Calling on the hive mind
One advantage of having a brilliant and devoted readership like mine is that I can occasionally reverse the Q&A process and appeal for your insight. Here’s the situation…
At Sundance, I talked about my plan-slash-pipe-dream of releasing the underlying footage of The Nines simultaneously to its DVD release. Essentially, you could load it into your Avid or Final Cut system and it would show up neatly divided into bins. From there, you could cut your own version — or better yet, mash in other content to create something unique: The Nines vs. The Grifters, or Donnie Darknines: The Koalapocalypse.1
Yes, you could do some of this just by ripping the DVD, but having the original material allows for much more sophisticated re-cutting, just as the a cappella version of Jay-Z’s The Black Album enabled a thousand remixes and reinterpretations.
There are legal and political hurdles to be sure, but all of that’s months away.
Right now, we’re surprisingly close to having an official trailer.2 After seeing vastly different approaches–comedy to thriller to existential drama–it became clear that no matter what the tone, there are approximately 15-20 shots which were in nearly every version of the trailer. Which is a pretty small number. Which raises a natural question…
Why not let people cut their own trailer?
Surprisingly, everyone who could veto the idea hasn’t. So I think we’re going to do it. But that means there’s a lot to figure out, much of which falls well outside my area of expertise. I know this blog has a significant readership beyond aspiring screenwriters, so I’m hoping that editors, web-heads and other folks with useful insight will de-lurk and offer some of their genius.
Format
My hunch is that most of these trailers will end up on YouTube, where the ideal input format is MPEG-4, 320×240. It’s certainly compact. The trouble is, editing systems like Final Cut would rather ingest almost anything other than .mp4. Which leads to my first question:
1. What’s the best video format for sending out the trailer footage?
We’re trying to strike a balance between a few competing goals. First, it needs to look and sound pretty good, both as edited, and ultimately, as re-compressed by YouTube. Second, it needs to be fairly compact, so that it’s feasible download (or torrent) the footage.3 Third, it should be something fairly industry-standard. No doubt there is a clever proprietary format out there, but if it requires special plug-ins, people are much less likely to bother.
2. One clip, or many?
Would it be more efficient to offer one long clip (perhaps with chapter marks) or a folder of the individual clips? The latter seems more convenient — you could just drop it into your system as a bin. But does more clips mean more chances for things to go wrong?
Logistics
Beyond the video format, there are other questions about the smartest way to do this. Such as…
3. Should it be a competition?
I suspect many people would participate just because they thought it was interesting, but my experience with the Scene Challeges is that even a phantom prize gets a lot more people invested. Assuming the trailers end up on YouTube, would a standard tagging scheme be enough to help identify the contenders, or should there be a forum for people to list/hype their entries?
3A. If there’s a competition, how long of a deadline?
Assuming the footage came out on a Thursday, would the following Monday be enough time? I suspect there’s a sweet spot between enough time and too much time.
4. What’s the best way to get the footage out there? Torrent? Download?
I’ve barely torrented, and have never set up any seeding situations, so I’m almost fully ignorant on the best ways to make this sizable file available. (In coming up with solutions, you can safely assume we have almost no money to spend on this.)
No doubt there will be other smart questions asked amid the answers in the comments thread. If you’re addressing any of the technical issues, it would be helpful if you mentioned your experience, or provided links. Thanks in advance.
- Just typing that makes me eager to shoot new koala footage. ↩
- Once the official trailer comes, you’ll find a link here, and no doubt a lengthy talkback on a certain site. ↩
- I’m going to guess and say that we’re looking at about six minutes of raw footage, if that helps the back-of-the-envelope calculation. ↩
Articles
May 22nd, 2007 at 2:26 pm
First; I say you should provide high quality DV/.mov-files of the trailer footage, and maybe one compressed format as well? Then, the footage should be downloadable as both torrents and a link to a normal download.
I think a week, 7 days, should be a proper deadline/time. A prize..? I don’t know… a ticket to the premiere? A DVD of the finished film? Glory?
Very cool competition, btw… I’m a filmmaker from Norway who edits a lot - and I’d love to take part in this!
May 22nd, 2007 at 2:32 pm
John -
I would think that most people who would participate in this would be using a Mac. Assuming this, I would suggest .mov format for download. It’s compact and includes solid audio, though certainly not Dolby Digital. However, you can export a Dolby mix using Soundtrack if you export the video file from FCP into SoundtrackPro and recompact it into FCP…
Additionally, I think that individual files would be easier for editing. I don’t see why it would make things more complicated; rather, it would allow for more target specific ideas that could be integrated into a trailer format, and also would be a quicker download.
Make it a competition. On YouTube, you can create your own channel. For example, you could create an account called “TheNines” (assuming it’s not taken), and I could become “friends” with you. By doing this, you would know who has made a video and also could select these videos as a favorite if it was a “finalist” or “winner.” This gives you some discresion as to which videos you would wish to showcase as well.
I think five days would be a good timeline.
Finally, if you’re not dealing with much money, a torrent allows multiple computers to share the files and download them in this manner…alleviating the issues that you might have with storage.
Just my two cents.
May 22nd, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Great idea. Seeding it as torrent would be great. Animation codec would be ideal for editing. Possibly 1/4 frame size to cut a good balance between usable quality and file size. Aronofsky recently did something along these lines with The Fountain Remix.
May 22nd, 2007 at 2:53 pm
Yes 3A. 7-10 Days
Multi-pronged
A: HTTP on johnaugust.com But be careful of your site bandwith…
B: Torrent You can create a torrent easily with this guide: http://torrentfreak.com/drag-and-drop-torrent-creation-on-the-mac/
C: Rapidshare Split the .RAR / .ZIP into pieces and post on rapidshare.com
D: Yousendit Allows files up to 2GB
May 22nd, 2007 at 3:09 pm
I think I like the idea better as it originated — to recut the film when it comes out on DVD. Asking people to make a trailer for a film they haven’t seen sounds a bit disingenuous. We all hate it when trailers don’t accurately portray the content of a film — whether it be in tone or genre or whatever — and this kinda feeds the notion that the marketing of a film and the film itself are two different enterprises. You know, get ‘em into the theatre at any cost.
