Dec 20
We love Vimeo because of their filmmaker-friendly attitude and focus. Now the good people at Vimeo are taking that an extra step further with Vimeo Video School.
Vimeo Video School is basically a curated and categorized directory of filmmaking tutorial videos on Vimeo, as well as original tutorial series by Vimeo themselves that take the form of both posts and videos.
Recently, I posted an article about the basics of removing audio problems, and the limitations that you face right out of the box when you go to fix some nasty audio. This time around, we are going to talk about removing a very specific type of audio problem: hiss.
What is Hiss?
Not to be confused with hum, hiss is a persistant noise on a recording that sounds like … well … hiss. Turn the sound up loud enough and you will almost always here some on your recording. A low levels, it isn’t much of a problem.
The problem is when you have hiss on a recording that is distracting – say from a bad microphone or from turning up low dialogue. You could also be trying to restore an old recording that has hiss on it. Wherever it comes from, however, it’s annoying and needs to be destroyed.
Many DiY-Filmmakers have likely heard of Comedy Central’s online comedy video site Atom.com. With video content provided by big name comedians like Kenan Thompson and Andy Dick, Atom.com is far from being an internet secret.
However, Atom.com prides itself in blending mainstream and indie media. One aspect that highlights this point may also be particularly useful to the DiY-Filmmaker, and that aspect is Atom’s World Famous Cash-Money Internet Comedy Tournament. The rules are simple, and best described by the site itself:
WHAT IS THE TOURNAMENT? The Tournament is a weekly competition beginning April 19, 2010 celebrating the funniest and most popular original comedy videos recently uploaded to Atom.com (“Atom”).
I tend to forget things. Although I never forget when to eat, I have been known to forget very fundamental things such as the need to bring the dog back in after taking her out. It’s a problem (sorry, my dog).
So when I am doing something video related, I like to bring a checklist. You know why? Because checklists are simple. They are idiot proof as long as you actually look at them. Here’s a primer 101 on how checklists work:
1. The checklist has a list of things to do.
2. If you do a thing, you check it off.
3. You keep doing things on the checklist until they are all checked off.
4. When they are all checked off, you are done.
Check that out. Simple. Effective. Idiot Proof.
A big part of people interested in DiY Filmmaking is people interested in documentaries, so I’ll be posting documentary-specific things on the site occasionally.
Reccently I came across this video from TED of a talk by Marc Pachter, who did a series of interviews for the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. The interviews were of people who had led extraordinary lives.
In this talk,Pachter talks about something you don’t hear a lot about – getting a good interview. A lot of people assume it’s easy – you sit down with someone and ask them questions – how hard can it be? However, Pachter gets much deeper into it – into the art of it – and comes up with some really fantastic advice.
Some of it is not applicable to documentarians, such as waiting until subjects are 50 and older, or battling for the audience’s attention on stage (the interviews were conducted in front of an audience), but give it a look, and you’ll find some fantastic bits of advice on how to approach your next interview.
About a month ago, we taught you an easy way to make a movie without a video camera. While simple and cost effective, this method still requires actors, a still camera and some video editing software… and although most people have access to all of these materials, there of still some of us who do not. If you are one of those people, or if you are simply looking for another fun way to tell your story, you may want to check out Text-To-Movie, an online module from Xtranormal.com that allows you to create short, animated movies right on the site.
About a month ago we talked about Vimeo and its benefits verses YouTube. We noted that Vimeo is much more conducive to the needs of filmmakers in that it provides a much cleaner interface to display your work, and is a great place to get advice from fellow filmmakers.
However, even if you vow to never post another one of your films to YouTube again, and have converted exclusively over to Vimeo, odds are you’ve still got a handful of videos that are already on YouTube and have been for quite some time. If this is true, then it’s just as likely that you’ve received plenty of feedback from fellow YouTubers on these videos, and that none of this feedback is particularly useful, helpful or encouraging. In fact, a lot of this feedback is probably cruel, hateful and often totally unrelated to the work itself.
As with any other place on the internet that give anonymous users the chance to voice their opinion, YouTube attracts people with problems. Seriously.
We here at DiY Filmmaking are not NL editing evangelists – Doug is a Sony Vegas man, and I like to sit down with my Final Cut Pro and go to town. We keep it peaceful.
However, if you are a Final Cut user, and you know you’re way around the program pretty well, check out the FCP Daily blog. I have been a Final Cut Pro user 6 years and found a ton of great tips that I am definitely putting to use. There are also a lot of great free resources you’d probably miss otherwise.
Be aware that this is not an ideal place to start for beginning Final Cut Pro
So Final Cut Pro power users, put this in your feed reader and starting impressing women with these sweet tips.
Feb 20
A blog I’ve really enjoyed reading lately is Vanish Production’s blog. They’re definitely of the do-it-yourself production mindset, and they’ve got some cool video, audio, and posts on DiY filmmaking from their experience making some shorts.
One post caught my eye that focuses on the DiY filmmaking “identity crisis”:
We’re not even DIY. God bless ya boys but we can’t relate. We immediately gloss over any blog posts involving money and/or budgets. Even the no-budget companies have budgets! Suggestions like “hire a cheap grip crew” or “barter with a catering company” fly straight out the window. You know our strategy? Ask a teenager from Mike’s landscaping crew if he wants to be a “sound engineer” and throw a couple bags of Doritos in the groceries for the week.
I agree with the sentiment. The term “DiY” is thrown around a lot in circles where a $6,000+ short is considered do-it-yourself, which is really misleading. $6,000 would cause Scrooge McDuck style money-swimming for most DiY filmmakers I know.
But what really defines do-it-yourself filmmaking? There has to be some sort of factor that we can zero in on.
If you’ve ever visited the office of a fully funded and large-scale production, you know that there is more than enough work to go around a sizable staff. While you may be using a spreadsheet in Google Docs to keep track of the financials, a larger production may have a dedicated accountant or even an entire accounting department. While people are shooting, more people are bringing in and organizing footage, editing, and doing all the little things that you need to keep a production moving along.
While you may be able to staff your production days with some people, it’s much more likely that once you sit down in the editing room chair or start to go through a bag of receipts, you’ll be flying solo. Because of this, it may be a little tougher to drill down and get things done.
But never fear! There are some great simple tools and techniques out there to help you stop wasting time during post production and plow through what you need to get done.
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The internet is chock full of how to guides for doing pretty much anything you can think of to make films on a budget. DiY Filmmaking is a blog that brings you the best and the worst of all that, plus great tips, tutorials, and guides of our own.
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