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Tip #1099: The Challenge of Perfect vs. Good

… for Random Weirdness

Tip #1099: The Challenge of Perfect vs. Good

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs to get the job done efficiently.

(Image courtesy of Pexels.com.)

Topic $TipTopic

My wife has a saying: “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” Nowhere is that more true than in technology; and it is driving us all nuts.

What this saying means is that we spend too much time looking for the perfect system, when a system that may be less than perfect is still more than adequate.

As an example, I’m in the process of upgrading my server for faster performance and greater capacity. However, last night, as I was exporting my weekly webinar, I measured how fast Final Cut creates a ProRes 4444 file: 85 MB/second. Even if I had storage that clocked in at NVMe speeds – 2500 MB/sec – my exports would not be any faster because FCP X can only calculate these files so fast.

1080p media needs less than 40 MB/second to edit, while 4K media needs less than 70 MB/sec. Storage that goes 300 MB/second will edit at the same speed as storage that goes 2500 MB/second.

I’m not saying faster storage is a bad idea, clearly, multicam editing, HDR or larger frame rates require more horsepower than simple HD. However, what I am saying is that we need to ask ourselves a bigger question: Where will extra speed actually help? For example, if I only edit one project a week, spending a lot of money improving export speed  is not meaningful compared to the time it takes to edit the project in the first place. Sadly, faster storage does not help me think any faster. I wish it did.

Another example was provided by Gloria. She owns a high-end 2019 Mac Pro. She’s worried that Thunderbolt 4, which hasn’t shipped yet, will make her system obsolete.

Well, first, ALL computers become obsolete at some point, but when it comes to performance, Thunderbolt 4 is the same as Thunderbolt 3, unless you are driving several very large external monitors. And, even when new gear is released, as it always is, all our current gear will still work exactly the same as it does now.

I get dozens of emails each week from editors happily editing on Mac Pro systems that are 10-12 years old. Clearly not state of the art, but fully capable of doing the work they need to get done – on time and on budget. I get even more emails from editors stressing over whether they need a 3.2 GHz CPU or 3.3 GHz.

My advice is stop trying for perfection – unless the search itself is something you enjoy. Instead find a system that meets your needs. Most of the time, good enough is also fast enough. And “future-proofing” is a fool’s errand.

Jan Frederickson, of WLS-TV, had a sign on her wall that I think about daily: “It’s better than perfect, it’s done.”

That is a reassuringly true statement.

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Tip #1100: What is a Showrunner?

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Tip #1100: What is a Showrunner?

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

The showrunner is the lead producer of a show from concept to marketing.

(Image courtesy of Vince Gilligan.)

Topic $TipTopic

This article, written by Jourdan Aldredge, first appeared in PremiumBeat.com. This is a summary.

Take a look at the day-to-day of the all-important television or streaming program showrunner. What can you can learn from this multifaceted role? The show-runner is the lead producer on a film or video project who oversees every element of the project’s creation, from the initial pitch to the final edits and marketing.

Jourdan divides the roles of a showrunner into five categories — development, pre-production, production, post-production, and marketing. Let’s take a look at each.

  • Development: While not always the case, more often than not a showrunner is the one who comes up with the initial idea or inspiration for a program and begins the process of pitching it around and fleshing it out. Whether it’s to Hollywood producers, studio heads, or local television, the showrunner spends months — if not years — in development just trying to get the concept green-lit.
  • Pre-Production: Once the project is tapped to move forward, the showrunner begins to put together a core crew — including writers, director(s), cast and crew, and a group of fellow producers that will oversee everything from budgets to contracts to scripts and shooting schedules.
  • Production: Again, not every showrunner’s role will be the same. Some might be more hands off on the actual production, but there are plenty of examples of showrunners who also serve as directors or remain close to the day to day of production. With so much invested already, a showrunner makes sure production goes as smoothly — and correctly — as possible.
  • Post-Production: Depending on how a program is being shot and released, the post-production process could overlap with production. This requires a steady hand, as the showrunner guides individual episodes along toward broadcast/release while still keeping an eye on the rest of the season. Additionally, a showrunner’s post-production duties involve managing specialists like narrative editors and color experts while keeping tabs on things like sound design and graphics/VFX.
  • Marketing: Finally, the role of a showrunner doesn’t end once a program goes live. Instead, it takes on a new life of its own, as a showrunner would be highly invested in making sure the program is favorably reviewed and heavily marketed in order to finds its audience. From viral campaigns to television spots, a showrunner would work with their marketing team to do everything they can to help their show take off.

