Despite the fact that I am taking a little hiatus/Freelance paternity Leave from Post Production work, as I look back at the few projects that I worked on in the past year, it was an eventfull one. I worked on more French speaking projects and more Big Brand/Mega Corporation work than ever and I saw a webisode project flourish.
In the mist of all this, we had another child. Woooufff, what a year.
I freelanced for many cool projects and interesting companies in the past year. My new "BatCave" aka office space is almost up and rumning and I can't wait to jump on that horse again and dive into a great project.
Welcome 2013, now on to the Next Big thing.
** If your in Toronto Canada area and need some Post work done please feel free to contact me. I'm itching to end my Hiatus early!
My new Home office walls are up and painted. Starting to move in the gear and I am close to finishing my hiatus from Post work. Here's a look at the office/Batcave.
I might not be working it but some of the projects I have worked on in the year have been hitting the award circuit pretty hard.
The Guidestones Web Series has been nominated in a whole bunch of catagories and has gotten crital acclaim from wed and traditional media. Just this week they won the Digis 2012 Award for Best Web Series. Early this year won a Rockies Award for Best Web Series Fiction and Official Selection at the Geneva Internation Festival.
Also, it got nominated for Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Female Performance (Supinder Wraich) and Best Supplemental Content at the IAWTV Awards. Oh Yeah and it got a Nomination for Best Editing too. Still haven't checked it out. Whaaaat. It is on Hulu, YouTube and guidestones.org. Watch them all, it's a fun ride.
Some work that I did for ALP Communication, some mini-docs for BMW have been awarding it up. BMW: The Ultimate Driving Machine is a Silver Winner at the 2012 Summit Creative Award®and a Platinum Remi for New Media – Web Series at the 45th Worldfest International Film Festival
It is nice see that all the hard work that I put in to some of these projects are being recognized but the best is to know that they are being seen by an audience.
A few months into my postproduction hiatus and I have realized something that has change in me in the last few years. I'm really comfortable with being wrong.
So, as I stated in my previous post that I was going to pay the bills the old fashion film ways; union film lighting. As I rubbed shoulder with my union brothers and catch up on old times, as we move big gear on big movies, I realize that there is this weird pressure to hit "perfection" on the first attempt at something. Having not done Big Budget shooting for about 8 years and some of the lightning equipment has evolved; so, I was a little rusty. No major mistakes that you get a nickname over or anything, but little things, little mistakes were made by myself. My bad.
I was surprised how people were quick to try to locate the offender but I was even quicker with my hand up to take responsibility for my faux pas and confortable doing it. Sometimes I would get friendly ribbing from people that now that I was just getting back into the swing of things. But sometimes, I would get disapproving glares, comments that were intended to induce some form of shame or even the mini speech about how it is done from younger members that didn't know me.
At the beginning I thought is was comical, then I was annoyed at why are we wasting time breaking down the mistake, then I thought about how film works; it is all about mistakes and adjustments. And most of the time things that were made a "big" deal out of turned out to be something that changed in the end like most things in the film world. I started thinking about why am I so un-phased about making a mistake.
Editing is making mistakes many times on an hourly basis. And over the years, I have noticed that if I don't just start making mistakes or editing, I develop editors block. So, I make the mistake and know that I'll come back to fix it later. I have gotten very comfortable with mistakes. For example, I think I nailed the essence of the cut and/or the director or producer points out key plot point that's not in the screener. My bad, I cut it out when I was trying to make the edit air tight for pacing. Or even better, I am at a show and tell with ad agency and don't like any of the 12 versions of the spot, technically my mistake. My Bad. I got a millions of these... Feel free to comment with your mistake stories. To quote Deniro in Cape Fear, "... Reminds you your human"
Conclusion. If you can't deal with making mistakes, editing is not for you.
If your not listening to the Freakonomics Podcast your missing out on some interesting insight.
This recent episode of Freakonomics Radio was an interesting one about customer service which is what a good freelance editor delivers ontop of the technical and artistic skills. The Social scientist prove what most in our industry almost always fail to appreciate, cost and quality are related.
When I get request for a quote occasionally some potential clients will inquire, "why is your quote and rate higher than.." Then, I explain that it's usually a worst case scenario guestimate, factoring in some contengency time and trying to anticipate some problems that has occured in my past experiences.
About my rate, I use the analogy of a general contractor quoting for some work on your house. "Never use the cheapest quote, that guy is usually the problem/unexperienced craftsmen."
Unfortunatly, sometimes some clients don't take my advice and the outcome is usually not satisfatory and they inquire a few months later with a request for a Fix-this-mess-Quote.
The Guidestones project has been a getting lots of great reviews. If you haven't checked it out. Join. I give it my "Sopranos recommend", watch 3 epidosdes and if you hate it, stop watching. it's not for you.
My previous Blog post about the Guidestones postproduction got me some great verbal feedback (write something in the comments if you like this or hate it). People seemed to enjoy getting a behind the scenes look at the process. So, when I got an episode to post up on my reel I decided to go back through my notes and communications with the director about episode 35 (officially released as Episode 29 in the series) and give some more info on the Behind the scenes of a low budget post process, the story end of it anyways.
