What's he up to, eh?
So… Final Cut Pro X, eh? Lot of chatter about it. Lot of controversy.
I bought it the day it came out expecting to jump in and find an editing Nirvana. Instead I found something that made my head hurt. I believe this reaction was not unique. Being slightly busy, I resolved to keep an open mind and give it a proper go when I had the time. Turns out that time is now: six months later! Continued…
Categories: editing, Personal, Recommendation, Work.
Dannsa hits Episode the Third with a trip to Taynuilt, near Oban. Well, relatively “near”: Taynuilt isn’t near anywhere, which is sort if the point of Ballet West. In idyllic surrounds, the ballet degree students have few distractions, other than the odd stag sticking his majestic head through the studio window to enjoy a rehearsal.
Categories: confession, editing, Personal, Recommendation, tv, Work.
Following on from last week’s blog, here’s what I have to say for myself regarding the music choices in Dannsa, episode 2, which is on tonight at 10pm, BBC Alba.
This week, we concentrate on the Fusion dance group in Aberdeen, with a brief sojourn with Livingston’s b-boyz (and girl), the Heavy Smokers, kicking off with… Continued…
Categories: confession, editing, Personal, Recommendation, tv, Work.
A new show TV started last Monday, 10pm on BBC Alba. It’s called Dannsa[1] and you’ll all be able to get it, because BBC Alba has just become available to anyone with Freeview. That’s you[2]. I recommend the show to you, because it’s rather good. I know this because I worked on it, along with a string of extraordinarily talented people.[3] And frankly, we all worked damned hard. I don’t want to give too much away, but one aspect of the post-production that I feel I can discuss in some detail is the choice of music. Obviously, the dancers featured dance to something, so music choice was a primary concern.
The show follows six dance groups from all over Scotland with wildly varying ages and dance styles, from classical ballet to contemporary, an over-60s group to a breakdance crew. There’s something for everyone, and it was a joy spending time with them all, particularly when they start coming together later in the series. Episode One introduces us to them all, whereas subsequent editions focus on one group at a time. So this introduction to them all is, itself, a kind of compilation album, a mix tape, a playlist. So the music better be good.
Categories: confession, editing, Personal, Recommendation, tv, Work.
Just realised that the edit which prompted the previous post will be the last sport programme I do for a very long time. I’m halfway through a 12 month contract with Gaelic indie mneTV (who have a terrific logo, don’cha think?), but the remainder of the time will be devoted to a single programme. It’s an ob-doc, which typically take ages to film and edit, so that’s me accounted for until the end of March.
Categories: editing, Personal, Work.
There’s a wee issue when interviewing footballers at the moment. It’s their age — anything between late teens and late thirties. The problem is that the human experience is so different for people at the extremes of that range, if you want to ask someone what their first album was, how do you phrase it?
Categories: editing, Personal, Work.
Started a show today featuring the formidable Margo MacDonald, MSP. I was aware of Ms. MacDonald before most other MPs-that-weren’t-on-Spitting-Image because my mum had gone to college with her, back when in Scotland you had to go to Aberdeen to learn how to be a P.E. teacher. My mum would never miss a chance to tell us when Ms. MacDonald was lying about her age; I was just chuffed she knew someone semi-famous.
I’ve only digitised and logged the footage so far rather than cut any of it, but the Member of the Scottish Parliament for Lothians is not only formidable, it turns out, but very funny, pragmatic, passionate and caring. It was she, after all, who campaigned for prostitute-tolerant zones in Edinburgh having worked directly with the girls and woman (mostly drug addicts) caught in the oldest profession — “seen the whites of their eyes,” as she puts it — only to have her bill rejected by the “moral” majority in parliament, whose morals were academic, distant and, in the end, no help at all to the victims of the situation. Her views on drug policy are equally practical, sensible and, of course, unpopular, borne of the desire to actually help people and reduce the problem, even though it precludes the lofty superiority of those less bothered by engaging with the reality.
In short, she’s the kind of gutsy, down-to-earth, yet highly intelligent heroine who gives Julia Roberts or Meryl Streep the chance to win Oscars. She cuts through the bull as a matter of course and can smell the shite in anyone else’s argument a mile away. She also cheerfully admits to lying about her age whenever she can.
I’m looking forward to this one. I always look forward to an edit, sure, but it never makes it less exciting to look forward to an edit. I just hope I can do the woman justice.
