Adobe Creative week

I tuned into Adobe Creative week webinar yesterday (quite gutted I didn't realise it was on before that !!) and I'm amazed at the new CS6. By no mean am I going to switch back to Premiere which was the first editing software I used, I think once you've mastered (or started to..) a software, there's no need to switch to another unless it brings an awful lot more to you and your workfload. BUT it was good to see the effort was made not necessarily to make people switch to Premiere but to use other tools that could  enhance, fasten, improve your workflow as a compliment to FCP or Avid etc. Quite impressed indeed by Prelude which is sort of what Bridge is to Photoshop. Going through footage and organising everything, binning what needs to go etc, that's a big part of the editing process, I haven't tried the software yet (I believe you can try it first going here) but it looks so much faster to go through that tenious task than in FPC.

A lot of interesting discussions during this webinar, including the trends in the process of making a video (documentary, fiction...) for TV and other media, and how being able to get instant feedback from the audience thanks to youtube and the likes changed the game, improved what is being offered. Some good comments on twitter as well, check them out if you've missed yesterday's talk #CreativeWeekUK and tune in at 12 for today's talk there.

Oh and my love at first sight, aside from Prelude, was this studio...have a look at their stuff, brilliant, fun, creative...

www.sylviephotography.com

Lovecats part II : the short !!

Last weekend was quite a sunny one for once and watching the kitties enjoy the heat in their own special way urged me to do a little short about them. There's a certain amount of things I managed to get them to do but they are really like kids, they have a short interest span and then they go off do their thing.

I shot this with canon 5D MkII and a 24-70mm L lens, edited with final cut pro only, and a lot of love, a bit of magic bullet look and garageband bits and pieces. The audio was recorded separately with a zoom recorder since the audio from the camera was way too low and not clear enough.

Enjoy !

Behind the scenes videos - Brennans bread and Fleadh Ceoil

I recently put together 2 behind the scenes videos for Trevor Hart : two very different and fun shoots for Brennan's bread and the Fleadh Ceoil. Lately I've used Fujifilm X10, it's a 35mm looking camera, very compact and handy. I need to have something quick and easy to use because there's too much going on during the shoot to have the luxury to use the 5d MkII. The X10 delivers full HD videos of very decent quality that doesn't degrade that much in low light, however its focusing is weak in tricky times, say against the light (even slightly against it), low light and for close ups. Depending on what I wanted to get, it was actually more than just annoying. But overall it's a very fast and well designed camera.


Have a look at Trevor's blog for the final pictures and the full story.
To see the videos in a bigger format, just click on them, it will bring you to my YouTube channel.

Image Magazine shoot - behind the scene video

It was tough to wait until the March edition was out before I could share this ! I put together a video of Trevor's precise and patient still life creations and all the sparkles and pretty shapes that we got to shoot for Image Magazine.

Click here for Trevor's blog about the shoot.

New homepage promo video with After Effects

Start of the year is usually the time where I sit down and have a look at improving or updating my website. That gave me a great excuse to redo my intro video compiling all I have to offer, as my first project on After Effects which I recently learnt to use. I normally use Final Cut Pro but I loved the way AE allowed me to tweak my comp at anytime, change any properties of each layer in a much much faster way than in FCP. It's also a huge resource of presets, effects and all. 

Check out Video Copilot, it's a fantastic place to get started on AE. Andrew, who presents the tutorials, is so passionate and creative, it's quite contagious, I might start special effects stuff myself soon !

Here's my comp anyway, you're most welcome to give me your suggestions. I think there's a big improvement compared to the one I had, I went quite easy on the effects and tried to give it an upbeat tempo.

A new edit for my first short video

At last... I thought I'd never get to post this !

About a year ago I shot my first video, a documentary on a Mayo born guy called John Monahan, who I had met while doing a photo project with the Rehabilitation Centre at the National Council for the Blinds. 

John was a legend in there, and filled faces with smiles with his jokes and stories. I shot this piece in one day, with little equipment, just my Canon 5d MkII on a camera tripod, and a Zoom as well. It's only now that I can tell how I could have benefited from having more gear with me (starting with a video tripod and a  viewfinder !).

I'm still happy with what I've shot and since my first edit was very poor, and I've learnt a lot since, I think John deserves a more appropriate work to compliment his words and his story. It's tricky, though, to do a reedit on your own video... I loved re looking at the clips I shot and rethinking about the framework of the video but as well as trying to pretend I never storyboarded the shoot and take it from scratch, the footage has to allow a new structure to appear. And it seems like mine allowed me a bit of tweaking but not that much.

It reminded me of what Walter Murch said about the major drawback of digital (non linear ) editing. Because the access to the media isn't random, you don't have to go through footage you're not looking for, which you had to in the moviola days and made you constantly look at material you could have discarded by mistake. 

So I had a thorough look at all I shot and recorded (the sound is crucial, throughout the video, especially at 2:01) to make some changes. 

I realised that the first edit I made was most importantly the final part of a project,my first video project. Yes, there was room for improvement on my editing ( I used Premiere on a 3 year old Dell PC by the way...had to replace the hard drive 3 months later !!) but what I've learnt by doing this reedit on Final Cut Pro isn't all the tricks I know now and didn't at the time, it is the fact that my whole approach of the project wasn't the best. 

Excessively organised as I am, I planned my shooting with John, I was so conscious of not wasting his time (in fact I only spent 2-3 hours with him, including a good part of walking from one end of the park to another, and the rest of the day on my own) that I had planned all he was going to say. 

We had talked so much during the photo project and all the time I spent at the NCBI, I knew him very well, and I had made up my mind on what I wanted to say about him, what questions to ask him for my story but most importantly what he was going to answer me. I restrained him in what I wanted the documentary to be about and I didn't let this fantastic character show all his colours. I don't mean that I tweaked reality but I feel I put some "blinders" to the story, I limited it at the shooting time when actually the decision should be made post shoot.

So a year afterwards, I'm quite happy with having done this, as my first video work, but I also see how inexperience and stress limited the potential of this little vid, or at least rejected the power of spontaneity, how rewarding it can be to let people open up to you and be what they want to be. Actually I did know, as a photographer, that the best shots are the ones in between the planned and structured shots...strangely I didn't let the Videographer Me know about that !

It's happening in the Phoenix Park, Dublin. Hope you like it ! As usual comments, advice, suggestions are very welcome. (for full HD, go to Youtube)