Now, i’m not impying that you are doing any kind of “bait and switch” tactic. I think it’s a fun idea and certainly a good compromise on the original plan. And since your film sounds like it’s not a straight-forward anything, it’s probably the ideal way to market it. But the reservations are still there on future misuses of such a contest…
And I have faith the clips you release will just add to the potential of the experiment. Intentionally allowing the same unseen movie to be advertised 100 different ways, just to show how tenuous the whole trailer-system is. (assuming the recent trend genre-changing recut trailers of real movies hasn’t already done that)
May 22nd, 2007 at 3:11 pm
This is a great idea. I hope you are able to jump the legal hurdles and make this happen.
Unfortunately the best codec to use, one that is both compact enough to distribute via the internet, and that will allow maximum compatibility with Avid, Final Cut Pro, and others is DV format. However, even DV material is 1 GB per 5 minutes.
More compressed Codecs, i.e., MP4 must be “up-resed” in the edit system before the material is able to be used and it still looks bad. Proprietary codecs, such as Apple’s “Offline-RT”, are much smaller but lock you into one editing system.
Perhaps seeding the footage as a torrent will make a 3 or 5 GB download bearable.
May 22nd, 2007 at 3:14 pm
As you go down this path, I would highly recommend engaging YouTube directly. Lots of benefits:
1) They are very eager to produce original content that they won’t have to worry about take-down notices with. I bet they’d likely even be willing to create a special page that hosts all the entries that is linked to from the front page
2) You could get even better promotion by being on their front page, which means more participants, and also more awareness for The Nines
3) You could offload a lot of the hosting and bandwidth risks to their servers, which beats the heck out of you funding it
The only downside is that this requires some lead time to initiate dialog with them, and get whatever agreements in place, which may put you out too far.
May 22nd, 2007 at 3:26 pm
Sounds fun, but what about music? Will you provide some samples from the soundtrack for us to use or would people be able (and by able I mean legally allowed) to use any music they wanted?
May 22nd, 2007 at 3:28 pm
John,
I love the idea and would love to jump in on this. It would be awesome if the clips were immiedately seperated into bins instead of one long clip, but it should be whatever is easier for you. In theory, for those of us cutting on Avid or Final Cut, you could create a project file with bins and media associated and make that available as well, that way all we would have to do is download the project file and the media (even if it’s in one long clip with subclips) and then import both into our systems and do a media relink. This (in theory) seems like the easiest option. For those not cutting on Avid or Final Cut…I don’t know.
As for the other stuff. 7-10 days would be enough. I’m so jumping on what KM suggested and say ticket to the premiere, but a DVD of the finished flick would be sweet too. A question back to you would be: Would the winning trailer then become an “official” aired trailer? That might be prize enough, if you can work it out with the lawyers.
Downloading seems like the easiest on you and leaves the work to us, which (in all fairness) seems like it’s the way it should be.
Hope it all works out. I’d love to take a crack at it.
May 22nd, 2007 at 3:30 pm
I hadn’t seen The Fountain remix thing. The link is here. It’s the same idea, really, with different restrictions.
They’re using .mp4, which is rough for all the reasons listed. The video assets are one trailer and two scenes. For me, that seems limiting, since you’d have a hard time pulling dialogue out of the mixed backgrounds.
May 22nd, 2007 at 3:48 pm
May 22nd, 2007 at 3:50 pm
John,
Would this be to promote the theatrical release, or the DVD release?
May 22nd, 2007 at 3:57 pm
DV does make the most sense for compatibility purposes. But, as stated, it’s got a big download size. A size of 1 to 5 gigs could take days with some peoples’ connections, and you don’t want to disqualify people just because of their download speed.
I can only really speak for the Final Cut Pro side, but this is how I would do it. First, create a sequence in Offline RT on Final Cut Pro. Then, go into the sequence settings and crank the quality up to like 75%. After that, put all the footage into one sequence, handles and all. You’ll have to shrink the footage to fit the screen and render it out. Next, export the footage to a Quicktime movie using the settings of the sequence you just created. This saved file of all your footage should be about 40 MB per minute of video.
Once you have this file, import it into your final cut pro project. Subclip every shot and organize it into bins. Delete the media from your sequence, but don’t delete the sequence. Instead, rename the sequence “NinesCut” or whatever. This sequence will have the exact settings that will allow you to drop the footage in without having to render anything.
Lastly, in the finder, select the saved final cut project file and the footage and right click, then choose ‘make archive’ from the drop menu. Make a zip archive. Don’t make a .rar Everyone can unstuff a zip, not everyone knows what to do with a rar. Torrent that sucker and you’re good.
I’d be glad to do this for you if you send over the DV footage. It’s about a half hour worth of work.
Again, though, this is just for Final Cut Pro. Maybe someone with an avid could do the same for you on Avid… then you’d just have 2 torrents.
I think this is a great idea, Dan
May 22nd, 2007 at 4:04 pm
I torrented (is that the verb?) once, just to check it. I downloaded a public domain film. it was only 90 minutes and it took a day. I put this bit of info out there for whatever it is worth. a week deadline does not sound great to me (commenting on the post above mine) I would say a week and a half to two weeks. for two reasons - first, one week is already too much time for this ‘job’ but that I am taking into account you want the participation of people who have a life as well, so more than a week would allow them to do so - and plus, there are readers (ahem, yes, I) who do not check as often and so if we check mid-week we barely have a couple of days to try it (not that I would). in that sense you might consider making it a thirty day deadline. just so everyone catches up to it.