EXTRA CREDIT

The article, linked above has several videos with showrunners talking about their work, as well as a variety of links that go deeper into this subject.

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Tip #1101: Breaking into Documentaries at 40

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Tip #1101: Breaking into Documentaries at 40

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

You don’t need to be young to be successful, but you do need a plan.

Jia Wertz (Image courtesy of NoFilmSchool.com.)

Topic $TipTopic

This article, written by Jia Wertz, first appeared in NoFilmSchool.com. This is a summary.

Filmmaking can be a tough industry to break into. And in Jia’s case, she thought it would be especially difficult in her 40’s. But just one year later, she has a documentary short screening at several film festivals and streaming on Amazon, a feature documentary that is in post- production, and a third in the planning stages.

Here are her key thoughts that she learned along the way.

  • Learn Everything You Possibly Can. I invested in a 6-week documentary filmmaking workshop, made connections with students and faculty, and attended every extra-curricular activity the program offered including elective evening courses, masterclasses, and additional shoots, and took every opportunity to ask questions and learn as much as possible.
  • Have a Rock-Solid Plan. Pick a subject or a topic you are very passionate about. Filming a documentary takes far too much time, money and resources for you to delve into something you won’t want to be working on for the next couple of years (or more).
  • Make Connections. Connect with professors, faculty, other filmmakers, festival programmers, and anyone else you come across in the industry, even other participants on Zoom calls. Getting involved in the community is key to keeping the momentum going, and getting organic word-of-mouth marketing for your film.
  • Be Smart About Your Film Festival Strategy. Treat it as a marketing campaign.
  • Lean Into the Transferable Skills You Already Have. I had absolutely no filmmaking skills last year. But I did have marketing and PR skills, extensive photography experience, and decades of experience managing large numbers of people. These skills were 100% transferable to filmmaking. Take advantage of whichever skills you have that can apply to the industry. You would be surprised at how many business skills—and not just creative skills—are required.
  • Market Yourself and Your Film. She provides a list of six techniques she’s found effective.
  • Ask for Referrals and Recommendations. Of course, when asking for referrals or anything else, think about what you can offer as well. Make yourself a resource for the people you are reaching out to. This will go a long way in building a long-lasting connection.

EXTRA CREDIT

The article provides more details and links to learn more.

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Tip #1078: Discover PostPerspective.com

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Tip #1078: Discover PostPerspective.com

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

PostProduction.com is a go-to source for stories, interviews and product reviews.

Randi Altman, Editor-in-Chief, PostPerspective.com.

Topic $TipTopic

If you haven’t explored the PostPerspective.com website, you are missing a treat.

Editor-in-Chief Randi Altman has a multi-decade career covering our industry. A few years ago, she founded PostPerspective.com to provide online, in-depth coverage of our industry.

Typical stories include interviews with the folks behind the camera, analysis of production and post-production techniques, equipment reviews, and tracking personnel as we move about the industry.

Here’s the link: PostPerspective.com.

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Tip #1079: How to Get More YouTube Subscribers

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Tip #1079: How to Get More YouTube Subscribers

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

Increasing YouTube subscribers comes down to leveraging your marketing.

(Image courtesy of Pexels.com.)

Topic $TipTopic

This article first appeared in MotionArray.com. This is a summary.

If you’ve been hustling away on YouTube for a while now, chances are you’re already well up to speed on all the major tips for growing your subscriber base. (Publishing videos on the regular, cross-promoting on social media, making primo content, etcetera, etcetera).

But what if you’ve tried all of those things and you’re still flailing around in sub-1000 subscriber territory? And now you’re asking yourself “how do I get YouTube subscribers and push the needle forward?”

Here are the seven steps they recommend:

  1. Enable YouTube’s Automated Pop-Up Subscription Link
  2. Collaborate With Other YouTubers
  3. Use Playlists To Retain Viewers
  4. Make Your Thumbnails Simply Irresistible
  5. Self-Promote in Facebook Groups, Subreddits, and Amazon Reviews
  6. Fill Your Titles With Super Relevant Keyword Phrases
  7. Make Video Intros a Standard Practice

Visit the article, linked at the top, for more details.

