Thu Jan 29

Finished DVD for the Sundance Kids with Joel today. We designed a menu using some of the footage from the video and it looks very nice. The sleeves that Joel printed are exceptional too, Joel is proving very dependable. We burned off as many copies as we had DVDs and delivered them to the band. Their tour begins on Jan 31st.

Tue Jan 27

With the deadline for Trance TV fast approaching, I made a substantial breakthrough with my footage. The streetlight footage I filmed worked wonderfully, particularly when it is sped up and set for the "difference" composite mode. It makes these moving dots of inverted color fly over the video and looks wonderful. Spent some time making this sync with the music.

I had been going through the Archive.org archives in search of some more meditative films, and found some footage from various psychology and hypnosis info films. I worked bits and pieces of these, particularly the old style title cards, in with a couple of my clips. I think that the overlayed hypnotic commands lend a very humorous air to the piece, so i built a little segment just for them. This is really starting to come together. The more I work on this project the more potential I see in Final Cut. There is so much that you can do! I am feeling very creative.

Sun Jan 25

Today I approached (my favorite) new local band Margy Pepper and asked if they would also like to make a music video. They are freshmen at Evergreen and only formed mid last quarter, but they are already making some very exciting music and are slowly becoming fairly well known in the Olympia music scene. They said that yes they would like to make a music video, they were very enthusiastic, which is think is a good sign. We set up a meeting for February 2nd where we would discuss our ideas and such.

Sat Jan 24

Presented video to Time Defeated and the Sundance Kids. They liked it, no changes need be made. I worked with Seth from Time Defeated to get the video ready to be uploaded onto the internet. He is uploading it to the Time Defeated website, and it will be viewable here:
http://timedefeated.org/
Next step will be turning the tape in to TCTV to be aired.

Also, the Sundance Kids asked if I could make them a DVD of the performance, since they are going on tour soon and would like to sell some copies. I agreed, since part of my whole goal with this contract is to increase the notoriety of local bands, so Joel and I will design a DVD together, burn several copies, and then he will design the sleeve (Joel is a print-maker by hobby).

Wed Jan 21

Finished my work on the Sundance Kids performance for Time Defeated. Gained some very good insights into efficient color correcting with Final Cut. Earlier I had been having some difficulty matching the colors in each shot, so I did some research and looked at various tutorials and devised a very helpful method. Using some of the window commands, a vectorscope, several frame viewer tools, and a second monitor, I was able to finish the color correcting very nicely. Then using the templates we had designed on the 11th, I created the opening titles and synced them with the first song. Finally I made the credits and it is ready for them to take a look at.

I am excited to show them the finished work, I think it is well done. I really feel that already I have learned so many new techniques for editing video. Each time I work on Trance TV or on this Time Defeated project I gain a better understanding of Final Cut and of video making (particulalry in terms of audio related media) as a whole. These projects are very different from the things I'm used to doing at my internship for TCTV, and it feels good to stretch like this.

Sun Jan 18

Meeting with Jenny Jenkins in Portland. We met and discussed the music video project I had approached her about earlier. She immediately said that we should use a song from her most recent album, since it was studio produced and is really good quality. So we made a list of all the songs on the album and listened to the ones we thought would be promising. Out of the 17 songs we decided that 6 of them would make good music videos and brainstormed a couple ideas for each one. We talked about our schedules and how we would need to finish the principle shooting before Jenny went on tour in early Febuary. We decided to each take some more listens to the songs we'd chosen and make our decision when she returned to Olympia.

Thu Jan 15

I am finding the footage for Trance TV to be overwhelming. The key on the greenscreen worked nicely, but i am having a bit of trouble deciding where to start. I have been using some footage from old projects as backgrounds and am playing with colors and found, public domain footage from Archive.org. I met with Sean to see what he has been doing and he taught me about composite modes in Final Cut. This will be instrumental in combining footage for the pseudo-psychedelic effect we are aiming for.