Categories: editing, Personal, politics, Recommendation, tv, Work.
A lovely way to start Saturday: an email from Tony C. Smith, editor (and captain) of the StarShipSofa, one of the finest SF podcasts around, quoting an email he’d received from a fan that singled yours truly out for praise. I’d narrated a story for one of the ‘Sofa’s Aural Delights episodes, and if you’ll forgive me blowing my own trumpet, here’s an excerpt from the feedback:
There have been far too many exceptional pieces to start naming some of my favorites, because invariably i’ll leave out some of the greats. That said, i do have to give a major shout out to Adam Roberts for the story “Remorse” in episode 30, and to your friend, Kenny Park, for that stunning (and terrifying) narration. I’ve become hooked on audio fiction in the last couple of years, but that has to be the first piece i’ve listened to almost a dozen times…the story is wonderfully horrifying but this is a perfect example of what an excellent narration can do for story enhancement. It was a bar-setting job of narration, and Mr. park deserves an award. And some distance-wow was that creepy! But again, excellent!
Here’s a link to the episode. (And thanks to Mark Hancock for the kind words.)
I became a fan of StarShipSofa years ago, back when it was just Tony and his pal Ciaran chatting about a different SF author every week. It was an informative and frequently hilarious show, friendly, low-key and informal. At the time I had an inkling to do a series of videos interviewing podcasters and YouTubers, as well as their listeners, to highlight the far reach these hobbiests had achieved (and to meet some people I had grown to admire). So I contacted Tony and asked him if I could come and film them doing a show and interview them.
He couldn’t have been nicer about it. I drove down to Newcastle where Tony put me up for the night (as he always did for Ciaran the night before recording a show, which they did every Wednesday before work). In the morning I filmed them doing their thing, which was a hoot, but didn’t have time, in the end, for the interview, meaning I’d have to go back. Before that could happen, though, another situation developed. It turned out that Tony had been talking to none other than the legend that is Michael Moorcock about doing an interview for the ‘Sofa over Skype. Having seen my sensational filming skills first hand, though, he’d evolved the idea into something more substantial. The next time I heard from him it was to propose a trip to Paris, where Moorcock would be for a few weeks, to film an interview in his flat there. How could I refuse?
So we duly flew ourselves over to France, met the great man, had the world’s worst curry and came home. Here’s the result:
Moorcock had donated his excellent story London Bone to the podcast, which began a series of occasional fiction readings between the regular author profiles. These became increasingly popular, and eventually Tony scooped all the Nebula Short Fiction nominees prior to the voting, got Boing-Boinged and StarShipSofa was on the map. Eventually, real life took Ciaran to London and Tony had to make a decision about what to do with the podcast. He opted to continue it, but rather than replace Ciaran (impossible) he mutated the show into a full-blown SF audio magazine, with each episode featuring editorials, fact articles, fiction and even poetry. It even spawned sister podcasts, the StarShip Sanitorium and the Sofanauts.
Right now, Tony is an internet superstar and the StarShipSofa is rightly lauded as one of the greatest SF podcasts around. I haven’t narrated a story for him in a while (I took my usual sweet time to get them recorded and sent to him, not ideal for the production line), but I still love the podcast. Go check it out.
Categories: Acting, Recommendation.
Bad news today. I learned that a pal died. His name was Erne Parkin, and he was a mensch.
Erne is 2nd from left
I met him around 2003 when I was working for a production company in Glasgow. He was a frequent client and during my time there we hit it off pretty well. When I went freelance he practically supported me, and we became very good friends. All my other clients would come up with a few jobs and then I’d hear nothing for months. Erne, however, had a steady stream of work (which I guess he depended on too), and though there weren’t mega-bucks, it was fair and it was steady. Were it not for him, I might have ended up back in a call centre.
I was also pleased to get him work when I could. When the fledgling Cage had a corporate job that needed a director, we’d bring him in. He was great at presenting ideas to the suits and getting them enthusiastic enough to leave us alone while we made it, while keeping us in check, making sure we delivered what he’d made them expect. One video in particular made such a hugely popular splash at one corporation that I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s still being shown to this day. That was thanks to Erne.
