I’ve decided to post some tips/tricks (Trips!) I’ve found to be really useful in working with Avid and as an Assistant Editor that will both remind me later down the road and hopefully help out someone desperately searching for answers late at night online.

Two Ways to Recover Your Original Source Clip Filenames:

If you’ve changed your clip names in Avid, and didn’t copy the column over into another column like “Take” or “Comments” for reference later, you may have already noticed the problems that arise from this seemingly innocent act.
For my current project, there are hundreds of archive clips that all need to retain their original archive clip ID in order to find the clip again and order masters from the archive companies. Having not always kept the original name somewhere in a column of the bin, I’m wondering “How the hell do I know what clip is what without having to open each up and visually reference based on the backed up media?”

1. Reveal File
Though you have changed the clip name in the bin, the MXF file Avid created on the import retains the original clip name in the first part of the MXF file name. Reveal File shows you the exact file on whichever hard drive you loaded it to.
Copy and paste just the obvious clip name part of the file (and not the other Avid generated numbers and letters) back into the Avid in a column like “Comment”, in order to export an EDL with that info in it.

But just so you know, the Avid does cut off the character count of your filename after what appears to be around 18 characters and then just ignores the rest.  So I would still cross reference it with the backed up media if your filenames are longer than that.

2. Use FilmScribe and show column “UNC Path”
If you backed up your media, and imported it from where you backed it up from, FilmScribe (another option above EDL in the output menu) will tell you the file path from the imported file, which ultimately ends with the filename.

ex.: G:\Loaded\GettyImages\8jd9fle9.jpg
Copy and paste that last part into the Avid somewhere useful. And/or just give the archive person the FilmScribe printout/file/link. (Though I’d recommend keeping that information that you’ve just worked on relocating somewhere in the bin as well)

If the original location from where the file was imported was changed or deleted or moved somewhere else, I’m not sure if it still retains that information. You could always use the reveal file method instead.

However, both methods are a pain in the ass, so now that you’ve learned it’s a bad idea to get rid of the original clip names all together, don’t do it again! I’m making a habit of putting that info into the “Take” column, which wasn’t being used in our project. Maybe make your own column called “Clip Name” so that there isn’t much of a chance someone accidentally changes the column’s info on you. Then make sure to remind everyone on the project who may load something without you knowing, to keep up the same protocol.

While we’re at it, here are the nominees for the American Cinema Editors (ACE) Eddie Awards. The winners, which were announced on Valentine’s Day, are in bold.

BEST EDITED FEATURE FILM (DRAMATIC):

• Avatar – Stephen Rivkin, A.C.E., John Refua, A.C.E. & James Cameron, A.C.E.
• District 9 – Julian Clarke
• The Hurt Locker – Bob Murawski & Chris Innis
• Star Trek – Maryann Brandon, A.C.E. & Mary Jo Markey, A.C.E.
• Up in the Air – Dana Glauberman, A.C.E.

BEST EDITED FEATURE FILM (COMEDY OR MUSICAL):

• 500 Days of Summer – Alan Edward Bell
• The Hangover – Debra Neil-Fisher, A.C.E.
• Julie & Julia – Richard Marks, A.C.E.
• A Serious Man – Roderick Jaynes
• It’s Complicated – Joe Hutshing, A.C.E. & David Moritz

BEST EDITED ANIMATED FEATURE FILM:

• Coraline – Christopher Murrie & Ronald Sanders
• Fantastic Mr. Fox – Andrew Weisblum
• UP – Kevin Nolting

BEST EDITED HALF-HOUR SERIES FOR TELEVISION:

• 30 Rock: “Apollo Apollo”- Ken Eluto, A.C.E.
• Curb Your Enthusiasm: “The Bare Midriff” – Steven Rasch, A.C.E.
• Entourage: “The Sorkin Notes” – Steven Sprung, A.C.E.

BEST EDITED ONE-HOUR SERIES FOR COMMERCIAL TELEVISION:

• 24: “8pm-9pm” – Leon Ortiz Gil, A.C.E.
• Breaking Bad: “ABQ” – Lynne Willingham, A.C.E.
• ER: “And in the End” – Randy Jon Morgan, A.C.E. & Jacque Toberen
• Law & Order SVU: “Hardwired” – Karen Stern, A.C.E.
• Lost: “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham” – Christopher Nelson, A.C.E.

BEST EDITED ONE-HOUR SERIES FOR NON-COMMERCIAL TELEVISION:

• Dexter: “Living the Dream” – Stewart Schill
• Dexter: “Remains to be Seen” – Louis Cioffi
• True Blood: “Hard-Hearted Hannah” – Louise Innes

BEST EDITED MINISERIES OR MOTION PICTURE FOR TELEVISION:

• Grey Gardens – Alan Heim, A.C.E. & Lee Percy, A.C.E.
• Into The Storm – John Bloom & Antonia Van Drimmelen
• Taking Chance – Lee Percy, A.C.E. & Brian A. Kates, A.C.E.

