I had my trusty partner watch and note what errors she could. What a shocker that she found an abundant supply of errors and "feel" problems. Three pages of notes and most of it was simple fixes I should never have had to make. If I'm going to generate a fake background sound, I should use audio with a pop or vocals in it. It just sounds cyclic and unpleasant.
I still hadn't figured out how to fix my DVD disk drive, so I devised a plan to upload all video information to an external hard drive and transfer it to a functioning PC with a functioning disk drive. Also, I had to upload a DVD architect program to build a menu for the final video. I spent all of my time after work, working on this. Up again until 2am, I managed to get 5 hard copies burned. Two of these had a image printed onto the disk and three had none. I was learning how to build a DVD menu with links, scene selection and all the appropriate chapters. I added chapter markers so a viewer could fast forward or skip to a certain scene. End run time was just over 17 minutes.
I mailed the DVDs off to their new homes. I saved the other three for myself, partner and one for my music guy to review. With the now final product on DVD, I had my partner watch again. Together we gave up all our best criticisms. The opening part was out of focus. The auto focus was not focusing where I needed it. I need to get better at controlling the lens. The audio in parts was either too loud or too quiet. I trimmed out some rather long sequences and just faded in and out of them to show time passing without stating it. My very minimal notice was that the sound of foot steps is there in the beginning and not later. It's hard to catch that after several nearly sleepless nights.
All in all, the product is delivered. The clients likes their merchandise. For $1500, they received a lot more than they would have received otherwise. I don't have all the latest and greatest equipment. My editing station is cramped and with the disk drive not working, a real point of difficulties. My understanding of the lighting and focusing of the lenses, kept me from catching focus issues and some strange coloring issues. With those failings, I offered; Filming, blocking, scripting, direction, lighting, voice over recording (done by assistant), original music score (done with musician and my oversight), editing and scoring, and the production of a few master copies with a fully designed menu and chapter selection mode.
My break-down looks like this:
Filming = 16 hours (myself and helper 8 hours each)
Blocking = 4 hours (part of filming but made it take longer)
Scripting = 4 hours (solo)
Lighting = (part of filming)
Voice Over Recording = 1 hour (assistant)
Created Music = 4 hours (myself and musician 2 hours each)
Editing = 30 hours (solo estimate)
Design & Production = 5 hours
grand total = 64 labor hours
future projects of similar size should be about 40-50 hours
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Day Three Editing (Crunch Time)
My client was feeling bold and tightened my deadline. I had to pull the project off the back burner and get to work on music and final editing.
On a Friday, I visited my music guy and together we hashed out an intro, a transitional tune and an outro. It took about 2-3 hours for the music, though admittedly we didn't work very aggressively towards the goal of finishing the project. I really enjoyed the process though. I felt as though I learned quickly what my music guy, Alex, was capable of. I was learning some terminology to accurately communicate what I needed. With more confidence, I was able to get down to exactly what I wanted. It felt good.
Saturday seemed like a great day to take a break from work, project, home and everything. I just took one huge day of rest with movies and junk food. They are soo fulfilling to me. I really enjoy them. It also came back to bite my ass.
Sunday morning, real crunch time was upon me. I was (at least verbally) committed to completing this project by 6:59am Monday morning. I woke up somewhat late, 10ish. I ambled to my PC and sat down to begin the process. My DVD disk drive was non-operational. This meant I couldn't upload the new music to the Vegas program. Also, I wouldn't be able to burn the mastercopies of the finished product. I set into solving problem A. I used another pc to upload and email to myself the music media. It took several attempts to finally get the files transferred. With that, I turned back to the raw editing. It was daunting. I had about 20 minutes of video I must have watched 10 times each. Things began to look similar. Details became less and less important. Audio problems manifested themselves because of my own laziness. Future note says leave it out if it is bad, and come back to it later with fresh eyes and ears.
Well into Monday morning I worked. Around 4am, I just couldn't continue. I had put together something that could have been delivered, but it was far from the quality I want the client to have and think of me with. I went to sleep with the two PCs trying to render the first draft of video.
When I was getting into the later hours, I began working very uneffectively. I would watch the video and notice errors. Instead of pushing pause and at very least noting the error, I just let it run and tried to make a mental list of errors. There were just too many and I kept having to rewatch the video. At twenty minutes a pop, it was just wasted time. I corrected one error at a time and could have done in four views what I barely did in ten.
On a Friday, I visited my music guy and together we hashed out an intro, a transitional tune and an outro. It took about 2-3 hours for the music, though admittedly we didn't work very aggressively towards the goal of finishing the project. I really enjoyed the process though. I felt as though I learned quickly what my music guy, Alex, was capable of. I was learning some terminology to accurately communicate what I needed. With more confidence, I was able to get down to exactly what I wanted. It felt good.
Saturday seemed like a great day to take a break from work, project, home and everything. I just took one huge day of rest with movies and junk food. They are soo fulfilling to me. I really enjoy them. It also came back to bite my ass.
Sunday morning, real crunch time was upon me. I was (at least verbally) committed to completing this project by 6:59am Monday morning. I woke up somewhat late, 10ish. I ambled to my PC and sat down to begin the process. My DVD disk drive was non-operational. This meant I couldn't upload the new music to the Vegas program. Also, I wouldn't be able to burn the mastercopies of the finished product. I set into solving problem A. I used another pc to upload and email to myself the music media. It took several attempts to finally get the files transferred. With that, I turned back to the raw editing. It was daunting. I had about 20 minutes of video I must have watched 10 times each. Things began to look similar. Details became less and less important. Audio problems manifested themselves because of my own laziness. Future note says leave it out if it is bad, and come back to it later with fresh eyes and ears.
Well into Monday morning I worked. Around 4am, I just couldn't continue. I had put together something that could have been delivered, but it was far from the quality I want the client to have and think of me with. I went to sleep with the two PCs trying to render the first draft of video.
When I was getting into the later hours, I began working very uneffectively. I would watch the video and notice errors. Instead of pushing pause and at very least noting the error, I just let it run and tried to make a mental list of errors. There were just too many and I kept having to rewatch the video. At twenty minutes a pop, it was just wasted time. I corrected one error at a time and could have done in four views what I barely did in ten.
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