Two Upcoming Screenings

February? Already? Unbelievable.

This weekend Blind Faith: A Film About Seeing -- a film I co-directed in a sort of co-op approach -- will be screening at the Picture This Film Festival in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. I really really really wanted to go, but with so much going on will have to watch from afar. The film received an Honourable Mention, and if you visit the festival's site you can see the festival jury provided some lovely comments.

February 20th, my brand new film To Get to the Other Side will screen at EgoFest Short Video Film Festival in Brainerd, Minnesota.

I love the way EgoFest has developed -- it features 40 shorts by 30 directors, and has shown a truly indie approach: many of the filmmakers became aware of the festival on Twitter thanks to the efforts of festival director Phillip Holbrook. With a no-application-fee / filmmaker-friendly approach (including a smart deadline extension), the festival has set the bar high for openness. I was able to get questions answered about the fest almost instantly, and the tone has been all about the fun of independent film.

I won't be able to join any road trip to Brainerd this time, but you can bet I'll be watching for next year's fest.

Color Coded Keys

A little pre-term session today.

Those little color-coded-keyboards? I don't like them.

For one: no little fingerbumps on the "f" and "j" keys.

Secondly, if the idea is that I'm going to look down at the keys, find the right color and the right symbol, click it, then look back up at my screen ... then I'm going to work much much slower than by getting used to thinking in terms of letters and working by touch. I mean, I think "tap j" and -- since I know how to type -- I don't look down.

The other reason: if you moved to a station with a normal keyboard you'd be lost. Maybe you could bring highlighters, and color code it yourself?

Documentaries in the News, ChimpCam Edition

Sure, you can trace the physiological basis of editing to the fact that we see the world in blinks. That's no big surprise, when you realize that Chimps can edit.

Of course, first they need to settle a typical Producer / Director on-set squabble. You know how that goes.

Movie made by chimpanzees to be broadcast on television

On top of the box was a video screen that showed live images of whatever the camera was pointing at. Initially, the chimps were more interested in each other than the video technology, as two male chimps within the study group vied to become the alpha male, disrupting the experiment. But over time, some of the chimps learned how to select different videos to watch.

I'm just curious if they'll get the IMDB credit.

Polanski Petition Update

I've shared my opinion on the Polanski Petition -- signed by a number of people in the film industry -- previously:

Facts Matter
Polanski Update
“The director of the documentary told me..."
Less Hypothetically
So Far In The Past

Now there's a little new news:

Judge: Polanski must come to L.A. to be sentenced in child-sex case

A judge has rejected director Roman Polanski's bid to be sentenced in absentia in a three-decade-old child-sex case. Judge Peter Espinoza ruled that Polanski, 76, will have to come back to Los Angeles to be sentenced. "I have made it clear he needs to surrender," the judge said.

So, do the signers of the Polanski Petition feel strongly enough to stand behind the director as the proceedings move to the courts?

To Get to the Other Side

Back on Halloween, I made this post about preparing to shoot a mini-documentary on the New York City Marathon as it passes through my neighborhood.

Well, I've been in the midst of a lot of other work, some of it quite uncooperative and confusing. But...

It's done. It's six minutes and ten seconds long, and sort of quirky. I'm sending it off to a few festivals in tomorrow's mail. I'll post more details soon, and we'll see how it goes.

The Canon Files

Over on my other blog, I've made a few posts giving a little background information as we go through the process of shooting a short interview-based documentary using a Canon 7D. For example:

First Canon 7D Test
Second Canon 7D Test
Working with the Canon 7D

Thursday the first interview session was completed, so I'm going to give some details on the technical specifics in case anyone finds that useful.

The 7D records H.264 format files onto memory cards and those files should be transcoded to a format that works better in your nonlinear editing software. The H.264 QuickTime files that come straight out of the camera can be imported into most editing packages, but don't seem to perform well unless transcoded to a format like Apple ProRes. This results in larger files, but the new files work well for the editing process.

The specifics for our shoot:

1. the session resulted in 5 gigabytes of files.

2. when these files were transcoded to ProRes, the total expanded to 14 gigabytes.

3. that means transcoding to ProRes format expanded them to about 3 times larger (in filesize).

4. one file, shot at 1920 by 1080 dimensions and 24 progressive frames per second, was 9 minutes long and resulted in a 3 gigabyte file. So, for an interview, we saw 3 minutes equal about 1 gigabyte of filesize (as an H.264 QuickTime).

So, our first rule-of-thumb estimation:

In camera, you might get about 3 minutes of shooting time for each gigabyte of storage.

After transcoding to ProRes, your files may blow up about 3 times larger.

So: 3 minutes a gigabyte in camera. 1 minute a gigabyte after the transcoding to ProRes.

Easy to remember. We'll see if that holds up through the next interviews.

Next time: transcoding time.