He was also one of those guys that always had some art cooking. The folk band he fronted recorded and played live frequently; he had a script for a multi-part TV serial about Robert Burns ready to go; and he was surrounded with memorobilia from shoots he directed and produced. As I hung out with him, I often thought that he was something of a role model. I’d think that if I got into my sixties being as creative and vital as him, I’d be doing very well.
Latterly, I hadn’t seen much of him but I was still very aware of his presence. I’d arrive at STV to do an edit, and the project open on the Avid was obviously one of his. “He was just here.” It seems that I ‘just missed’ Erne for the last year or so, but he was always around.
Well, not any more. He was young enough that his death was unexpected. When I got off the phone to the mutual friend who broke it to me, I told my wife, and she got it right immediately. “At least lived his life well,” she said, “and was spared the long, slow demise [we've both seen members of our family suffer].”
Everyone who knew Erne liked him enormously, and a lot of folk knew him. He did live a good life. He had a great family whom he supported doing things he loved, and doing them well. Even now, he’s a good model.
If I can do as well, I’ll be happy.
A few weeks ago I spent a long weekend editing a programme for STV called, Susan Boyle: Two Weeks That Shook Show Business. I’ll assume you know who Susan Boyle is. The programme was to play on the Bank Holiday Monday, dividing the double episode of Coronation Street and going up against East Enders on BBC1. No pressure, then. The producers quickly decided to structure the two halves of the show thusly: part one would illustrate the story, the humble beginnings, the audition on Britain’s Got Talent, the YouTube sensation, the twittering celeb couple and global super-stardom; part two would analyse the phenomenon, offering possible explanations and suggesting where it might go next.
Part one would take care of itself, but part two was tricky, basically because we didn’t really have any idea why the story had gotten as big as it did. All of us working on the programme knew the story, of course, you could hardly escape it, but the why of it was quite baffling. Luckily, the crew came back with some very insightful interviews, with Pop Idol winner Michelle McManus being particularly eloquent and perceptive. So, over the course of four days (with the Saturday shift extending to about four in the morning, only for Sunday’s to start eight), we lived and breathed Susan Boyle. The picture that emerged was of a talented woman who had dedicated her life to the the care of her elderly parents, and when they had both passed decided to take her best shot at a singing career, fully aware that if success eluded her it wouldn’t make her a failure. She knew, I think, that it was the attempt that mattered, giving her all. That’s why she took the initial jeers and skyward glances in her stride: she wasn’t going to let anything stop her from doing her best. What happened then was out of her hands, but she’s handled it with the same philosophy — as long as she tried her best, nothing else matters.
The programme got 27% of the TV audience that night, beating East Enders’ 25% and the ITV network by 10%. That’s a success. I know our hard work on it wouldn’t have initially made viewers choose it over East Enders — Susan herself was the draw. I do like to think, though, that when they arrived they got something a bit more thoughtful and considered than they might have expected. A few of my pals in the business (who can be a tad cynical) praised it for not sensationalising the story any more than it had been already, and for not trying to pretend Susan was something that she’s not (while still being respectful and complimentary of her and her obvious talent). The Scotland on Sunday bemoaned the lack of an interview with the 1:24 girl or backstage info (like whether the judges really had no idea what to expect from Susan), but concluded: “for what it was, 2 Weeks That Shook Showbusiness was still pretty good.”
One observation I’d make is that much of her success is because of mainstream media’s failure to understand Twitter. I don’t blame them: as everyone who uses Twitter knows, it’s impossible to understand Twitter unless you’re doing it. It simply defies explanation. Boyle’s story went ‘global’ because it went American, and that only happened thanks to a pair of tweets from Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore. That’s it: one tweet apiece. Kutcher’s was something along the lines of, “That made my night,” to which his wife replied, “You saw me getting teary.” To anyone not tweeting all day it may be easy to take that as ‘Demi Moore announces to the world her admiration and love of Britain’s Susan Boyle!’ She didn’t announce anything of the sort. Well, she did, but she didn’t. That’s where Twitter’s unique form of communication lies — idle musings, random thoughts, passing notions. Sure, plenty of people tweet things of great importance to them, but it’s clear to me from the slightly indirect tone of both tweets that they were meant primarily for the other’s spouse, rather than all their fans and followers. As such it was tenuous to suggest that she’d captured the heart of Hollywood. It’s a tiny point in the Boyle story, admittedly; the fact is that once it had been brought to the Americans’ attention via Fox and CNN they lapped it up, so does it really matter how it got there?
