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First Shoot Post-Production

You know post production and editors uh khun b your angels with wings uh they can really take something that, um as a director or producer you just go and shake your head go while uh that may be the last thing I ever shoot and you hand it to someone who's talented on these post side and they come back to you with something that, uh is not only better er than what you thought you could get uh but sometimes just makes your work rice to another level that's why I personally make a point a lot of people are asking do you learn final cut pro? I of course I've learned final cut pro and of course I've cut some of my own stuff because if I don't do that, I'm not going to learn to be a good director or filmmaker because you need to learn how to put the pieces together to be able to shoot for them at the same time on all the products that I work, I seek out an editor before I shoot anything and have a discussion with them will do that today, but uh editors could be your best friends and um pleas...

e make him don't make the mistake of undervaluing what they do in that same realm a cz editors we have to be very chameleon like in terms of our roles some people we work with very much like us to press the keys they want preston do exactly what they want other people to give us a box of tapes and they come back from the week to see what we've done so you as producer director can define that role you need to give the editor they create a freedom that you want them to have and at other times pulled those reins back in and let us know thanks for your input but I really need to head in this direction and get it done so yesterday for those of you that we're watching we ended the day on an experiment where we had the students for the first time get together assume these new role they just been uh uh there's had just discovered and we asked them to shoot very straightforward interview and uh it didn't go smoothly uh it's probably worth the entertainment value to purchase this workshop just to watch what happened yesterday afternoon uh because while you won't be taught how to do things, you will be shown how not to do it and that's I think it's a tremendous value in that as a teacher to see other people make mistakes and uh that way hopefully you'll make them yourself um and uh I would save show of hands in this room and on a show of hands because no one's seen what it has put together how many of you think we, uh at the end of the day yesterday decided you know let's just kind of forget that ever happened and let's absolutely not ever look at this ever again just move forward, raise it. Raise your hand. All right. So, uh how many of you think there's a usable piece out of that cool how you possible thing? How long? Well, uh ed, um why don't you show them the final piece that you were able to cobble together? Um and, uh the key point uh, that I want share is that, um there's what? We shot a near view, but I also made sure that during the day uh you may have seen some students step away from the classroom they went around and shot what is called b roll? Uh, one of the word b roll comforts like literally the role of yeah, it's when we did a b roll in film and this is really gone back for may we had we had to build separate roles on the roll was typically your main shot and then he had overlapping was a separate physical real that was on the b roll. That was to cover the edits you made on the aerial right, so, you know, in today's terms, a role is like the principal interview with the meat and b roll is the fat and you put a little meat and fat together and you get a sausage and hopefully the sausage tastes good um but, uh the way that you cover yourself for a less than perfect interview um and also to keep people engaged is that when you work on a documentary and or an interview uh people could only watch two people talking back and forth to one other for so long it gets a bit boring so even when you want to fifty minutes, which is a show that's very dependent on that interview between the star uh uh anchor whoever it is and the interviewee they're splicing in a tremendous amount of b roll that shows that illustrates what's being talked about or if you don't have that wonderful quote during the interview, you can illustrate it or show it in the b roll so er very important concept and um and the b rules also used like a magician uses, you know distraction. We can't work our editorial magic if everything's out in the open so you know much like a magician wave their hands up magically there's a pen in this year's that b roll I can show you something else while ice ice on dice the audio like crazy to get the message down so I take a peek let's take a peek so this is the raw ingredient what I've done here on the screen just for the viewers who didn't see yesterday it's a two camera is so um pretty straightforward there's an edit in the middle because we had a garbage truck I left a little bit of slop in there so you could identify that this piece is about two minutes long and when you said I saw you meant uh it's an isolated camera feed from each camper you know what I saw means two photographers probably nothing. You know, I s o r t safe for me but I have to point out how language is just yeah, that will not even get into what a clothes pin is called. All right, let's take a peek at the raw today I'm talking with greg swanson he's one of the creative masterminds of creative live so hi, craig all right, how you doing today? I'll tell us a little bit about creative live what is it? Well, you're experiencing crave life to some extent right now but crave life is an online worldwide training classroom. We're broadcasting classes on all shapes and sizes and there's a lot of moving pieces to this place. So how long have you been doing creative live way started my company started working in training about four years ago and basically spent about four years tweaking the model just trying different approaches really struggle what's the vision of creative life what are you trying to accomplish with it? Well, chase services spoke about the democratization of creativity and about production. Basically we're entering a new world where the tools of the communicate, all the barriers are breaking down and there's a lot of people that don't have access to some of the really great information that has been kind of kept in