Actualities

Hoop Springs Eternal

2009-11-13T01:33:00.000-05:00

Above, a doc produced in five days. Watch it, give it a vote.

Olympian Effort

2009-11-12T11:48:00.001-05:00

Our short film Hoop Springs Eternal will screen tonight at Olympia Film Festival. (It's made with Chris Corradino, Linda Goldman, and Maya Mumma, featuring Loren Bidner and Jenny McGowan.) I think it's scheduled after Shut Yer Dirty Little Mouth and before Sissyboy -- about 9:45 p.m. or so -- but there's no love for us on a schedule listing, however. Maybe they figure it's so good it should

Me, Me, Me, And Then Stuff About Me

2009-11-10T20:14:00.000-05:00

There's a lot going on, but in overly self-important news, read Part One and Part Two of an interview on doc production. Featuring me. Based on Actual Events. More significant news soon.

That's Not Lake Minnetonka

2009-11-09T19:33:00.000-05:00

A little interview on What goes into making a documentary? in which I detail some of the process involved in our short documentaries. Part two tomorrow. Just what you need, more words from me.

Wiseman's "La Danse"

2009-11-04T22:23:00.000-05:00

I've mentioned Frederick Wiseman as an influence a few times previously. I was fortunate enough to see him speak in 2006, and I think his body of work is monumental. Great short article on his latest in today's NYT: Creating Dialogue From Body LanguageIn “La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet,” his 36th documentary in more than 40 years, Frederick Wiseman takes his camera into the stately and

In A World Something Something, One Man Stands Alone

2009-11-02T10:01:00.000-05:00

Today I'm giving a lecture on editing structure in film trailers. There's more to it than the text below, with lots of examples and ideas and such, but here are the basic background notes. For what they're worth. Editing Film Trailers A film trailer combines storytelling with persuasion. Editing a film is about story structure. There's a beginning, that brings us into a new world. It usually

Mile Seventeenish

2009-10-31T17:03:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow I'll be shooting some footage as the New York Marathon goes along First Avenue, near my apartment. I have a few ideas on what might make an interesting microdocumentary, but it's tough to say what will happen or if a story will emerge. I'm likely to shoot a combination of stills and HDV (at 720p30), and to also drag a small audio recorder around. This is similar to how Notebook on

Little Eisenstein

2009-10-27T20:14:00.000-04:00

As in past years, I'm having my editing class take the famous "Odessa Steps" sequence from Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin -- 7 minutes and 19 seconds long -- and work to cut 30 seconds out of it without ruining it. (Try it yourself: grab the Eisenstein film over at archive.org.) Some students just make shots shorter, and some completely remove elements you or I might say are essential

Final Cut Pro Without A Mouse, Part One

2009-10-18T19:33:00.002-04:00

Want to work fast in Final Cut Pro? Learn to work without the mouse. Oh, you'll need the mouse sooner or later. Some tasks are best done with the mouse. If you want to edit fast, however, you may want to learn a few useful key commands that will speed up your editing process. Besides: it's cold and flu season, and who knows what's on that thing. So let's try a little mouse-free editing. Get

But First, Arm Wrestling And A Slap Fight

2009-10-15T11:06:00.000-04:00

I really enjoyed this post by Maria Lokken. One of the reasons I have my students read books by both Walter Murch and Ralph Rosenblum is to give them a sense that often the relationship between director and editor is more important than just knowing how to edit. No matter which role you are playing -- or if you are both -- the process of moving from production phase to editing phase can make or

Rock Followup: Hair Still Good

2009-10-13T18:29:00.000-04:00

News from the world of documentary lawsuits. Woman Declares Chris Rock's Documentary 'rip-off', Case DroppedA judge in Los Angeles District Court dismissed a plagiarism lawsuit against Chris Rock that claimed the comedian lifted a woman's ideas when he filmed a documentary about African-American hairstyles.

Ted's Ideas On Editing Chase Scenes

2009-10-13T14:34:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday I'm giving a lecture in one of my classes on editing chase scenes. I've given it a few times before, and it's usually a pretty big hit -- it seems to really help students get a handle on some basic editing concepts. They may never edit a chase scene, but the bigger point is that they learn to develop a rational plan to make an otherwise complicated and confusing set of shots seem

Party Like It's 1993

2009-10-12T20:58:00.000-04:00

Is it just me, or is a lot of the current conversation about the future of film distribution very similar to the discussions folks had in the early 90s about the future of the Web? I have a book about the "future of art" on my shelf, printed just as the World Wide Web came along. Its predictions are completely wrong. I remember all the excitement about media moving to CD-R. That's faded away,

