Category: Editors

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Cinematic Composition for Video Productions – Online Course

Composition is one of the least understood yet most important aspects of cinema. Using a wide variety of examples, Emmy Award-winning Director of Photography Eduardo Angel breaks down effective cinematic composition, shares his favorite compositional effects and techniques and even covers how and when to successfully break well established rules.

https://www.linkedin.com/learning/cinematic-composition-for-video-productions/welcome

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Lighting Design for Video Productions – Online Course.

It doesn’t take a Hollywood budget to make to make the most of available light, and to learn simple tricks to reveal or obscure objects and subjects in your scene. Here’s your chance to learn field tested techniques to manipulate moods, add depth, and enhance your overall production with a few lighting tweaks.

Online Course

https://www.linkedin.com/learning/lighting-design-for-video-productions/welcome

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How to quickly create a cinematic look.

How to quickly create a cinematic look or match a film look.

Adobe Capture

Adobe has a free app called Adobe Capture that few people know, and even less people use. Here’s why you might want to start using it today to very quickly and easily create a cinematic look, and even match the look of movies you like.

How it is supposed to work.

The way Adobe Capture works is: You take a picture and the app creates a color patch. Then that patch gets exported to your Adobe Creative Cloud library so you can share it with all the other Adobe applications. I don’t use it that way.

How I use it to create a cinematic look.

I do use it to recreate the grade or cinematic look of specific movie. To achieve this all I need is to get a screenshot of that movie, create a color patch based on that image, and apply that patch to my footage. These simple steps often get me pretty close to the original look.

How to quickly create a cinematic look or match a film look.
How to quickly create a cinematic look or match a film look.
How to quickly create a cinematic look or match a film look.

Here’s more info:

Pretty cool, right? This is huge for people working under very tight deadlines or who aren’t super technical and don’t want to spend a lot of time learning applications like  DaVinci Resolve, Lustre, Nucoda, SCRATCH, or Baselight.

Now, if you ARE interested in learning more about grading, and especially how color affects perception in storytelling, I can’t recommend this book high enough.

Want more? Check this “Amazing Adobe Premiere Pro Tips.”

Comments? Questions? Feedback? All of them are welcomed below.

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How I Use Hard Drives for Video Productions.

On my last post, I shared where to find information about reliable hard drives and a couple of people asked “How is this applicable to a 1 Person Crew video production?”

Well, if I know that a specific 3TB drive from a certain brand has a 50% failure rate, that’s all I need to know to not even consider getting it, regardless its price or features.

Once I know which brands and sizes are the most reliable, I set up my workflow using three hard drives. On this video tutorial I quickly explain why:

Takeaways

  • For video production, you only want hard drives that are 7200RPM, not 5400 RPM.
  • Keep only your OS and Applications on your computer’s internal hard drive.
  • Keep all your project’s assets in ONE location. It’s good for productivity and peace of mind.
  • An USB-powered drive is almost always slower than an AC-powered drive.
  • Having a clear and consistent back up strategy is essential. Don’t wait until it’s too late!

Solid Sate Drives

Solid state drives are still very expensive, but they tiny, extremely durable, and they are coming down in price.

On location, I like using cheaper internal solid state drives like these to backup my footage.

How are you setting up your hard drives for video production? Leave your comments below.

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DISCLAIMER
This article is not paid or sponsored by anyone. It reflects my own independent opinion. I only recommend companies and products that I trust. Some links might be affiliates, which means I may get a few pennies if you decide to purchase something.
Thanks in advance for your support!

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When to replace your hard drives.

All hard drives will die. The question is not if, but when. This is why finding reliable hardware AND having a solid back up strategy is extremely important.

Finding Reliable Information.

Reading tech reports like Backblaze’s annual report on hard drives is important, because they provide priceless information on which brands and models NOT to buy. At the end of 2018 Backblaze was monitoring 104,954 hard drives used to store data, so they REALLY know which hard drives are good, and which ones should be avoided.

For example:

“Based on 1,220 drives and nearly 500,000 drive days, the AFR (Annualized Failure Rate) of the Seagate 10 TB drives continue to impress. For 2018 it was just 0.33%.”

When can you or I test a thousand hard drives, let alone a hundred thousand? Never, that’s when.