in one place, you know what is happening right here is usedto used to take a trip across the united states a dedicated weekend thousands of dollars to get the type of information that we're getting today and here it's just being broadcast freely across the entire planet, we've got people participating from australia, new mexico, new zealand, all well, I guess I'm kind of picking just united states in australia, but all over the appointment and it's really exciting. So give us some idea of the breath of the classes that you offer way are covering all sorts of creative topics, from software programming to traditional computer graphics software like photoshopped and illustrator to traditional fine art watercolor painting, and I'm sure I'll be doing the acrylics know things like that, including a huge number of classes in photography and other related visual arts will be coming in with video editing and all sorts of other classes as they come up, so let me try your mix some terrific irony that one of the single biggest problems of the video it's that I'm walking in the back of one shot the entire time and sarah's doing it too I'd like to claim that was doing it on purpose uh, that I will admit readily that you know, things were going pretty badly yesterday and that my mind wasn't really on the final result, I was trying to make something salvageable, but there is a quite a terrific irony in that write that here I am in the back going like this the entire time, so we'll talk about how ed hopefully fix that and just can't let him take over from here his build you want for the final piece I can certainly the building blocks your choice. Uh get to the final. Let me just show you a real quick one of the things I noticed when I am took a look at what I had to work with for raw ingredients um and uh the thing that I recognizes in video production we live within a exceptionally finite time space money continuum so you have to quickly come to terms with working within the resource is doing the best you have giving those constraints so you need to look at a shot like this on set and say, can I live with this shot for the rest of my life? Given the time I have to set it up. I personally would not want the light panel shoot right. His glasses. I might have them removed the glasses, and this is two cameras. So this is shot of, uh, one speaker. He was. If you see here, his head size is dramatically larger. If they actually look like that and you saw them together in the supermarket, you're going to take a picture of one of them. There's just no way. Way. So, you know, you just need teo. Look at that stuff. I also was lucky enough to observe the actual interview, which I don't get to do a lot. Um, and I didn't really see anybody listening on the crew to what they were saying. That was the whole point of setting up all that stuff was what they said. So, you know, just normally is an editor. I would get this content and your notes on what you liked about what they had, what you didn't like. What so let's, uh, given, given those constraints that I had let's take a peek it what we ended up with. Today I'm talking with greg swanson he's, one of the creative masterminds of creative live by craig tell us a little bit about creative alive what is it? Create? Blood is a long line worldwide training classroom we're broadcasting classes on all shapes and sizes. So how long have you been doing created alive? Michael bay started working in training play about four years ago what's division of creative live what you trying to accomplish with democratization of creativity and about production? There's a lot of people that don't have access to some of the really great information that has been kind of kept in one place here is being brought just freely across the entire planet. Give us some idea of the rest of the classes that you offer from software programming to traditional computer graphics software like photos off an illustrator to traditional fine art water are painting, including a huge number of classes in photography and other related visual arts will be coming in with video editing and also other quest hey man, pay the man well, so there's a lot of audio editing going on a lot of it. What I look for us and I didn't have a direction in which we're looking four, so I opposed produced a piece, but I don't like when somebody hits the essence of a sound bite and then we keep getting the same message I like short compact powerful message on almost every piece I do I have a favorite at it um and frequently at least favorite um my favorite edit in that piece just to share with you is you asked um uh craig about what the purpose wasn't what he hoped to accomplish and his reply was words to the effect of well like chase jarvis likes to say there's the democratization of giving this information out there that was a water down he's qualifying his statement um so I took that whole precursor out and just went with kind of writing your face the democratization if on the other hand I wasn't entirely sure that as a person he is I bought it I might have put a lot more pause in after you asked the question whether it existed or not what you know why you're doing this what's your purpose uh chase jarvis like this you know that pause communicates a lot so I have time and space to play around with um I had to go out and get a little more ingredients to cover a lot of the audio editing I did um but what I can show you quickly ah and I won't tell you the whole pieces but they're they're cut down is kind of the process I went through um one of the constraints I had was you know, it's eleven o'clock at night twenty hour day I don't know how long I can continue working on, so I try and get it uh there's a saying I like to say which is very tough to come to terms with us. An artist done is good and frequently you have to accept that because you can work to perfect something, as you guys found out yesterday and not get what you need not done is very bad it's basic done is good it find a positive impact on it and I met the deadline I'm happy with that is an artist. Is this the best thing I've ever done? No it's gonna go on my demo reel? Probably not. Did I have a positive impact? Yes, I'm exceptionally comfortable having a positive impact on this piece and that was my goal here's what I call it the radio cut looks like, so I just cut together creative love the speaking parts without worrying about what it look