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Tip #1080: Filmmaking Fundamentals: Blocking

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Tip #1080: Filmmaking Fundamentals: Blocking

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

These five videos illustrate different ways to handle blocking a scene.

(Image courtesy of PremiumBeat.com.)

Topic $TipTopic

This article, written by Jourdan Aldredge, first appeared in PremiumBeat.com. This is a summary.

When watching amazing cinema, there are many aspects you’ll notice right away and often remember forever — great lines of dialogue, breathtaking action sequences, and beautiful cinematography. However, one film element that often gets ignored, but is still crucially important, is blocking.

Before we go into learning from the masters, let’s go over some of the basics of scene blocking. Scene blocking covers everything that has to do with placement and movement between characters, props, and camera(s) for every shot and scene. Unless you’re shooting a documentary or a certain type of improvised action, most film scenes are tightly controlled, blocked, and rehearsed so that every movement and action is accounted for.

Finally, the most important part of any scene blocking is the camera. In many ways, the camera — which represents your audience and POV — is the primary character in your scene. Consider your camera placement, its framing, and any (or all) movements that you might employ, from simple pans to complex tracking shots, when working on your scene blocking.

In this article, Jourdan provides videos illustrating:

  • How to block a scene
  • How Hitchcock blocks a scene in “Vertigo”
  • How Scorsese blocked a scene in “The Wolf of Wall Street”
  • How Akira Kurosawa using blocking
  • How Kubrick, Spielberg and Inarritu blocked scenes

SUMMARY

When you’re finally shooting your scenes with your carefully defined blocking in action, it’s helpful to treat each shot and scene as its own mini-movie. You have your actors ready to go in their starting positions, you have your lights set and queued up for any adjustments, and your camera is rehearsed and ready to move. Once you call action, you’re really just recreating the stage play that you’ve blocked and mapped out — now it’s your job to shoot it to the best of your ability.

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Tip #1062: Accusonus Releases ERA 5

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Tip #1062: Accusonus Releases ERA 5

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

Easy-to-use, high-power audio tools for all NLEs.

The Voice AutoEQ interface in the new ERA 5 bundle.

Topic $TipTopic

Accusonus, a well-respected name in audio repair, just released ERA 5.

This bundle “features incredible new tools and the biggest engine update yet, delivering staggering quality with the most intuitive workflow for creators. Innovative solutions empower you to fix even more audio issues than before, saving time in editing and enhancing your sound.” (Accusonus blog)

New tools include:

  • Voice AutoEQ. This automatically adjust its parameters to provide you with a great baseline of good sounding EQ for the human voice, which you can adjust to taste afterwards.
  • Voice Deepener. This creates a voice recording that is able to allure, convince and hook everyone! Just select the voice deepening amount that sounds right to you and let it do its magic.
  • Audio Cleanup Assistant. This features presets for podcasting, vlogging, interviews, audiobooks and all sorts of content creation. And if you often have to deal with audio that has been recorded in the same conditions again and again, you can always save and recall your own presets.
  • Noise Remover Pro. RA Noise Remover Pro has up to 6 spectral processing bands. By applying a different amount of processing to each band, you can further tune the algorithm performance on your particular source material. Save dialogue tracks which cannot be recorded again, remove unwanted elements with astonishing precision, and enjoy the ultimate control over your recordings.
  • Reverb Remover Pro. Ggt tailored reverberation reduction on key frequency ranges. Each band has been fine tuned to work optimally in its range, while the complexity is managed automatically behind the scenes. Reverb reduction is one of the most demanding post production processes.

And several more. The software is available by subscription.

Download a free trial here.

EXTRA CREDIT

They don’t promote it, but the new De-reverb filter in Adobe Premiere is actually technology licensed from Accusonus.

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Tip #1063: Robert Yeoman, ASC: Lighting Comedy

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Tip #1063: Robert Yeoman, ASC: Lighting Comedy

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

Robert Yeoman, on set.

