Having been a prolific and partly-professional blogger for some 5 years now I was recently asked to compile a guide to blogging for those still classified as Blog-Virgins. Like all good bloggers i scoured the internet to see what others had written about blogging largely unsure that my own perspectives would prove to have any consistency beyond myself. There was a lot that i uncovered from other bloggers that I largely disagreed with.
Many asserted that blog posts must be short. I do not concur. A blog post should be as long as the subject matter and the quality of the writing can sustain. I have no problem reading long essays online just as I dont have issue with reading them in print. If they are good, i'll read to the end.
Others asserted firmly that blogs should be personal and first-person. And again, I do not concur. Personal and first-person is a writing technique much like any other, thus it's suitability is governed by context. i see no inherent reason why blogs should be first-person and personal. And moreover may suggest that a great many blogs are easily dismissed because of such an emphasis.
So having rejected some of the commonly expressed tenets I set out a few perspectives on my own.
I would begin by asserting 3 facts:
1) To effectively engage with an audience you must be
able to write Clearly and Well.
2) The Only way to become a good writer is to write Often and
Regularly.
3) If you are not Online you Dont Exist.
We believe these truths to be self evident.
In the 21st century it is the last of the three facts
above that can be the most confronting. The internet has wrought
massive opportunity to speak and be heard. The gate-keeper has been
sacked and the publisher's door has been propped open with a
digital doorstop for all to file in with their manuscripts. There
is no obstacle between you and and an international readership.
The key ramification of this opportunity is a radical shift in
expectations... It is now expected that an idea will appear online
first, it is expected that a discussion will be instigated online
first, it is expected that insight and knowledge will be sought and
found online first. Thus we may conclude that if You are not online
then you cannot be found. And if you cannot be found, then You
don't exist.
WHY BLOG?
There are a whole host of answers to the primary question of Why
Blog? (Not the least of which being to assert that you do indeed
exist)
To self promote and
build profile: A Blog has an infinite global reach and if it
is consistent with its topics it has a very high chance of
connecting with others who share an interest in those topics. A
blog of good ideas well expressed is among the most proactive
things you can do to build your own profile and promote yourself as
professional.
To create a database
library: By default a blog is a database with every post you
write tagged with keyword metadata. Subsequently, over time a blog
becomes a fully searchable library which at any point you can
search to retrieve information you have recorded. In this way you
can use your blog to store ideas, thoughts, references and
materials - both your own and from others - for later use.
To be proactive not
passive: The digital age embodies a move from passive
Consumers of ideas and knowledge to more proactive Produsers
(Producer-Users) of knowledge. Produsers generate and contribute
knowledge as much as absorb it; they Use rather than Consume
information. By becoming a blogger you are asserting yourself as a
proactive contributor to the ?discussion?.
To get work:
Potential employers care as much about what you Think as what you
have Done. A Blog goes far beyond a CV or showcase website in being
able to do this.
To practice:
Writing, making, communicating, creating and analysing are all acts
of doing and for anyone involved in any area of the creative arts
it is crucial that you know how to write, make, create, communicate
and analyse. The only way to get good at these is to do them -
often and regularly. A Blog is a place to practice.
To become
web-savy: This is the new must-have skill-set for the 21st
century. In the same way everyone traditionally needs to know
Office software and how to use a web-browser, it is now
increasingly expected in a wide diversity of careers that you know
how to contribute to, rather just use, the internet.
To establish yourself
as an expert: Great careers are built on expertise, but
having expert knowledge, skills and artistry is only half the
struggle; you must present yourself as an expert in order to be
recognised as one. A blog is the perfect means to stake out a claim
on an area of knowledge and establish yourself as an expert in that
sphere.
BLOGGING TIPS 1. Use Topical and Controversial post titles.
There is a lot of noise on the net. The best way to make your blog
cut through the noise and be read is to write clear and punchy
titles to your posts. Its the post titles that appear in RSS feeds
and the first thing to show in a Google search. Nothing generates
traffic like a controversial title that takes a specific point of
view. Nothing gets ignored faster on the internet than wishy-washy
post titles that don't engage a polemic.
2. Use images, diagrams, maps, videos and photos
Variety is the space of life and a blog is inherently multi-media.
Embedding diagrams, images, photos, video clips is easy and adds
dimension and depth to your blog.
3. Be Scannable.
Blog readers often scan a post before reading in detail. By using
short punchy paragraphs, sub-headings and even text highlights you
can improve the likelihood of a scan-reader becoming an in-depth
reader.
4. Be clear about your Blog topics and be consistent with
them
A blog that covers all things to everyone will fail to build up a
regular and proactive core audience. Define clearly the topics and
ideas your blog is concerned with and be consistent in your writing
about those topics.
5. Reply to comments
If you want to build a Produser audience that engages with the
ideas in your blog then it is important that you respond to any
comments readers may leave. It is important that your blog be seen
to be a living, breathing thing if you want it to serve as a
catalyst for conversations and networking.
6. Be tough and thick-skinned about comments
By publicly blogging you are transmitting your ideas out to the
mass public for all to see. As such you need to be a little bit
thick skinned to un-constructive comments. Respond constructively
to negative feedback and delete comments that arent contributing
productively to the conversation.
