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  • [VIDEO] Making a Short Film in 48 Hours

    Making a Short Film in 48 Hours

    This vlog documents my experience while shooting a short film over a weekend. It was a pretty wild roller coaster ride. Even if you have all the experience in the world, shooting a short film in 48 hours requires tenacity, grit, and the ability to continue pushing with very little sleep.

    It’s been my experience that your scheduled shoot days are pretty much guaranteed to go well into the night and into the early morning. Luckily, this particular shoot wasn’t for a film race competition. We just had to shoot a pre-written script within a weekend.

    I’ve only done one or two other 48 hour film races in my life, and the beginning is always fun, the shooting is also pretty fun, but toward the end of the shoot, everyone starts to fade, and if your film requires any fancy editing tricks or VFX, that’s almost always the most difficult part because it comes last.

    Everyone is always dog-tired at the end of the race, and that makes editing (the one piece of production, I’d argue, requires the largest amount of continuous, logical thought) the hardest step of all. You’ve done all this work and killed yourself to reach the end and you’re only one final, rendered timeline away from submitting! But it’s always a great overall experience. Keep creating.

    matt

    January 1, 2020
    Filmmaking, Screenwriting, Vlogging
    filmmaking, screenwriting, short, vlog
  • Flowblade Review: Most Capable NLE on Linux?

    Flowblade 2.0 Released

    Janne Liljeblad and other contributors released Flowblade 2.0 recently and I thought I’d try it out. I edited a quick 1 minute video from about 10 drone clips shot in 4k. The first impressive feature was how easily I was able to render proxies. It was just as easy to replace them with the original media before the render.

    As both a Premiere user and a Linux user, I’ve been on a quest to find an NLE that is just as capable and intuitive as Premiere, but on Linux. So far, I’ve used only a few and had just ‘okay’ experiences. My first Linux based NLE that I dove headfirst into was Kdenlive. I was cutting some footage for a client and built out the complete project in Kdenlive for a few reasons. First and foremost, at the time, I no longer had access to Adobe CC through a former employer. And finally, even if I had $53/mo, I could think of 1,000 things I’d do before I got an Adobe CC subscription.

    But I digress, this is a post about Flowblade. My experience with Kdenlive was fine, the hotkeys took some getting used to. The alpha channels weren’t automatic either, but it worked. Flowblade, however gave me a much more ‘automatic’ experience. I’m on an older mid-range GTX-970 machine and 4k footage doesn’t playback smoothly. Regardless, it felt like proxies were easier to create in Flowblade than in Premiere. Just a few clicks and it was done. Updated right there in my timeline. And encoding was a breeze. Once I made my edits, which was a pleasure by the way, All I had to do was choose “replace proxies with original media” and I was all set to render.

    Intuitive Experience

    There were several hotkeys that carried over from Premiere and others that just made sense. The i and o keys set in and out points, the HOME and END key pops your playhead to the beginning and end of your timeline, stuff like that. The alpha transparency and title card system took some getting used to, but it wasn’t that bad. I feel like color correction is slightly easier in Flowblade than in Kdenlive. That’s just my experience, and the clips I happen to be working on.

    Overall, I still can’t completely commit to Flowblade, even though it’s a pretty great application for basic edits. If I were a vlogger and just needed something to spit out videos with speed, I’d definitely use Flowblade for everything. And even as a pro editor, I still may use Flowblade for some quick edits here and there, based on the situation. But as long as Resovlve remains an option for Linux users, it no doubt offers the absolute best postproduction experience so far. The grades are otherworldly. I’ve never had so much control over color. Not even in Premiere. Lumetri Color doesn’t even compete with Resolve.

    So far, my only issue with resolve is it can’t take Panasonic .MTS files by default, they have to be transcoded first. And that just may be a “free version” limitation, I’m not sure. Either way, I’m just a few freelance jobs away from picking up a full copy of Resolve for my personal Linux machine, so I’ll keep you posted if my experience changes once I get everything up and running. Until next time.

    matt

    March 19, 2019
    Linux, Ubuntu, Video Editing, Vlogging
    Adobe, creative cloud, kdenlive, linux, nle, postproduction, premiere, ubuntu, video editing
  • Is It Okay To Blog About Different Topics?

    For the last several years, I’ve had lots of ideas for various blog posts and videos, but there’s been a lot of stuff stopping me from ever making that video or writing that blog post. Early in my career as a video professional, I was blessed with the opportunity to work with several wealthy entrepreneurs who seemed to know a lot on the topic of branding. They pretty much instilled in me that it’s not okay to post about different topics.

    Of course, this is a giant ocean of a topic with numerous books, articles, and videos about making a brand for yourself. Lots of people said you needed to have a blog, you needed to have a YouTube channel, you needed to have this, you needed to have that… The biggest theme I saw across all of them is they all had a pretty solid focus on everything they ever posted. It was always about entrepreneurship, business, getting more clients, and making more money.

    That’s all great, and probably a good idea for running a business. But I always struggled with “my brand”. I felt like it was this made up version of myself that I didn’t even know. And the biggest rule this person had to follow was “consistency”. Always post about the same stuff on a regular basis. This ground my entire creative process to a screeching halt.

    Don’t let a ‘brand’ stop you from doing what you want

    I’m not a single-minded person. I have tons of different interests, likes and dislikes. I want to share a lot of it. In January, I’m into motorcycles. Suppose in April, I’m into airplanes. In August, I’m into kitesurfing. In November, I’m into computers. There are, however, a small group of interests that hold my attention for long periods of time. But I could never focus on one topic forever and post about that one thing on a regular basis. That’s way too robotic for me.

    So all this makes me take a step back. Why am I doing this blog? Why am I making this video? Do I have an audience? Do I even want an audience? Should I do this to make money? Is there any money in it? Is this worth pursuing? I have no idea how to answer pretty much all of these questions. But after trying to figure out the answers for over 3 years, I realized I wasn’t actually creating anything.

    I never made videos, I never wrote posts because 98% of the time, they didn’t fit into one particular category of content. Sometimes I wanted to share tutorials. Other times, I wanted to make a comedy skit. Other times I just wanted to share my experiences. But because all those things were never “focused,” I could never figure out how to include them in a social media feed or post them on my website or upload them to my YouTube channel.

    SEO is great, but don’t let it restrict you

    I am focused. Just not on the same content, all day, every day. I don’t know how to fit that into a plan or a channel. Should I always “give the people what they want”? I don’t really have a niche. I don’t really have a focus. But I am sick of feeling restricted by having to follow the mountains of rules that ensure great SEO and conversion, and profit, and whatever.

    If you’re like me and you feel constricted by the idea of sticking to a specific topic for your vlog/blog channel/feed, do yourself a favor and experience the freedom to post about different topics. Don’t let some made up guidelines for ‘success’ define whether or not you should do something that you want to do. I would just suggest posting content because you love it and are genuinely interested in it. Don’t post because you think you might make a fortune off a viral video. It could happen, but it’s like trying to hit the lottery.

    Anyway, that’s all I’ve got! Hope this helped you answer a few questions on posting about different topics or straying from a specific topic. Yeah, you may lose some followers, but just be you.

    matt

    February 5, 2019
    Blogging, Lifestyle, Vlogging
    blog, blogging, branding, lifestyle, personal brand, social media, vlog, vlogging

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. 1 Thess 5:21