Topic $TipTopic

This article, written by Jourdan Aldredge, first appeared in PremiumBeat.com. This explores how cinematographer Robert Yeoman keeps his comedies light and helped develop Wes Anderson’s quirky aesthetic.

While Yeoman’s work long ago became intertwined with Anderson’s coffee shop aesthetic, he actually has quite a career as a cinematographer outside of that relationship. His early work garnered him quite a bit of esteem from the Independent Spirit Awards (To Live and Die in L.A., Drugstore Cowboy) and his later works have included several highly successful comedy blockbusters (Yes Man, Bridesmaids).

This article contains interviews and videos illustrating how such cinematically recognizable films as Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, Life Aquatic, and The Grand Budapest Hotel so successfully elevates arthouse indies and blockbuster comedy franchises alike by combining his craft of kitsch with his artistic and comedic sensibilities.

  • Finding Your Creative Process
  • Developing a Visual Grammar
  • Lighting for Clarity and Comedy
  • Old School Whip Pans and Slow Motion
  • Developing the Wes Anderson Look

When looking back through Yeoman’s career so far, it’s important to recognize that he isn’t simply a means to bringing a director’s vision to screen, but in fact, he’s very much a developer of the looks and aesthetics that we’ve come to know and love.

Check out the link at the top to watch all of these.

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Tip #1064: MotionArray Announces Team Plans

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Tip #1064: MotionArray Announces Team Plans

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

MotionArray bundles all their services and prices it for team use.

Manage all MotionArray resources in one place.

Topic $TipTopic

In an email, the team at MotionArray announced the launch of Team Plans to provide better account options for groups of two or more editors needing access to the same MotionArray resources. The primary feature is all team accounts can now download unlimited assets and manage their licenses in one place!

NOTE: MotionArray describes itself as: “The all-in-one video & filmmakers platform. Take projects from concept to completion with unlimited asset downloads, exclusive plugins, video collaboration and review tools, and a portfolio website builder…all in one membership.”

Key features include

  • Easily Add & Manage Team Members
  • Manage All Your Stock Assets & Licenses In One Place
  • Collaborate & Review Projects Remotely
  • Save Time and Money

Here’s the link to learn more.

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Tip #1036: Rough Cut Interviews in 6 Steps

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Tip #1036: Rough Cut Interviews in 6 Steps

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

These six steps keep the chaos at bay while editing interviews.

(Interview image courtesy of Pexels.com.)

Topic $TipTopic

This article, written by Joe Frederick, first appeared in PremiumBeat.com. This is a summary.

Editors on interview projects face an overwhelming task: reducing hours of footage into just minutes for the final cut. Eliminate that stress with these six steps.

1. Transcription. Getting your interviews transcribed is the best piece of advice I have for anyone cutting these types of videos. There are many, many advantages to getting your interviews transcribed. If the director suddenly wants to find a particular soundbite from a particular interview, you can easily search the transcription for particular key words or phrases. You can also skim through the interviews when away from the edit suite. The benefits are endless.

Before the transcription, it’s worth forming your multicam clips first, if you’ve filmed from multiple angles, so you can drag the multicam clip into your timeline and export the audio from there. That way, the timecode on your transcription will match the timecode of your interview timeline. This is vital if you want to keep your process efficient.

2. Highlighting. Read all the transcripts from beginning to end, highlighting anything and everything that might possibly be used in the edit. I usually open the PDFs in Preview, which allows you to use different colors when highlighting.

3. Create “Good Content.” Back in your NLE, go through all your interviews, cutting out any of your highlighted segments from each interview into a new project/sequence. Essentially you are building an unorganized selects reel. Put a text slide before each clip with the content of the sound bite. By now, you should have a sense of the organizational structure you are aiming for.

4. Create “Good Content Ordered.” Rearrange the selected sound bites into an order that makes sense.

5. Create “Content Cut.” Duplicate your project and rename it “Content Cut.” Because your footage is now in order, you’ll be able to see when you have repetition in what’s being said and can quickly delete it. Then, get busy deleting and whittling down your cut until it’s the length you want your final piece to be.

6. Create “Refined Content Cut.” Duplicate your project file once again and rename it Refined Content Cut. This is where the final finessing takes place.

By taking your project in stages, it helps you feel more in control which allows you to focus more on your story.

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