Because Jay Ferguson, the director/producer, was around the globe shooting, we used the email for notes/feedback. I would assemble and rough cut based on the script, try to sort out any tech or MIA footage with the post crew. Then post up a locked Vimeo version of my cuts for him to screen from wherever hotel/motel he was in the world.
So, I initiated my search for Guidestones notes episode 35 (released as ep 29)... "nothing". Curious.
I am an email hoarder, so I went my backup email program that I use as a catch all/archive... "nothing". Well, technically not nothing. This email:
Date 17 April, 2011 8:32:27 PM EDT
"This is cool....toss some dramatic music in and we should see what happens....do we need a couple feet / blurry running shots? At the end?" J
If anybody knows Jay, he isn't a man of few words. So, I looked at the early episode notes (ep. 1-8), to compare. There was lots of back and forth for the first 2 episodes but a significant falloff on volume after those episodes. The notes transformed or evolved into a more coach on the sidelines of a game style or even better it was more like a conductor of an orchestra; "Faster", "Slower", "Good".
At some point in the process most of my successful projects have had this type of relationship. Trust.
A good director/client after the "tonal" tweaks of the beginning starts conducting not micro managing a.k.a. "use this shot", "cut that head move out" , (insert your favorite post production cliche). They trust you to put forth the best shots, performance even reference music. Not Blind Trust but a confidence that your choices are valid.
I have been a little lucky and I realize now that I seek out that type off relationship and if my gut tells me that this is not going to be that type of situation. I walk away. And in all fairness, me and Jay have worked together for a while, so this type of Trusting collaboration happens a little earlier in the process. Or in this case, I can jump in as the process has already started. (see previous blog).
So, when you look at the evolution of the episodes cuts ,you don't see the obvious drastic changes in alternate cuts, but the more critical eye can see the subtle tweaks, push and pull in the story and pace. More importantly you still see that the essence of the episodes and its initial rough cut story. The tone is still in there (my responsibility on this project). The color on the walls of the house has changed but the support beams have not been touched.
A things that I thought were interesting: Final is 1 minute shorter than rough but pacing is the same, music tone changes feel of final scenes and reaction shots change interaction of characters (I think if you watch the series you'll get it). Here is the final episode.
As a filmmaker, I find this type of subtle comparison more helpful than the wacky scene that obviously doesn't work that was left on the cutting room floor (see Bill Paxton scene in Aliens).
I have had this Blog post in draft mode for the last few months now. As I was finished listening to Episode 53 of The Back to Work Podcast, I realize that I was listening to the "Return of the Jedi" podcast for freelancers editors.
Which means that Ep. 51 is "The New Hope" & Ep 52 is the Pana-ultimate-cast "Empire Strikes Back"! So if your only going to listen to one of te podcast's, you should listen to that one. My struggling with this post was finished. I am not a writter, so why not just leave it to the pros. They pretty much hashes out all my thoughts and more on the subject of what I like to call the "Invisible".
Please read at your own risk the draft of my thoughts on Freelance intagngable that most Productions don't take into account when picking someone to craft their project in the most important final stages.
(Begining of Draft)
I was recently chatting with a peer of mine about software (FCP X and 3D packages), post work in general and the state of working freelance in the film industry when I started to talk about that INVISIBLE factor. It is the invisible advantage that hiring someone like me (meaning someone with a certain level of experience) versus someone who can just operate a software package (Thanks Mr.Jobs you made my life easier but you made some people think that they don't have to "study" film to make film*).
I know that this is treading weird waters as I find it hard to write about this because it isn't a tangeble. Also, I don't think that there isn't a place for the "machine operator" as I call them. Moreover, I don't pretend that I don't opperate the machine and you should strive to know your tool to it's fullest so that it isn't stopping you or slowing you down from the task at hand. BUT, I know that most of my regular clients appreciate the INVISIBLE that I bring to the table. I think Malcom Gladwell touches on this on his book (which I haven't finished reading yet).
I don't really have to explain this to my current repeat offender clients but the new clients that come for a quote always seem to look at it from a dollar and cents perspective. Rarely do they look at how far their dollar spent is going to seen in the result of the footage.
One last thing on this I-Factor, the I might be for INSURANCE. What I always say to my clients, is that your paying for insurance that if there is a "road block" or something doesn't go as planned, you loose some footage,... any of the thousand of situations that happen on a film production. The more experienced, seasoned individual has that set of invisible tools to deal with that situation.
The sad and sometimes frustrating part of this is that the productions that don't run into a bad experience never really see the advantage of the INVISIBLE; since they completed the show, commercial or movie without the drama of a disater but one will never know how great it could have been if they hired someone with the INVISIBLE.
* What I mean by study film is not necessaraly go to schoold but read, eat sleep film. Really study it as a craft.
(end of draft)
The Invisible factor: Puppet elevate's the average actingfrom Good to Great.
I appologize if this isn't the most polished post, but like I said, I am not a writer. My stregth is writting with pictures, a soundtrack, ect... I am just "Shipping it"!