May 22nd, 2007 at 4:10 pm
Eric (#5):
This trailer thing doesn’t preclude/replace the bigger goal. If anything, getting this to work would be a huge boost towards getting the Powerful Companies Involved to try something bold with the DVD release.
I hear you about the difficulty cutting a trailer for a movie you haven’t seen. We’re going to be screening the hell out of it, but that’s not going to help is you’re living in the Omaha suburbs.
The official trailer would be out before the cut-your-own thing would begin, so at least you’d have some idea what the movie is.
DKG (#6):
Up-rezzing isn’t ideal, but I just tried it on some of The Fountain footage, and it’s not awful. Using Compressor, 11 MB of .mp4 becomes 537 MB of DV (.mov), which FCP happily gobbles up. It’s probably an okay compromise for people who want/need to download a smaller file.
Mike (#7):
Your lips to Google’s ears. I don’t know why anyone would host video when someone else (YouTube) can do it so much better. Yes, the quality isn’t ideal, but it’s vastly faster.
Mallet (#8):
Composer Alex Wurman already has a bunch of the music up at his site. You can hear it here. We’d certainly mirror it to make it available. But most trailers are cut to other existing music, and I would foresee that being the case here.
Manny (#9):
I’m certain pro-bin. I’d guess that a high percentage of participants would be on either Avid or FCP, so providing a project file and media would be ideal. But a fair amount of work, honestly. Perhaps a charitable participant would step up.
May 22nd, 2007 at 4:13 pm
~1~ DV (with MPEG-2 a close second) would be the best format for video professionals. But if you want to be more inclusive…
The most universal source format options would be AVI files, MPEG-1 files and QuickTime Movies, in that order. Supporting all three would be ideal, (each additional format would be very little incremental work for whoever prepares the clips). The clips should be 320×240 at 24fps (properly de-interlaced, natch).
Any ancillary audio should be delivered as WAV files.
~2~ Many clips will be easier to work with. Bundling them as a .zip file won’t appreciably reduce their collective size, but will make them downloadable as one chunk.
~3~ A competition would be fun, and have marketing/PR benefits as well. Personally, I’d give people two weekends to put together their entry.
~4~ Download is the most straightforward, and the best choice if you have the bandwidth. BitTorrent is great if you don’t have enough bandwidth, but many, many people have never used BitTorrent and will need some guidance.
I’m a video/audio compression expert, so just let me know if you need help preparing the files.
May 22nd, 2007 at 4:19 pm
I have 2 recommendations regarding the format for the movie files:
1) 24 fps (or 23.98) DV NTSC. This is very well handled by both FCP and Avid (don’t know about Adobe Premier but I think it should be able to handle quicktime files). Unfortunately, as DKG mentioned, it’s big and (unlike other quicktime formats) you can’t adjust the frame size. So, my recommendation (considering file size) would be…
2) 24 fps (or 23.98) Motion JPEG A. This is a Quicktime codec that works nicely with both Final Cut and Avid. With Motion JPEG A, you can resize the files to 320×240 or whatever you’d like and the image quality remains relatively good.
Regarding a prize, what if you offer to “online” the winning submission for a higher quality rendition. Might be a nice trophy-piece for someone’s editors reel.
Hope my thoughts help…
[Also, if you didn't already know, once your editor gets to the point of producing the media files, there are some pretty cool things you can do with FCP's Media Manager that I wouldn't have known if I didn't have to learn it :-D]
May 22nd, 2007 at 4:26 pm
Unless you’re able to get YouTube or the distribution company to pay for bandwidth, I say go for bittorrent. If enough people download/upload the files and keep seeding you can get even 1-2 GB files in one or two hours (that is of course provided that you are on 8mbit or faster broadband connection).
As for the deadline, I agree that a week sounds like a good time frame.
May 22nd, 2007 at 4:32 pm
Hey John,
I just posted this to the Final Cut Pro forum at Apple’s site. There are some extremely seasoned FCP and Avid users over there that I think will have some good ideas. Here’s a link to the thread:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=969070&tstart=0
Hopefully this will get you some good info. Cameron
May 22nd, 2007 at 4:33 pm
Another great prize would be a cup of coffee (for those non-Angeleno’s, John could just mail a check).
May 22nd, 2007 at 4:35 pm
COOL IDEA!!! I loved your pre-Sundance idea and I really hope it becomes a reality…Im a super-competitive person, though I dont think there really needs to be a prize or many restrictions. Your fans will eagerly await any opportunity to “remix” this film.
My honest concern goes back to the earlier discussion of people re-cutting a trailer for a film people have not seen yet. I would only be nervous of people discussing the idea too much before the film screens. Half the fun (for me, and Im biased) was watching the film with so little information about the plot/characters. Now this point may be moot given today’s availability of movie information. AND the trailer idea WOULD help you sell the larger idea.
Mallet’s question about music poses some interesting things to ponder…Anyway, just my $0.02…The ideas are awesome and I look forward to following this in the coming months!
May 22nd, 2007 at 5:23 pm
Warner Independent a trailer contest with the release of A Scanner Darkly last year.
Link to the contest forum - contest rules
Once you see the rules and the prizes offered, it’s clear that there was a decent amount of money behind this (prizes sponsored by Microsoft & Warner).
Anyway, the concept was, they provided an official trailer that was cut for the movie, and all the video and audio assets that were used for the trailer were provided for download. I can’t remember the exact formats used, but I think they were .mov and .wav files.
The contest was hosted on jumpcut.com, and the competition involved remixing the official trailer.
The thing about it was, I would have to guess that many people interested in this were at least familiar with the plot of A Scanner Darkly already. As Eric mentioned above, it could be difficult to make a trailer for a film one hasn’t seen, especially if an ‘official’ trailer isn’t shown first.