7. Know your audience and what they want
It can be hard to maintain motivation if the audience is just
yourself. Clarify who your audience is, the kind of information
they might be after, and write to inform and engage with that
audience directly and consistently.
8. Link
The ability for your blog to rank high in a Google search is driven
not by how many page hits you get but by how many other websites
refer and link to yours. Aside from simply writing good blog posts,
the simplest way to generate incoming referral links is to link to
others and to comment on other blogs. Such links generate
reciprocal links, commenting on another bloggers site encourages
them to comment on and link to yours. By building relationships you
create a web of connections and it is the number of connections
that will push your site higher in Google searches; subsequently
allowing more readers to find you.
9. Put your name on it
Your blog is there to serve you and be a
living, breathing extension of you so put your name on it. Use a
banner image that's evocative and embed your name into it.
10. Include an About section
Readers always want to know who they are reading. An About page
adds credibility to your blog by removing anonymity. Its a chance
to promote yourself as an expert and be personally recognized as an
authority on the topics your blog deals with.
Collections of screenplays online is hardly a new addition to the good ol' Interweb. Sometimes they are early drafts of known films, sometimes officially released versions, occasionally shooting scripts and, all too often, simple transcriptions of what appeared on screen - A practice which seems to largely defeat the point of reading a screenplay which is presumably to either a) to consider making an unproduced one or b) to analyze one that has been produced to see what changed or altered between page and screen.
In any case there are plenty of them around but just this week I stumbled across what must be one of the best resources for Screenplays yet sprung up on the web. Called simply 'MyPDFScripts' the site hosts an enormous array of screenplays in efficient and functional PDF format along with comprehensive searching and sorting. More than that, the site also presents as a central repository of news, information, interviews, reviews and articles about the art of the screenplay.
Their Mission Statement lays out the righteous intention of the site:
How do most veteran screenwriters respond when asked how someone can
become a better writer? Usually by stating the obvious: write often and
read a lot.
That said, we exist so that burgeoning screenwriters and filmmakers
everywhere have a free resource that provides them with the highest
quality screenplays available on the internet. Thats a bold statement,
you say? Well, thats because this site is about quality and not quantity.
We want screenplays that look like screenplays. Why? Because we write
screenplays. Because we study screenplays. Because we know what a
properly formatted screenplay should look like, and John Boys 352 page digitally converted script in 32 pt. Arial Bold isnt it. Thats why we only
provide PDF formatted scripts, because they represent the most accurate
representation of a tangible script, which we feel is crucial when
studying the craft of screenwriting where so much emphasis is placed on
structure and page count.
Every script available on this site has been double-checked to
ensure quality, stripped of extraneous non-essential information, and
file sizes have been reduced when possible.
MyPFD Scripts really is a fantastic resource and well worth setting as a daily visit destination and a regular read.
The Phantom Menace (and all three Star Wars prequels) Sucked. Sucked such outrageously large lemons that it's hard to fathom that they came from the same person who created the original Episodes 4-6. So much so that the only conclusion to draw is that George had a LOT of help (Paul Hirsch, Lawrence Kasdan, Irvin Kershner) and that those great minds who helped him seemingly ABANDONED him leaving George's incompetence and ego fully exposed for the world to see.
I could rant on but I shall refrain in order to make room for a 70min bout of pure genius from a guy called Mike from Milwaukee.
On the surface this is a very funny and satiric appraisal of the Phantom Menace. But to view it simply as a tongue-in-cheek fun would be to miss what is one of the most astute, accessible and well illustrated examples of story analysis i've ever seen. Mike from Milwaukee may be taking the piss but his wry tone belies a depth of observation and analytical clarity that most film critics will never obtain. More importantly he finds engaging and wholly accessible ways to illustrate the deep flaws in Phantom Menace that whilst hilarious resonate with overwhelming and inescapable truth. (case in point being the last 5mins of Part 6 which beautifully sets up why fights scenes are NOT about fighting)
I insist you watch every minute and pray that George Lucas, Michael Bay and a score of other Hollywood hacks are watching too....
I have updated and expanded my definitive detailing of Free tools, utilities, resources and applications available online. Not just a list of links I have sought to provide a little detail on each tool and sort the collection into easily navigable groupings.
Almost every tool listed in one I personal use or have used and in doing so have found 'useful'. The collection includes free-standing apps, plugins and add-ons as well as online tools and resources.
It seems like only yesterday I was kicking around a fledgling and ambitious software tool. Back then CELTX was a baby-faced kid with a lot of promise and a host of good ideas rattling around. Today CELTX seems a teenager that grew up into a brash young adult possessing a refreshing blend of enthusiasm and escalating maturity.
Version 2.5 of CELTX was recently slipped into the wild and does its level best to up the ante another notch. Certainly there are a string of features that will make existing users very happy with new options that have been at the top of the request list. Screenplay text can now be "locked" to prevent edits and alterations. This is perfect for allowing the production team to access the CELTX project file, perform mark-up and add notes and annotations but leave the script itself in tact and locked-off.
