A Memento of Larry Holden

 As I mentioned last year on this date, May 15^th would have been my friend, Larry Holden’s birthday had he not past away last year from cancer. 

Larry had been an actor for years but received much more attention after appearing in the Christopher Nolan film, Memento. 

(He additionally appeared in other Christopher Nolan films like Insomnia and the blockbuster hit, Batman Begins as D.A. Fisk)   

Larry was also an indie filmmaker and his movies were an interesting series of unconventional visual and emotional quests. Sometimes very challenging and thought provoking — yet never disregarding his artistic intentions over Hollywood narrative structure.  

So over 10 years ago, a second release of the Memento DVD was going into production but this version was to contain multiple extras and a running commentary from Christopher Nolan. 

Larry told me Chris always had people pointing out what they felt were flaws in Memento’s narrative. They had repeatedly watched the film to solve what THEY felt was actually going on in this creatively backwards narrative mystery. They were always incorrect. 

So, for the hard core fans to discover, Chris put an easter egg shot in the Special Edition Memento DVD featuring Larry Holden to be discovered by some eagle-eyed viewer. 

The thing is, NO ONE has found it after all these years…

So, to honor Larry Holden on what would have been his birthday, I’m going to help point it out to you…but there’s a catch…

In Larry and I’s last conversation, he wanted to make sure that his films still remained available for people to purchase and be seen — to live on even if he wasn’t around to promote them. 

So, please take a few minutes and visit Larry’s website: www.holdenautomotive.com and take a look at the reviews, comments and his series of films for sale.  All purchases go back into the pot of keeping Larry’s dreams of making films alive. I highly recommend Larry’s last film, All Sun And Little White Flowers. I find this to be his most haunting film from the DVD cover to the last frame… it is a solid piece of work. His film, My Father’s House, was a festival favorite, getting the attention of director Martin Scorsese  who contacted Larry for a viewing copy. Without flinching Larry simply directed him to the website shopping cart and Martin bought two copies. (Martin later called Larry congratulating him saying it was one of his favorite indie films that year)

Please check out Larry’s movies and don’t hesitate to pass his website around…

So, onto the Easter Egg…

As I understood it, and Larry points out in his interview in James Mottram’s Making of Memento book, Larry auditioned with a mustache and he joked that that is why he got the part of Jimmy the drug dealer. Before they shot his scenes he posed with Carrie-Anne Moss for photos to be placed as set decorations in her character’s apartment, but they asked him to shave his mustache off. 

So, for the photos there were images of Larry with a mustache and Larry without a mustache (and a couple combinations of other facial hair bingo).  During the shoot, Chris and the crew shot multiple versions of framed photos of Larry with and without the mustache. (Ultimately, they wanted him to grow the mustache back for his filmed scenes so the mustache photo footage was used)

But after so many people trying to unsuccessfully prove a flaw in the narrative of Memento to the director, Chris decided to introduce an actual flaw/mistake… but on purpose… for people to actually find in their quest. 

…But… still no one seems to have found it…

So I’ve helped you out with this clip…

                         (I know Larry wouldn’t have pointed this out on his own)

Larry wanted me to make sure that Chris, his wife Emma, and D.P. Wally Phister knew how much he respected them and was truly honored to have been a part of their films.

So, based on what I’ve told you, here it is for you to discover yourself… In honor of actor/filmmaker/friend Larry Holden… enjoy.  www.holdenautomotive.com

One extra point of note. Larry said he had worked out and was in good physical shape for the film. Yet later, the Polaroid of his body that Guy Pearce carries around is not his actual shirtless “GUT” as Larry points out but a stand in’s “GUT”.  So for the record — the exposed gut Polaroid WAS NOT Larry’s gut.  — You’re welcome Golden…

Knock. Knock. Who’s there? Editor WHO?

When I write Tweets about Final Cut Pro 7 being killed or needing a replacement, it gets met with some agreement, some opposition, and some interesting aggravation.  

                           ”Stop your bitching and just edit dammit.”  

So for more clarification that obviously can’t be done in 140 characters via Twitter, I write this. 

                                                EDITING or EDITING?

The act/art of EDITING is now split even moreso these days. The tool itself does not actually earn you the artistic discipline that follows the title “EDITOR”, but the tool can potentially intersect with that title in various degrees — especially, if EDITING and generating EDITED work is what you do as a career. 

                                                    ARTISTIC EDITING

I keep hearing this argument that real editors “edit” and can use any tool out there to edit. Sure. That’s the classic (and romantic) idea of what an EDITOR is or does using what I’ll call  “artistic editing”.  I’ll go one better and say you don’t even need an NLE to know how to fashion the imagery via the psychology of storytelling with a series of images. That’s the artist part of it. The more elite part. YOU are more than your tool. 