Tue Jan 13

We filmed Trance TV at the studio at TCTV in front of the greenscreen. All three of us brought our music equipment and made some very interesting music. Sean ran all the audio through a mixer to keep the levels even and to record it, as a precautionary measure, however, we set up an omni mic in front of the greenscreen. Chandra ran the mobile camera.

The music was made up of Sean playing guitar and doing vocals, Kenny making noise by looping audio with various equipment i don't really understand, and me playing bass with several effects pedals. We also had a Groovebox, a machine that creates beats and sounds, that Jahla was running to fill out the sound scape. We made sure to dance around and do lots of crazy stuff so that we could get a good visual from the performance.

Afterwards we made use of the greenscreen and shot some dancing and other various things that we would use when editing the piece together. We departed to Sean's house and captured the footage. It looked great, especially the mobile camera, this should be a very exciting project. We distributed a copy of the footage to each person to edit.

Sun Jan 11

Met with Time Defeated and Shelby Turner, the leader of the Sundance kids, to review and edit the footage. I brought my computer and showed them the footage. We almost immediately that we would use the second take exclusively, so i layered the two takes in a Final Cut Pro sequence and synced them up. Then, using the mobile camera as the principle shot, went through the entire performance with them, showing them the different angles and editing the footage as they suggested. After a couple run throughs we had a rough cut that everyone was happy with. The band left so Joel and I worked on the intro titles and the ending. We designed template text for the intro using Photoshop and made the ending graphic. I will take the now edited footage, fine tune it, balance the colors (the two shots, although color balanced at the beginning, fell out of sync because of the constantly changing lighting), and complete the titling.

The picture above is the credits we wrote down to add into the intro and ending.

Sat Jan 10

Today Sean, Kenny, and I met for a Trance TV meeting. We discussed the shoot on Tuesday. We will film with two cameras, one stationary and one mobile. The three of us will each bring instruments to play in order to create a sound track for the episode. We will play the music in front of a greenscreen so we can use the performance as footage. It was decided that each of us would be responsible for 10 minutes of edited footage for the completed episode, or 1/3 of the total footage each.

Fri Jan 9

Arrived at the Finger Complex to film the shoot. Made a couple last minute adjustments. I had decided i would experiment with a couple techniques, namely playing with the focus. Occasionally when I would move the camera i would pull it our of focus, then when i had framed up the next shot, I would pull it back into focus. The filming would be intentionally jerky, to try and match the energy of the performance. For audio i brought a shotgun mic and an omni directional mic i checked out from TCTV.

I filmed the band, and Joel, from Time Defeated ran the lights. We filmed the entire set, then decided that both I and the band would like to do one more take, since they had made some mistakes and i had started to get more familiar with the style i was trying to shoot in. The second take went very well, all the cues were hit on time, the reveal went smoothly, and the band performed very well. We decided to wrap it up, and will meet in a couple of days to edit the footage together. I went home and immediately captured the footage.

Thu Jan 8

Met with Sundance Kids and Time Defeated crew at the venue, The Finger Complex, to set up venue. We moved furniture around, attached a sheet in front of the organ for the reveal, numbered the strands of christmas lights, and mapped out when each strand would be plugged in. Then I worked with them to place the cameras, it will be a two camera shoot, and then shot some test shots. The first camera will be placed just outside the main room and will film the entire band, the second camera will be hand held and stationed in between all the christmas lights. I will run this camera and get close up shots of the band members. We left the room set up and the cameras placed.

Wed Jan 7

Met with the Sundance Kids and Time Defeated crew, finalized shooting plans for shoot on the 9th. The Sundance Kids described what they wanted for the video, starting completely dark, then as they played their set the stage would be lit incrementally by strings of christmas lights. Each new strand of lights would be turned on at a specific point in each song. All the strands of lights would be held by the "audience,' people sitting and standing behind the band. The set would start out with just one member of the band playing, and then, with each new song, another member of the band would join in. At the climax of the last song there would be a reveal of the last member of the band playing the organ, then the camera would resolve on a close up of the organist.