John August

Search Results for: youtube

iMovie 09: Almost certainly maddening

Rant, Video

Among the products Apple announced today is iMovie 09, an update to their entry-level video editor that I currently find completely unusable. They have [demo videos](http://www.apple.com/ilife/imovie/) up showing some of the new features, which range from very helpful (stabilization) to fairly gimmicky (the animated maps).

What’s most clear, however, is that they’re sticking with the bizarre and unfortunate editing interface.

Yes, I have the curse of knowledge: I know how an editing system is “supposed to” work, as it does in Final Cut, Avid and to some degree, the original iMovie. But I’m always game for a new and better idea, particularly if it makes heretofore complicated things easier for newcomers to understand. iMovie is supposed to let ordinary Mac users cut together simple videos. I get that.

But worse than being unlike real editing systems, iMovie is unlike any normal Mac application. Take a look at how [Precision Editor](http://movies.apple.com/media/us/mac/ilife/imovie/2009/tutorials/apple-ilife-imovie-use_precision_edit_view_to_trim_video-us-20090106_r640-10cie.mov?width=640&height=400) works in the new iMovie.

You move the mouse along the gray bar, or inside one clip or inside another clip. You’re not clicking or dragging; you’re just floating. Unlike every other Mac application in which a click selects something (or moves the insertion point), a click in iMovie is a cut — or more precisely, it adjusts the out point of the top clip. A click in the lower clip adjusts its in point. There’s feedback, in the sense that the video suddenly jumps, but it’s not immediately clear what’s changed, or what would be undone if you hit Undo.

Throughout iMovie, there’s a lot of WTF? Important things are hidden in pop-up menus, often attached to clips. I understand and support the idea of attaching actions to objects, but how is Precision Editor an action? It’s a noun, not a verb, and opens as a separate viewer.

The timeline is the other major frustration. Anyone who has ever watched YouTube understands that in video, time moves from left to right. If you drag the playhead — the little circle — you’re moving forward and backward in the clip. But not in iMovie. In iMovie, time wraps like text, left to right then up and down. Apple has created a new and inferior grammar for no good reason.

Fortunately, Final Cut Express is only $169 on Amazon. It can import iMovie projects, and you’ll definitely want to. While it seems more complex at the start (more menu items), it consistently rewards your expectations about how video and Macs are supposed to work.

Postmodernism will eat itself

Follow Up

In the comments thread to my post on [Charlie Brown, advertising, and whatever comes after postmodernism](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2008/charlie-brown-postmodern), reader Michael makes an important point:

> If everything is a reference to a reference to a reference, as so much creative work is currently, then audiences are forced to either “get” everything, or else be alienated by everything. It may work in the short term for a target audience, but the work won’t hold up for long. Once the references become irrelevant, the work built on references becomes, likewise, irrelevant.

That’s the crux and the crisis: you’re creating things that won’t make sense 20 years from now. Or 20 minutes, given the speed of our culture.

Certainly there are things forged out of this postmodern, paste-it-together ethic that will last — probably because they have some artistic achievement beyond their ability to string together pop-culture references. “Single Ladies” is really well shot and performed. If you put it in a time capsule, it will still make sense, the same way Tina Turner’s “Proud Mary” holds up.

But as an extreme example, consider Weezer’s deliberately memetastic “Pork and Beans” video ([link](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQHPYelqr0E), not embeddable). It’s fantastic and won’t make a lick of sense to anyone who didn’t use YouTube from 2004 to 2008.

Charlie Brown, advertising, and whatever comes after postmodernism

Film Industry, Meta, Video

I went to undergrad hoping for a career in advertising. This video reminds me why I’m happy I bailed:

It also reminds me of my junior-year class in postmodernism, in which we spent at least half the semester trying to arrive at a definition for the term — and never really got one. This video certainly has aspects of what we were seeking. It appropriates familiar cultural elements (The Charlie Brown Christmas Special) for use in unexpected contexts (advertising), much the way Michael Graves used the Disney dwarfs to hold up the roof of the [Team Disney building](http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/gravesdisney/disney.html). And in both cases, the project doesn’t really make sense unless you’re familiar with what it’s playing off. In this case, Lucy isn’t Lucy and Linus isn’t Linus, but the joke doesn’t work unless you understand who they usually are.