For distributing the content, they used a content distribution network paid for by the sponsors - so I think in this case torrents would be the best, as long as people will keep the seeds alive.
May 22nd, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Well, apparently the people at Apple didn’t take kindly to me asking about how to do this and removed my post from the forum.
Sorry! Cameron
May 22nd, 2007 at 6:21 pm
Only if you call it the JAGUAR award (John August’s Greatest Undiscovered Audiovisual Remixer).
Seriously though, I think it would be nice to include the best fan trailer on the DVD release as an extra.
Depending on the quality of entries and the space on the DVD you could even include the top 5 trailers and maybe a little feature about the competition and also johnaugust.com.
May 22nd, 2007 at 6:33 pm
people suggesting MPEG2 obviously have not tried importing that type of footage into an NLE. It’s a bloody pain in the ass…
May 22nd, 2007 at 8:58 pm
John,
I have no problems creating a project file for Avid or FCP. Let me know.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:26 pm
Torrenting is probably the best way. You’ll have an initial (probably quite large) number of people who will do this regardless of format, time, effort required. Then the more who do it, the easier it becomes to Torrent solving the problem for you.
I don’t see why you’re limiting yourself to a ‘best’ format. Giving people a choice of formats at the beginning will magnify the little extra effort it will cost you enormously just in terms of goodwill. Editing a 320×240 file wouldn’t be anywhere near as much fun.
Alternatively, stick to .mov and speak to Apple directly. Get them to host , promote, run with it. Its a superb marketing tool for FCP or whatever proprietary NLE you go for. Obviously FCP has its benefits in terms of who uses it already…
Anyone who says getting people to cut a trailer is a bad idea or disingenuous is just plain wrong. Firstly I think it will be fun. Secondly this is absolutely superb viral marketing. But when you launch it, don’t make the common viral mistake of limiting your initial seeds and hoping people will run with the idea. Launch it everywhere, Final Cut Users Groups, Creative Cow, Apple Discussions, Digg etc.
Good luck. You’ll certainly have all five editors in my company having a bash.
May 23rd, 2007 at 12:49 am
I wouldn’t go with Quicktime. Not that it’s a terrible format, but it doesn’t seem like it would be the easiest to work with. I’m not an editor though, so take that with a grain of salt.
Also, I use a PC, and would definitely try to participate in this. It shouldn’t be Apple-exclusive.
May 23rd, 2007 at 1:21 am
Best format would be a (75% quality) MJPEG MOV. Every editing system can use that and they are reasonably small.
480×360 would be a nice resolution, a good compromise between quality and size. You want something bigger than youtube resolution to get a good flash encode to show it there.
A week is a nice deadline and I am all for prizes.
May 23rd, 2007 at 3:08 am
This seems like a great way of closing the gap between filmakers and consumers and creating a bit of synergy but, speaking as a writer who couldn’t edit a cell phone clip, cutting together a trailer from a number of predetermined clips to a movie no-one would have seen yet seems a little odd.
While I understand why the participants would be drawn to the project I don’t understand of what use the results would be to the filmakers. No-one participating would know what they were making a trailer for, surely? I have a friend who is up and coming in the movie making field and I sure she would be very interested in this idea. I’m just not sure I understand what the goal is though….
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:37 am
Hello John,
I’m a full time Avid editor (enter street cred) in Knoxville, TN (exit street cred) who dreams of growing up to be John August (or, if I have to settle, Josh Friedman). Anyway, I thought I’d take a stab at your questions:
If using Avid, don’t use the Avid DV codec. This should enable FCP folks to use the QT as well. Go for the “large internet� setting (320 X 240) and use all of the defaults. Pretty simple, but I emailed a frame grab of the settings to your ask@johnaugust.com just in case.
Obviously, it’s best to keep it to one track of video, two tracks of audio.
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:40 am
(Sorry, I had to break this into parts):
3a. One week seems the perfect amount of time.
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:47 am
(Part Three):
Question Four: This is dicey. If you export a single QT with the specs I mentioned above, the file size will be roughly two gigs, depending on the resolution of your original source material. Everyone’s going to want it to be be bit torrent.
(Except me, cuz I hate and fear bit torrent. Cuz I don’t understand it. And I hate and fear what I don’t understand.)
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:56 am
part four of four:
Aside from bit torrent, xdrive, filezilla, and tubesnow are all supposedly good file-sharing resources.
Hope all of this information helped. Sorry about the multiple posts.
May 23rd, 2007 at 6:15 am
Long time reader, first time commenter. I think this is an awesome idea! I have just few thoughts to add:
I think a YouTube tag (maybe theninesremixentry?) would be a perfectly adequate method of submission. As was mentioned previously, you might even get YouTube involved, and if nothing else, it gets the entries out there which helps promote the movie.
It would be a shame to use a format that cut out Windows (or Linux) users.
Personally, I would prefer separate files, however I don’t think they need to be all that high quality.
I’d be happy to volunteer to help out with hosting. I can donate both bandwidth for direct downloads and bittorrent hosting. Contact me directly if you’re interested.
Hope it works out one way or another!
May 23rd, 2007 at 7:02 am
What a brilliant idea. Bootleg versions of a film. I love music bootlegs and mash ups and this sounds great idea.
May 23rd, 2007 at 7:03 am
What a brilliant idea. Bootleg versions of a film. I love music bootlegs and mash ups and this sounds like a great idea.
May 23rd, 2007 at 7:03 am
Oops. Sorry.
May 23rd, 2007 at 8:08 am
Quicktime (.mov) will be most friendly to users of all the NLE platforms out there. I would suggest breaking your footage up into simple seperate clips for distriution / download. Trying to create a single project folder for people to download and then use across all systems will create more headaches then helping steps. One Avid’s project folder is a Final Cut user’s garbage and vice versa.
I’d vote for ten days to complete the cut and get it submitted.
