Deluxe Wows Me

On Tuesday March 17th our class went to Toronto to visit Deluxe, which is a house for film, video and audio production for big budget television shows and movies.  The studio has won ten Academy Awards for technical excellence - and let me tell you their studio is impressive.

The day started off in the Deluxe boardroom where we were greeted by three high-ups from the studio.  These guys were pretty funny - all really into what they do.  I found it pretty interesting how two of the guys weren't really much older than I was, but I was blown away by how much they knew and the advice they had to give to amateurs like the class.

From there we checked an isolated sound booth where actors come into the studio and do voiceovers and replace audio that wasn't captured great or doesn't sound great off the original take. The head guy, I think his name is Paul, was saying that actors hate doing this sort of thing and many have a hard time getting into character to re-enact the voices and such.

We checked out several things inside the studio but I'm only going to talk about a few of them. We were allowed to enter what they called the Foley Room, I believe, where diegetic sounds are produced in a studio to make them sound much better than if they were taking organically from the original film.  This sound-proof studio they had set up was amazing - it was actually littered with ordinary and bizzare objects and items that the sound artists use to make audio. Several different types of doors were on one portion of the wall, different floor types on the ground, sand, water, bathtubs, toilets, guitars, shoes, an old car, chairs, anything and everything!  In my opinion this was the coolest studio in the Deluxe house.

One of the last rooms we checked out was the room where they convert and copy film and video.  This room was crazy! Definitely a few million dollars worth of equipment sitting in there.  Paul was saying that older copies of movies and such are copied in that room, and there was tapes everywhere.  The room house many machines which also meant a lot of people, it was the busiest room in the house.

What I liked most about this trip though were the three people that gave us the tour of Deluxe. They were young, extremely knowledgeable, and most importantly, they are pretty similar to what I'm like - well at least I think so anyway!  It was really refreshing to hear people talk about their work with such enthusiasm.  Great trip.

Response to Walter Murch

So I had some time this past week to pick up "In the Blink of an Eye" by Robert Murch and read a piece or two from it.  Murch is an Academy Award-winning film editor and sound designer, and is best known for his sound designing work in Apocalypse Now and Return to Oz - which he directed.

What I'm going to specifically focus on for this entry is the problems Murch defines when film made (or makes) the transition from analog to digital.  In the early 1980s, hard drives were bulky, primitive, and didn't really work all that well, so film was stored on analog forms of media, such as videotapes or laserdiscs.  But then in the later 1980s, technological devices such as hard drives and more advanced ways of storage started making its way into the film world.  Film began being digitized directly onto a computers hard disk, and I'm pretty sure its safe to say it scared film industry people back then - technology still scares people now.

Now more onto a more personal level.  My dad used to teach film and television broadcasting at the university and college level up till the early 1990s, when he passed away due to stomach cancer.  This obviously meant that my dad new a great deal about cameras and filming, and I can remember massive cameras laying around the house and stacks of film sitting around.  Yes, the film industry had already made their way to the digital era, but for people who weren't in the industry, analog was still the way to go.  Now instead of hauling around huge video cameras like my dad used to do, I can easily carry a video camera comfortably in my hand.  Not only this - the cameras consumers use today are high-definition, something that would of been out of the question back in my dads time.

Alright, now back to Murch.  Right.  Murch points out a couple negative aspects that come with this move from analog to digital, all of which I find quite interesting.

1. The Amount of Memory - early hard drives didn't really have much memory anyway.  This meant that films couldn't be stored as one large chunk, and moving from one chunk of the film to the next meant swapping hard disks which the film was stored on.  Not fun.
2. Bottleneck - Early machines and digital forms of storage were so expensive that buying more than one was next to impossible.  This meant that the key people involved in producing the film had to work in shifts, simply because there was only one machine to use.
3. Complicated, Inconvenient and Expensive - The big editing machines were bulky and expensive, and copies of dailies had to be specially made to be read by the machine that Murch calls the EditDroid. 
4. The Quality of the Image - Image quality is something that is most important for people who watch television or movies today - people go gaga over large screen displays.  In order to store films onto digital media, the data would be shrunk down, where a lot of resolution would be lost in the process.  Murch says that this makes it impossible to see hidden problems. 
5. Ease of Making the Cut Itself - These editing machines like the Avid were keyboard intensive, which was not what most film editors were comfortable with.  We still see this today - video editing programs like Final Cut or Premier are extremely keyboard intensive.  I'm not even sure if you could properly edit a film or video without a keyboard.
6. Works Best When Needed Least - The machines couldn't handle too much, and editors would often get a message that they had maxed out the machines processing abilities.  Murch says that this would cause things to go out of sync.  Dropped frames, anyone?
7. Reliability of the Edit Decision List - the edit decision list is conformed to match what is in the computer, which turned out to be super problematic on early editing machines.  This all comes down to difference in frame rates.  In Europe, film and video run at 25 frames per second, and in the United States and other Western countries, film runs at 24 frames per second while video runs at 30 frames per second.  This meant that some mathematical equations needed to be done before doing any transferring or copying.  Messing this up would probably result in a massive headache for editors.

