I've been asked to DP a project that will be directed by my friend Joe. The project is called Mr. Wrinkles and is a heartwarming short about two old men reminiscing about younger days. We'll be shooting in a dog park, which is something new for me. This'll be my first time shooting something narrative outside in broad daylight so I have lots of new obstacles to overcome. It should be a fun shoot. It will also be my first time working as a DP on a project with a producer, two cameras, SAG actors and a full (albeit skeleton) crew. We're shooting on April 13 and I'm very excited.
Sticky Floor is a short that was written by my boyfriend Kevin (who also directed and starred in the short). I shot and produced it. This film has had a long and arduous journey. We shot it while in the midst of moving apartments (something I will NEVER do again). So the film took about a week to shoot (shooting in the evenings after I got home from work).
I decided to edit the project at home rather than using Final Cut Pro at the production company I work for. Since I am a devoted PC person, I could not get FCP for my home computer. So I thought, hey, why not Avid? I had worked on it freshman year at UT Austin and didn't remember having too many problems with it. If only I knew what I was getting myself into. It's been awhile since freshman year, and I've only worked on FCP since then so my Avid skills are...rusty to say the least. It took me several months to edit the project (a Saturday here, an evening after work there) and I did it all on one 4x3 LCD screen.
So I get the thing picture locked (it's about 13 minutes long) and start the process of exporting it for the guy doing the music, a local musician friend of mine named Chance. And this is where the trouble starts. First off, I can't even get the thing to export properly. It spends forever exporting the thing but only plays back the audio. After much pulling of hair I find out you have to install a bunch of codecs for Avid (yep, I didn't read the instructions). So after getting that whole mess worked out, it's smooth sailing from here, right?
I finally get a usable full-size quicktime and I bring it into the production company I work at (Echo Entertainment) to show off the footage. I play it back on the nice big HD monitors and it looks TERRIBLE. There's this weird ghosting effect whenever the actor moves through the frame. There's also this strange white snow that's covering everything.
Meanwhile, my buddy Chance slaves away at an incredible score that totally brings the movie to a higher level. The end credits song alone just blows me away.
A colleague of mine, James, is kind enough to troubleshoot this export issue with me at home and while I do learn a great deal about formats and the like - there is a substantial bit of bad news. Basically, I imported the footage from tape at 24p but the camera I was using was the DVX-100B which doesn't shoot true 24p but shoots 29.97 with a 3:2 pulldown. So, now I have to re-import all the footage into Avid, re-create the edit from scratch (I can't use an EDL because it won't transfer from a 24p project to a 29.97 project), and I have to make the new edit match the old one exactly to fit Chance's fantastic score. Basically, I have a lot of work ahead of me. But the bright side is that the creative side of this project is pretty much done (the audio still needs to be mixed with some added sound effects) - all that's left to do is some tedious media managing and editing. Stay tuned for further updates...