And guess what, if you have “it” (and by “it” I mean the talent of EDITING), you deserve to feel and be recognized as special in that field.  That’s why many of the narrative/artistic editors fight for that respect — it has very little to do with the tool and more to do with conveying emotions, timing, feelings, music, sound and the sociology and psychology of those things.  In music, knowing when to play and when NOT to play and realizing there’s no one true way to do this. It’s not mechanical. It’s not science. It’s completely human and appealing to humans. 

Think of it like telling a joke. Some can do it, some cannot. Some can even retell a joke you already know and still make funny, and those are the people you remember that make an impression on you.  

This is not an everyday talent or skill, yet every day because so many people have the “joke book”, the next “comedian” to take up the stage is conveniently listed on craigslist?  Seems goofy, right? 

Devoting so much of your life to the “art” of something and suddenly realizing that all you had to do was basically buy the “joke book”?  

Is it or can it be that simple?

Now we all know that is neither “artistically” or “spiritually” true, yet the business environment where people hire EDITORS can make all of that “professionally” true.  

You and your years of discipline to the art of being an EDITOR alongside the kid that just watched Larry Jordan’s “how to use _____” videos — both in the running for the same employment — all because on paper you both possess the title of EDITOR.

Is the term EDITOR really the right singular title anymore? 

                                             BUSINESS EDITING

Now, even more than ever, we have “business editing”.  In “business editing”, like the EDITOR themself, the tool IS also important. What it can do for the EDITOR/PROJECT is important perhaps even less to what it CAN’T do for the EDITOR/PROJECT.  Deadlines, timelines and needs are different for everyone sometimes on a case-by-case basis. The combination of ART and COMMERCE and varying degrees of each. 

Avid can be a proven tool for matching back to film negative but far less useful for timeline composting, or irregular frame sizes and frame rates, than Final Cut Pro for instance. FCPX invented a whole new paradigm for editing like pulling the carpet out from under your sneakers — leaving out many things EDITORS needed to keep using it for “business editing”.  Premiere 6 is way ahead with real-time playback, but simple clip reconnecting is still a challenge. 

Picking what’s best for the “business editing” is important and so are the tool(s) and the people who are making the tool(s). 

So I’m trying to have a replacement for Final Cut Pro 7 and I know I’m not alone. 

Adobe has mostly picked up where Final Cut Pro 7 left off, but it’s still missing some things that matter to me. Things I intend on bugging the crap out of them about. 

So I’m making it my point to try to keep pestering Adobe (or whoever wants to step into the ring) to pay attention to the EDITOR and ultimately help them create the serious replacement for that really useful little tool Apple decided to drown called Final Cut Pro.  

Picking a NLE company as your “favorite team” seems an alignment that cannot be trusted anymore, so we gotta push the makers of the tools that we have right now and sadly not assume the company will be there for us in future. 

More than ever, right now it’s about business — and I say… while their wallets are interested, let’s try to get what WE want. 

New Trimming Default Behavior in Premiere 6

Adobe has amped up their trim tool with a wicked new Dynamic Trim feature that really works. 

Unfortunately, I’m finding out I’m still not as much of a fan regarding the new “Smart” Default for Trimming Behavior in Premiere 6 as I am for either flavor of the Final Cut Pros - yes, I like the way Apple deals with Trim Tool selection in FCP7 and FCPX. 

The quick video above highlights my discomfort with it. I especially find it most irritating when cutting narrative dialogue scenes with overlapping on and off camera dialogue.  I want to hide off camera lines by audio track trimming the heads and tails in a basic cut J and L cut fashion.  The Smart Default option wants to Ripple Trim by default and that is driving me nuts. 

You may love it for your work. I just want a way to program the default behavior. 

*UPDATE: Holding SHIFT key helps TRIM TOOL CHOOSE left or right side without unselecting - via @retoolednet

Creating Odd Sizes and Frame Rates in Premiere 6

It’s a workaround, but it came up as a question on Twitter (via Frank) and I wanted to try to make it work.  

Assignment: 4096x4096 at 48fps - which is not a default in new Premiere 6 obviously…

So what do you do?

Premiere 6 has a lot of new improvements. Lot’s of great additions and some things I just like about the program itself  (see my favorites in my last post) 

48fps and movies?

As for the actual frame rate of 48fps.  I vote NO.  It’s basically the same look that you’re getting with film rate television broadcasts processed via 120hz and 240hz televisions with the frame smoothing on (minus the increased resolution)  

James Cameron feels differently. Perhaps his interest in 3D imagery because 48fps has a technical purpose in presenting 3D imagery - it just feels like it’s at the expense of film’s dramatic-ness. 

Premiering Adobe Premiere

So as part of the trying a DELL to replace a MacPro experiment, I was also testing out the Windows version of Premiere Pro CS6 for about 6-7 weeks. 