BEST EDITED DOCUMENTARY:

• The Cove – Geoffrey Richman
• Food, Inc. – Kim Roberts
• This Is It – Don Brochu & Kevin Stitt, A.C.E.

BEST EDITED REALITY SERIES:

• The Deadliest Catch: Stay Focused Ordie – Kelly Coskran & Josh Earl
• Expedition Africa: Stanley and Livingstone – Jonathon Braun, A.C.E., Brad Ley, Sven Pape & Molly Schock
• Top Chef: The Last Supper – Annie Tighe, Alan Hoang, Adrienne Salisbury & Kevin Leffler

I compiled a list of every Best Editing Academy Award winner by year along side the Best Picture winners to see 1) Just a list of all the Best Editing winners all lined up, and 2) Which films won Best Editing and NOT Best Picture as well.  I plan to watch them all or at least start with those that won Best Editing and not Best Picture first.  I doubt I’ll go all the way down to the 1934 winner, but maybe just as far as the award seems currently relevant.  That’s probably somewhere around the early 60s with some exceptions lower.  Mary Poppins seems very modern to me.

So, in case anyone else is interested in a list laid out and easy to reference, here it is.  (There is also a column, if Best Picture and Best Editor winners don’t match, for whether the Best Picture winner was even nominated for Best Editing).

OscarEditWinners

I’m never super thrilled when it comes to the audio mixing portion of the editing process. It’s not really my thing. So certainly, already finding the whole process to be a challenge, I’m never going put the time in to record my own sound effects for every thing you hear in every project we do. Most of that is already recorded by someone who knows what they’re doing. And most of the time, that costs a lot of money to obtain. Especially if you want a decent selection.

But there are several sites out there that offer royalty free sound effects for people to download for free.  Here are a couple I use regularly.

Flash Kit

Flashkit.com is actually a resource site for Flash coders, but that includes sound effects and movie files like animations, that all of us can benefit from.  The files come in various formats like mp3, wav, flashtrak, etc and are mostly high quality and without extraneous noises around the sound.

You do need to kind of know what you’re looking for in order to find it.  Like know that you’re looking for a “swoosh” instead of a “swish.”  There are categories, but some SFX I’ve found in unexpected categories, so it’s not necessarily the end of your search if it doesn’t pop up on your first try looking.

The navigation menu is kind of small and off in the corner of the top of the page.  Click on Sound FX to get searching.

Flashkit’s usage guidelines.

Free Sound Project

freesound.org is a sound effects only site.  Anyone can submit their sound effects for people to download.  Like flashkit, you have to know how to accurately describe what you’re looking for in order to find it.  Free Sound also has some cool extra, collaberative type features like a section for “remixing” other people’s sounds, and contests for recording whatever the contest’s theme is.  Everything is free and downloadable in various formats like wav, mp3, and flac.

They also sell really cool looking t-shirts that if I was more of a sound person, I’d probably buy.

Free Sound Project Men's T-shirt in Red.

The sounds are usually high quality and they have a really wide variety of sounds to choose from.

Free Sound Project Usage Guidelines

Just today I discovered a site that has free, royalty free music!  When you just need a song in a pinch, these all seem really great.

You can search by genre or by “feeling,” which, while sounding really dorky, is quite useful.  The songs are perfect for when you need to set a mood or have a little jingle here or there and you don’t have time/money/need to have someone compose something every time.  Television and Radio use royalty free music left and right, and you can even find songs that aren’t deathly cheesey!  The songs I’ve listened to so far have been pretty complicated and un-cheesey.  Plus some contributors are making digital recordings of classical music.  Normally,while the songs are often royalty free, the recordings of them are not.

I haven’t looked too deeply into the site, but I was excited about the find enough to almost immediately make a post about it.

Check out:

incompetech.... Royalty Free Music and a bunch of other stuff.

It’s a really bare minimum site, and all I can really tell about the root site as a whole is that it’s a personal website  of a guy name Kevin from Brooklyn, with several contributors/collaberators and just a lot of interesting stuff on it.  (For example, many and various shaped graph paper templates!) There’s even a movie reviews section by his wife or sister or just some woman who coincidentally has the same last name as him.  And this! which I’m amused by, having grown up in Wisconsin.

Incompetech’s Music Usage Guidelines

All of the sites have donate buttons… so if you’re feeling charitable……!

If you know of any other good free, royalty free resource sites out there, feel free to comment with them and I’ll add them to the list.