But I’d argue that the video also represents more than whatever postmodernism is or was. It’s the kind of thing you can’t imagine existing without YouTube. While the technology to make it could exist independently of internet distribution, the idea of doing it feels net-dependent. If Ernie doing M.O.P. is the quintessential video mash-up —

— then The Charlie Brown Ad Agency is its close kin. A mix-in, maybe. And it exists in the same metaverse as Beyoncé’s [Single Ladies video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m1EFMoRFvY), which remakes a mash-up ([Walk It Out Fosse](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8iLBQFeX4c)).

I offer these observations without any clear idea about what it means for screenwriting, but you can look at many current films through this lens. The Dark Knight is less a Batman movie than a Big Serious Movie with Batman mixed in. Twilight isn’t a vampire story. It’s a teen girl fantasy with a small thread of vampirism — not even real vampires, but something almost wholly different — woven in.

And I think that’s what our books and movies are going to be for a while: Aliens vs. Predator vs. Mr. Magoo. Our cultural world is vast and ephemeral, so we look for familiar icons that we can recall and repurpose. We want to know just what we’re getting, yet still be surprised. We’re toddlers that way.

On creating emotion

Big Fish, Directors, Projects, QandA, Words on the page

questionmarkI am writing an extended essay in order to get my IB Diploma for school, and Mr. LaRue is my coordinator. My extended essay is about film, especially about emotions in film. I was wondering if you could help me out by answering a few questions.

What causes emotional catharsis in a movie?

What sort of components (lighting, sound, dialogue,…) have the most emotional effect on the viewers, and do you have any examples?

What techniques are used to produce emotions within the viewer of a movie?

What are some things that you have specifically done (relating to the screenplays that you have written) in order to produce emotions in a movie?

— Danielle
Fairview High School

Danielle is attending my former high school, so I feel some duty to steer her in the right direction, if not exactly answer her questions. But for readers who didn’t grow up in Boulder, Colorado, a little background is in order.

Boulder is a medium-sized (100,000) city tucked right into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. It has a much bigger national reputation than it should, largely because of its university (CU) and its reputation as a bastion for all things New Age-y. Mork and Mindy was set there, and quite believably; a man claiming to be an alien would not raise the slightest suspicion on its snowy streets.

There are two rival high schools in the city: Boulder High and Fairview. Except that Boulder High doesn’t really consider it a rivalry, because they’re too cool to give a shit. For example, [Josh Friedman](http://hucksblog.blogspot.com/) went to Boulder High, and would never need to answer a question from a student there, unless it was why his Terminator show glorifies violence at a time when G8 countries should be focusing on global debt relief.

It’s an accepted truth that schools are falling apart and today’s youth aren’t getting nearly the education older generations did, but by all accounts Fairview is actually a much more academically rigorous school now than when I attended. I took three AP classes, which would now be openly mocked by students like Danielle. I never wrote an extended essay about emotion in film. But if I did, I’d probably reach the following conclusions.

1. Emotional catharsis is a direct function of how much the audience identifies with the character(s). Catharsis is a journey through dark territory, and you don’t go on that trek unless you can put yourself in a given character’s place, and feel like you’re living that experience.

2. The triumvirate responsible for creating emotion are The Writer, who creates the character and lays out the obstacles; The Actor, who gives the character weight and breath; and The Director, who coordinates the technical elements (such as lighting, editing, and music) to achieve the emotional reaction desired.

3. An example from my own work: Will telling Edward the final story in Big Fish.

**GIANT SPOILER WARNING** if you haven’t seen the movie.

On a writing level, the moment wouldn’t work if we hadn’t invested time in seeing their dilemma from both sides: the frustrated son, the slippery father. The script sets up a lot of elements and characters for recalls: Karl the Giant, the shoes, the Girl in the River.

The performances are strong, with actors continuing threads established earlier. In particular, Billy Crudup tends to get overlooked here: because he’s so prickly earlier on, it’s particularly affecting to see him struggle to hold on.

Finally, Tim Burton directs the elements calmly. From visuals to music, he’s careful not to push too hard or too fast, letting the emotion kindle.

Good luck with the essay.