Aug 26 2010

Final Cut Express Newbie – Take Two – Very Basic B-Roll

Category: Creative Process, Multimedia & Video — Ethan G. Salwen @ 7:58 am

Not only can you see one of the rooms in my home in Argentina in this video editing test but, gasp!, you can also see that I’ve actually figured out how to edit b-roll on top of one video/audio take. (”A-roll”?) The inability to perform this incredibly basic editing function in iMovie is what made me finally decide to buy Final Cut Express.

The reason I’m sharing this video with you (as I did my FCE compression test) is the same reason I’m posting these down-and-dirty experiments to YouTube: to help me get over my fear of new technologies, specifically in the realm of multimedia editing.

I over think way too much and often get stuck deep in the creative-technology mud. This time around I was about to get stuck with FCE, which looks like Final Cut Pro to me, and which made me want to crawl back to iMovie. I realized I could think and think and even practice and practice, but never make any substantial headway. What was called for was learning by engaging in quick, learn-one-skill projects and publishing them.

Sure, my tendency is to only share polished work, and sharing crappy experiments makes me go “gulp” in a very real way. What if someone actually sees this???

Yeah, what would happen? Nothing, I suppose, but thee real point is that I’ve noticed that photographers who share their experiments in a public manner advance much more quickly than those us who get stuck — over thinking and not creating, publishing, learning and moving forward.

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Aug 17 2010

Documenting Tango to Learn Multimedia

Category: In-Camera Techniques, Multimedia & Video — Ethan G. Salwen @ 6:33 pm

Yesterday I headed over the tango festival going on here in Buenos Aires to photograph a workshop being given by Claudia Bozzo, my tango teacher. She had seen my tango stop-motion movie and asked me if I could document her class and “make something special,” which I heard as, “Here’s a chance to practice your multimedia skills.” This seemed like a good idea given my work for Human Rights Watch. It also seemed like a good time to put my photography skills to work documenting aspects of a culture that daily becomes more my culture.

Carla, on sound, interviews Claudia, on tango.

Carla, on sound, interviews Claudia, on tango.

You can check out the down-and-dirty gallery of images I’ve selected to form the base of the what Ralph Clevenger calls a “music motivational piece.” As you can see, none of the images are stellar, but that won’t be critical — once they are zipping by to music. You can see that I was taking Mary Lynn Price’s advice and working to record the full spectrum of activities in wide, medium and close-up shots.

My girlfriend, Carla, did a great job recording sound, although I didn’t do a great job of instructing her how to do so. I wasn’t clear on what audio I wanted. I also wasn’t clear on how to shoot video segments, which I did frantically with my Canon G9 in between photographing stills.

Frankly, I found the experience overwhelming and confusing. And that wasn’t because there were more than 100 people stuffed into a very tight area, making it very difficult to move around. The real problem was that I was not clear on how I would be using the images and/or video and/or audio to create my piece. However, I wasn’t dismayed.

Thanks to advice from many photographers, I realize that creating multimedia is all about editing. And now I have some raw material to get into Final Cut Express and get editing. As I figure out what I can make, I will undoubtedly learn how I can better balance capturing stills, video and audio to record this kind of event for multimedia.

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Aug 04 2010

Deadly Lego Guns, Playful Video Experiments

Category: Creative Process, Multimedia & Video, Photographers — Ethan G. Salwen @ 6:44 pm

Richard Anderson has joined the wave. The wave of still photographers embracing video, that is. We had a long, great conversation today. We discussed nerdy photo stuff and more important ideas about family, friendship and creative satisfaction. Our talk started by touching on all themes at once when Anderson shared his new excitement for video. He’s getting off to a nerdy and creative start by focusing on projects featuring family and friends.

Anderson has devoured From Still to Motion and is learning from online resources. He’s also started to think about how to make money from motion. But he’s not too worried about this “monetizing” issue. For now, Anderson is focused on having fun and learning from doing — as it should be.

The first piece Anderson published to his Vimeo channel highlights his son, Nicholas, showing off his Lego gun, a real monster of creative engineering. (Man are Legos cool! If you haven’t seen Mike Stimpson’s decisive Legos, definitely check them out.) Anderson’s next two videos are both music videos of Daniel Hill, a family friend whom Anderson captured at Chincoteague, Virgina, during a family vacation.

Anderson’s “Nothn’” music video is pretty basic, but required greater video making skills than “Nicholas & the Lego Gun.” He had to deal with recording sound with tricky ambient wind, and now we do not hear his off-camera voice. More polished, more professional.

Thriving By Keeping It Simple and Fun

In his second Hill music video, “What is the soul of a man?”, Anderson takes Continue reading “Deadly Lego Guns, Playful Video Experiments”

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