May 23rd, 2007 at 8:31 am
Hei KM (#1),
you say you’re a filmmaker from Norway. I’m a student / movie maniac from Germany and I love your country and Norwegian films, too. I even try to learn the language in evening classes.
So, if you’d like to chat just send me an email to
Lars
May 23rd, 2007 at 8:50 am
I love the idea of remixing a trailer. I was going to enter the ’scanner darkly’ trailer remix contest, but found out about it too late. You may want to look at how they ran that contest for ideas. I think it was in conjunction with ifilms or another video website. (The contest link is here.)
Speaking of using another company to host due to bandwidth, you may want to consider google as well as youtube. As for format of the files, I think decently compressed 320 x 240 would be fine, with the winners being able to create theirs high res. As for downloading, I think torrent and direct link both.
Color me psyched about this impending contest and me finding out about it in a timely manner. I used to edit video in a former life.
May 23rd, 2007 at 9:30 am
I say quicktime .mov files - perhaps h.264 compression? I know compressing it sucks but the HD trailers on apple.com are h.264 and you can get a gigantic trailer into a few hundred megabytes. Individual clips, with just voice-audio? Music left to the creator?
PC people - how nicely does h.264 play with you guys? Avid folks? It’s an apple creation so I’m not quite sure. Definitely can’t leave non-apple, non-FCP people out.
I prefer zip/rar files via ftp/http. I agree with the sentiment that a torrent won’t catch everyone.
May 23rd, 2007 at 9:53 am
John, I work for the show Ghost Whisperer and my specialty is quote un-quote new media. I am doing similar things for the Season 2 GW DVD release, and am quite familiar with the process. I’m currently working on some really “big” things in a similar vien with CBS interactive.
Since you’ve been so kind with this blog and are a fellow USC alumni I’d love to help return the favor and give you and hand, or at least some valuable advice with this process.
I don’t want to go into too much detail in your comment section, but I have a lot of ideas, so please email me if you want some help!
Thanks
Stephan S. Fleet
May 23rd, 2007 at 10:32 am
“3A. If there’s a competition, how long of a deadline?
Assuming the footage came out on a Thursday, would the following Monday be enough time? I suspect there’s a sweet spot between enough time and too much time”
Could it be a week? I’ve got the day job, the part time job, and the family. I can’t be the only one overextended, can I?
May 23rd, 2007 at 11:01 am
Eric (#35) said:
“It would be a shame to use a format that cut out Windows (or Linux) users.”
As a Windows and Linux (l)user who has no acces to a Mac, I must agree.
May 23rd, 2007 at 11:11 am
What’s the deal? I can’t post anything.
May 23rd, 2007 at 11:12 am
Nevermind.
May 23rd, 2007 at 11:44 am
Okay, I keep trying to post this & whenever I type something meaninful, it says “permission denied” so I’ll do it in shorter chunks & see if that works.
May 23rd, 2007 at 11:51 am
I give up.
May 23rd, 2007 at 11:54 am
Great idea, sounds like lots of fun!
Suggestions:
Post the clips on a Thursday, set the entry deadline on the Monday 11 days later. Two weekends!
Post two versions of the clips:
3. Use bittorrent. Get a few fully-established seeds (non-competitors, if there is concern about early access to the clips) before announcing. Ask us to keep seeding, and we will. If it doesn’t work out, the low-Q clips can still be used to produce a fairly good trailer.
Also, re: “making a trailer for a movie you haven’t seen”: I kind of like that part. If the only possible interpretation of the production spec was to create an effective promotional device for the film, it wouldn’t be as much fun.
Anyway, great idea and I hope the hurdles are cleared.
May 23rd, 2007 at 12:43 pm
The folks behind “black snake moan” did this exact thing. All the video clips, sound bites, and music were on the website… you’d download a package, cut it together, and submit. I believe the winner of the best trailer got tickets to the Sundance screening.
May 23rd, 2007 at 2:12 pm
Thanks to the many readers who wrote in with smart suggestions. Here’s where I think we’re at:
For those who don’t want to deal with the torrent, the compressed file should be available through an alternate download venue. (S3?)
The reason I don’t see us hooking up with an outside sponsor on this is that some entries will inevitably be tasteless or questionable. I say, great. But I’m not a big corporation.
We’ll probably add an official forum for all of this at lookforthenines.com at some point.
Again, thanks, and keep your suggestions coming.
May 23rd, 2007 at 2:30 pm
The band “Modest Mouse” is currently having fans cut their own trailers. Here’s the whole operation: Missed The Boat
Very similar parameters. They’re working in Apple Intermediate Codec, just shy of Standard Definition pixel dimensions.
May 23rd, 2007 at 3:29 pm
My attempts at posting here yesterday only brought me frustrating error messages. Even though it seems like decisions have been made I would still like to throw in my 2 cents.
Best video format: I vote for .mov files, but I am admittedly biased as I use FCP.
One clip or many: Many. One long clip = sync problems. This shouldn’t be true, but it often is.
Competition? Yes, definitely. Competitions are fun. The prize could be as simple as having the winning trailer go up on The Nines website with a short bio of the winner. Other honourable mentions would also be a good idea (perhaps with a link to the videos on YouTube).
May 23rd, 2007 at 3:30 pm
3A. How long of a deadline: Let me state this as clearly as I can. One week is NOT enough time. As someone mentioned earlier, many people won’t hear about it until it’s too late for them to participate. People are busy - many would likely miss out if you caught them on a bad week. Also, I am meticulous. I like to ponder, not just slap footage together. I would say a minimum of 2 weeks is a must. I’d bet that giving us a bit more time will equal more entries of better quality, and who doesn‘t want that?
May 23rd, 2007 at 3:31 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 3:33 pm
Sounds like you’re heading in the right direction John. There’s a Battlestar Galactica promotion that’s very similar. They chose both AVI and MOV DV files, and .WAV files for audio, utlizing clips and ZIPing them up. Details are here: http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/videomaker/tools/
May 23rd, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Also, what can/can’t we do with respect to music and music rights?