But why did they lap it up? Clive James wrote and read a piece on Radio 4 where he praised her voice but made the point that voices as strong grace opera choruses and am-dram groups up and down Britain. It’s a lovely voice, don’t get me wrong, but is it really that extraordinary? Is her talent the equal of this five year old from Korea who can play any piano piece she hears but once, Mozart-style?
For my part, when a female singer is introduced to the world I usually find her vocal talent sufficient to justify the dedication of the managers and publicists that got her her break, but the back of my mind will always whisper, “Lucky for them she’s gorgeous, too.” The implication, of course, is that an equal talent in a more homely personage will be ignored. I haven’t heard anyone in the business say this explicitly, apart from snide remarks on X Factor like “you don’t have the right ‘look,’ dear,” nor have I seen any research to suggest that for every good looking singer I’ve heard of there’s at least one unattractive one who’s doomed to lead a ‘normal life.’ It’s just a feeling I have because, deep down, I know I’d rather look at an attractive woman than an ugly one. Comely over homely. It’s self-evident, obvious, but it’s also harsh, shallow and unbecoming. So, do I like the Susan Boyle character because it affirms that I can see past the glossy veneer, thus proving I’m really a good guy? Do I like her only because it makes me feel good to like her, to flatter my own ego?
There are other reasons to like her, of course, more objective reasons: her handling of the sudden media attention, for instance, seems Herculean to me. Though she’s lacking any technique at all in dealing with journalists (all her interviews consist of barely-useable one-word answers) she seems perfectly happy to deal with them anyway. She was interviewed by Larry King from her living room and was completely unfazed by the heavyweight champ of talk show hosts. When a film crew ambushes her on the streets of Blackburn, she chats amiably and with humility about her new situation, and while she is unpolished, she carries herself with considerable grace. And though she may not be Kiri Te Kanawa, she can sing. As McManus pointed out, she has a great deal of talent and she’s on a talent show so why shouldn’t she find success?
So cutting this particular show was a revelation for me and hopefully for the viewer too. Come her next appearance, I wish her all the best. Whatever happens it’s difficult to see her suffering any bad will now. She’ll forever be a hero in her own community and if she’s remembered outside of that, it will be fondly, I’m sure.
Categories: editing, tv, Work.
I’m glad to be back in the temporary employ of MNE Media, an independent producer of Gaelic-language tele. The show I’m working on is called Cuide Ri Cathy (Company with Cathy). It’s an interview show where Cathy MacDonald chats with Scottish celebrities over the course of a single day. So far I’ve done shows with Hardeep Singh Kohli, Tony Roper, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Alan Rough, Sir Menzies Campbell and, er, Leon Jackson. It’s a warm show, informal, friendly and relaxed.
As I walked into the offices on Thursday, though, I got a shock. The whole place was branded, from wall-mounted hard-backed posters to PC screen-savers, with the logo I designed for them last month. Designing logos is not something I usually do, as a rule, and I was flattered and perplexed when they approached me with the project. They explained their wishes for it in abstact terms, essentially describing how they saw MNE as a company (alive, dynamic, current, etc.), and I had a weekend to come up with basic concepts. Coming up with images around a theme turned out to be a great joy, and a very similar process to writing drama.
The strongest concept I had by Monday morning was that of a fuse. Not the kind of fuse that goes in a mains plug, obviously, but the fuse of a bomb, a stick of dynamite. I thought the spark of the fuse would in itself be dynamic, while holding the promise of the explosion to come. Come Monday I showed a mock up to the MNE senior management and left them to consider. Thankfully, the concept appealed to them and their only notes were practical, considerate of its future as embroidery on jackets and polo shirts, letterheads and on the side of vehicles. After a few drafts, everybody was happy, especially me: I’m now a logo designer!
After that was the usual technical ballet of the delivery. I’m used to this when doing video for a company’s website. Basically, websites are not my area of expertise; I have enough knowledge to be dangerous, but not enough to be really useful. So there’s often a brief period of finding just the right format for the web guys, them talking in web terms, me talking in video terms. We always get the optimum file pretty quickly, but the trial and error for a project’s specific requirements is always necessary, it seems. In fact, it’s probably better than me thinking I know it all, because I’ll never be as au fait as someone who’s dedicated to a medium other than my own.
