Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Frugality, Part One

I spent yesterday cutting Frugal Traveler: American Road Trip.

It was a fun experience, and you really learn a lot editing on a tight deadline. More on the experience in future weeks: there are eleven more of these scheduled....

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Ted,

Thanks for the comment! Yeah, I enjoyed the first two episodes (or the intro and then episode 1?). I'll be looking forward to the coming series.

Are you on the road with him, or is he mailing you (or emailing) his footage? Seems cumbersome. When I did my road trip vlogging, I edited myself on my lappy in motels and campgrounds and then uploaded at coffee shops... not easy, either, but...

Also, I was interested that the first travel episode looks very "swimmy" like he's using a super slow shutter speed. How come?

Ted Fisher said...

Hey Mark,

Good to hear from you.

Strangely enough, I have never met the Traveler in person. I worked from home yesterday for the project, and could not pick him out of a police line up.... And since I only worked on this "episode one" and not the first intro piece, we've never been in the same room. It's kind of funny, really.

The process is that he's shooting, then editing down the shots and scripting. Then, after script approval, recording a voiceover and uploading that to an ftp site. I then grab the files and edit - eventually showing a rough draft to the folks at the Times, getting comments on that and finalizing and posting for upload.

We were able to confer by IM, which was really helpful and leaves open the option of changes if the material needs it.

As to the look on the first one, again, I didn't work on that one so my guess is that the concept was to keep his identity secret and the slow shutter was the solution.

You know -- in case he has to fight crime while finding travel bargains....

It will be interesting to see how the summer goes. I think the main challenge will be finding the really interesting characters out there in the world. I'll be really happy to see that happen.

tf

Anonymous said...

Cool! Thanks for the info. Very interesting. I wonder what their strategy is by keeping him anonymous. I mean, you can google the dude and find photos of him if you were really sleuthy. ;) I guess since he's already famous (thanks, NYT!) he wants to make non-biased judgments about the places he visits. Hmm...

Anywho, keep up the good work! I'll be watching! And I subscribed to the blog, so I'll know what you're up to in the future! :)