In a similar vein of facilitating project sharing and collaboration (which is truly the beating throbbing heart of CELTX) 2.5 also adds a a new ?Revision? mode which allows for different department heads and collaborators to revise the script with their own uniquely coloured amendments. These amendments can then be viewed like filters - turned off and on at will - and allow a highly effective and very visual method of tracking changes and viewing suggestions and alterations. Changes and additions are highlighted directly on the script and in the particular assigned colour. Its simple, effective and really bloody useful.
Add to this an integrated Chat system right inside CELTX for live collaboration and integrates with your Celtx Studio account and you have something really very special.
But the bit of Newness that has me most excited is SKETCH. In typical broad-thinking Celtx fashion SKETCH is not one tool to do one thing but a little eco-system that can serve a number of uses depending on your needs.
Ostensibly Sketch is a rudimentary drawing tool based on a kind of clip-art and basic geometric shapes. But once you start to doodle a bit with its incredible practical usefulness becomes glaringly apparent. For some, Sketch is a very fast and efficient means to produce storyboard cells and framing ideas for shots. But through its integration with the existing Storyboard function of Celtx, Sketch is enabled to take on a more directly technical and logistical function as a top-down, mud-map, tool for producing camera and staging plans. Sitting side by side with the Storyboard cell, Sketch in this way becomes a Cinematographers best friend, allowing them to pre-plan the position of lights, props, and movements long before they walk onto set. The first thing some of my cinematographer students did when I showed them was populate the storyboard cells with their reccy photos of locations and have them as a visual reference for their camera plans. Print the whole thing off and take onto set - or if you're really a digital-native, print to PDF and throw it on your phone/PDA and carry it right onto set with you.
Packs of the vector-based clip-art icons and diagrams (known as Art Packs) can be purchased from the Celtx website for next to nothing - currently their are 3 art-packs with scores of images for just $6!.
Sketch is just the beginning, it's fairly simple at the moment but with Celtx's completely user-focused development style, they will listen rather than dictate what their users want. With the feedback that comes in on how users want and plan to use Sketch we?ll certainly see Sketch grow into one very effective pre-production tool.
So there really is No excuse now. If you arent using Celtx, youre outa ya mind! www.celtx.com
Not just the passive annoyance many of us feel when tele-marketers call your house or spam your inbox. My hatred is deep-seeded, scourged into the fibrous sinews of my being, and fills my mouth with insipid bile whenever I am forced to even speak to someone who emblazons the word marketing on their business card.
Make no mistake my hatred is profound.
Marketing is what people do for a living when they have no particular skills, knowledge, insight or opinions. Marketing is a career path designed for the empty, the vacuous, the uninspired, the banal and the intolerably mediocre.
Marketing is the venerable haze cast about like a suburban musical society smoke blower to obscure ideas, imagination and progressive thinking.
Marketing is knowledge of Nothing masquerading as the understanding of Everything.
Marketing is not a Science (marketers are regularly guilty of crimes against statistics) Nor is Marketing an Art (it doesnt seek to create, inspire, shape or inform - its very existence serves only to regurgitate and reconstitute. To present the same old shit in a different bucket and charge good money for the privilege of the excrement remix)
To this I am forced to concede that I am myself may, as a journalist, be part of a marketing machine. But rather than lead me to renege my position this pseudo-fact just makes my hate all the more manifest fuelled, as it is, by a tinge of self-loathing.
But before I spill any more venom onto my digital page let us take a step back to review the definitions of Marketing. First to point out that Marketing is NOT Advertising.
This from the American Marketing Association Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.
This from the text-book Principles of marketing by Philip Kotler, Gary Armstrong, Veronica Wong, John Saunders A social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and values with others
And I cry Bullshit...! (Particularly the society at large bit - stop fooling yourself you mindless hacks)
I cry Bullshit on many grounds but the one particular bone I would like to pick is that above all else Marketing, as a process/entity/business exists wholly and solely to justify its own existence.
Without Marketing people would still make things and sell them. People would still identify a need and produce a product to service that need. And if nobody needed that thing then the person would stop making that thing. If lots of people needed that thing then they would make more and better things. Marketing is utterly supernumerary to this process. It is human imagination that drives the invention of things. Marketing does not make people more imaginative. Many of the greatest inventions of the modern world were created by accident or without specific market opportunity. Science itself is founded on the premise of open exploration and all the major discoveries in science and medicine in the modern age have come about through exploring with no particular market aim. Penicillin, Xrays, the Internet....
Necessity is not the mother of invention. Very often Invention precedes Necessity and produces its own self-fulfilling necessity. Invention is the Mother of Necessity.
Accepting this profound truism leads to a profound conclusion; if Marketing is not at all required for the creation of things, the need for things, nor the selling of things then Marketing exists with only one aim - to justify its own existence. I am reminded of that famous quote (from someone insightful) The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.
If Marketing is not at all required for the creation of things, the need for things, nor the selling of things then Marketing is only required to sell things we dont need to as many people as possible who dont need them.
Marketing therefore has the prevailing, perennial, primary objective of justifying its own existence.
I am no market fundamentalist (the pinko commy lefty, greeny badge on my forehead prevents the self-lobotomy that would be necessary to be one) but when stripped to essentials there is undeniable truth in the notion that if you have something people need then people will want it; subsequently an economy is born. Marketing therefore is about identifying need where there isnt one, creating a want where there isnt one and determinging if there is a market for a thing that is unnecessary.
