Dumbland

Really interesting overview of what is pretty likely to be the new standard video format.

I saw this short film one night on Eat Carpet in much the same way I first encountered Twin Peaks. I was in a trance-like state between sleep and not-sleep, susceptible to something making an indelible mark upon my brain. This did that, and the phrase has stuck with me ever since.

Now I watch it fully aware and awake and a decade and a half of bullshit and confusion later and it’s beautiful and I feel no connection to it anymore.

Oh well. Hooray for YouTube.

I’m sure I’ll keep posting individual items from here as they come along but it’s worth noting this site in its entirety. Just about everything worth knowing about FCPX online.

Engage Betteridge’s Law.

People used to take Slashdot seriously.

UPDATE: And then there’s this.

It’s become one of the film world’s great pastimes to sit around and hate on what Apple did with Final Cut Pro X. Upon its launch, you would have thought Apple had come in and kidnapped every editor’s first born child. And, let’s be honest, the FCPX launch was not Apple’s finest moment. I still really believe that if Apple had introduced FCPX as Beta software and not immediately discontinued what was at the time (and in some ways still is) the best edit software on the market (Final Cut 7), people would have been really excited about X’s potential, and would have really enjoyed playing around with it instead of calling it an atrocity and affront to humanity.

This sums up the situation exactly. The calamity of the launch was not simply the ‘missing’ features from FCPX, but the combination of that and the sudden EOL of Final Cut Pro 7. FCPX is a great system, one I like more than 7 (which I’m still working in) but Apple’s actions went a long way to destroying any confidence people might have in them.

Still kicking this old dog about. You know what’s really annoying? When you have a music track with fades up and down throughout for intertitles, and those intertitles keep moving back and forth as clips come in and out. Ideally you just dont do the music until the end of the process.

But client reviews!

Anyway, Alex4D with another useful tip.

This opinion piece is about the broader issue of representation in Hollywood (in the business, not on screen), but it does touch a little on her removal as director from Brave.

This was a story that I created, which came from a very personal place, as a woman and a mother. To have it taken away and given to someone else, and a man at that, was truly distressing on so many levels.

As with most FCPX problems, the answer is “use a compound clip”.

So how stands each project now? After almost a year of updates and extra-curricular activities, the first video of Feminist Frequency’s project is to finally be released this Thursday the 7th.

Meanwhile, Tropes versus Men (or, as it’s also known, “An analysis of male roles and misandry present in modern video game media”) has disappeared without a trace.

A short film I helped out on.

A story you’d have heard if you’ve been to any of Larry Jordan’s presentations, expounding the value of efficient editing.

Part 1 of a workflow I doubt I’ll ever get to use. I cut a RED feature in FCP7 mostly following the RED whitepaper. I’d write a bit about how that process went, but it would probably get a bit repetitive

Lisa Daniel, festival director of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, said the move was embarrassing for Australia.

“It just makes us look like a cultural backwater, I think. It’s pretty embarrassing given the film has screened all over the world and never been banned before,” she said.

It does, and even though I tend to think we are, I think it’s a state we should be continually striving to escape. We finally got the board to stop banning “R-rated” video games, surely the next step is to get them to stop banning “X-rated” films.

Comprehensive is one word for it.

I have my own evolving method of file management, which is to say it mutates every time I start a new project. Like much of my work, when I come back to it months or years later I can not even begin to decipher exactly what the hell I was thinking.

This is something I have to think about again now that I’m shifting over to Avid. I’m not there yet, but I’m reading ahead and apparently Media Composer dumps all imported media for all local projects into a common folder. I’m already having nightmares.

This guide seems to be based on Media Composer 3.5, but appears quite thorough and should at least help to pick up some of the different ways Avid works to FCP.

Another useful rundown of tips for an Avid convert. Including links to, apparently, 200 Media Composer tutorials. So a bit of reading then.

I have to make the change myself shortly, so I’m looking for all the tips like this I can find. This is a real no-frills list of things to memorise, to hammer in to a thick skull.

Anita Sarkeesian’s series, which awesomely raised 2648% of its Kickstarter goal back in June 2012, kicks off on Thursday.

On the one hand, the Tropes vs Women series has always been insightful and entertaining and I look forward to the episodes. On the other, the ensuing shitstorm from a bunch of very angry gamers who insist they’re not angry at all will be … interesting.

Basically it was Skynet’s fault. Which would be a satisfactory excuse if Skynet actually existed, which it doesn’t. People wrote the software, people deployed it, people were careless enough to not pay attention to its output, and people stood to profit from it. The background is interesting, but does not absolve the concerned parties of responsibility.

UPDATE: This tweet sums it up:

While some people are being extremely patronising and superior about auto-generated t-shirt slogans, the rest of us think ‘keyword filter’.

— @tkingdoll

It turns out we have a certified wackaloon for a MLC.

A tenuous link but an amusing headline.