like I'm gone just for audio content today I'm talking with greg swanson he's, one of the creative masterminds of creative live high craig, tell us a little bit about creative alive what is it? Crib blood is an online worldwide training classroom. We're broadcasting classes on all shapes and sizes, so how long have you been doing created alive? Michael bay started working in training claim about four years ago so fight kind of piece of craig out you would see jump cuts we call them here they want a line so the first thing I do after that go ahead you know this intrinsically but did you see how you did that quick cut in the background you point that out you could get that you can fix the dialogue and kind of people who have never seen a better do this don't understand what you're what you're doing. You know, I think the first part to understand is, uh that is actually going to cut this for audio and what he means is just like how we talked about content being king in this case the entire dialogue has to be strong together at first to continue to go from point a to point b or from several points in a row and adds job is not to make it look good first order bringing all the special effects in first he has to make the interview start somewhere arc up to something and an end and so he's cutting the first layer a regardless of what things look like visual you might see the character jump right and it might be from a different take, but as long as the audio is continuous, it works. He knows that when uh he slices a line in between between a thought and inserts a separate uh finishing thought the visual the screen is going to jump visually going to catch that cut, he can hide that with b roll all right, so kind of a different way of thinking it's obvious to you, ed, but two people out there right there but never done it there like what? And there I called my radio cut it's it's the framework for my entire piece, much like you guys were setting up yet say where our chairs going because everything's going to be structured around that. So I want to make sure that solid first I'm here to the a section that's an example of that, I'll play it while you can see the interface and frequently is not just lifting something out, but I'm taking something from an hour later and putting it before moving things around. So naturally, craig was saying something different, you still stare in the background jump, right? Basically, we're entering a new world where the tools of the communicate and then I cut it down production there's a lot of people, so that's my jump cut right there. Do you see sarah in the background jump like in, uh, in a production there's a lot of people that so in this part of the screen right here, you'll see that I've taken some time out so he's cutting the fat out did you catch that with your ears barely visually definitely caught it and that's kind of where the art of editing comes in is if you didn't cut that little slice in between the interview just kind of draws out doesn't sound very professional are you guys getting us our people on the internet getting it some I lifted eight seconds out there eight full seconds for those of you playing the home edition very long time to cut out of the answer and so that that's what the radio cut looks like and it goes along there so then um the next thing I try and do is go through my piece and split the edits uh, splitting is where I will take the audio from one angle or the picture from that angle and have it overlapped the other. So for instance when you say with me today is craig craig how you doing? We're not looking at you the whole time I have craig sitting there listening and he responds in sync and then we go away to something else that overlapping is the way we experience life is our attention focuses from thing to thing, so I if I can give you a similar experience to the way you experience life, I could do magic around that because it aligns with your life experience entirely sure that makes sense because I've been doing it for too long but it's I guess a simple way of trying to win. Scott says, you know hello, craig. How are you, it's? Good to cut to craig going fine. Thank yu. In the same way that when scott asks crag a question that, uh, craig makes a good common it's. Interesting that scott finds interesting it's a good idea to cut back to scott nodding, even if scott did not. Not at that time, perhaps he's working on notes were goingto pick a moment from a later part of the interview where there's no dialogue and bring it back and trick the person who's viewing it to think that scott was nodding while he was getting that great response, even though in reality, as you shot, he was busy scribbling away or getting some sort of comment from the producer in his ear. So that's, where you need to understand how there's a lot of different ways and you kind of just is flying through this stuff that, uh, our great ways to kind of cover your tracks, and I actually did that. At one point I went and found a shot of scott. He was kind of looked like a smile. It felt friendly. But when I put it in, it looked like he was laughing so then I went for more of a non I grafted that from somewhere else here's a split at it over a section see this real quick tell us a little bit about creative alive what is it? What is an online so let me, uh, play that for your one more time with a little more playing high pray tell us a little bit about creative live what is it, chris? What is an online? So that is an illusion, craig nodding and saying hello in reality then continued with some garbage I didn't use so I took the next question and pulled it up right after craig it was a visual cut so I could do that. And then craig's response was from another point in time. And so by having showing you while we hear craig responding makes your brain think that that's how it happened a lot more so than if I had done an edit right there and I can show you that if you want and I would stay in full screen, moz. Thank you. Thank you mean the other way around in the state this way seeking to see the interface so here's what I'm talking about right here tell us a little bit and this timeline is a graphical representation of what it is I'm playing out. Tell us a little bit about creative alive. What is it? What is an online world? So this is an edit right here. This line represents a net it if I didn't have, um, him extent stay there that whole time. You