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...

Adobe Kuler is an indispensable tool for anyone that works with color. No matter what variety of media you work with, if you need to whip up amazing color schemes you should be using this tool. If you work on a Mac, this just got easier. Using the Mondrianum 2 plugin for the Apple OS X system color picker, you have access to Kuler from virtually anywhere in your system. Just change your preferences in any app that doesn’t use the...

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...

Matt over at FreshDV posted a list of free editing software. It’s a list of 11 open source applications ranging from Non-Linear Editors to Format Converters. It isn’t a comprehensive review, but it is a good resource if you’re looking for editing software on a zero budget.  The only software on the list that I have any experience with are Avid FreeDV, and Jahshaka. Avid FreeDV isn’t half bad, but the biggest problem...

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...