Just published a few more devlogs that I've been working on for a bit:
film devlog #4 // Shooting with Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Cameras. Similar to my DaVinci Resolve: Tips, Workflows, Keyboard Shortcuts compilation, I started a running list of notes about shooting with Blackmagic cameras. I also added some notes about their new Blackmagic Camera iOS App and the native iOS Camera for good measure.
film devlog #5 // Shot Notes. Another running list — striking frames from movies I watched and what I liked about them. Not much here yet, but seems like a useful thing to have around.
Figma Design Workflow with Aneesh
I wanted to update a few of the videos thumbnails on my website to look at bit more “neat and tidy,” so I asked my old colleague Aneesh to help me out making a quick grid / template in Figma I could use to redo all the existing thumbs and copy / paste when making them in the future. Aneesh had recently done a little lunch + learn at my friend Iqram’s company that I found really valuable, so we decided to screen record our session redoing these thumbnails in case it’s valuable to others. We posted it to youtube.
Four Points Film Project
I’ve done a few of these events by The 48 Hour Film Project in the past (when I lived in Oakland), but they didn’t host one I could do from NYC until earlier this month. These things are always an awesome way to manufacture a deadline and just get out there and make something end-to-end.
A few learnings from this one…
DJI Mic Audio Drift. We used our DJI Mics which I have LOVED using in the past, but experienced a weird issue with audio drift where the 2 DJI mics got out of sync with one another (and the camera audio) after a few minutes of recording. This was VERY annoying to debug in post on a tight submission deadline. I've been researching forum threads trying to find the root cause (below), but still not 100% sure I have pinpointed the issue. The only response from DJI seems to be "try a firmware update."
Pacing. The biggest takeaway from the weekend for me was a thought on pacing. The contest had a 7 min cap on submissions, and our first edit ran about 11 minutes. After editing down in a way the preserved the best stuff and watching, the film seemed to just wrap up way to quickly.
This was partly the result of where we invested in getting more interesting shots, I suppose, and also partly due to the writing (it wasn't exactly the best story I've ever written).
In any case, I'd gone into the weekend thinking mostly it would be good "technical" practice -- shooting, etc -- but it was a nice surprise to learn a bit about storytelling, too.
That’s all for now. More after Thanksgiving!