It’s a short that we wrote a couple years ago and then shelved. We haven’t looked at it since, but several months ago I got some feedback on it from some great folks over on ChristianFilmmakers.org. That gave me a direction for improvement. A few days ago, I started to rework the story a little, and now I have a finished treatment. Hopefully, I’ll get going on actually writing the screenplay very soon.

By the way, here’s a Celtx tip. I discovered the other day that you can add a Novel to any Celtx project. So I added a Novel to write my treatment in. Handy to have everything in one project.

So that’s what’s up with us. More later!

I’m still on FCP 7 myself. But I’ve been trying to educate myself about the new version, which I will likely be upgrading to before September, by reading as much as I can on the subject. I’ve found some great information out there, so I thought I’d do a roundup blog post to pass it along.

So first of all, there’s been a lot of backlash from “professional” editors (whatever that term means in their eyes) to say that FCP X doesn’t do what they need it to do. My favorite quote on the subject is

Here’s the thing: In a time when minor aesthetic updates to Facebook’s home page are greeted with petitions that attract thousands of users, is it any surprise that a radically different Final Cut Pro would be met with resistance?

That ’bout hits the nail square on the head.

When the product first launched, Larry Jordan (who had pre-release time with FCP X) posted a great blog post with some pros and cons of the product. He compared FCP X with FCP 7 and even recommended when we should upgrade. In his opinion, anybody who doesn’t jump ship will be on FCP X and lovin’ it in eighteen months, tops. Later, he recommended that we wait at least a month for the dust to settle before we jump overboard.

David Pogue did an excellent roundup of various complaints about missing features, explaining that some features were not missing but merely moved. Better still, he managed to get official statements from Apple about the features that really were gone. (Philip Hodgetts did a similar post which is also very worth the read.)

Meanwhile, a petition appeared, demanding that Apple bring back FCP 7. However, Philip Hodgetts quickly responded with a post denouncing the petition. Apparently, his name is on it without his permission. He gave details about better ways to tell Apple your complaints.

A hilarious Mac vs. PC ad spoof showed up, with FCP 7 and FCP X going at it hammer and tongs.

While we’re on YouTube, Alex Lindsay, Mark Spencer, and Steve Martin did a roundtable discussion of FCP X, demoing pieces of it, answering questions, and generally being helpful for two whole hours. Not to mention the sweet studio tour at the end.

Tao of Color Grading discussed where we’ll be without Color, reviewed the new Color Board, and gave some nice color grading tips into the bargain. They also impressed me enough that I subscribed to their e-mail list.

The dust settled a little bit when Apple posted its own response in the form of a handy FAQ page and a new page highlighting the professional-grade features in FCP X. (One of the big accusations is that Apple deliberately alienated the professional market segment.) Best out of that FAQ is that Apple mentions several key FCP 7 features that are on the way in future updates. Apple even went as far as to say that we’ll see an update this summer.

To round this blog post out, here are some training links that I have enjoyed… First is Steve Martin’s Final Cut Pro X training, running five hours and available for $40. But he has some nice free samples, so check those out. And Izzy Video has a completely free 2.5+ hour training series as well.

All in all, I’m excited about Final Cut Pro X. I can’t wait to get my hands on it, though I don’t know if I will be editing any “real” projects on it anytime soon. But this looks like the future of editing, and the future is bright. Very bright. In fact, I’m getting out my sunglasses.

(Click to enlarge.)

Lately, I’ve been working hard both learning how to dialogue edit and mix sound, and also applying that new knowledge to the project. I got a great book called Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures: A Guide to the Invisible Art. It’s been a fantastic help.

The book starts out with the history of dialogue editing and then explains how to get all the pieces you’ll need on a big production. Not necessarily useful to me, but it was interesting.

That’s the first third of the book. For the rest, it’s all practical hands-on stuff about the dos and don’ts of dialogue editing. And it’s more principles than rules (or should I say guidelines?). If you read this book, you will learn how dialogue editing works and you will be able to apply it.

So I’ve been doing that.

In other news…

I spent a good bit of yesterday syncing up the good audio for A House for Marge. In retrospect, Ruth and I decided that there is probably a better way to do this. I set to investigating possible solutions and I think we’ve got something now for use on future shoots.