Originally being from AVID then switching to Final Cut Pro almost exclusively for years, I am obviously now looking for a way to replace what was great about Final Cut Pro as a tool that satisfied so much of my work with something else now that Apple killed that version/flavor of it. 

Enter Premiere CS6

There’s lots of tech talk about Mercury Playback Engine and newest Premiere features out there to read this week but I just wanted to focus on stuff I like that won’t get mentioned as much. 

Stuff I like:

1. A Viewer Window. It’s been a staple of editing (even before non-linear) and Apple made it go away.  I constantly use it to matchframe back and view source timecode of a clip very easily.  It’s still in Premiere 6 and that’s a feature I’m looking for.

2. Merge Clip: Merge clip is way better than FCP’s.   For double system workflows and you want to sync the good picture with the good audio (and lose the scratch audio as well) Merging clips works great. An annoying bit with FCP was that if your audio is way longer than the picture you were syncing to and even if you trimmed it to fit the picture side it still remained when you loaded the clip into the viewer as handles. FCP marked the picture in and outs but you could have minutes of audio head and tails in there.  Ugh. 

Premiere’s MERGE CLIP is great.  You can merge from the slate marker on both, set an IN and OUT and MERGE them without even using the timeline.  A checkbox can remove the scratch audio as well. Nice.  The MERGE instantly appears in your bin as well and you can rename before and after as well. The extra audio is still there if you want to extend it out in the timeline - just hidden when you match from it unlike FCP7. Nice! 

3. Duplicate Clip In Timeline: You can now duplicate and move the duplicate clip in the timeline with a keyboard shortcut and mouse move. You now just hold ALT/OPTION and drag copy into place.   See my previous FCP workflow video for why I like this. Find In Timeline sadly isn’t in this release though :-(

4. Colored Clips in Timeline. Always wanted this in FCP. You can colorize STOCK FOOTAGE for instance and at a glance see that you’ve used in the timeline. Colorize Audio too and choose a particular stock audio library to color for easy detection later.  Lots of uses. Colors the WHOLE CLIP not like FCP used to do with only the text portion. 

5. Multi-cam:  I didn’t get to use this yet but works with footage of different frame rates (and sizes I believe) now.  Computer determines how many cameras you do and it can be quite a few. For The Last Play At Shea, FCP6 was all I could use to cut concert footage proxies at 29.97 into 23.98 timelines with more than 20 camera angles to deal with.  (PS: the trailer they made for LPAS is awful btw)

6. Dynamic Trimming: Been the AVID “thing” for years and even FCP didn’t quite get it right. I am not Dynamic Trimming user - probably because I didn’t like the FCP feature - but it is in the new Premiere and it works great. I will be using it much more now.  The trimming features are powerful and intimidating at first.  Through a little shortcut mapping you can do AVID style tops and tails editing as well.  I am a big E key (extend edit) guy in FCP and you can do it the same in Premiere.  Entering Trim has lots of ways and that may rock you at first. I liked the simplicity of FCP in this way and Premiere is similar but with more (and stronger) possibilities.  

7.  Marker Sections:  In the companion app, PRELUDE, you can create markers that don’t just mark the frame of interest but the entire span of say and interview or soundbyte. That Marker now transfers to Premiere so it’s “like” Favorites in FCPX but I prefer it much more because it retains the master clip and only puts a colored marker over the section of interest instead of a whole separate clip also.  It only can be done inside Prelude though and that’s a bit of a bummer for they way I work but I expect this feature inside the Premiere app itself in an update. 

8. Bins:  Simply, bins still feel like bins. I can file and drag stuff in and out like FCP7.  Smart collections are cool in FCPX but for now I still think the original methodology works for larger projects. Create a bin and put stuff in yourself. 

9. Effects Tab:  Effects tab got a little placement makeover so when you open a clip in the viewer you can jump to effects much easier than before. It’s still a lot like AE with twirl down triangles. 

10. Interface:  The new interface is simple and can be as complicated as you want it. It’s very customizable like After Effects.  If you are a FCP user you will feel at home with the way Premiere’s default interface works.  Very FCP friendly.

I was never a “customize the FCP interface guy” but I feel I will be doing this more using Premiere.

11. Hovering:  I always wanted Apple’s Quicklook implemented in FCP7. You’d have to load into viewer to look or play a clip. Now in Premiere you can choose to view as storyboards and hover thru a clip and basically QUICKLOOK what it is in the clip. Even better you can add IN and OUT marks and add to the timeline right away if you’d like.  Nice!  It’s gonna be the “skimmer” of Premiere but it’s implemented more the way I like and not as a replacement to the VIEWER window.  It’s not quite the Quicklook I would have wanted for FCP8 while browser viewing in text mode, but I will use it similarly. 