And thats Murch's list!  I think there will always be an argument over analog vs. digital.  

 

Robert Bresson Response

After a great deal of thinking about what this new experimental video will take to construct, I've been coming back to Robert Bresson's "Notes on Sound" writing.  Our class received the reading during week one - a long time ago, but I'm writing on it now since its becoming a bit more important to me.

The plan I have for this journal entry is to state each of Bresson's points from the reading, and then explain its importance to video and video editing.  At the top of the list, Bresson explains that the list has been compiled to know what business that sound (or that image) has there.  In other words, the list is for people to understand why something has been done the way its been done, why something sounds like it does, and why something has been edited the way it has been edited.

1. What is for the eye must not duplicate what is for the ear.

By this I imagine Bresson meaning that we should try not to create images with sound. Everything must look aesthetically pleasing to the eye, and audio should not be a contributing factor to this.

2. If the ear is entirely won, give nothing or almost nothing to the ear.  One cannot be at the same time all eye and all ear.

Bresson means that we should not go overboard with audio and video at the same time.  They must play off of each other and not create distraction.

3. When a sound can replace an image, cut the image or neutralize it.  The ear goes more toward the within, the eye toward the outer. 

In other words, do not use images when audio would be better suited for the situation or the viewer.

4. A sound must never come to the help of an image, nor an image to the help of a sound.

If the audience or viewer cannot pick up what the image is saying literally or metaphorically, then something is wrong.  The same goes with audio. 

5. If a sound is the obligatory compliment of an image, give preponderance either to the sound or the image.  If equal, they damage or kill each other, as we say of colours.

I imagine that Bresson is saying that an importance must either be put on the sound or the image and not both.  If both are important, the resulting video/film will not convey the message you want it to convey. 

6. Image and sound must not support each other, but must work each in turn through a sort of relay. 

As mentioned above, I think Bresson means that both cannot be given equal importance at the exact same time.  Sound and image must flow together. 

7. The eye solicited alone makes the ear impatient, the ear solicited alone, makes the eye impatient.  Use these impatiences.  Power of the cinematographer who appeals to the two senses in a governable way.  Against the power of speed, of noise, set tactics of slowness, of silence.

I feel that Bresson means that these impatiences can be used as a form of building suspense or irritation.  If the sound does not sound how the audience thinks it should sound, it may make the film either more enjoyable, or less enjoyable. 

That is Bresson's list. 

New Experimental Film

Just thought I'd post two videos that inspired me for my second video assignment. You can view them below. First is Weezer's "The Good Life". Second is Blink 182's "Always".

Reflections on Melted

Project # 1 was to create a film leader.  The guidelines were very open which was great - until I saw the demo videos shown in tutorial.  I was scared.  The videos Prof Duran showed the class literally frightened me they were so good.  I had no idea how to create something that looked that good.  

I then began thinking over a few things and decided on creating something really weird and experimental.  I wanted to grind up children's numbered magnets in a blender, speed up the footage and voila - a video.  Unfortunately, things don't work that easily in the video production world.  I soon realized the blender idea wasn't all that great, so I focused on something else. 

After watching the "Nastalgia" film, for which I cannot remember the name of its creator, I began thinking of melting the magnets.  After talking it over with Prof Duran, I thought I had a great idea lined up that I was excited about.

Melting plastic on a hot stovetop isn't easy - and I learned this from completing the rough cuts with the Sony PD170 and Adobe OnLocation.  First let me tell you - OnLocation is my new favorite toy.  It allows for direct capturing onto your laptops hard drive without even recording anything to the camera at all.  In fact, you don't even hit record on the camera itself - most of the controls can be found through the application's interface, although you still have to focus the camera and adjust other settings.

"Melted" took several hours to shoot, edit, re-edit, and eventually finalize.  Each second in the video is actually over three minutes and thirty seconds.  Each cut has been sped up 13,000 percent, and then reversed.  This happens with each second except for the cut of the stove element and the final sequence, where it is sped up 8,000 percent and is not reversed. 