Market research is conducted to prove the worth of the market research. Marketing strategies are developed to identify the need for a marketing strategy. Marketing plans are written as mindless busy-work to justify the expense on the creation of a marketing plan. Worst still is when (and this is where I get REALLY irate) good ideas, insightful speculation, informed hypothesis, educated guesses, bold risk-taking, a good hunch is slapped into bleeding mediocrity by Marketing. Wherever the Marketing God presides any suggestion of an Idea is met head on by calls for market research to investigate the viability of the market for unique selling points and consider the penetration of the product into targeted demographics. All this is nothing more than a giant smokescreen of slippery bullshit to avoid at all costs the process of having an IDEA.
And it makes sense that Marketing would proliferate such excrement for if such a head on challenge was not undertaken against IDEAS then the fallacy and irrelevance of Marketing would be plain and palpable for all to see. If the idea was left to stand and be explored then Marketing could not justify the time and cost of its existence and the vacuous - idea-free-zone - individuals who call themselves Marketers.
The great inventions, ideas, products and progresses of humanity did not common about because Market research showed the way! They came about through someone taking a punt, running on instinct, hazarding a guess, exploring a possibility, boldly going where no one has gone before.
It is this blender of ingenuity, insight, instinct and ideas that both Creates needs and Satisfies them whilst Marketing vigorously but pointlessly masturbates in the corner blithely convincing everyone that its even better than the real thing. My ire, hatred and despair however has been tempered somewhat; not from outside haters like myself but from the termites within Marketing itself...
I notice increasing reluctance on the part of marketing executives to use judgment; they are coming to rely too much on research, and they use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post for support, rather than for illumination. David Ogilvy - The Father of Advertising
And this...
Marketing is what you do when your product is no good Edwin Land - Founder of the Polaroid company
And then this - The Audience Is Always Right - provides a profound insight into new thinking about what Audiences are and How they engage....
Today's media world is thrilling, captivating and full of challenges for brands - a revolution in brands and people's behaviour in fact. But as in all revolutions, it's sometimes difficult to get a clear view of what's going on. And so, dear readers, TBWA's strategy department was looking for patterns and similarities from different discussions and has attempted to sum up the revolution in 135 slides. Our goal is to explore the different ways of tackling today's communication challenges - and to show how successful brands are switching from brand-centric to audience-centric behaviour. Inspired by many different people and brands, it intends to spark a conversation about the need for Media Arts, and how it is ingrained with the theory of Disruption.
For all
the copious books on Screenwriting and endless re-hashings of Hero's
Journey, 3-Act Structure and misappropriations of Aristotle; sometimes
the best advice comes not in lengthy paragraphs but in concise,
powerful and singular Words and Phrases.
This is no 12 step formula or another diatribe of structure from a
script guru who has never actually written a screenplay; it's simply an
investigation of the distinct qualities that engage and edify us as
viewers.
Qualities Of Ambitious Film:
1. Ambition 2. Originality 3. Innovation 4. Integrity To The Concept 5. Discipline 6. Truthfulness 7. Joy Of Doing 8. Singularity 9. Communication Of Themes 10. Clarity of Intent 11. Synthesis of Style & Themes 12. Application Of Techniques 13. Reality Of Actors 14. Pleasure 15. A Good Story Well Told 16. Accomplishment Within The Means 17. Awareness & Appreciation Of The World 18. Acknowledgement Of The Limits Of Feature Film Form 19. Consideration Of Effects Of Representation 20. Recognition Of Film History 21. Subversive To The Status Quo 22. Provocation Of The Audience 23. Respect For The Audience 24. Confidence In The Filmmaking 25. Restraint 26. Awareness Or Avoidance Of Pretension 27. Access To The Subconscious 28. Differentiation Among Characters & Environments 29. Leaving Some Things Unexplained 30. Emotional Use Of Technique 31. Depth Of Character / Depth of Characters 32. Impassioned Point Of View
He then goes on to flesh out those terms and it's an article well worth the reading.
I have begun compiling some of the more useful eBooks available online into a central repository on my website and forming a kind of virtual private library - only it's public so you can all share. The eBook host SCRIBD has became an invaluable source of research information and self-education and Im leveraging it's excellent embedded hosting features to good effect.
So to take adetailed virtual read you can visit my online library at www.mikejones.net.au
Sublime.... that really seems the only truly appropriate word for this video from the Ukraine.
But watching - intellectually staggered and emotionally moved as I was - I was prompted to consider exactly What it is...?
Painting, with Sand as the medium? Of course. Performance? Certainly. Of it itself the sand drawings are just static drawings; beautifully realized for sure but distinctly lacking the impact those same drawings are imbued with when presented as a real-time and progressive performance.
But still it seams that describing this video below as simply a 'Performed' 'Painting' with Sand does not nearly do the work justice.
What is it really? It is CINEMA. Pure and simple, it is the art of the moving image. The images are not drawings, they are progressive and continually changing moving images engaging with a performed narrative. if Chris Marker's superb La Jette is cinema, made as it is from nothing but still images that progress blend and change, then certainly this work below possess all the same uniquely cinematic qualities.
