Another good Mac FilmMakers slate tonite at Apple in Cupertino.
Demo Reels
Phil did a nice slideshow with astro photos using Slideshow Expressions Software and his own exposures. He uses 4 telescopes, DSLRS and cryogenic sensors. Serious gear. Exposures were between 20 minutes and 9 hours, using a main telescope and a guiding telescope.
Jim did a nice slideshow using iPhoto of plum trees in Japan. Hand-held Canon SD500.
One videographer showed 3 shorts: Tokyo at Night (spectacular), the Fish Market, and Professor Robot Dr. Hiroshi Ishiguro (odd and a little creepy showing him and his robot twin in the same frame). He used a $4,000 Canon XH A1 HDV camera. His secret for the night shots was to “shoot a lot and keep the good stuff.”
A commercial filmmaker showed a documentary of the creation of a haunted house set in a hangar. Funny watching the actor tryouts, scary seeing the final results and reaction of the audience.
Mac OS X Backups and Hard Drive Troubleshooting
Kevin did a lecture on backup techniques for the Mac. He used a 800 GB firewire drive with 3 partitions to illustrate various methods. He recommends using a small one for a boot partition (30-40 GB) and a large one for most everything else.
He demoed using the GUI repair tool and also fsck in single user mode to repair partitions.
The Geniuses rely on Disk Warrior.
Many audience members chimed in with their experiences and favorite tools and techniques.
Logging and Capturing Video with Final Cut Pro
An Apple Store Creative Genius demonstrated the logging and features in Final Cut Pro. (These techniques are not applicable to Final Cut Express.)
He initially was a Premier user, but got interested in Apple products when he saw FCP logging.
He demoed logging some tapes from his “beater handicam” of footage he shot for a documentary called “Cyclops” of a unicycle parade.
He likes backing up project files by emailing them to himself periodically.
He likes about 5 seconds for pre-roll and post-roll.
A wedding photographer mentioned doing from 20 seconds down to as little as 1 second for good cameras and tape.
A couple people mentioned that they log the whole tape as one piece just for the sake of logging it.
He also showed some clever twists on video capture, such as doing a low-res JPEG capture to save disk space, doing your project rough cut, then at the finish re-capturing your video in hi res.
Sundance Film Festival 2006 Review
Kevin talked for a while about his dream trip to the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.
Some attendance tips:
- 2 show passes available A and B. A is first 5 days, B the last 5. Book A well in advance. Price of A and B is $5500 for 10 days.
- Book your hotel well in advance. Park City is sold out months in advance for $300-$500/nite. Sharing is good.
- No parking in Park City, so use the convenient shuttle buses.
- Make your own food, as the restaurants will have hours-long lineups.
- People are there to network, so carry lots of business cards.
- Stars show up for 6 pm premier showing, not 9 pm one.
- There are a total of 4 festivals happening: Sundance, Film Music, Schlock and Indie.
- Some films are viewable in the press rooms of the Yarrow hotel.
- Yarrow Hotel is most central location. The place to be.
- Can be cold outside, bring parka for lineups.
- Albertson’s has free wifi.
- Postal mail schwag home.
