Because the file path to the media on each computer was the same, we never had to relink any media, or as Scott Simmons calls it, "the reconnection dance".
With our deadline fast approaching, we sent our locked offline sequence on a path to be uprez'd. We had to relink our media to our original RED QT proxies to be able to recreate a full-debayer 1080p sequence, so we exported an XML of the sequence and, using Clipfinder, conformed the sequence to the Full-Quality (_"F") QT Proxies in the R3D folders. We then reimported that XML in FCP and sent that to Apple Color for the expressed purpose of creating high-rez quicktime files of our source media. Once that finished, I sent that sequence back to Final Cut Pro and voilà, I had my full-raster 1080p sequence for coloring.
Here were the tricky parts, though. Three things snagged us because of the workflow we were following.
The first was a simple problem: spanned RED files in FCP. To solve that, I easily ran the ColorFixer program on my Color project file. This is a must before you do any work in Color.
The second was the aspect ratio sizes. Because we cut our offline sequence with all 1080p media, we never had to deal with the different aspect ratios that are delivered with the RED. The camera/build we used delivered us 4k, 3k, and 2k media. That meant that the relative geometry of our clips were all over the place because we had everything scaled to 100% of their image size, due to all our offline media clips being 100% and uniform in their aspect ratios. Therefore, once I sent the sequence to Color, I went into the geometry room and had to manually re-enter the correct image size adjustments to make sure each image rendered at full-frame.
The last problem was the way Color reads RED files. For obvious reasons, rendering out handles on the media created all the handles at the tail of the shot, but none at the head. This was extremely troublesome and I can't wait until they fix that. Once I sent the sequence back to Final Cut Pro, I had to slip each shot by hand to make sure it matched the offline edit. Needless to say, it shouldn't be designed this way.
Fortunately, though it wall worked out in the end. Thanks to everyone's hard work and the incredible guidance and creativity of Radical Friend, this video has had the most amazing response. I just heard from RF that the video has been counted as one of the Top 20 Music Videos of 2009 by Spin Magazine!!! I even found it on Kanye West's blog.
Isn't the internet amazing?
UPDATE: We screened our film at The Hammer Museum in Westwood on December 17th. Michel Gondry debuted his latest music video with Mia Doi Todd and even played drums in her concert after the screening. Totally awesome! Check out this link to see all the videos screened!
UPDATE #2: Radical Friend is interviewed by Pitchfork for their Director's Cut series!
Freddy and Francine: Live At The Mint!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjJwI0ZaNgc&w=480&h=300&fmt=18] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2f8Utr8ZOA&w=480&h=300&fmt=18]
Back again after an extended blogging layoff because of work and projects! Coming up for air long enough to point you to the latest installment of What I've Been Working On.
Freddy and Francine is an awesome band and friends of robgwilson.com after their music was featured in a short film I edited called Chris And Steve (IMDb). You can check out more about them here and here. In June their song Brownstone Alley was featured on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic as their Top Tune Of The Day, which is only the coolest thing ever. In case you don't live in Los Angeles, KCRW and that show in particular is the best place to find great new music in the city of Los Angeles.
So F&F and I got together and decided to up the ante on their video work online. With the help of my friends Adam Deyoe and Katie Goldschmidt, the three of us got together to shoot a concert at The Mint in Hollywood. Dating back to 1937, the venue has hosted everyone from Stevie Wonder, Willie Dixon, and Ray Charles to more recently Ben Harper, Macy Gray, and The Wallflowers.
These two videos, 8 Pages and Brownstone Alley, were the first two songs from their set, with more to come. Hopefully we'll be working together again soon. They're a pleasure and their music is kickass. Go see them if you get the chance.
David Doesn't Dance
Just a little nice piece to embarrass my friend. Let this be a warning to all your drunk dancers. Don't let me get my hands on that footage. :) [vimeo 4738745]