The video below presents an art that transcends the largely disposable experiences of most music, painting and movies - it is transportive, intoxicating, utterly compelling and infused with a distinct humanity. Once watched it is not easily forgotten.
New website exploring cinema and digital technology
Over the past few months ive been working on building a new website to serve as the central collection of my writings, essays, articles and video projects concerned with cinema and the digital. The driving impetus shaping the site has been to avoid the vacuous and 'surface-level only' nature of so many websites of late and establish a site with a depth and density of material and content. Some 4-5months on with the project i feel like I'm very close to the crticial-mass.
www.mikejones.net.au contains over 30 essays and articles detailing topics ranging from the virtual camera and computer gaming, through to composition, analysis of the moving camera, colour grading, the role of film schools and discussions of contemporary production software tools.
Along with the various written works, the site also contains its share of rich-media. This includs a collection of video essays and online documentaries that examine filmmaking process and digital aesthetics as well as an array of podcasts of lectures and public presentations concerning topics ranging from popular culture and online communications through to digital cinema theory and the impact of surround sound.
If any of these topics interest you please feel free to come visit and leave a note in the guestbook. All works on the site are lisenced under Creative Commons.
With every technological evolution connected to art there are those that sing it's praises and those that are detractors. There are those that see the loss of something once held dear and others who see the gains made by the new and the different. Sometimes these are practical and industrial concerns, and other times they are creative worries.
When Photography emerged many declared the end of art now that a machine could capture life.
When 'Talkies' arose with sound-on-film, some declared the loss of visual purity and imagination.
When Colour arrived many declared that cinema's mystique had been sacrificed.
When Widescreen became dominant many declared that proportion and the golden-ratio had been dispensed with.
When Television came into being many declared that the communal nature of cinema was lost.
When home Video Cassettes emerged many declared that illegal copying of films was destroying the movie industry.
And yet amid the countless fears, apprehensions, misgivings and misconceptions there are those who have vision, who see past the now to a much bigger picture.
Francis Ford Coppola speaking erratically (and probably high on a horde of cocaine) at the 51st Academy Awards in 1979 commented:
"We're on the eve of something that's going to make the industrial revolution look like a small out-of-town tryout. i can see a communications revolution that's about movies and art and music and digital electronics and satellites, but above all, human talent; and it's going to make the masters of cinema, from whom we've inherited this business, believe things that the would have thought impossible."
There are those who see what has been lost and those that see what might be....
Apple finally, at long last, let FCS3 out of the bag
Well it damn well took them long enough! At long last Apple got their
act together and have FCS3/FCP7 ready to roll. It's no secret i have
been highly critical of Apple over the past few years for not making
FCS as good as it should or could be. Releases 5 and 6 were profoundly
disappointing simply because they brought nothing new to the editing
table that didn't already exist in competing
applications.
More
recently, speculating on what we might hope for in FCP7, I offered up a
list of hoped-for additions. How many of them were
fulfilled...?
- A real-time engine that can actually scale
decoding resolution. Result - Umm... seemingly
not. Whilst RT performance should be improved and ProRes performance is
very good, it doesn't appear that Apple have addressed this issue in
the way that most other NLE's have.
- Actual 4k 4096px
support It seems so. A major failing of the QT
engine overcome and FCP now reports to suppourt 4k 4096 res.
- Project files able to be fully exchanged with
Motion/Colour/DVDSP Nope. Apple still havnt
engaged integration in a more comprehensive way. XML is the right idea,
Send-To commands such as that from FCP to STP are good but none of
these is as a well rounded system as that which Adobe have shown is
possible whereby projects files from After Effects, Premiere,
Soundbooth can all be freely moved around. Despite the rhetoric Applee
are still very much behind in regard to the fully integrated suite.
- GPU acceleration (used for much more than page-twirl
transitions) Nope. It seems the GPU remains an
untapped resource.
- Greatly improved audio tools in FCP (this is a VERY long
list that starts with the ability to playback a bloody MP3 files
without RENDERING!!!!) Nope. It seems Apple have
failed to see the forest on this one. I don't have FCP7 to test yet but
there seems no mention at all of improving the horrendously bad audio
tools in FCP. Of course they would contend that this is SoundTrack
Pro's job but by forcing the user to move to a different application
for any kind of sound work they force the user to work in a specific,
traditional manner. And I dont like begin told 'how' i should work by
the software. What if i want to mix and edit sound as I edit rather
than AFTER i edit? A new age of production demands that I as the user
choose my workflow rather than have the software dictate it. Premiere,
Vegas, Edius all have very comprehensive audio tools right on the NLE
timeline including surround sound, bus to bus routing and wet-dry
monitor/record. This more forward thinking approach that Apple seem not
interested in, simply makes for a much more open and non-dictatorial
tool that allows the user to work they want to.... And if FCP still
cant play an Mp3 files without rendering than the guys at Apple truly
have their head screwed on backwards!