I keep getting asked about the audio for this assignment.  The audio was taken from Our Lady Peace's album "Spiritual Machines" from the song "R.K. On Death".  To be honest, I don't know why I decided with this audio clip.  As soon as I synched it with the video I knew instantly that it was the right decision.  As someone mentioned in class, the audio brings a totally different element and level to the other countdown sequences thus far, and I strongly agree with that statement.

Melted can be viewed below.

Melted - Assignment # 1 from Josh Willard on Vimeo.

Thoughts on the Blue Murder Rushes

For exercise # 2, we were asked to divide into groups of three and were given sixteen minutes of rough footage from the television show Blue Murder.  The show is a police drama, which from the rushes, looked like it had poor acting. Don't get me wrong, the show seemed interesting and I'm not bashing it - most police dramas all look the same anyways.

Our task was to cut out and edit the rushes into a one minute video clip.  After going through the sixteen minutes of footage, we decided we would aim for a movie trailer titled "Robotic Cop 2". We wanted to try to create something with a bit of humour in it since the scenes we were given were fairly serious - including gun fights, cops, etc. 

Since we were not allowed to use any pre-existing synched audio from the rough footage, Dorothy, Dan and myself decided on using audio effects from my sound effects library.  We found it difficult to decide on which effects to use at which time, and it was quite difficult matching up sounds to suit the video.  We also included a "movie trailer voice", and several voiceovers of the police officer, which were recorded using GarageBand, exported as MP3s, and finally imported. 

After cropping out the time-code from all the clips we were going to use, we pieced them together using Final Cut Express.  This also proved to be a difficult task as decisions needed to be made as to how we were going to transition between the clips.  We decided on using cut-aways which proved to be successful. 

The one-minute movie trailer had to accompanied by two other criteria. The first was to address one item from Robert Bresson's "Notes on Sound" article, and also had to meet two other categories.  Bresson states in his article that "image and sound must not support each other, but must work each in turn through a sort of relay".  His statement relates to our group's movie trailer as sound is helping the viewer identify with what is happening on screen. There are many scenes were the police officer is out of frame - so the audience depends on the sound to know what is going on.  We also have several sounds of guns being fired which aren't visible to the audience, but hearing sound makes the audience know that a gun is being fired. 

Finally, our movie trailer reveals a character, and demonstrates a point of view.  Sargent Patterson is essentially a cop that cannot be killed - and this is revealed near the end of the trailer when he is shot, but says "I'm fine its only a flesh wound".  The title of the movie also gives this away, as "Robotic Cop 2" hints at the cop being some sort of robot and un-human. The one-minute trailer also demonstrates a point of view.  The trailer is partly shown through the eyes of Sargent Patterson, making the audience see what he sees, thus demonstrating the officer's point of view. 

The finished video can be found here: http://www.vimeo.com/2982289

Response to Stephen Arthur's "Tran Scan"

The first thing that came to my mind as I watched this was "what an extremely unique video". Tran Scan is a five thousand photograph journey across Canada following the Trans-Canada Highway. The video makes use of a relatively new technique of telescopic, traveling time-lapse photography.  This allows the audience to travel 5,700 kilometers in approximately eight minutes. 

The production quality that went behind the making of Tran Scan is astonishing.  No motion picture or video camera was used at any time, yet the video seems extremely smooth to the eye. According to Create Space, the frame-by-frame video piece took eighteen months and $100,000 to create.  Another interesting note is that the sound used in the piece was composed from scratch with sound effects that were created by movement. 

It is easy for me to say that the $100,000 was worth it. Tran Scan is not only impressive and eye catching, it also has an educational element. For people like myself who have never driven across the country before, this video teaches the viewer a lot about Canada.  I didn't really know what the Prairies or the Maritimes exactly looked like before watching the video. 

My only dislikes of Tran Scan aren't even really dislikes at all. After focusing on the video for a few minutes I began to feel very nauseated and dizzy, making me look away from the screen for a few seconds and miss parts of the video.  I realize that this is probably unavoidable, or might have even been Arthur's intentions.  Secondly, it would be been beneficial for the viewer to know the location they are in as they are watching the video.  Since road signs fly by you at an unreadable pace, you have no idea of what you are looking at.  This was occasionally counterbalanced by being able to identify landmarks or the city skyline, but even this was extremely difficult at times.

Traveling across Canada in eight minutes is pretty cool. You have to admit it. 

A preview of Tran Scan can be found here: http://www.transcanfilm.com/TranScanAlberta.mov