I love Craigslist. From a filmmaker’s standpoint it’s a great place to find people, buy and sell gear, and keep yourself in the know about local productions. However, being a free service it’s become overrun with moochers looking for free labor, skilled crew positions and even their gear. This has begun spilling over into the larger industry job boards (such as Mandy.com) and is simply put poisoning the well of jobs for recent graduates and low-level professionals.

Look, I understand that there isn’t a lot of money in indie shorts these days. I also understand that you, the creator, don’t have a budget to properly shoot your vision, much less adequately compensate your crew.

The point is this: once you approach someone hat-in-hand looking for help, you lose ownership of the project. I’m not talking about ‘points’ or ‘deferred payment’ – because everyone knows that money doesn’t exist. I mean creative ownership. As Marion Ravenwood said, ‘you’re getting more than you bargained for. I’m your goddamn partner!’

... but the whole film was my idea!

So you’re looking for free labor, but what you should be looking for are collaborators. You’re a director with a script and you’ve done most of the legwork, planning out the shoot, arranging your friends so they each get the role you wrote for them, but that is unfortunately 0% of the work. Not saying it isn’t the most important part of making a good movie, but planning is not labor. It’s not gear, and it doesn’t cost money. No, what you need is an angel to descend from Heaven riding a white steadicam and wielding a fiery RED One. Here is how you get one:

1. Explain what the film is about. Sell the project.

Be upfront and excited about your movie. Tell us what it’s about, the genre, logline, even a paragraph or two to build up the story. You could even leave us hanging on the end. Maybe we’re that much more likely to contact you, and just reading the rest of the script becomes an interesting proposition. If your movie is worth making, we’d be happy to help out, but you have to sell us on it upfront. Go far enough to explain why this is an exciting opportunity for each specific crew position, and what your influences are. What will you be doing that will let a crew member experiment, be challenged, and shine?

2. Explain what your budget is, and where it is being spent.

Filmmaking costs money. It just does. If you’re not willing to pay for the thousands of dollars of gear you’re requiring crew to donate, what ARE you paying for? Does it make sense for the director to contribute 6 subs (cut in half) for the cast/crew each day for 4 days while the ‘Camera Assistant’ brings his $300/day HDcam, or the ‘Editing Assistant’ spends a week tying up her time on her own $5000 computer?

People who make material contributions to your film should be compensated for it. It’s that simple. Everyone buys their lunch, but throw the DP some money toward a new lens, and it’s a guarantee the money will end up on the screen. Pay-what-you-can models have been working for awhile now, and even if it’s very little, like $40/day, it’s still something and shows you understand the value of the gear and the skill to use it.

3. Explain what you’re going to do with the film after it’s made.

Everyone is going to work their tail off, and for what? “Festival run” doesn’t mean a lot if you’ve never had a festival run before. You definitely need a game plan, a marketing plan including a budget for submitting, prepping the press kit and a strategy for submitting. Start with smaller festivals and work up to the big ones? Who is in charge of making sure the submission package is in order? Who will make sure the film is on imdb? These are balls that too often get dropped, resulting in a finished film lost to history, or worse, one that’s never completed in the first place.

4. Show your track record and put a reel in the post.

If you’ve done this work before, have examples of your other films or a director’s reel handy. Link it in the crew call you put up on Craigslist. Make certain that people know you’re for real, and that you’ve actually completed projects in the past. If you haven’t directed before, surely you know someone with a short under their belt who will help out on the crew. Latch onto them, as “with the DP of X” looks better than nothing.

If you’ve got no filmmaking experience, and don’t know anyone who does, I would suggest that you take a long look at your blind jump into production, but definitely be upfront about it in the post. Say “I am inexperienced, but am looking forward to working with someone who can interpret and gently guide me to make this film a success” – people like to be the experts, so maybe you’ll get lucky and find a great partner. Just don’t expect anyone to deal with much of an attitude on the set.

"Assistant Camera Operator needed. Must have own Canon 5D Mark ii and lenses. Unpaid."

5. Make sure the person providing the gear is given total responsibility over the gear provided.

This means I could just as easily drop it off and go home. In fact, I’m sure the ad writer would prefer that, unless you want me there specifically to show you how to use it. Is it my camera? Then I am nobody’s assistant, and am a full-on Camera Operator or even Director of Photography. Otherwise, nobody else touches the gear, since it likely cost more than your shoot.

"...will make great industry contacts."

6. Don’t bother offering ‘contacts’ – Friends do favors, everyone else gets taken advantage of

No. Industry players would pay people involved in their productions. I would be meeting more starving artist types (admittedly, like myself) and just become a number to call when they need hundreds or even thousands of dollars worth of labor, free. There are plenty of organizations out there to meet great industry types; while on the set I’ll be working. If I hand a business card to the gaffer during a shot, you can fire me.