My experience / links: indie filmmaker. Write/produce/direct/edit for the web and cable TV up here in Vancouver.
-Sorry for the multiple posts. It wouldn’t work otherwise. What does this error mean: Precondition Failed The precondition request on the URL /wp-comments-post-php evaluated to false.
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:02 pm
Now that I have a moment to breathe, I still recommend you email me and I can help you in more detail, but, in short, what you want to do is a video mash up competition. They did this for Scanner Darkly and many, many other films and TV.
Now, there are things you can do to make your competition unique… take things to the next level… or you can simply do what is already a fairly fun and successful formula.
There are several considerations here. 1) The best idea may be to partner up with a company that is a video content provider that is new. Like a Joost or something of the like. These guys can use proprietary created software, or flash or the like, to let people do simple cuts right there in their browser.
Another way to go, which seems to be the main point on your post, is to release clips for digital distribution. For this I would follow the NIN example. Trent Reznor frequently packages files to remix his songs using Garageband. It’s once nice tidy package. You can do that for AVID, FCP, iMovie, and/or Adobe Premiere. Simply include a project file and the downloadable files all in one package! Then all they have to do is open the file and start editing. Obviously, they need to have some proficiency with their editing program from the get go. That is a given.
With that being said, focusing specifically on FCP (the weapon of choice for most indies, I would say) and format - here is the good news: FCP handles most any format, and as long as the project is created and the timeline matches the footage, there is no rendering involved. The only thing you want to stay away from his highly compressed web footage like MP4 or Sorenson, not because you can’t edit it, but because it is long GOP and lossy and taxes the editing program more.
I’d do MJPEGA at 320×240 with a matching timeline and stereo audio. That is probably the highest quality and most universal, and will convert in youtube very nicely. Heck, even though I say no - you may want to try MP4. The good news with that is people can make the footage directly playable on their iPod or Apple TV.
I’ll give you one better. You could a VODcast RSS feed for iTunes, so everyone could upload their shows and they could be processed as a feed right in iTunes.
Another idea, which is more costly for your manufacturer, but HASN’T been done yet, is to include a data CD or DVD in your packaging with the materials! That’s rad.
In terms of the contest… email me… that’s a whole different beast!
May 23rd, 2007 at 7:00 pm
Hi, I haven’t read through all the suggestions here (far too many) but I have read the replies by John so I’ll chime in with my two cents worth of suggestions and apologise if it has already been said. There’s currently two such competitions already going, one for a Bjork music video and the other for a band I’ve never heard of which is up on Apple’s site. The Bjork one isn’t bad really as it at least has a reason for you to have a go as if you win you get to work with her and could be your start at entering the industry. The second one is awful though as you get no credit whatsoever so they’re litterally out of ideas and wish to steal originality from enthusiaticly creative people. My suggestion would be to not worry so much about the final output quality at all as you need not actually work with what any entrants actually output whatsoever. To explain, if you split each shot up individually, .mov files done with the h.264 codec at about 608×336 with the stereo sound already in them would be fine as people can play around with those ’til their hearts content with regards to image and sound (play sound from one shot over another different one for example), wrapped them up as .rar files (zips can be a pain when crossing the PC/Mac realm, trust me on this) and either upload them as one torrent or split them up by shot, when an entrant has finished their cut then they can upload their entry at whatever quality they like for you to pick a winner from. When the winner is decided you simply have them send you their EDL file (Edit Decision List) or project file from their NLE system with which you can open their project (if you have the same NLE) and simply reconnect the files on your end with the higher quality originals and hey presto you have the winning trailer at full quality without having to download anything (the EDL route is pretty similar and this is a job any assitant editor should more than capable of). A lot of editors have to do this route when working with very high data rate HD content these days in order to be able to work in real time and at speed, simply create lower res versions of your files, edit them, export your EDL and use that to conform the orignal data files to do what you did with the lower res ones. I’m simplifying the process somewhat but it can be that simple (your editor will know how to do this) and is basically the electronic version of what we used to have to do back when we actually edited with film, pass our maticulous cutting list to the Neg Cutter who would then cut the negative to match what you had done in the editing suite (still done of course but no longer done by hand from written notes of forms thank god). Anyway, the EDL route is the best way to go for any final output on your end John as this removes the worry of having to use any footage that’s of an appauling res (much like my spelling probably is thus far but it’s bloody late here in the UK and I’m knackered!) because of compromises made in trying to have all the files be downloadable when it came to their size or broad use of codecs (stay away from mpeg2, it’s evil and HUGE!). A 7 day deadline would be cool, as suggested already. With regards to prize I think a DVD would be fine but even cooler would be to pick maybe three winners (hoping that enough people enter the comp of course) and simply have a section in the extras of the DVD release called Blog Fan Trailer Edits and give each winner their day in court by letting them have their name on their versions along with the DVDs as prize. Probably more than two cents worth but there you go. Signing off.
May 24th, 2007 at 12:34 am
Sorry to insist but some things regarding format and compression must be explained.
Quicktime (mov extension) is just a wrapper, like AVI. The important thing is which codec are you using for compressing the video.
DV codec creates too big files and is dependent of the platform. It is not the same the microsoft DV codec than the Avid DV codec. While most NLE systems admit both there can and will be compatibility problems.
So, my option is go for Quicktime because both Macs and Windows accept it (same can’t be said for AVI).
The best codec is MJPEG A (aka MOTION JPEG A). In fact, it doesn’t really matter if it is A or B since they are the same quality-wise and they were differentiated in origin for a hardware issue with capture cards that has been resolved long since.
MJPEG codec is a very old one. It essentially compresses each frame as a JPEG. Since it is old every NLE admits it and the quality is very good (you can set the quality as a % as you would do with a JPEG in Photoshop).
