Jay Ferguson, the director/Producer of Guidestones, got me to chat about editing the first season.
He is hard at work between award shows ceremonies and writting at preproduction of season 2 of Guidestones.
Not sure how you put even more twist and turns but Good Luck there Mr. Ferguson, Good LUCK.
I am really better at behind the camera but hey sometimes you got to talk it out.
Despite the fact that I am taking a little hiatus/Freelance paternity Leave from Post Production work, as I look back at the few projects that I worked on in the past year, it was an eventfull one. I worked on more French speaking projects and more Big Brand/Mega Corporation work than ever and I saw a webisode project flourish.
In the mist of all this, we had another child. Woooufff, what a year.
It has been a little bit of a rollercoaster with the new little girl and to alleviate some familly stress I took 6 month Hiatus of my post work but most of my projects were still reaping what we sowed.
I freelanced for many cool projects and interesting companies in the past year. My new "BatCave" aka office space is almost up and rumning and I can't wait to jump on that horse again and dive into a great project.
Welcome 2013, now on to the Next Big thing.
** If your in Toronto Canada area and need some Post work done please feel free to contact me. I'm itching to end my Hiatus early!
My new Home office walls are up and painted. Starting to move in the gear and I am close to finishing my hiatus from Post work. Here's a look at the office/Batcave.
I might not be working it but some of the projects I have worked on in the year have been hitting the award circuit pretty hard.
The Guidestones Web Series has been nominated in a whole bunch of catagories and has gotten crital acclaim from wed and traditional media. Just this week they won the Digis 2012 Award for Best Web Series. Early this year won a Rockies Award for Best Web Series Fiction and Official Selection at the Geneva Internation Festival.
Also, it got nominated for Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Female Performance (Supinder Wraich) and Best Supplemental Content at the IAWTV Awards. Oh Yeah and it got a Nomination for Best Editing too. Still haven't checked it out. Whaaaat. It is on Hulu, YouTube and guidestones.org. Watch them all, it's a fun ride.
Some work that I did for ALP Communication, some mini-docs for BMW have been awarding it up. BMW: The Ultimate Driving Machine is a Silver Winner at the 2012 Summit Creative Award®and a Platinum Remi for New Media – Web Series at the 45th Worldfest International Film Festival
It is nice see that all the hard work that I put in to some of these projects are being recognized but the best is to know that they are being seen by an audience.
Almost back...
A few months into my postproduction hiatus and I have realized something that has change in me in the last few years. I'm really comfortable with being wrong.
So, as I stated in my previous post that I was going to pay the bills the old fashion film ways; union film lighting. As I rubbed shoulder with my union brothers and catch up on old times, as we move big gear on big movies, I realize that there is this weird pressure to hit "perfection" on the first attempt at something. Having not done Big Budget shooting for about 8 years and some of the lightning equipment has evolved; so, I was a little rusty. No major mistakes that you get a nickname over or anything, but little things, little mistakes were made by myself. My bad.
I was surprised how people were quick to try to locate the offender but I was even quicker with my hand up to take responsibility for my faux pas and confortable doing it. Sometimes I would get friendly ribbing from people that now that I was just getting back into the swing of things. But sometimes, I would get disapproving glares, comments that were intended to induce some form of shame or even the mini speech about how it is done from younger members that didn't know me.
At the beginning I thought is was comical, then I was annoyed at why are we wasting time breaking down the mistake, then I thought about how film works; it is all about mistakes and adjustments. And most of the time things that were made a "big" deal out of turned out to be something that changed in the end like most things in the film world. I started thinking about why am I so un-phased about making a mistake.
Editing is making mistakes many times on an hourly basis. And over the years, I have noticed that if I don't just start making mistakes or editing, I develop editors block. So, I make the mistake and know that I'll come back to fix it later. I have gotten very comfortable with mistakes. For example, I think I nailed the essence of the cut and/or the director or producer points out key plot point that's not in the screener. My bad, I cut it out when I was trying to make the edit air tight for pacing. Or even better, I am at a show and tell with ad agency and don't like any of the 12 versions of the spot, technically my mistake. My Bad. I got a millions of these... Feel free to comment with your mistake stories. To quote Deniro in Cape Fear, "... Reminds you your human"
Conclusion. If you can't deal with making mistakes, editing is not for you.
If your not listening to the Freakonomics Podcast your missing out on some interesting insight.
This recent episode of Freakonomics Radio was an interesting one about customer service which is what a good freelance editor delivers ontop of the technical and artistic skills. The Social scientist prove what most in our industry almost always fail to appreciate, cost and quality are related.
When I get request for a quote occasionally some potential clients will inquire, "why is your quote and rate higher than.." Then, I explain that it's usually a worst case scenario guestimate, factoring in some contengency time and trying to anticipate some problems that has occured in my past experiences.
About my rate, I use the analogy of a general contractor quoting for some work on your house. "Never use the cheapest quote, that guy is usually the problem/unexperienced craftsmen."
Unfortunatly, sometimes some clients don't take my advice and the outcome is usually not satisfatory and they inquire a few months later with a request for a Fix-this-mess-Quote.
Invest in your post.