Last year alone, Backblaze had 180 Western Digital 3TB drives remaining, and ALL of them where removed and replaced with 12TB drives. Sometime this year they plan to replace all of their 4TB and 6TB drives and upgrade them to 14, 16, or even 20TB drives.

Annualized Hard Drive Failure Rates from January 2018 to December 2018.
Annualized Hard Drive Failure Rates comparing 2016, 2017 and 2018.
Annualized Hard Drive Failure Rates from 2013 to 2018.

Key Stats.

There are a LOT of useful gems we can extract from Backblaze’s 2018 report:

  • Backblaze replaced 3TB, 4TB, and even a handful of 6TB drives with new 12TB drives. The drives replaced are about 4 years old.
  • The failure rates of all of the larger drives (8, 10, and 12 TB) are very good: 1.21% AFR or less.
  • In September 2018 Backblazde added 79 12TB drives, and as of this publication, none of them have failed.
  • The Seagate 10TB drives, which have been in operation for over 1 year now, are performing very nicely with a failure rate of 0.48%.
  • In 2016 the average size of hard drives they had was 4.5 TB. By 2018 the average size had grown to 7.7 TB.
  • The 2018 annualized failure rate of 1.25% was the lowest by far of any year they’ve recorded.
  • The Seagate 10 TB drives continue to impress as their AFR for 2018 was just 0.33%. That’s based on 1,220 drives and nearly 500,000 drive days, making the AFR pretty solid.
  • None of their Toshiba 5 TB drives has failed since 2016.

Do you find this info useful? If so, leave your comments below.

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DISCLAIMER
This article is not paid or sponsored by anyone. It reflects my own independent opinion. I only recommend companies and products that I trust. Some links might be affiliates, which means I may get a few pennies if you decide to purchase something.
Thanks in advance for your support!

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YouTube: 1PersonCrew
Instagram: @1PersonCrew

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Sound Effects libraries, from free to super awesome.

Image of an old radio

On any video production, regardless the crew size, sound design is key. We all know that. What’s is not very well known is where to find high quality and affordable sound effects.

Resources

On today’s video tutorial I share some of the websites I’ve found most useful, from the usual suspects, to the BBC and even a somewhat hidden sound effects library within YouTube.

Sound Effects library on YouTube

I quickly discuss when to spend time recording ambient sounds on locations and when I’ve found it’s better to rely on sound effects libraries. There’s even a tip on how to create sound beds for free and without any copyright issues, and lastly, I discuss why Artlist.io is currently my favorite music library.

By the way, if you like what you see at Artlist.io, this link gets you 2 months FREE.

Dive in. It’s just under 3-minutes long but full of (hopefully) useful info. If you have other resources I didn’t mention, please add them to the comments below.

The more we share, the more we learn.  

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Related Content

Being unfaithful (and testing new mics).

Why the Three-Act Structure is Obsolete.

Marketing is the fourth production stage.

Why I like cutting a trailer RIGHT AWAY.

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Why you should cut a trailer RIGHT AWAY.


I’m a big fan of Vashi Nedomansky, a brilliant video editor who has worked on 11 feature films and trailers, and over 50 national commercials for major brands like Nike, Volkswagen, Ford, NHL, EA Sports, Adobe, and the US Army. I recently read an interview where he says:

“The trailer game is an ever-changing pursuit that tries to stay ahead of the intelligent public but must also find new ways to tease, cajole and intrigue. Show scenes that aren’t in the film. Manipulate dialog and visuals to make a scene more interesting. Shift the order of shots to make it more interesting or compelling. Add music not in the film to hit an emotional beat. Use every trick in the book to make an effective trailer.”

I don’t agree 100% with that approach, but the article reminded me one of the (many) valuable lesson I’ve learned about marketing. The lesson is: cut a 30-second trailer as soon as you’re done shooting. Here’s why:

I’m not sure how, but Vashi was able to select 46 individual shots that were shared in the promotional material for “Rogue One” but never made the final cut of the film.

Actually, “Rogue One” serves to prove my point about the paramount importance of teasers and trailers as marketing tool; the 2-minute trailer has attracted over almost 38 MILLION views on YouTube alone!

What about you? Do you always use teasers and/or trailers on your projects? Why or why not? Leave your comments below.

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