I see the sample as a short film with one very specific goal: to leave the potential funder wanting to see more so badly that they will write the filmmaker a check. In the last blog, I wrote about how to get started editing a sample reel. Once you’ve defined the best of the best of your footage, it’s time to come up with a plan or a script for editing your sample. Here are five tips for making the strongest sample reel possible.Read More
This spring we’ll be editing a sample reel for A Paradise Lost, a documentary in progress by Laurie Sumiye.
I often get approached to help people edit sample reels for documentary films in progress, usually to show potential funders as part of a grant application. Editing sample reels is very different than editing a film trailer, where the film is at the fine cut stage, if not already completed, and so you clearly know what the film is about. Editing a sample reel is also different than cutting a crowdsourcing video for a platform like Kickstarter, IndieGoGo or GoFundMe, where there is usually a direct on-camera appeal from the filmmaker included.Read More
Picture Lock! After months of editing, Marlene Booth’s documentary Kū Kanaka is nearly finished. I am sitting in Stanford Chang’s edit room at Gravity in Honolulu as he color corrects and finishes final picture on this mostly-Adobe Premiere edit.
In order to move the picture locked sequence to Stan’s system, I needed to learn and use Adobe Premiere Pro’s Project Manager feature. But first we spent some time cleaning up our sequence and getting the highest resolution stills and archival footage possible. We also upconverted a lot of SD sources to HD via Teranex hardware. I will detail this process in this blog, and I will talk about Project Manager in additional detail in the next blog.Read More
“DON’T!”…would have been my advise in the past with regards to changing editing software or operating systems or computers in the middle of an edit. But if you aren’t too deep into your editing, you might consider getting off that reliable but ancient workhorse Final Cut Pro 7. Read More
After years of editing on Final Cut Pro 7, it was finally time to choose a new editing software. I weighed the advantages of going back to Avid versus learning FCP X or Premiere Pro CC. Ultimately the marketplace decided for me…most folks here in Hawai‘i were switching to Adobe Premiere, and that is what they are now using at the local film school where many of the filmmakers with whom I collaborate teach.
Last summer I began editing Kū Kanaka: Stand Tall with producer/director Marlene Booth, using Adobe Premiere Pro CC, 2015 edition and we are now about 3 months into editing it. Many people have been asking if I have come up with a written best practices workflow, and so I’ve begun to document how we are editing the show. Read More
So fun to do short trailers for films in the midst of editing these multi-year epic documentary projects! Last spring I had the pleasure of editing a couple of trailers for a couple of great docs. I love getting the chance to collaborate with filmmakers and helping to spread the word about a film I really believe in.Read More
http://floodwall.org I’ve been documenting the work of dear friend and artist Jana Napoli for 25 years now. After the levees failed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, inundating her beloved city New Orleans, she began walking the devastated neighborhoods and studying the insides of each home cast out onto the sidewalks. The 700+ abandoned drawers she collected became the building blocks for Floodwall, Read More
New Day Films Annual Meeting 2013
Just back from an intense and inspiring four days in Northern California with my professional tribe: the 80+ social issue documentary filmmakers of the New Day Films collective. This is my twentieth year in the co-op (20!), and I have seen it grow from under thirty members doing DIY distribution to a sophisticated, cutting edge and profitable company, run by activist filmmakers with a passion for changing the world through documentary film.Read More
This little editor has been so busy making edits that she hasn’t blogged for THREE MONTHS. Thank goodness that she has friends and colleagues who blog. So I’m cheating…this is a re-blog…or whatever the blog equivalent of a Re-Tweet is. Read More