- Metadata
management Ummm, nope. It seems that Apple really
havnt put any work into advancing the idea of managing, creating,
annotation media assets with metadata. This is the frontier of new
thinking about digital production - on one hand its simply
good media management (an area FCP has been notoriously poor in
comparison to say, Avid) but on the other Metadata management evokes
all sorts of new worklow concepts and processes. Witness the way Adobe
have started to implement Metadata into tools like the auto-transcrbing
of audio files from Soundbooth or the direct to disk shooting metadata
annotation of On-Location. Apple appear to have left this unexplored.
They have the system in place in the form of their XML structure but to
date this is very under exploited.
-'Real' native format
suppourt rather than compulsory re-wrapping to
MOV. NOPE. Once again Apple claim the 'no
transcoding' 'native' workflow tag lines when in truth Apple is almost
completely restricted to QuickTime MOV files. Almost every non-MOV file
has to be re-wrapped to MOV in order to be used. This isnt transcoding,
there isnt quality loss but it is a manipulation that shouldn't be
necessary. it means files like R3D's and XDCAMEX have to be duplicated.
And worse that such files are often not usable or give poor
performance) when opened in non-Apple/FCS applications. Either this is
a deliberate protectionist policy by Apple to protect its own Quicktime
product from competition or else FCP's underlying engine is so flawed
that it simply cant cope effectively with non QT
wrappers.
That said, what we did get
outside of this wish list was a form of background rendering such as
Adobe CS4 have with Media Encoder working in the background while you
work. This is nothing new but it is good and I hope it works as well
and efficiently as it will need to.
The iChat
theatre system in FCS3 is the one glimmer of Apple the Innovator of
old. This is a very interesting idea that goes a step further than
Adobe's clip-notes system for review and collaboration by going into a
real-time landscape. It sounds very good and I look forward to kicking
it around.
Velocity controls for clip speed. This
is the classic Apple/FCP that I have previously complained about.
Premiere and Avid have had comprehensive speed controls, ramping and
enveloping of speed for, literally, YEARS. Thank you for catching up
FCP.
Improved marker system. The previous marker
tools in FCP were a cruel and pointless joke and so it appears Apple
have finally joined to 21st century with a (seemingly) much improved
set of marker tools. Sony's Vegas has nothing less than 5
different types of markers that are completely customizable, namable,
individual or paired regions and can trigger events and captions - will
FCP's be up to this standard? Probably not but any improvement is
good.
The interface of FCP it seems missed out
completely. Whilst cosmetic this is one area no one seems happy with.
The overly bright, bitsy, cluttered GUI filled with microscopically
small icons really needs a re-think.
ProRes got the
big bump that everyone was expecting. A 444 with Alpha mode was just
what everyone was looking for to make effects heavy and higher-end post
a bit more viable than just working with the clumsiness of Uncompressed
10bit. ProRes is a great codec and it just got better. But again
there's nothing new about this. Cineform have had a lossless
intermediate 10 and 12 bit 444 and 422 format available for a long time
and even go further with RAW capabilities and a real-time,
non-destructive, metadata colour correction system. So ProRes 4444 is
nothing new, nothing innovative, nothing we havnt seen before expect
for the fact that it comes as part of FCS3 and FCS3 is very cheap!
Apple as bargain basement bundle!
I wont go into
much detail on the other FCS applications in this post. Motion has been
boosted and thats good but it is still a very far cry from After
Effects. Some users will love it for its price point in the FCS bundle
and for some of the great and easy to execute tricks up its sleeve. But
its not even close yet to competing with After Effects.
Color is an enormously powerful colour correction
system but it seems Apple still havnt had the time to "Appleise" it, it
still doesn't look or feel like a true FCS app and is arguably still
more complex to use than it should or needs to be. Anyone who has used
Magic Bullet Looks knows how fluid and elegant a colour system can be
and if MBL only had secondary CC an Motion Tracking masks then Apple
Color would look very clumsy indeed.
SoundTrack
Pro, from the beginning, has been the great DAW that ISN'T. STP could
have been great but so far it has very much not been great. Modeled off
Sony's superb Acid Pro but lacking both the power and flexibility of
Acid, STP has been plagued with stability issues and a host of strange
quirks - not the least being that it can import but Not export an OMF.
The Apple press release speaks of a number of improvements to STP but
largely they seem simplistic (voice level match) or long over due
remedies to previous failings (channel re-ordering) I was, in many
ways, hoping that STP would be the shining light in FCS3 but it seems
disappointment is coming my way.
The FCS3 package
may be great value and cover almost all the bases of production, but
there's really no arguing that STP and Motion are anything but
second-rate to where the market is at. Acid Pro, Audition, ProTools,
Cubase, Reaper, Sonar are all superior DAW's. Some of these are
expensive (PT, Sonar) other are inexpensive (Reaper, Acid) but for
SoundTrack pro cheap can be a big price to pay for second
rate.
And as for DVD Studio Pro.... My god, has it
been left out of the upgrade cycle altogether? The great authoring
system that once was had fallen so far behind the curve that
it was getting a bit ridiculous. And now it seems Apple are just
ashamed of it.
Now, dont get me wrong. Im very happy
to have the improvements that are there, as will my students who are
daily frustrated with FCP. But for all its niceties this release is
much like FCP5 and FCP6, it keeps Apple in the game with a strong
toolset but it does not put them ahead of it. There is no real
innovation here, nothing that we havnt seen before. They may have 50%
of the market now but without going one-better than the competition
they are likely to see their market share substantially whittle away
over the next few years.