tell us a little bit about creative alive. What is it, chris? What is an online that's? Not believable if something like this tell us a little bit about creative alive, what is it? Crib. What is an online worldwide training class? You just it sells it so muchmore and those splits go all sorts of different ways. Audio leading video fall. I mean, just and makes its way are going to go over a quick intro editing control later today, you know, is not meant to be going right now, so we're not gonna talk at all about what you're seeing on the bottom part of that screen right now. So here's this section here, why haven't audio at it at this point right here? Um and I had to cover it with something and I was going to go to be role later, so I didn't want to rely on b roll here. It's very awkward to have an interview, put one shot, cover an audio at it back to the interview one shot to cover it, you know that randomly place farm footage and somewhere just doesn't work so here's a nice nodding production there's a lot of people that don't have access, and I think every in the reality of the shot uh, scott was nodding, uh, because vincent was telling him he was doing it all wrong and to start over. But, you know, it's this's my reality now you and I can make it your reality. Uh, with a couple of keystrokes, the next thing I did is I I put a graphic in here. Um sometimes clients, producers or your and clients are not good at visualizing, so I put some text in normally I would make that full full frame see didn't see craig back there, but it was just me. I knew what I was doing so is trying to figure out I've got some b roll. Where am I going to put a nice section? Don't have access to some of the really great information that has been kind of kept in one place here is being brought just freely across, so I had to cover a cut, but I needed some spots to shoehorn in some other stuff, so that's a pretty basic split pass on this, um, covering color correction, so at this point now I've gone through? I'm pretty happy with my content. My radio cut um if I were working for you and you were paying me to do this um especially if we've not worked together a lot, I'm going to send you the radio cut get by off so I don't go spending your money and making my perfect version of a movie you don't want, so we have this kind of iterated design process that you can employ that lets you control your resource is and maintain creative control over the project. So if this was a two hour long doc, I'm not gonna cut a two hour long piece and say, what do you think of the movie? I'm a cuddle a little scene, so you have that control retain it and use it so in this area here, I've actually, um taken scott and, uh, blown him up not like with dynamite, but I've made his frame larger so that I could get his head to break the frame line at the top so that it doesn't make craig seemed like he's walking around with the world's largest header by inverse that scott has the world's smallest heads it made my cuts a lot more believable I've added a little bit of just starter color correction just to get my, uh, uh, brightness and contrast a little bit better between them uh and then because it was driving me nuts with sarah jumping around in the background and there was someone behind scott that was walking all over the place I uh I went through and took a piece of the frame from when no one had been moving around so this square right here that's my reality I've put that part of the frame back in if I were to uh disable this clip you'll see that sarah standing right there um so if I were to play classes she's back there working away and go back to the way I had it before find training classroom you're broadcasting classes on hold so I'm just went through and did some quick cleanup so there's a little bit of the witchcraft were talking about yeah just a little tiny bit that the next step would be I would actually especially on these shots um uh had I had the time I would have gone through and I convenient this I could lose everything on either side of your head and still black there but if I had done that first in all likelihood what I would have ended up with at the end of a twenty hour day is a timeline where for half of it I had gotten that done and for the other half I had not done is good so I employed a workflow where at any thirty minute interval I could have stopped and delivered um so that's you know, it's it's just experienced knowing not tow walk into those land mines and you know you're so perfectly crafting manu part of the whole that the whole never is completed for people who like to do things once and leave it anything is probably not for you for people who would like to do things and then re work on them and rework on them and rework on them layer by layer by layer peeling an onion one in a layer at a time editing is a fantastic thing for you but there's certain types of personalities me included that um you know, it takes a lot of energy for me to want to go do seven or eight or twelve passes yeah, as an editor um I cherish it. Yeah, you cherish it. I don't that's why I work with you and you know I could if if I sat down right now with the pen I could probably transcribe this piece without saying I could write for you right now. A script from nineteen eighty three you know, you live and breathe these things um and I organize them so vince could come in and say, you know, I know for sure that we were shooting the b roll somebody got a shot of the catering guys showing up I've got an organizational structure behind the scenes here where I could find that shot in five keystrokes. So that that's a big part of what an editor's doing two is forcing some sort of structure. So let's jump to, uh, you kind of spicing. It'll be a little b roll and they will watch the final. Yeah, sure. So what I did for the b roll is I had a couple of random things I was able to grab. Fortunately for me, um, chase jarvis had done a piece about creative life, so the client was able to supply some material for me to work with, um, it's it's. Not the way I want it in all reality off these screen grabs. They're just static, boring screengrab. So my vision for here would be that they would be slightly vignette it as if there was a slash of light across the screen. The screen grabs to start slightly larger and tilted and be drifting down into space with a nice dissolve between each of the schools of thought. Done is