Check out this fantastic little docu-short – shot with a 5D Mark 2 and a steadicam merlin.
Fantastic storytelling and shots. I really want to go here now.
Also, the guy at the end is featured in the movie Into the Wild, one of my fave movies. It’s cool to see that him and his art are actually real.
This week, the Worldwide Short Film Fest kicks off tomorrow night, and I’ll be there pretty much all day every day from Wed-Sun, taking in panels and screenings. More on that later!
It’s been a pretty crazy few weeks and I haven’t had much time for updates, so I thought I’d update on some of the major things that have been going on.
First of all, some good news: our short film Queen of Clubs won 2nd place at the Toronto 24-hour film challenge, and along with it a $750 prize to Cinequipe Whites! I said it at the awards and I’ll say it again now: it was amazing to work with such a talented and dedicated group, I really couldn’t have done it without all of them, and they definitely exceeded any expectations I had. We’re looking forward to using this prize on another short film together!
I am dying to show Queen of Clubs to lots of people who may not have had the chance to see it, but I’m going to have to hold off for now, but for good reason. We are currently in the process of submitting Queen of Clubs to Film Festivals, which means we need to keep it off the internet for now. But the good news is, if it does get accepted anywhere, there will be further public screenings. I’ll keep any extra news about that posted here or via my twitter feed. Along with that, we now have an IMDB Title page for the project! This is really exciting news as it means we now get official recognition and credit for all our hard work.
Check out the IMDB Title page HERE
And our trailer is also available via IMDB HERE.
Got a great question from photographer Carlo Calope today:
“Hey Christine! I wanna ask.. You shoot video using the 7d right? Do you edit your footage using final cut pro? If yes.. How do you convert your capture file to a specific codec match in final cut? Any help would greatly be appreciated!”
Answer:
You’ve gotta use conversion software like Mpeg Streamclip (a great little free program you can download here) and convert all your footage to Apple Pro Res 422 if you want the best performance in final cut!
What I do is set up a pre-set for the Pro-res quality and then do a batch process. (Select List -> Batch List) It takes a while if you’ve shot a bunch of footage so it’s usually best just to leave it overnight. Go to sleep and it’ll be done in the morning.
Another program that does this is called Magic Bullet Grinder from Red Giant Software, and it costs about $49. This program also lets you convert your 60fps footage to playback in 24fps, and can add timecode during the conversion.
The third option, although I haven’t really used this one much, is to use the “Log and Transfer” window in Final Cut 7 – supposedly this will convert your footage and you can start working on it right away.
By converting your footage to Pro Res you’ll be allowing for a much smoother edit in Final Cut.
Of course, with the new Final Cut X coming out in June – the news is that you won’t need to do this conversion step any more because it will automatically do that for you. I’m really excited about the new Final Cut – it’ll cost just $300 via the Apple App Store in June – read more about it here.
