If you’re like most creative professionals, you probably use your computer for editing, graphics, effects, audio production, and any number of other tasks that require maximum performance from your system. You probably also use that same system for many other things that don’t require top performance. My usual ritual when starting work for the day is to set my Energy Saver settings to never sleep the system because there is...

I get this question a lot from freelance editors that are just starting out. They always have a tough time figuring out how to price their services. Creative people tend to have difficulty with the business side of things and get themselves into undesirable situations all too often. Have you ever set a flat rate for a job then found yourself working for peanuts at the end when you did the math? I know I have. I learned a valuable lesson...

This second installment of the edit faster and more efficiently series is an extension of part 1 File Organization. Now that you have an organization system that works, it’s time to move to the next step in the quest for video editing speed and efficiency – keeping bins organized. Sloppy bins are just as much of a problem, and just as common as a messy file system. Few things waste time like fumbling around and searching for...

Is it possible to speed up your film or video editing and become more efficient without spending truckloads of cash on the latest bleeding edge hardware? Yes. You can edit faster without spending any money. Increasing your editing efficiency can actually make you more money. With the amount of time I spend working in non-linear editing software, I like to be as quick and precise as I can while staying creative. Speed and efficiency is...

I have never directed a film before so when my assistant editor Adam asked me to direct an entry to the National Film Challenge, I agreed. Who in their right mind would turn down a fun, sleep deprived weekend of filmmaking? Not me, that’s for sure. And fun it was. We had a weekend of DV Rebel style filmmaking with a one day shoot that took place at a small carnival, and a day of intense post-production. The weekend started with a...

If you are involved in post-production, or in filmmaking in general, you should lend an ear to That Post Show. Host John Flowers invited me and Scott Simmons on this week’s show to talk about some post-production goodness. John, Scott, and I have a great discussion about the current state of the NLE software landscape. We talk about some of the projects we use Avid Media Composer, Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro for, and why we...

Back in November I was invited by my friend and world class Aerial Cinematographer, Norman Kent, to document a world record attempt at a 100-way parachute formation. I shot footage from the ground while Norman and a handful of others were in the air capturing some stunning images of the formation. After a couple days of practice with smaller formations, the skydivers began the actual record attempt. On the second day of attempts, the record...

Supertown has been moving along a bit slowly lately. There is no budget and too many characters to count, so shooting happens when our producer, Chris (who is currently in the process of moving to L.A.) manually aligns the planets, which he does a great job of. I think we have one more day of shooting coming up. We have been shooting on weekends and days off every now and then since October or was it November? Not sure. It’s a...

Here’s a short video I found on YouTube about the 180 rule. If you don’t know the term “crossing the line”, this two minute clip will explain it.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdyyuqmCW14]There are other ways to get away with crossing the line if necessary, but the camera move explained here is the most effective. If you find yourself editing a scene that has an unintentional breaking of the 180 rule, you...

I received an email a couple of weeks ago from an acquaintance from film school. He told me that he had shot a ten-minute short film in February, but was having some difficulty putting together an edit, as he is not an editor. This first time director needed some help, so I agreed to edit the piece for him.This project had its share of problems, technical and otherwise. The film is set almost entirely to music (I’ll get back to this in a...