MJPEG codec is much better for editing than H.264, MP4 or any other interframe codec (i.e. it uses one or more earlier or later frames in a sequence to compress the current frame). MJPEG, as DV, is intraframe, that means that it compresses each frame making it easier for the NLE to edit it.
Problem is that MOV’s compressed with MJPEG are bigger than the ones compressed with a interframe codec.
I have make some tests and best choice would be 640*480 at 24 fps, sound at 44100 Hz, 16 bit uncompressed (again for compatibility issues and because sound impact in file size is not that big).
With that settings you would get a data rate of around 70 MB per minute. With a DV codec it would be around 216 MB/minute.
Hope that helped.
May 24th, 2007 at 1:01 am
Ever get the feeling that you just opened up Pandora’s Box, John?
May 24th, 2007 at 3:46 am
John!!! just saw this today. I was at Sundance. Great work. It would be awesome if you could allow people to vote on the completed trailers. Good luck great idea.
May 24th, 2007 at 3:53 am
Hey John,
Lots of interesting suggestions provided, but they all face the same problem. Video editing requires footage that is better than what can easily be distributed via the web. Which leaves basically three options:
1) Distribute small files that are not really appropriate for NLE editing–this will lead to serious confusion getting the files into Avid or FCP and a mediocre looking end-product.
2) Distribute large files via torrent or download–this will piss off a lot of people who don’t have fast download speeds, and will probably lead to less media being offered, which will hurt the trailers.
Or… Here comes my big idea….
3) Distribute large files via DVD and snail mail. That’s right, a data DVD that comes in the mail. In this manner, you could provide complete projects for both Avid and Final Cut with all of the media neatly organized into bins. Data DVDs cost pennies and can be easily duplicated and I bet the cost of distribution in this manner would be about the same as paying a webmaster to devise a crazy method of web distribution, not to mention the bandwidth costs you encounter for serving up terrabytes of data. (Obviously, Newmarket/Sony can afford almost any cost associated with marketing, but DVD is still better for the end-user)
I know it’s very 1995 of me to suggest sending something in the mail, but, as a professional editor who often needs to share media with other post-houses, there is simply no better way than sending a DVD. The web is good for exhibition, not media sharing.
Good Luck, P
PS: as far as codecs go, I would suggest DV, it looks good and is easily used by Avid, FCP and iMovie.
May 24th, 2007 at 7:36 am
Try teaming up with eyespot (http://www.eyespot.com/) They are teaming up with Lucas to provide fans a means to make their own star wars movies using a combination of user generated content and archived clips, sounds, music from all 6 star wars films. I’m sure you could save a lot of trouble, and more importantly, open this up to a wider audience, if you teamed up with them.
May 24th, 2007 at 7:44 am
As it turns out the makers of STAR WARS - a sci-fi independent from the seventies with cult following - are doing a similar thing… http://www.aintitcool.com/node/32785
May 24th, 2007 at 8:21 am
Star Wars… Nope, never heard of it
Do you think we’ll ever get to the horrifying stage where all we’ll ever have to do as film makers is shoot scenes, post them online and let the audience slap them together any way they like? I’m sure someone could easily come up with a random mash up program to automate the process. Every time you watch it, it’s in a different order/length. Same movie/different movie every night
May 24th, 2007 at 9:11 am
I’m on Windows using Sony Vegas so ring me up for the minority.
Regardless of how you get this going, it is an AWESOME idea. Good luck with it.
May 24th, 2007 at 9:56 am
I’m not sure if this has been said yet, but if the film is being released in different markets, then after say the Los Angeles opening allow LA folks to edit their cut AFTER seeing the film for an accurate representation. Maybe after it reaches wide audiences and all the cities have submitted, declare the top 3 winners and get a signed copy of the DVD, ticket to DVD launch party with promise to screen trailer for all to see!
Anyway, can’t wait to edit.
May 24th, 2007 at 11:02 am
Plowden (#64):
Some sort of DVD distribution system is crucial for the full-movie mash-up incarnation. But for the trailer contest, we’ll never get the infrastructure in place. So it’s going to be a torrent and download solution.
Alex (#61) and others:
I was going to explain that Quicktime is a wrapper, but you beat me to it. I wish the Finder made it more apparent exactly what format is inside.
MJPEG A is surprisingly good. Great suggestion. It brought a 1.2GB clip of DV down to 112MB, and FCP lapped it up. Color was off, but that may have just been my settings.
The clip was six minutes long, which is what I’m guessing the material would be.
Battlestar Galactica is providing their clips in DV, and a la carte — you can download just the ones you want. We’re not going to have the pipes to do that.
Carol P. (#58):
I don’t know what that error would be. It might be browser-specific. Is anyone else having trouble? Email me at ask@johnaugust.com if it happens again.
May 24th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
It would be a pitty if we weren’t able to have access to the film with DV quality, as a trailer’s editor would…
May 24th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
Any reason why you used a logo from a pack of cigarettes for your post picture? You subliminally trying to get us to smoke.
May 26th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
I love the idea of the contest. One week sounds ok if you’re eagerly waiting to enter the contest and play with the files but it might be also turn off people with more important things to do that precise week and that precise week-end. IMO that kind of creative contest should take place over 2-3 weeks.
As for the format it would be great if the files were compatible with open source editing software but I don’t know to what extend it is possible with all the proprietary codecs. Ubuntu Studio as just been released a couple of weeks ago so I don’t know yet what is possible with the featured free editing software, Kino. Hopefully Cinelerra will be part of the distro too.
