Black Hole

Here's the latest of our pieces with Steve Brodner for PBS' "Need To Know".

Watch the full episode. See more Need To Know.

This one was pretty simple in concept and execution -except for Steve's hand never clearing frame! -We need clear frames in order to present the illusion of seamlessness. To make up for it, we used a lot of cross-dissolves.

Typically, I don't like to cut with dissolves but for these pieces it's a necessity.

The conceit behind the single camera, single point of view shoot is that you're in real time conversation with the subject. Since we're constantly speeding up and slowing down actions through time remaps and animation it's necessary to preserve a visual seamlessness. That's the number one editorial priority.

In any event, this was a pretty simple concept. Steve and Gail got an approval on the concept Monday after a couple days of quick research. We shot it on Tuesday. Loaded in the footage from the P2 cards and had an audio cut by early evening. Wednesday we fixed up the picture and we delivered Thursday at noon.

The broadcast version, again, is much superior because of the soundtrack. PBS has carte blanche to use any music royalty free for broadcast and we take advantage of that. That right doesn't extend to the web so we deliver a music free version. Another day and another few grand in the budget we could do a royalty free stock online delivery -but that's the news business. No time, no money.

Sounds like all production these days.

In any event, click through to the PBS site: HERE and leave them a comment.

Fat Thursday

In the tradition of being late for holidays, we wish you a happy last day before Lent.

This is a piece about New Orleans troupe Fi Yi Yi we did with Gail Levin for Prospect.1.  Half for them/half for ourselves if the accounting means anything.

 

Ben Shapiro shot this.  He did a very smart thing (and I was smart for thinking of it independently).

These interviews are done casually, in an on the street documentary sort of way.  While these guys were talking and making costumes they were also making loads of background noise.  Drumbeats in and out, singing, Michael Jackson on the radio -things which make it impossible to edit.

But there was a "full" take of a performance they did just before the crew left.  We were able to use this as an audio bed.

That gave us a few things.

1) It muffled and devoured the other ambient sounds.

2) It established a finite length.  Especially important, considering the lengthy and entertaining speeches Victor Harris gave.

3) It gave us a structure to build to.  The narrative is kind of rambling -but if we end with footage of the performance, that doesn't matter.

Revised Reel

While making a film the crew creates a cocoon. They inhabit a self-contained world of messy larvae and slime in the hope of growing into a pretty, pretty bug.

This hibernation makes working easier- shared common language, a shared goal, and ultimately a unified point of view.

The downside to this, of course, is that your audience may no habla your lingua franca .

That's why directors focus group their pictures, to make sure the point gets across.

While I tend to be a little arrogant when it comes to the clarity of our work -in my mellowing approach to certain death I've began to show pieces in progress to make sure their point is coming across as strongly as possible.

A couple weeks back I posted our Fall demo montage and sent it around to folks. Several people had the same reaction, and we could appreciate the validity to their thoughts.

This revised cut incorporates the feedback from our loyal fans.

Naked Campaign: Coda

Our two year project of chronicling the 2008 election with Steve Brodner came to a close on Tuesday.

The approach to editing this film was different from all the others. Even so, the final structure demonstrates what we hoped (I hoped, at least) this would experiment achieve. Illustration provides a specific way of seeing, in this final piece the images (and the ellipses) tell a story that words could not speak.

This time we had the soundtrack as a starting point. On Monday Gail and Ben went to Bennett Studios in Englewood to shoot Jon Faddis playing the National Anthem.

This told us how long the piece would be.



Unlike the other videos, I began by putting on the opening title sequence and blocking in the end signature and credits. Then the detail work.

The edit started from the back.

Initially, we discussed using Obama's 2004 convention speech as a lead. We'd intercut with footage Faddis performing while Brodner drew and then mix in a clip from Obama's Tuesday night victory speech.

We've used real audio before, and found it effective- notably in The Straight Talk Eggspess, Three Legged Race, and Plot Holes.

The audio always comes first. The sound tells you what the picture is. Even when editing sound and picture at the same time the flow of the audio takes priority.

John Hubley famously recorded all of his soundtracks before beginning animation. Not just voice, but music. Tissa David asked him "how do you know it's going to work in the film." His response, "I listen to the track. If its good and it works, the film will be good and it will work."

Since we were working here with a defined measure of time (3 minutes, minus open and close), we decided to fill in the finale first to ensure it received the proper time.

We decided on two clips from Obama's Victory Speech, the second part echoing the "red state/blue state" passage of dichotomies from his '04 Convention Speech which we used for the first Naked Campaign film in January '07.

From there it was back to the beginning. First was Frederick Douglass.


This is also the longest of the portraits.

The editorial plan was to draw the viewer in with an elegant, almost elegaic pace. This portrait starts from the blank page and works to completion in 36 seconds.

Over the course of these films, we've done a lot of "undercranking" or speeding up footage to the construction of a drawing. In this, we purposely moved through the drawing process with slow dissolves and kept it all (mostly) in real time.

Intitially, Louis Armstrong was slated as the second profile.

He was a casuality of time. Just not enough room.

The next guy, Jackie Robinson, starts with his features already established. We see two strong lines being drawn.


The structural intention was to start Douglass from point zero and have each subsequent portrait begin later in the construction of the drawing.

We had a detailed discussion about who would be represented in this piece. At first, I was a proponent of Shirley Chisholm seeing her as more of an extraordinary individual. Rosa Parks, as courageous and noble as she was, represented the inevitable. Brodner made the irrefutable point that she was a "game changer". That her action, inevitable or not, changed the world and she, alone, is responsible for that.


Brodner created her with heartfelt warmth in this illustration. His definition of her action also clarified what this final piece of the campaign should be.

At this point, there was no need for the 2004 speech and the intercutting with Faddis was convoluted and unnecessary. Direct and simple clearly became the way to go.

For Dr. King the framing was tricky. That sort of effected the overall editorial philosophy of the piece.


His section fades out as the camera moves trying to frame him while the finishing touches are put on his moustache.

That brings us to the impressive portrait of Justice Marshall.



We only show his robes being colored in.

Lastly, the speech fades up and Obama is drawn with several parts already on paper.



He starts out, improbably enough, a little like Lincoln. As his features form, the portrait remains open ended. We don't see his eyes. The line is soft and open. His features recede into shadow. He is still a question.

A question -what's that? Watercolor fills in tone as if to say all the men and women leading up to this point simply provided the framework. Here we have the fulfillment of a promise described with pencil, pen and brush.

Prospect.1 #1

The New York Times has a big story about Prospect.1 in New Orleans.

We're working with Gail Levin to make little documentaries profiling several of the artists involved.

These bits bring up several interesting editorial issues. Cutting a piece is distilling and structuring what something is "about". For this project a few questions are already there, given the specific nature of this biennial: What is the art's relationship to the city of New Orleans? What is the process of creation (especially charged given the city's recent destruction)? Who is the artist, what makes them interesting?

Those questions swirl before a single frame is shot -then they tell you something else on top of that.

Here are a few rough clips.




The above is different from anything I've cut before. The voice track is completely divorced from the picture until the final shot. There are a few moments where we "fake it" to make it seem like he's synched.





This one was my best editing ever. Janine Antoni was so charming, the set up so much fun and Ben Shapiro's camera work so intimate and friendly that the only thing to do was pull one take.

Oh, and animators -especially CG and motion capture types -listen closely to what she says about her experience filming her eyeball, there's profound insight in there.