Making a "Making Of"

Got a big bite our of Final Cut Pro today. Allen gave me an assignment to create a "making of" the commercial we shot on Monday. I had access to most of the footage and stills and he provided a sound track. He didn't give me a time limit and he didn't remind me of how to cut things, I just got to go at it. At first, I had some difficulties because I hadn't touched the software in 2 weeks, but I got the basic hang of it. It took me a bit to just go through all the footage, but I narrowed myself down to a dozen (or two) shots to work from and just about as many stills.

Allen left shortly after he put me to work and Joe had an interview with a guy who might become an animating intern. When he left, I finally got to show Joe "Penguin Parade". He had some good things to say about it and some critical as well. But he also admitted to not being a gamer. However, he was of the mind that Purple Piece Games was my brianchild that I wanted to turn into a money-making enterprise. I sorta kept my mouth shut about that because I WOULD like Purple Piece Games to become a money-making enterprise, but it's just not feasible right now. He also told me I should hire an illustrator to do the artwork, but again, that kindof defeats the purpose of it being something Caleb and I do rather than just coming up with the games and having someone else do the artwork, even if it would look better. (we also can't really afford to pay someone for their time and artwork, which is also why I'm not using stock photos)

Anyway, when Allen did come back around 2 he also showed me how to digitize a beta tape. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough space on the harddrive, so I had to take some time to clean out some old high res files that they already had compressed versions of. When I finished that, I got back to the "making of" video. I thought I did alright having it go about 1:15 or so. When I showed Allen, he said it had to be cut way down! He hadn't given me a timelimit before, and I said so, but he said that that's how it'll work in the real world. Someone gives you a bunch of video and wants you to put it together and when you're done, tells you it's wrong. Well, Allen didn't say that, but that was the jist, even though what I did wasn't really "wrong" it was just "uneducated". I've never edited video before and I have no idea what the taboos are and hey, that's fine! That's apparetly how you learn in this biz.

So, no wipes needed, just regular cuts. I used some disolves and that seemed okay. I did two or three more cuts of it, cutting it down farther and farther, trying to get the right pacing and not repeating shots or getting bored with just stills or just video. I'm not sure how I did on that count, but again, I'm really just learning! You don't expect a 2-yr-old to walk a mile. As of now it's about :40 long, which was within the time limit Allen set (:30-:45). However, right as I think I'm about done, Allen drops another bombshell on me. "Oh, yea, most of this should be color corrected". *sigh* I know how to do that in Photoshop, but not in FCP. So he showed me some of the tricks and how to copy those filter attributes onto other clips and such. But it really was a "you gotta be kidding me" at the end of the day kind of thing. Only got some still and a few clips color corrected, but I think I'll be working on that next time.

So all in all, had a great learning day today. Kinda mad that for whatever reason, I can't play what I did on my own computer. I tried to export it so I could show Caleb, but it wouldn't even go in to MediaEncoder to compress it. I'll ask Allen about it on Monday. Already can't wait for next week!

[Hours: 10-5.30]