Tips from a Colorist Assistant

Those who met with Dan "G-Rock" Goslee got some great advice on shooting, coloring, and moving to Los Angeles. Here's some of the points Dan made:

- Shoot Clean. Especially with DV! The signal is so compressed, it is best to shoot so the whites aren't "blowing-out" and the blacks are not "crushed".

- Correcting: Make your whites "White" and your blacks "Black" using the scopes. Yes, keep it that simple.

- Literal isn't storytelling: If you what a dark scene, shoot it clean (so you can see it and the picture doesn't pixilated due to poor lighting), then correct the white/black range, THEN manipulate the look. Shooting too dark or too bright means you have no room to be creative...you'll bascially be correcting your poorly shot footage instead of being creative with your properly shot footage. Also, if you eventually want to create a night scene, avoid warmth. Shoot clean, or just a bit cool.

- Color Theory: If you don't know it, don't mess with it! Get a book, look on wikipedia, or even talk with Professor Biddle and/or Professor Smith.

- Fly a couch, or just stay home: LA is already flooded with people who want to be editors, directors, producers, VFX artists, etc. You can't sit at home and expect LA (or NYC, or Atlanta, or Toronto, etc.) to come to you. People are already there sleeping on friend's couches, knocking on doors, and doing what they have to in order to learn and make it in the business. If you want to take big, you better go big! That means taking risks. Dan Goslee moved to LA with enough money to survive, slept on friends' couches, worked "crappy" jobs until he moved up to be a Colorist Assistant. He's been in LA three years. It takes time. He's willing to put in the sweat, time, and sacrifice. If you aren't, then places like LA might not be for you.

TeleArts Transdub Madness

With the addition of three new M-Audio keyboards in Lab 136, composing music in Garage Band is easier...it's also much more fun than using "canned" music (which Professor Biddle and Professor Smith don't really like or allow in student work).

Check out a keyboard and use it in Lab 136! C'mon...look how much fun Shooter is having! Expect lots of Transdub Dancing during the editing rush. WooT!

Professionals, alumni, you there...Avid anyone?

Biddle is now offering Avid Certified Instruction. Contact him for more details.

Who is this man, and is he dangerous?

Dan Goslee (also known as “G-Rock”) started out in the shipping department of a telecine house, Company 3, which was quickly becoming one of the leading digital intermediate companies in LA. With many areas of film work shifting toward digital intermediates, Dan focused on learning as much about
that as he could, and eventually become part of the foundation of that department. Company 3 has grown from doing four major films a year to about twenty, and in the past two years Dan has worked on over thirty different projects. Dan’s area handles everything from typical D.I. filmouts and D-Cinema processing to DVD mastering.

Recent and current projects include: Into the Wild, Fred Claus, National Treasure 2, and Sweeney Todd. Dan has also worked on X-3, Pirates of The Caribbean II & III, and Transformers. He is also the deadliest Four-Square player on this planet.

Lately, Dan has focused on the color correction side
of the process, but has also dealt with online conform and some of the vfx and compositing work. At this point is his short career, Dan has gained experience with almost all post-production outside of offline editing.

G-Rock will be in town from Wednesday, November 14 to Friday, November 16th. He'll give a short lecture/demo on Wednesday in Room 214 of the SLC from 4:30pm - 6pm.

The DV Rebellion Will Not Be Televised!!!!

Thirteen TeleArts students (“The DV Rebels” as they are known, inspired by Stu Maschwitz’s book used by Professor Biddle) and TeleArts Professor James Biddle joined industry professionals and trainers at The New York Post Production Conference in Manhattan. For three days, the group attended sessions on Avid, Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, After Effects, Field Production, and much more thanks to event organizer Future Media Concepts a leading producer of educational conferences for the film, TV, video and web industries. The company produces numerous major events around the country, most notable, the educational conferences at the annual NAB convention in Las Vegas.
Aside from training by well-known professionals such as Yossey Tessone, Richard Harrington and Douglas Spotted Eagle, students attended lectures by editors Jay Rabinowtiz (Broken Flowers), James Thomas (Borat), and Christopher Tellefsen (Capote). “It was a great review to hear the techniques we learned in class,” says senior Brian ‘The Man With The Plan’ Perry, “and it was reassuring to see how well and how useful our production skills are used in the real world”.

“It wasn’t easy to organize at such short notice,” says Biddle, “but I am glad these students wanted to go. As a post-production person, I respect these people and what they pioneer, and I wanted these students to experience it. And thanks to Future Media Concepts President and Co-Founder Ben Kozuch, the students were able to experience the Content Creators dinner at the B. B. King Blues Club. Not only did were they able to speak one-on-one with industry professionals, they won over $3000 in prizes including a copy of Avid Express Pro. I almost fainted!”

“I realized how well Professor Biddle and Professor Smith have prepared my fellow students and I,” comments senior Nick ‘The Claw’ Holtzclaw, “The lectures at the conference stressed a lot of the same principles, such as extreme organization in editing and getting things right in the field so as not to have to fix it in post…sloppy work will not be tolerated and it costs time and money, if not your job.”