good. So I took those and tried to line them up to the audio of what craig was saying so that when he's talking about illustrators talking about photoshopped or seeing those tools were not seeing somebody paint, so you just see a couple edits here software programming to traditional computer graphics software like photoshopped and illustrator to traditional fine art water for painting, including a huge number of classes there and hold that for a second yeah, if you're the producer, you know the reality of of television is you don't always get choose whether or not you do the interview first or after the fact I think it's a lot easier to interview someone uh take notes and then go shoot b roll because you know what the person's gonna talk about I've already having happened me in jobs where the ceo is not available till you shot all of your b roll and significant more difficult to predict what that person's going to say you cannot shoot a bit more coverage, but if you were, uh, a producer uh and you were there for the interview in the morning, you would be taking notes on every single thing your interview subject the same oh, you know, I love photo shop and I love, you know, in design and we have traditional artists here, etcetera, so that when you're done with the interview before you ever added anything, you've got a list that says, all right, I need b roll of uh photo shop screen in design screen lied to find artist with traditional paintbrushes uh we need to find x y and z and off we go and your day is easy as far as I'm concerned because you know what you want you get the shots you make him look beautiful on your you know quite done whereas if you don't do the interview till the end um you go somewhere no idea what to shoot you pretty much uh shoot everything uh, of course you know, I mean, all of this works when you have a set of questions you know about the client and you could predict what they're going to say in advance and it works wonderfully when you've done all your homework and research and the client actually says what you want them to say and you have the pieces there uh your job becomes very difficult when you do all that work shoot all the information and the client is either unable or unwilling to talk about any of that stuff and goes on a wild tangent and that's when you really come back to scott or to ed and say, um okay let's let's see what we can do uh let's go back and reshoot if we have to yeah, and and the you know, the important thing is from from my perspective is an editor uh that my measure is the impact I have on the people working with this video is not me but the interaction we have together and creating it is a huge part editing should be a fun experience and, uh, you know, there's some artistic playing of ideas off one another I might try and sell vents on you know, what a transition really is and ultimately it's his job to make that decision? My job is to give him every option I can possibly think of to make this piece better. So get that input from your editor work work towards that this thing could completely be changed. You guys have the right right now say we don't like any of this section here take that out but the other part forward and I would go back and merrily make those changes for you uh and then you know, I would tell you an estimate of how long it's going to take to do that. So you have control over that resource? Yeah, he does get paid by the hour. Yeah, uh, I'm more than happy to work on this. I'll get you something back in august invoice weekly yeah, you want me to do another cut and there's, you know they're very hard to do another cut. There are a lot of land mines I really like the, you know work a little bit and show a rudimentary copy sometimes that's a bad idea because a client doesn't can't visualize, um, there's, there's lots of pitfalls in the entire production world, unseen approval being one of them, you show it to your client, love it, but then fell in. Tom, judy, come in and and then I think just to wrap this up, I would love to have you play the final piece, but not in full screen mode, showing all the different layers that are involved, so they've got to change my u I hear, okay, way. See what he's going to show you without, you know those of you have never seen final cut pro? Uh, just a reiterate we're going to go through a demo of this software not this level uh, later today, but what you're seeing on the right is the, uh, the finished product of the top rights reince has creative live right now. What you're seeing on the bottom is all the ingredients lined up together, they're linked and their legs so the green there's you'll see a central line um, in on the sequence in the middle of it, everything below it, the green stuff is audio, everything above is videos you'll see every little rectangle there is a different video clip these has always this if you go ahead and just make it fit it all in the screen and you'll see the amount of cuts and work that ed did from start to finish and go ahead and play, and we'll just you can check it out today and talking with greg swanson he's, one of the creative masterminds of creative live by craig, tell us a little bit about creative alive what is it? Crib blood is an online worldwide training classroom. We're broadcasting classes on all shapes and sizes. So how long have you been doing? Creative alive? Michael bay started working in training play about four years ago. What's division of creative live what you trying to accomplish with democratization of creativity and about production? There's a lot of people that don't have access to some of the really great information that has been kind of kept in one place here is being brought just freely across the entire planet. Give us some idea of the rest of the classes that you offer from software programming to traditional computer graphics software like photos off an illustrator to traditional fine art water for painting, including a huge number of classes of photography and other related visual arts, will be coming in with video editing and also other quest cool thank you very, very much happy do it. Uh, awesome job of pulling something out of nothing that just f y I was probably, um, find on an hour and a half effort, an hour and half effort to fix, er, five minutes of tension. You know, if you look at on a scale, it took me a long to edit. That is it took to set up the tripod, so, you know, all right, cool.