John August

Archives for 2011

Rob Corddry on getting stuff written

Geek Alert, Television, Web series

Merlin Mann’s [Back to Work podcast](http://5by5.tv/b2w/29) has a great discussion with Rob Corddry this week, talking about Children’s Hospital. (Which, if you’re not watching, is [available on iTunes](http://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/childrens-hospital-season-1/id296879842).)

I was especially interested in how Corddry and his team are breaking stories for the upcoming season: using the simultaneous editing features in Google Docs. That’s the same way Stuart and I wrote the point-counterpoint for yesterday’s article about FCP X. The collaboration features in Google Docs are fairly amazing and under-heralded.

You can listen to the Corddry podcast [here](http://5by5.tv/b2w/29).

Final Cut Pro and Con

Software, Stuart, Video

Final Cut Pro X has been [controversial](http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/professional-video-editors-weigh-in-on-final-cut-pro-x/?pagewanted=all) because it greatly alters the traditional workflow and eliminates features many editors find essential.

Some of those missing pieces — like multi-cam editing — are apparently coming soon. But most of the big changes are simply The Way Things Are Done Now. They go beyond keyboard shortcuts and helper apps to fundamentally different ways of working.

It’s fair to call this a brand-app that happens to be named Final Cut Pro.

I’ve used several incarnations of Final Cut Pro over the years. I don’t cut things that often, so each time I started editing something new, I had to spend a few minutes reminding myself how everything worked. In 2006, I finally took a FCP class at UCLA.

Here’s a very juvenile video I cut using the sample footage that comes with one of the tutorials:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SS6mrp7Sbu4

My assistant Stuart actually used to teach FCP in college. It’s fair to say he’s more experienced with how the old app worked.

Over the past four weeks, each of us has had the opportunity to cut a few projects in the new FCP X and evaluate its strengths and weaknesses. I think the differences in our reactions are largely based on how familiar we were with the old version.

I’ll go first.

Runner
—-

I wrote, shot and edited this spot for FDX Reader myself.

Everything was shot on the Canon 7D. Rather than import directly from the camera, I used Image Capture to transfer the movie files to the hard drive, then created a New Event in FCP X and imported the files.

I find the Event metaphor to be one of the most annoying choices in FCP X. Events make sense for iMovie — here’s Katie’s birthday! — but not for Final Cut Pro. Functionally, you want a container for all the footage related to what you’re cutting. Events aren’t exactly analogous to Bins in the old FCP, but Bins would be a better name than Events.

Regardless, once I put the footage into an Event, and began a new Project, I found the process surprisingly enjoyable. FCP X churns away in the background, analyzing footage and transcoding proxies. But at no point did I notice, even on my 2006 Mac Pro. I could start going through footage right away, versus waiting an hour or more for FCP 7 to transcode to something editable. Big win for the new guy.

In FCP 7, I would often drag little bits of footage to the timeline and start picking favorites. FCP X strongly encourages you to make some choices right in the Bin (err, the All Clips window).

Using the standard J-K-L keys, you play through your clips. When you find something that you might want, mark ins and outs (I and O). Then F to mark that section as a favorite. Yes, the handles that mark ins and outs look a lot like those in iMovie, but the functionality remains pretty traditional. You can do a lot more from the keyboard in FCP X than I’d expected.

Once you’ve looked at everything, Control-F switches you to Favorite Clips. These are basically your selects. Everything you’re going to want will probably be here.

From there, you drag clips to the storyline and start assembling your cut.

Unlike FCP 7, you can’t just throw clips anywhere. In FCP X, everything is magnetic and wants to stick together. To leave blank space between clips you have to deliberately Insert Gap to get a chunk of dark nothingness. It’s neither better or worse than before, but it’s certainly different.

Also different:

* You have one Viewer, rather than two.
* The Inspector handles almost any variable that needs to be adjusted, from video to image to metadata.
* Recorded audio stays attached to its video unless you very deliberately detach it. Things don’t get randomly out of sync.
* In addition to the normal playhead, you can scrub across footage to play it. I found the scrubber mostly benign, but occasionally turned it off when it got annoying.

I found Compound Clips to be incredibly useful.

Often when editing, you have a section that’s working nicely and want to make sure you don’t mess it up while working on other things. In FCP X, just select the relevant pieces of audio and video and make it a Compound Clip. Everything sucks down into one filmstrip. It’s logical and works. ((One exception: If you pin something to the outside of a compound clip — a sound effect, for example — it’s likely to slide around if you change something inside the clip. The sound effect only knows its position relative to the entire clip, not any component inside.))

In the Runner video, all the opening stuff with Amy typing lived as a compound clip.

I did all the titles and graphics in FCP X. I found one bug: the final tagline “Now on iPhone and iPad” wouldn’t animate properly unless I added spaces to the end.

On the whole, I like FCP X. Most of what’s missing I honestly don’t miss, because I never used it.