Rebekah and I are doing April Script Frenzy. She’s ahead of me. By tons. We’re hoping that this will give us two new feature scripts to work with.

And I created a new video the other day. It’s me playing a hammered dulcimer, just for fun.

That’s about all for now. More later!

(Click to enlarge.)

Sounds disgusting, but it’s actually good! This is when we say the edit looks great, so we’re going to reimport all the footage used at high quality. Previously on A House for Marge, we’d been working with proxy footage.

This is actually doubly exciting for us, as this is the first time we’ve ever done this sort of thing. Previously, we’d been using tape as recording media, which is finicky when trying to handle a proxy cut, plus the fact that Final Cut Express doesn’t do that. Now, with tapeless media and Final Cut Pro, we can save disk space with a proxy cut.

It’s always exciting when you get to the rough cut stage. At that point, though the film is still aways from finished, you can sit down and watch the whole thing straight through!

As of last night, we’re at that point on both. Whoopee!

It’s momentous enough that I thought it warranted a blog post.

It’s like putting a puzzle together. A puzzle that we created without entirely knowing what the picture would look like. Fun, in a mind-bending sort of way.

Continuity rocks.

Right now, I don’t really have any idea when we’ll get to the book trailer. We’ve discussed a few possibilities, and even wondered if we should come right out and say what we’re doing because it will likely be awhile. That way, we could post behind-the-scenes stuff more freely. Tell us what you think.

Here’s one more less-spoilery photo to tide you over. My brother Ben getting a makeup job:

Seriously, though. Recently, I learned about a very neat transition in Final Cut. Introducing… The Gradient Wipe!

(Disclaimer: Remember when I talked about cheesy transitions? A gradient wipe can be just as cheesy if you overdo it. Don’t.)

Okay, with that out of the way, let’s jump in. First of all, what is a gradient wipe? My local dictionary says nothing on the subject, so you can make up your own definition based on the explanation. Let’s play with a gradient wipe.

Add a gradient wipe between two clips just like you would any other transition. Now, for basic experimentation, find the second clip in your browser and drag it into the slot I’ve pointed out in the picture. Drag the softness slider up a bit, play the video, and you should see something pretty interesting. Here’s what I got:

Gradient Wipe from Phantom Moose Films on Vimeo.

Pretty neat, huh? Let me explain how it works. When you added the clip to the slot, you added a matte. Final Cut uses this matte to decide which areas of the shot to transition first. Darker areas at the beginning, lighter areas last. We can use this to our advantage to make a very artsy transition.

You’re going to need Photoshop or some similar photo editing application for these next examples. Launch Photoshop and create a new image the size of your video. Make sure your foreground and background colors are black and white, then do Filter>Render>Clouds. Save that image and bring it into Final Cut.

Drop your new cloud picture into the matte slot on your gradient wipe. Play it and see what happened. Here’s mine:

Cloud Gradient Wipe from Phantom Moose Films on Vimeo.

Let’s make this even more interesting. Remember the movie National Treasure? When Riley is explaining to Ben the security surrounding the Declaration of Independence, there’s a really neat shot of “kids on their eighth grade field trip.” The kids come in first, and then the background fades in behind them.

The filmmakers probably did a lot of motion tracking and matting and such to pull off this shot. Here’s a low-budget/lower-time way to get the same effect with a gradient wipe.

First, shoot some video of your people walking in front of something. Plan ahead more than I did and make sure they stand out against the background. The key to making this work without too much hassle is to have your subject stay still for a few seconds before they start to move.

Bring that video into Final Cut, and then export a frame of the part where your subject is standing still. Open the image in Photoshop.

Do a nice cutout job of your subject and get them on a separate layer. Get rid of the background and make it white. For the foreground, you have two options. You can either shade your subject all black to make them fade in all at once, or, as in the National Treasure effect, paint your subject in gradually lightening shades. Remember, darker fades in first.

Once you’ve saved that, bring it back into Final Cut and drop it in the matte slot. You may have to do some adjustments, but you should come out with something like this:

Complex Gradient Wipe from Phantom Moose Films on Vimeo.

As you can see, the possibilities are nearly endless. If you come up with anything interesting, leave a comment linking to your video. I’d love to see it!