7. Have a clear, set-in-stone schedule

Tell me exactly when you’re shooting. Even if you took time off from work for the shoot, the odds are very good that your free crew did not. How many weekends will you be shooting? How long is the day? Don’t keep free labor any longer than necessary. Ever. In fact, try to get out early every day, bring out a case of beer and hang around, making a point to thank each and every person, mentioning something they did during the day that ‘made the shoot’

8. Don’t try to invent ‘payment’ in the form of credits or a copy of the film, or certainly ‘reel material’

Credits, copies, and reel clips do not represent a ‘reward’ and should not be sold as one. Instead they reflect the work put in by the entire crew and are everyone’s property, not yours to dole out on the barrel-head at the end of the shoot. Be upfront about what someone is getting in return. If it’s nothing, being clear on these other 9 points will help you convince them that working with you (not for you) is worth their time and gear.

"... but I really just direct. I wouldn't have anything else to offer in exchange. I could mow your lawn?"

9. Offer Barter!

Okay, so a guy is about to cancel two weekends to pack up his mics and come boom your short film with no expectation of compensation. What can you do for him? If you have the scheduling down, you’ll know when you will be free. Offer to help him with a project, either crew, production (since you’ll have experience putting a team together!) or in any other capacity.

Return the favor of free labor. Don’t make him ask, either. Offer it up willingly, even going so far as to encourage him to make his own short.

10. Don’t expect menial labor.

Offer everyone working that’s for free a position at least one, possibly two steps above what they would do for money. This means that Assistant Editors become Editors, that Camera Assistants become Operators and DPs, and PAs get to Grip or help run the lights/sound.
If you ask for someone whose job will be to get you coffee, or to hand water to the cast, they’d better either be related to you, or owe you a favor from something else. In fact, I would suggest that a great way to build camaraderie on the set is for you, the director, to start each shooting day by getting the coffee for your crew. We always keep a box available on shoots, and gopher is not in anyone’s job description.

Are you a business? Then none of this applies to you.

Either you don’t need the crew, or they are adding value to the project and should be paid accordingly. Doesn’t matter if it’s spec, or a podcast, or whatever. If you aim to receive money for the work, or ’someday turn it into more’ then you are making an investment and nobody working with you should be forced to assume your risk.

Are you crew? Looking for work?

Don’t sell yourself short for a project you don’t believe in. Remember that what you don’t get in money, you need to get in happiness and a positive shoot experience! Roughly speaking, this is what you are worth to the production each day:

PA                 $100-$150
Grip               $125-$175
*Script Supervisor $200-$250
Gaffer             $200-$250
Hair/Make-Up       $150-$200 (plus kit)
Camera Assistant   $150-$200
Camera Operator    $200-$250
Sound Technician   $175-$250
DP                 $300-$400
*Assistant Editor  $200-$250
Editor             $400-$500

*Try to make a point to pay this person SOMETHING, as their brains will melt from the amount of concentration and effort they put into doing this job well.

Providing gear? Divide the cost of your gear by about 20 to determine what it is worth as a rental. That’s sometimes a low estimate, and you’re better off looking up local rental houses to see real prices of your exact equipment (then knock about 25% off for their ’special rates’)

Consider what you’re worth when you’re asked to work for free, and you’ll be much more well-armed toward working good, professional projects that further your career.

Reviews and commentary are out about the new FCP release and from reading what they have to say, I’m not thrilled. Actually, I couldn’t care less. How do people keep the faith in this program when all Apple ever does (When they ever do anything for Final Cut) is release things that are “Just like [blank program] does it!”? Sure, it has some new additions now and then, but with so many seemingly obvious features missing that are covered by other programs, usually the largely more used Avid, why would you even keep buying and using Final Cut? Especially since they weren’t even at NAB. They’ve shown they don’t really give a crap about video editing.
Maybe if they renamed it iVideoEditingProgram, it would have more attention by the developers. Rename plugins to “apps” and suddenly people will care!

I started up working on Bartender Wars again after the break between the pilot and the second episode shoot.

You’d be surprised how much more willing people are to play along once they’re wasted.

Watch it on FLN starting October 10th!

My previous reel was geared more toward the Pixar Standard for demo reels.  I think it ends up being slightly less impressive to those who want a song and glitz.  I actually think the Pixar way is more practical for showing you can edit, rather than showing you can edit a demo reel with clips to short to gather what the technique was.  I tried to find a mid ground with slightly longer clips so you get the idea, and it fits to the music.

Some new animations, new clips from shorts, and a whole bunch more examples of color correction.

Ta Da!