12: VIDEO or AUDIO INSERT ONLY:  It’s simple but I like this. You have clip loaded in the viewer. You set and IN and OUT but you only want the AUDIO. Premiere has 2 little icons to choose that when you drag the AUDIO icon (or VIDEO icon) from the viewer to the timeline - Just the audio (or video) moves. Simple and welcome for me. 

13. Audio Track Makeover: The whole STEREO and MONO tracks choices became much more like FCP now. Less complicated than it was in 5.5.

14. Warp Stabilizer and Rolling Shutter Removal: Both feel way more powerful than what’s in FCPX although not a ton of testing on this one was done. I felt the Rolling Shutter warped the image effectively more so than a tilt / zoom in rolling shutter fix of others. Need to really test this out more though. 

(AFTER I POSTED THIS I ADDED THESE)

15. Grouping: Group a collection of clips together and they move together. Like the opening of weekly show or the staple edited elements you use over and over again. It’s like a cooler version of “nesting” and a more appropriate “connected clips” for pros. 

(4-15-12)

16. Track Names: You can “name” the tracks (V1, V2, A1, A2 etc) in the timeline - BOTH Video and Audio. Call them what they are like Narration for instance… Foley etc.  Couldn’t do that in FCP. This I will use.

17. Adjustment Layers:  Thought this was cool in After Effects and now it’s in Premiere.  Effect and Affect all video tracks under the adjustment layer with a Black and White effect for instance without having to add the effect to each clip by clip.

18. Interpret footage:  This used to be a Cinema Tools thing in FCP. Conforming 60fps footage to 23.98 for instance. In Premiere you can now interpret/conform clip to a framerate, pixel aspect ratio etc  inside the app itself. Even make a clip non standard 18fps for instance… and simply too. *It can remove smart pull down on the fly as well!!! 

I am really searching for a replacement tool for the work I did with FCP7 and Premiere has now become the standout choice. 

The other day, I returned to FCP7 and found myself missing things from Premiere. Most notably, real time playback of whatever you throw at it. It is amazing. 

With all the wonderful parts there are some groans as well. 

Next time, I’ll compile a list of wants and needs for Premiere, but if you are a Final Cut Pro show producer and you need to look at the future, you’re going to be looking at this release of Premiere.  It’s amost 75-80% the Final Cut Pro 8 we were waiting mostly because of some missing things from this release - but then also sometimes it’s a step forward from FCP8 in many ways that Apple didn’t see in it’s pro market future… and that’s what started all this in the first place. 

It’s going to be tough. I could do everything I needed in one app, FCP7, and right now duplicating my workflows still require more than one NLE to do so, but Premiere is the closest. 

Now if we can just get plugin developers on board we can get this party cutting…

[NOTE: I unfortunately didn’t get to install a third party card (Decklink) or any additional hard drives. It shipped with a partitioned 1 TB internal drive and a 250gig SSD boot drive. So, not a lot of drive space for RED footage. 

This Dell system contained 2 NVIDA Quadro 2000 cards (not the much better 4000 model and the second card was to be a Tesla 2075 card but for some reason Dell didn’t include it for testing as planned) and 24 gigs of RAM.]

What the Dell am I thinking?!

I am a Mac Guy. Have been since 1996. I started with a variety of weird and dead non-linear editing systems like Scitex Sphere or this tape based Matrox editing system that ran on windows, but I finally got to the Avid on the Mac. It was the system that Hollywood used and I wanted to be part of that.

                                

Then this magic thing happened. Avid decided NOT to support Mac anymore. WTF?

                                             

We all know what happened there. A whole lot of WTF!!!!

                                              

Around that time, I got handed this little Mac only program called Final Cut Pro to try and give feedback on. It was the 1.0 version. It took a bit to get my brain around how organic it was vs Avid, but soon I was digging it. Actually, I dug it more than Avid.

Flashforward to 2011 and Apple decides to reinvent professional editing with Final Cut Pro X. For me (and many others that aren’t creating training content on how to use it) it was/is kinda a dud.

                      

I was even more pissed than the Avid debacle. WTFCPX?!!!!!

So, last month I was approached by Dell computers to try out one of their precision workstations in conjunction with Adobe Premiere (and the CS Suite) as a possible replacement not only for editing software but hardware as well.

Oh, yeah. They would provide me this Dell Precision workstation… for free with no real obligations - except some general feedback I assume.

Apple had now asked me to ‘think different” about professional post and going PC for editing was, well, “more different…” and as of last Friday, it began…

I’m probably going to be harsh as though I’m on the team trying to create a replacement for Mac Pro editing so Dell can expect some serious criticisms and maybe some welcome surprises that will hopefully benefit a company that seems to want to make an impact for us post production guys in the future.

Never did I think I would be considering NOT using Apple computers for editing… yet, here I am…

… and it all started with the release of FCPX….

What’s next? Hollywood actors reediting Star Wars movies?