In this case, the foreign medium was print. The brief period of trial and error was with the company that was to put the logo onto physical objects. The issue at hand was the relationship between the resolution of an image and its dpi (dots per inch). In short, I was producing files of huge resolution, many times that of a movie projected in theatres, but because I was operating within a video application (thinking only of endcards for programmes and animations) the dpi was constant and unchangeable at 72 dpi. This is generally considered the standard for all video, at least the conversations I’ve witnessed between videographers and printers is anything to go by.
The trouble is that 72 dpi is pretty poor when printing something physically. Having done a bit of research online, it’s my lay impression that although they seem the same in principle, dpi and resolution are quite independent of each other. Essentially, no matter how much I upped the resolution of the image, because the dpi was 72 it would always look poor when printed on a large scale. The dpi is more an instruction to the printing device on how to render the image physically than a true measure of the image’s sharpness. This implies that once you have a sufficiently resolved initial image (albeit of 72 dpi), one can simply use a print-friendly application such as Photoshop to simply set the dpi higher.
This is what I did. I took an image 3840 x 2160 (four times the resolution of HD video, which you can watch on the biggest screen of any multiplex with no problem at all), opened it in Photoshop and reset the dpi to 400. The resolution increased accordingly (and artificially, of course), but hopefully the resulting file would print with solid curves and smooth gradients. Judging from the decorations at the MNE office, it worked just fine.
Now, I just need to get myself one of those polo shirts…
What greeted me on Thursday morning
There are always, it seems, several edit jobs on at once. The idea of seeing one to finality before embarking on another is naïve, at least when you own a production company where you are the sole editor on staff.
Of the three music videos we have produced in recent weeks, the first (which was finanised over a week ago) required attention this morning: a broadcast master needed to be produced. In the Cage we can master to DVCAM, HDV or in any conceivable file format; when it comes to the venerable DigiBeta tape format, we must enlist the help of either an equipment hire company, such as the ever-reliable Progressive, or post facility like M8. Today, we used the latter.
Editing is also finished on the second video, for Alto Elite’s Walk Away, but final delivery awaits, and the third remains to be approved by the band themselves, so further editing is still a possibility.
During all this, a making-of documentary for the DVD of an upcoming feature film takes shape. Of that I will say little at the moment, in the way of specifics.
All the while, new projects are appearing in our diary with increasing frequency. It is up to us now to finish them to our high standards as quickly as they are arising. This is a good position to be in.
Just discovered Exposure Room properly. I mean, I’ve known about it since Rick started using it, but I’ve not really engaged with it until now. Here‘s my ‘channel’ to use a perhaps-inappropriate YouTube-ism. Only thing on there just now is a wee tune I did, but I’ll add more stuff (after the harder part of actually making it).
Over on the Cage’s channel, we’ve just put up a reel that we did for HG Productions with whom we’ve been collaborating recently. It’s really for their site, but it’s all work we’ve done and we stuck it on Exposure Room to give them the option of using that (instead of Vimeo, which is their plan at the moment). Anyway, here it is:
Categories: Work.
The month of November looks like being the busiest of my professional career to date. The busiest of my life. I am a lazy man. This should get interesting.
It therefore makes perfect sense for me to commit to NaNoWriMo and, along with tens of thousands of other poor sods around the world, write a novel between the 1st and 30th of November. Fifty thousand words. Fifty thousand. That’s 1666.6667 words a day. Miss a day, that’s 3333.3333 the next day.
I am not only lazy, I am dumb. Anyway, I’ll keep you all posted.
Categories: confession, Personal, Work.
I recently edited a commercial apiece for Clyde One and Forth One, Glasgow and Edinburgh radio stations respectively. Like the Leprosy ads, I can’t see the ads on the stations’ official sites for some mysterious reason. The Drum has Photobucket versions here, but I don’t know how long they’re going to be around (and the quality’s not great), so I thought I’d host them here too:
Categories: Work.
Here are two TV ads I did for the Leprosy Mission Scotland. I had trouble viewing them on their official site (might be a Mac thing), so I’m hosting them here too.
Categories: Work.
I recently edited some TV spots for a campaign to raise awareness of randmised clinical trials. They were shown across Scotland with each region having its own version. Here they are:
Categories: Work.