… for Random Weirdness

Tip #291: 12 Documentary Editing Tips

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

These steps will help you organize and focus your work.

Michael Maher first wrote about this for PremiumBeat. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of editing a documentary is the amount of unscripted responses during interviews. Here are twelve tips to help you focus.

1. Organize Folder and Label Bins. There is SO MUCH content in a feature that organization is critical. Consider using Post Haste, from Digital Rebellion. This free program instantly creates folder structures from templates, such as video editing, motion graphics, visual effects and more.
2. Create Sequences for Individual Interviews. Rather than build everything into one master sequence, divide the work. This allows you to quickly build selects from an interview and also simplified later transcription.
3. Transcribe all footage. New automated speech-to-text transcriptions can often get you close enough for editing. And editing from a transcripts is MUCH faster.
4. Backup everything. Always. All the time. Like every night.
5. Edit for a Story Arc. Whether it’s a documentary or work of fiction, every film needs to tell a story. In doing so, you want to make sure you have a beginning, middle, and end. In that series of events, you want to take your audience on an emotional roller-coaster — or story arc. It doesn’t matter if your documentary is two minutes long or two hours, if the story doesn’t progress — don’t expect anyone to watch.
6. Use Close-up and Medium Shots More Than Wide Shots. Wide shots are great for establishing a scene or as an introduction to a new speaker, but they aren’t enough. By cutting to medium shots and close-ups, you are making the speaker more relatable. The medium shot is most often used for conversational pieces, as the audience feels the subject is right there talking to them. However, documentary films frequently use close-ups of only a speaker’s head. This is common due to the varying sets and backgrounds that can be jarring when cutting between speakers.
7. Cut on Action. Actions make perfect cutting points that seem natural.
8. Cut on Dialogue. Cut to words with a strong pronunciation. Also, cut at the beginning of a new sentence/theme.
9. Avoid Jump Cuts. Hide cuts by switching angles, or covering edits with B-roll.
10. Use Photos When You Don’t Have Footage. Still photos can help you hide edits or break away from static shots.
11. Keep Graphics and Lower-Thirds Easy to Read. You don’t need a ton of moving parts or motion graphics. In fact, text with a drop shadow is the most common lower third for a reason. It’s simple and legible. Be sure to also use a font that is easy to read, as well as a nice font color. Don’t go crazy.
12. Build an Archive of Assets. Keep media you can use across projects in a handy folder.

… for Random Weirdness

Tip #158: Monitor Energy Usage

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

Use this to conserve energy when running on battery.

Hidden in Applications > Utilities is a powerful measurement tool called: Activity Monitor. Type Shift + Cmd + U to open the Utilities folder. Double-click Activity Monitor to start the app.

Activity Monitor allows us to measure current activity in five key areas:

• CPU
• Memory (RAM)
• Energy
• Disk (local storage)
• Network (both Internet and other network-connected devices)

Most of the time, I’m running on AC power. However, for users running their laptops on battery, energy conservation is critical. Activity Monitor makes monitoring energy usage easy. Here’s how.

Click the Energy tab at the top. The Energy pane shows overall energy use and the energy used by each app:

• Energy Impact: A relative measure of the current energy consumption of the app. Lower numbers are better. A triangle to the left of an app’s name means that the app consists of multiple processes. Click the triangle to see details about each process.
• Avg Energy Impact: The average energy impact for the past 8 hours or since the Mac started up, whichever is shorter. Average energy impact is also shown for apps that were running during that time, but have since been quit. The names of those apps are dimmed.

BONUS

NOTE: If you run Activity Monitor on a laptop, you’ll see additional battery statistics at the bottom.

As energy use increases, the length of time that a Mac can operate on battery power decreases. If the battery life of your portable Mac is shorter than usual, you can use the Avg Energy Impact column to find apps that have been using the most energy recently. Quit those apps if you don’t need them, or contact the developer of the app if you notice that the app’s energy use remains high even when the app doesn’t appear to be doing anything.

… for Random Weirdness

Tip #156: Measure CPU Performance on Your Mac

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

Activity Monitor displays how hard your CPU is working.

Hidden in Applications > Utilities is a powerful measurement tool called: Activity Monitor.

• Type Shift + Cmd + U to open the Utilities folder. Double-click Activity Monitor to start the app.

Activity Monitor allows us to measure current activity in five key areas:

• CPU
• Memory (RAM)
• Energy
• Disk (local storage)
• Network (both Internet and other network-connected devices)

Click the CPU tab at the top to display all the software currently running on your system. You won’t recognize most of these, because many of the programs your Mac runs are background tasks.

The graph at the bottom (see the screen shot) shows total CPU effort called “CPU Load.” Red indicates tasks running under the control of the operating system. Blue shows tasks that you have started. The maximum CPU % is based on the number of cores in your computer times 100. So a four-core system has a maximum of 400% CPU activity.

I often look at this to see what my CPUs are doing and how hard they are working. This also allows me to cancel any non-critical tasks that are using up too much CPU time.

BONUS

You can also see CPU usage or history in a separate window or in the Dock:

• To open a window showing current processor activity, choose Window > CPU Usage. To show a graph of this information in your Dock, choose View > Dock Icon > Show CPU Usage.
• To open a window showing recent processor activity, choose Window > CPU History. To show a graph of this information in your Dock, choose View > Dock Icon > Show CPU History.

Energy usage related to CPU activity is incorporated into the energy-impact measurements in the Energy tab of Activity Monitor.

… for Random Weirdness

Tip #165: Turn Old Phones Into Wireless Mics

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

A cool way to repurpose older technology.

Eric Escobar wrote about this in The Beat:

While old phones don’t work well as multifunctional smart phones anymore, they are capable of doing some amazing things. For example, recording high-quality, high bit-rate audio. With the right microphone attachment, an old iPhone becomes a wireless portable audio source with built-in power and storage.

For example, pair an inexpensive used Movo PM10 lavalier-style mics as a body mic for on camera talent. A setup that’s great for capturing on-set audio for very little money.

Keep in mind that using an older iPhone means that you give up real-time audio monitoring. For some, that’s a deal-breaker. For others, the savings in dollars makes the risk worthwhile. The basic trade-off is inexpensive gear vs. not knowing what you’ve got until after the recording stops.

For recording software, Eric recommends the free TASCAM PCM Recorder. It records 44.1khz audio at 16 bits right off the built-in mic or any external mic plugged into the headphone jack. It is a “two button” operation, meaning you have to click the red record button first, then the green play button to get it to “roll” just like an old DAT recorder. That may be anachronistic, which is fine. There are literally a dozen other free-to-cheap apps that will let you record audio on your phone at 48khz in 16-bit. Find the one that matches your style.

NOTE: Remember, video records audio at a 48k sample rate. It is best to match external audio recorders to that sample rate.

He has more recommendations. Click the link above to read the whole article.