Web building done right - SquareSpace and my new site
The evolution and maturation of the internet has been a rapid one. And its progress is one that i can map personally by my own websites I have built and maintained over the years. My first sites in the late 90's were straight HTML. In the early to mid 00's it was Dreamweaver that ruled and made Web-building closer to Web-design by virtue of drawing upon tools refined by the Desktop Publishing Revolution some decade earlier. But there was another big change that set down in the past 3-4 years - the rise of the CMS (content management system)
Coinciding and tightly linked to the Blogging movement, the CMS took the code away in a much more profound way than Dreamweaver ever could by providing an infrastructure from which a site could be managed and manipulated. I tried a number of these suits on and after much ill-fitting and overly prescriptive paradigms, found myself very happy with Wordpress.
Whilst more dedicated blogging engines such as Blogger and Roller remained narrow in their perspective, Wordpress seemed to offer a very clean slate from which to assemble and manage a site that could easily be a blog but was not restricted to only being a blog. It was pseudo modular, had plenty of addons, was largely very effective and clean - either self hosted or hosted by the WP servers.
But despite arguably being the best of a mediocre bunch, Wordpress was also never quite right. Not truly modular, rather inflexible, sometimes slow if using the Free WP servers, clumbsy to use at times - the web was very much due for something better.
And I think i found it...
SquareSpace is getting much hype of late and having now spent several weeks investigating, running test sites and migrating data, I have nowlaunched a new site on the SquareSpace system. Its the new incarnation of my private webiste www.mikejones.net.au
The system is not amazing for its new-ness or evolituonary step forward; it's amazing for it's simplicyt, well-thought out paradigm and clean elegance in presentation. It strikes me that SquareSpace has borrowed much from all the CMS's that have gone before - not least of all Wordpress - and yet also presents a clean and clear vision of how website building and management can function.
What strikes me most profoundly about the experience of using SquareSpace is the largely object-orientated paradigm it engages. Rather than a distinct and demarcated Front-end and Back-end; the control side of SquareSpace is integrated right into the front-side. Once logged in if you want to move/edit/modfy a section simply click/edit/type/drag right on it as it sits on the page. This may seem highly logical as a kind of in-situ tactility but it's remarkable how un-common this approach.
The connection that seemed immediately obvious to me was between SquareSpace and Sony's Vegas editing system. Vegas is the ONLY NLE on the market that embraces a direct in-situ approach to controls. In the traditional NLE interface, for example, if you want to modfy an effect on a clip you dont access the CLIP itself as it sits in-situ on the timeline but rather you access those controls in a physically and conceptually seperate window on the screen - removed and apart from the clip itself. In Vegas the controls for any given compoent are largely found on/in the compoent itself. To get to an effect on a clip you enter the clip on the timeline. if you want to select right and left channels in an audio file on the timlien you do it on the clip, on the timeline. If you want to add an effect to all clips on a track, you enter the track itself.... and so on. It's this direct object-oroenttated aporach in Vegas that puts the prime importance Not on the source or canvas windows but on the Timeline and the clips themselves. It's a way of working that traditionally expeirenced editors often struggle with but new and more free-thinking editors find wholly logical. SquareSpace takes a similar approach, largely doing away with the front-end/back-end paradigm and cretaing a single front-side access mode that is infinately more efficient, flexible and logical.
SquareSpace is not free - which may turn some people off in this age of the "give me free or give me death" mantra. But SquareSpace smartly bill this as a benefit not an obstacle. A point of differemce. A 'real' system for 'real' and 'serious' users is the implication. More signal, less noise is the result. On SquareSpace there is nothing to 'put-up' with, no adds, no unwanted elements, Just a more complete position of control.
That said, SquareSpace know they are working within a industry structure and economic culture that more readilly finds viable the idea of small amounts of money from lost of people than large amounts of money from a few people. It's worked superbly well for Google, its the cocnept behind the Pro Service add-ons of Celtx and its a smart choice for a web-building platform. Whilst SquareSpace can obviosuly provide a powerful, self-controlled, service for corproate clients they have also positioned their pricing structure where it is highly attractive to Wordpress users who currently pay nothing. Starting at just $8/month which gives you a good size server spave, a decent amount of bandwidth for a perosnal site and a hige raneg of fleixble page modules; the step from a $0 Wordpress acount to a $8 SquareSpace account is really not a big step at all.
What must also be admired is the no-contract, quit anytime, export your data at will offering of SquareSpace with a free 2 week trial to see how you like the system once you've migrated your data to it. A step which is made all the easier since SquareSpace can directly import the XML dumps from system like Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad and Moveable Type.
My new SquareSpace site still needs a little dressing up but with just 2 days work setting up all the new data I now havea site much more effective, efficient and flexible than before.
For indie filmmakers in particular, SquareSpace offers a system that provides excellent suppourt for video embedding in a clean attarctive, well designed environment that wont make you look like just another amateur hack. First impressions count when you're trying to show off a showreel. With the superb quality of HD video on Vimeo as a hosting platform embedded over to SquareSpace, the pair presents a compelling platform for young Directors, DoP's and screen-media artists.