It takes a while to get used to the new interface, but I can’t imagine needing to take a class to understand how to use basic features. And while I still have FCP 7 on my hard drive, I doubt I’ll need to open it again.

Stuart’s impression of FCP X is far less favorable.

[Read more…] about Final Cut Pro and Con

TV reboots have a bad track record

Television

Kevin Fallon points out that most reboots of classic series [don’t stick around long](http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/print/2011/08/tvs-history-of-failed-remakes/243609/):

> Sleek, hip, and expensive relaunches of *The Bionic Woman* (which in 1978 starred an indestructible Lindsay Wagner) and *Knight Rider* (the ‘80s series in which a pre-Baywatch David Hasselhoff talks to his crime-fighting car) were high-profile disappointments for NBC in 2007 and 2008, respectively. The one-two punch of failure would be the cautionary tale against remaking TV classics—had attempts at reviving *Get Smart, Love Boat,* and *Melrose Place* (among others) not tanked spectacularly before them. Given the graveyard of TV remakes haunting Hollywood, why do networks keep churning them out?

Because familiar brand names are worth something, particularly when trying to launch a new show in the fall. And while the batting average isn’t great, several shows have worked, including 90210, Battlestar Galactica and Hawaii Five-O.

One could argue that the reboots Fallon lists simply weren’t very good (though I enjoyed the new Melrose Place).

For example, V was a slo-mo car crash of lizard sex and muddled religious allegory. The only reason it stuck around for a second season is that V is in its very DNA kind of awesome. ((I watched every episode of V. But then again, I would watch Elizabeth Mitchell boil water. When I close my eyes, Juliet is still living in her Dharma Initiative bungalow, waiting for her reading group.))

Look at it from a network president’s point of view. You’ve ordered pilots. They’ve been shot. Now you’re trying to decide what you want on your schedule.

Given two shows that seem roughly equal in quality, wouldn’t you pick the one with a pre-sold name? Do you want a comedy with a witch or *Bewitched?*

TV reboots will continue. Most of them will fail. But that’s because most TV shows fail. That’s TV.

The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers

Books, Stuart

by_stuartI generally am leery of screenwriting gurus who present formulas and spend books twisting and massaging stories to show that every movie fits or is fundamentally flawed. They take three hundred pages to describe what a square is, and then prove all Play-Doh is square by shoving an amorphous example blob through a square hole.

Christopher Vogler’s *The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers* is one of these books at its heart, but it has narrowed its focus in a way that makes it acceptable. It is a surprisingly worthwhile and palatable read.

The book has two major sections: Mapping the Journey, which discusses the archetypes we will encounter, and Stages of the Journey, which takes us through the major plot points.

Like other books of this type, it comes complete with graphs and charts:

We are given power words, and reminded of them when they’re place in bold and all caps. But I never feel like I am being force-fed.

Vogler doesn’t attempt to define All Stories, instead focusing specifically on mythic and epic structure, which is much more manageable and sensible. If one were to try to explain “geometric shapes,” the set would be too big, too general; it is a pointless task. If one were to explain the subset of parallelograms, however, there are common characteristics that deserve definition. The specificity gives us something to discuss.

The subsets of stories he has chosen — myths and epics — are grand by nature. The Middle Ages artwork at the start of each chapter feels like it belongs. The extra-heavy page weight that makes a four hundred-page book look six hundred is somehow forgivable, or even appropriate. He makes statements like, “When you ‘spell’ a word correctly, you are in effect casting a spell,” and they’re not out of place. You may roll your eyes, but you get why he’s doing it.

Vogler is quick to allow and even encourage exceptions to his rules. He doesn’t seem threatened by films that don’t follow his structure, but instead is happy to tackle difficult stories and show how they fit. He offers Pulp Fiction as a case study, demonstrating it fits even with its non-linear story telling, and he does so convincingly. Then he applauds its untraditional nature.

>*Pulp Fiction* reflects the postmodern condition in both style and content. […] The sequences appear to have been sliced up with a samurai sword and thrown in the air, although in fact the order of scenes has been carefully chosen to develop a coherent theme and produce a definite emotional effect. […] *Pulp Fiction* is part of the pop-culture jet stream, flowing easily out of the current collective unconscious, charged with images and sounds from previous eras.

Even if a story doesn’t fit, he can stick by his rules. He’s talking Joseph Campbell, defining Mythic structure, not Story structure. A film that doesn’t work is not wrong; it is simply outside of the structure’s purview. The specificity gives him an out.

Still, the definitions themselves are loose. He never defines characters, but instead defines character roles. No one is the “mentor;” different characters act as mentors at different times. Everyone is free to shift and change as the story progresses, even the hero. And the definitions, both of characters and of plot points, are valuable tools for breaking down stories, mythic or otherwise.

Vogler provides a universally applicable way of thinking without trapping himself into calling it the only way of thinking. He manages to be all encompassing without being suffocating; grand enough to be valuable without being so grand it’s ridiculous.