According to senior Amanda “Mander” Simon, “If I had the chance to do the trip all over again, I’d do it in a heartbeat. I really think this trip should be a yearly opportunity for the Telecommunication Arts Students.”

TeleArts Professors James Biddle and Jennifer Smith hope to make trips to NYC and Los Angeles regular semester events so students can experience professional seminars and productions. According to Biddle, “Thanks to Kristen Strausbaugh-Hutchinson in AD/PR, we were able to organize the trip quickly and efficiently with all she’s done for the AD/PR trips. With Jenn Smith’s knowledge of Los Angeles, we should be able to organize a very exciting trip in the near future!”

“We also owe a lot to Brooke Rooks. Thanks to Brooke, the students learned about the Student Support fund for the trip. With the knowledge and resources we can share here at Grady College, Professor Smith and I know we can organize trips that will help our students to experience the industry and prepare for it in ways they might not have thought possible.”

Student attendee Megan “The Shark” Clark and Professor Biddle are working with Ben Kozuch on the possibility of these students attending the NAB Las Vegas Conference in April 2008. “FMC offers students the opportunity to work the conference and attend sessions for free, and the students from Grady really impressed Ben and the trainers.”

“Before the trip, I worried incessantly over whether or not I had the skills necessary for a successful career in film production,” says Jared ‘Shooter’ Bargiel, “but since then I have discovered newfound confidence in my abilities…It is nice to be reminded every now and then that one’s studies are in fact going to prove advantageous within the job market. The trip to New York City worked much to that end.”

Professor Biddle will hold a meeting in January 2008 to organize the trip for Fall 2008. Details will be made available in January.


LINK TO CONFERENCE
ttp://www.nypostconference.com/


LINK TO STUDENT SUPPORT FUND
http://www.grady.uga.edu/undergraduate.php?al1=Undergraduate&al2=Financial+Aid&al3=Student+Support&page=grady_pages.inc.php|GP_ID=55

ATTENDEES:

Charlotte “Web” Aston
Jared “Shooter” Bargiel
Ashley “Paltrow” Chase
Megan “Shark” Clark
Sean “Squelch” Connor
Jessica “Diggs” Diggelmann
Nicholas “The Claw” Holtzclaw
Jonathan “Blade” Hunt
Jae "The Edit Gangsta" Park
Brian "The Man With The Plan" Perry
Amanda “Mander” Simon
Paul "The Bounty Hunter" Smith
Adam "Cutter" Speas

Content Creators Party, NYC 2007 Trip

Here's the whole group (except for Biddle who took the picture and Jae Park who was probably still asleep in Brooklyn) with Ben Kozuch from FMC (Future Media Concepts). Thanks to Ben, we had a great time at the Content Creators Party and hopefully, the group will be able to work the NAB in Las Vegas this April.

Check out Future Media Concepts on the Internet. The company offers training on Avid, FCP, Boris FX, etc. They have offices in NYC, Philly, Miami...and Dubai, too.

Tip Of The Week: Asset Management (or "The Frankenfile")

Aside from just plain being organized, proper file/asset management can really save your tuckhass. Unique, remember-able names for Photoshop layers, editing bins (FCP and Avid), projects, etc. separate professionals from coffee-getters. Organization will definitely help you when you're away from the project for some time (even a weekend) or people get sick and others on the team have to work on it.

This little homage to Dr. Frankenstein happened on Wednesday, November 7th in Lab 136. Amanda Simon (one of the edit team leaders along with Eric "Smooth" Kridle) was there when this happened. She participated in this event...

Amanda and Eric are working on segment four of a cooking show my 4250 and 5250 class is designing. For the editing teams (four teams total), Amanda, Eric, and I designed a standard naming convention for all of the assets (bins, folder, files, clips, etc.). To save drive space, we also decided to do the work "offline" (in a lower resolution) saving us drive space, but sacrificing quality. After we have picture lock, we'll re-capture the media at full resolution for effects, color correction, and transitions. This also means NOT taping over old footage...NEVER reuse tapes. Bad.

For some reason, when we went to re-capture the media for a clip (let's call it 001), we kept hitting a timecode error. Nothing would correct it. We tried all of the standard tricks, but nothing worked. We still haven't figured out the reason for the problem (mostly likely due to accidentally re-using a tape...the shoot was a bit stressed, so things can happen), but the solution required sleep and thinking around FCP's stupidity (FCP is stupid, editors are smart).

When FCP captures footage, it gives the QTime file in the capture scratch and the Clip in the Browser the same name. Since the clip was "offline" (yes, the horrible red line), we tried capturing the clip on either side of the break.... which did work.

We created a new sequence called "repair". We put both sides in the sequence and repaired the breech via editing. From there, we exported the clip to the Capture Scratch (as a Qtime movie, self-contained, with current settings). We then closed FCP.

Navigating to the Capture Scratch in the Mac, we found the file and duplicated it. We then renamed the duplicate with the name of the original clip that we could not re-capture (for this story, we used the name 001).

We then re-opened the project in FCP...and it flippin' worked!!!! The clip reconnected to the "Frankenfile".

So, organization and understanding how assets get managed can really save your work and your stress level.

For more information, see Biddle or Amanda Simon.