He Told Them To Rush, More

2009-10-11T21:13:00.000-04:00

Does Wes Anderson's Director of Photography really think he's a butthead, or is this a planned P.R. stunt? Either way, today's Los Angeles Times article on the retro stop-motion process behind The Fantastic Mr. Fox is a very interesting read. Fur flies on 'Mr. Fox'Not everyone could muster a magnanimous word for Anderson's M.O. -- especially his on-set absence. "I think he's a little sociopathic

IMDB Web Series Credits Update

2009-10-11T00:02:00.001-04:00

A while back -- on April Fool's Day, unfortunately -- I posted about IMDB Web Series Credits. Casey McKinnon had just announced the result of her conversation with Col Needham, IMDb founder and managing director: IMDB would be creating a Web series category. She's still waiting, and has an update.... I want my… I want my… I want my Web TV!"How much longer do we need to wait? How much longer

Long Enough To Reach The Ground

2009-10-10T18:42:00.000-04:00

What's the right length for a film? Esquire Magazine makes one argument: The 90-Minute Movie: Because 80 Minutes Is Too Short, and 100 Is Too Long They could have cut out the entire China subplot from The Dark Knight — easily 20 of that movie's 152 convoluted minutes — with no effect on your enjoyment or comprehension of the film. And was it me, or did the fifth hour of The Curious Case of

Marathon Women

2009-10-10T01:39:00.000-04:00

Many of the films from the International Documentary Challenge can now be viewed on Snagfilms. Above: Marathon Women, a 5-minute doc made by two friends of this blog for the 2007 competition. Enjoy, and remember you can "snag" the film and embed it anywhere.

Documentaries In The News

2009-10-08T01:28:00.000-04:00

With all the talk of documentary distribution, I guess one tried-and-true plan hasn't been discussed enough. That's right: suing the heck out of somebody. Chris Rock sued over Good Hair filmKimbell said she screened the film for Rock back in 2007 on the set of Everyone Hates Chris. Like Good Hair, My Nappy Roots traces the business and cultural history of black hair care and interviews

Parallel Eye-Jabbing Action

2009-10-07T20:32:00.000-04:00

Today I taught my editing class, emphasizing smart and fast technique. When the students came in, each computer was ready to edit -- but the mouse was hanging off the desk, useless. "Don't touch it," I told them. "The mouse is for weak-minded people. Today we edit like adults." Which was true, and by the end of the class even the most hesitant students were able to make subclips and perform

Pointing And Laughing At "Persistence Of Vision"

2009-10-03T16:13:00.000-04:00

Look, here's the deal: the concept of "persistence of vision" was discredited decades ago. People who write about it and tell me it's a very important concept are dumb. It's not even a coherent idea, which tells me these "writers" are just taking the ideas handed down to them from other people and pretending to understand them -- and then they are "teaching" those ideas as if they were true.

Doc On A Stick

2009-10-02T11:52:00.001-04:00

One swallow does not make a summer, but two documentaries on USB flash drives? I think that marks a trend. Mann releases mushroom doc on USB stickCanadian director Ron Mann is testing a new method of movie distribution, releasing his documentary Know Your Mushrooms on a customized USB stick. The Toronto-based filmmaker was in the U.S. promoting his new doc — which follows mushroom-hunting gurus

Less Hypothetically

2009-10-01T16:27:00.000-04:00

indieWIRE has more on an incident that will surely appear in future textbooks on documentary ethics: what happens when the subject of your film says they lied? “Desired” Director Zenovich Responds To Polanski Prosecutor’s “Lies”Zenovich said that the day she filmed Mr. Wells at the Malibu Courthouse, he gave her a one-hour interview. “He signed a release like all my other interviewees, giving

Ah, Documentary Ethics Is Always In The News

2009-09-30T18:50:00.000-04:00

A little documentary ethics question: if you make a documentary, and many people cite it as evidence in an international legal battle, and then your interview subject admits that he lied about a key piece of information that became central to the film -- just made up the story -- what's the next step? I ask this hypothetically, of course.

Mornington Crescent?

2009-09-29T21:02:00.000-04:00

On my other blog, some ranting about the news. Above: a much less unpleasant snapshot from a subway station. You guess which one.

Sony's Secret Lab, Somewhere Off The Jersey Shore

2009-09-25T11:25:00.000-04:00

So Canon, Nikon, Panasonic, and Pentax all have useable HD modes in their DSLRs now. All have problems, the Panasonic GH1 being the smartest of the bunch so far -- and the closest to useable for documentary video. (The Canon 7D is also creating a lot of excitement among doc makers -- but the Panasonic still has the best implementation to date. It's just that people love their Canons, and