Re-thinking story? Where is the Dramatist? Go ask the Editor.
Every filmmaker should consider themselves a Dramatist. Not a writer or story-teller or script analyst or any other useless term, but a Dramatist - someone who understands and can construct Drama - human engagement with experience, narrative and catharsis. Too often this is watered down into just 'story'. A colleague of mine, an extensively experienced screenwriter and movie project developer, declares ad-nuseum that the filmmakers job is NOT AT ALL to tell a story but rather take the viewer on a journey through the story. The distinction I believe is profound.
What invariably arises out of such exertions and declarations is discussion of what Story is and how it is or should be structured? At this point 'Aristotle' rears his head - 3-act structure - various 'methods' - Hero's journey and so on. Only a fool rejects these - 4000 years of performative works of drama cannot be so easily dismissed, let alone the past century of cinema - more dramatically satisfying then any other form that has gone before.
But once any artform develops a cannon of work people begin to view that body of work collectively and analytically and start to see patterns. And from those patterns they form conclusions and assumptions. Of itself, to this point, that?s a-ok. But the art of the dramatist can quickly fall in a hole when such patterns begin to be referred to as 'rules', formulas, set-in-stone-defy-at-your-peril parameters.
Am i the only one who wonders why so many of the so-called Gurus of screenwriting structure Do Not have impressive CV's as produced screenwriters? With the glorious exception of William Goldman - it makes me wonder why, if these guys do know all the answers as to 'how to write a screenplay that sells', they're doing a whole lot more preaching than practicing? Or do they just know that there's a whole lot more money to be made from preaching than actually practicing? Or, more cynically, is the preaching a way to make up for a lack of talent? (ie "if i talk loud enough about Aristotle and dramatic arcs no one will notice my lack of actual screen credits..." (notice im not naming names as I dont want to be sued - these guys who shall remain nameless strike as the litigious type...)
Anyway, it was while musing on this idea that I struck upon an article in WIRED by Scott Brown entitled "Why Hollywood needs a new model for storytelling". Satyrical though it is, it none the less prods at the 'sub-industry' of self-help that often plagues filmmaking.
"Brothers and sisters, we are gathered here today to mourn the death of Story. As you may have heard, it's kaput?or, at the very least, terminally ill, wracked by videogames, wikis, recaps, talkbacks, YouTube, ADD, and the rise of a multiplatform, multipolar, mashup-media culture. Hollywood, vendor of Story in its most denatured form, is most at risk: The film industry is slowly but steadily being forced to part with quaint artifacts like the "hero's journey," Joseph Campbell's so-called Monomyth. (Which is just so ... well ... mono.) Beginnings, middles, and ends are headed for the attic, next to the box marked VCR Rewinders/Beastmaster Franchise. And Tinseltown can kick this chestnut to the curb."
If you want to understand story, you need to understand people, what makes us worry and fear. if you want to understand Aristotelian ideas then here's a thought; read Aristotle! better from the horses mouth than from some bloated mis-attributing parody. Read Howard Suber's book "the Power of Film" which will NOT tell you how to write a screenplay but will tell you a lot about the fundamentals of what makes a person/idea/event 'dramatic'. In fact DO NOT read any book that even vaguely suggests that it will tell you HOW to write a screenplay. Instead read about ideas, conflicts, struggles and adventures; there is far more to be learned there then in another re-hashing of screenplay 'rules'.
And better still, if you REALLY want to understand the 'construction of experience' that is the nuts and bolts of cinema, DONT ask a screenwriter...! Instead ask an Editor. Dont read Screenwriting books, read books on Editing. Start with Norman Hollyn's superb 'The Lean Forward Moment' and work your way from there.
The screenwriter is simply the first writer on a movie. The Director then 're-writes' with direction and the actors re-write their bits with performance but ultimately the king kong final-say 'writer' is the Editor. Most editor's Ive ever known have a significantly more engrained and innate sense of the 'cinematic' and how to leverage dramatic action into emotional enaggement than most writers will ever comprehend. The art of the Dramatist is the art of Problem solving. Screenwriters only have to solve problems in a 2-dimensional way, it's the Editor who has to wrangle, craft, shape and manipulate drama with 3-dimensional holistic density - not just as words and actions but also as timing, rhythm, pace, moments, glances and inflections, tones, colours, shapes and sounds.
Once you've had the joys of solid state shooting and production, with formats such as P2 and XDCAMEX, its hard to imagine ever going back to tape. This is not to say that solid state doesn't come without its drawbacks: no shelfable master, re-wrapping processes, short record times are all tangible workflow concerns. But the advantages - speed, efficiency, on-set clip review - for the most part outweigh the drawbacks. Going further, the real advantage to be embraced is metadata tagging and media management. It's here that solid-state steps into a realm of its own.
Final Cut Pro has its log and transfer system for managing solid-state files which, whilst rather rudimentary, works reasonably well. Adobe's Premiere Pro CS4 goes much further with a comprehensive system for metadata and solid-state file management built into a dedicated browser inside the GUI. But there has for some time also been a software tool floating around deserving much more attention than it attracted.