May 26th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
John,
It sounds like a great idea. But I’m surprised nobody has mentioned the fact of the possbile hype and the consequences that come with it. Obvisouly, I’m refering to “Snakes on the Plane”. Now whether the film was that bad to begin with(haven’t seen it) or the internet hyped it up so much beyond expectations that it was doomed rom the start. As a writer, I’d be very concerned how the movie would be perceived. After all, it is really just advertising. Competition would be great, you could of course charge a small nominal entrance fee and have the proceeds given to charity. Keeps the people just trying to capitalize on fame out.
May 26th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
Great idea. As a beginning producer myself, I think it could be a great learning experience to get my hand on the footage.
I second the need for high-quality footage, at least in DV quality (though a 4:2:2 codec like DVCPRO would be great to be able to do some grading with Color on it, granted we get the “uncorrected” raw material…). DVCPRO can be contained in a Quicktime file that both Final Cut and Avid can import, so there’s no problem there.
Stereo 44.1khz should be sufficient for the sound, to considerably lower the file size. For distribution, a .torrent would be neat and fast, as long as people stay on and seed for a while.
May 28th, 2007 at 5:23 am
Hey there. I’ve been trying to post for the last few days with no luck. I’m going to try and break up my comments to see if that works. Thanks -Dorian
When I participated in the Scanner Darkly Trailer Remix Contest the clips were: Format: MPEG4 FPS: 23.98 Size 640×480 Audio: 16-bit, 49kHz Stereo
This worked very well for me as a participant. I created a Sequence in Final Cut Pro with settings that allowed me to edit the clip in their native format without any conversion. Then I exported the final trailer remix out to the required specs (320 x 240) for the site that was hosting the contest (jumpcut.com). These settings are pretty much the same as YouTube’s. It looked great even with the compression (conversion to Flash) applied after the upload. http://jumpcut.com/view?id=541CAFFEEF9C11DAA0644E6A17CD0207
Lately, I’ve been seeing a few new contests providing DV25 or DV50 clips. http://toriamos.com/bigwheel/ - These are zipped. http://www.ozzy.com/idontwannastop - These are straight downloads of the clips - no zipping.
May 28th, 2007 at 5:26 am
Many individual clips with head and tail would be preferred. Some clips could have dialog or, if not essential to the particular clip, no audio at all on some.
May 28th, 2007 at 5:27 am
Logistics Beyond the video format, there are other questions about the smartest way to do this. Such as… 3. Should it be a competition?
Sure! Why not - these kind of video contests are fun as hell. I’ve been hooked on these kind of competitions since last July. Have a panel of judges select the winners - steer clear of audience/participant voting I’d say. Have a grand prize and a runner-up - or maybe a first, second and third place.
May 28th, 2007 at 5:33 am
If you decide on YouTube you can create a “Group” on YouTube - there’s a button on the lower left here: http://youtube.com/groups_main The YouTube group you create will act as a common place for folks to post entries and there’s a discussion board that’s also a feature of the group. Sounds perfect, no? Additionally, asking participants to add some standard unique tags wouldn’t hurt.
May 28th, 2007 at 5:58 am
3A. If there’s a competition, how long of a deadline?
Two weeks. Gives everyone enough time to get acquainted with the clips, ask questions on the Discussion board, share best practices. brag. etc. Also, if anyone has a weekend that’s booked with something (family gathering, road trip) at least they’ll have second weekend that might work better for them to get crackin’ on this. Kick it off on a Friday. Make the announcement on your site and have the YouTube group go live on that Friday (morning?) with the clips ready to download. Example Timeline: Friday: Contest goes live. Sat/Sun: People hibernate in their edit suites chop, chop, chopping away. Mon-Fri: Ditto San/Sun#2: Ditto Mon-Thurs: Again, ditto. Friday: Submission period ends at 11:59 Pacific time. Sat/Sun#3: Judges deliberate. Winner to be announced on the following Friday. It’s good to have a little wriggle room if you find that you need time for any unforseen events. Personal or contest related.
May 28th, 2007 at 5:59 am
I like downloads makes it easy. But offering both would be good to spread the bandwith burden around a bit and give people a choice.
May 28th, 2007 at 6:01 am
My “Channel” on YouTube: All of the vids here were made for video contests over the last year. http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=meridianrazor
Included here to illustrate that I’ve got experience in participating in these contests and being exposed to different rules and deadlines, judging criteria and maintaining the highest possible quality for upload to sites that re-encode video for viewing/posting like YouTube, Jumpcut, etc.
John, in particular, you might enjoy my ‘Script Support’ - 2006 Austin Film Festival Trailer Competition Entry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4JUezuOlRw
Thanks and apologies for the multiple post - but I was just so excited to help out I HAD to get this posted. Looking forward to this! -Dorian
May 28th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
Correction for #76 above. It should have read: Audio: 16-bit, 48kHz Stereo
June 3rd, 2007 at 3:33 pm
Right now…anything sounds cool. I’ve been stoned all week long. Just getting my bong helmet off. Uh…
June 8th, 2007 at 1:50 am
Just want to start off by saying that I think that this is a brilliant idea, and am very excited. Also I think that the rest of the guys out there should stop creating problems. I am sure that they are trying to help, but I think it’s simple. You decide in what format it will be provided and then it is up to the rest of us to make sure we can get it. I cut on Lightworks and whatever format it is provided in I will make a plan to make sure that I can use it. This is a great oppertunity for those of us that are not in the US and are not constantly exposed to this. Look forward to having an oppertunity to cut the trailers!!!
October 5th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
I would shoot for FCP’s best output .MOV then upload it and let youtube convert it. It can take a while. I’ve never had a problem so far.
March 26th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Mark Riley (London, UK)
Hi John
I thought your idea in releasing The Nines footage for trailer cuts was a great idea.
By the way did you ever manage to realise your other idea where by the whole of the footage from The Nines would be released simultaneously on its DVD release for use on the Avid or Final Cut systems e.t.c.
I havn’t seen it on the DVD’s in the UK but I thought it may have been a bridge too far for the distributors?
Kind regards
Mark