Robots, trilobites and disk copying utilities

Pop videos
Headlong back into work yesterday, I’ve got a tutorial to write for Computer Music magazine. Basically they want me to show people who’ve never touched video before how to make a pop promo on PC or Mac.

The software they sent over wasn’t really up to the job, but luckily they were able to switch for more workable programmes (Sony Vegas for the PC and Imovie for the Mac). I did the PC edit fine using the 2 camera shoot they’d done at a live venue, but since imovie can’t syncronise two tracks of video at once, I’m going to have to adopt a different approach for the mac version (which is good anyway because it will make the feature more interesting).

The band who sent the footage are going to shoot some more over the weekend – a bit of a pain for them, but I’m sure they’ll get a lot of publicity out of it – not to mention a free video on youtube.

Although the tutorial is easy enough to do, it’s a bit frustrating knowing that if I was using Premiere or FCP, I could produce a much better piece of video. Still, it should give a good set of pointers to people new to video editing.

Robots, trilobites and disk copying utilities
I can’t do too much work on the documentary right now, since my computer’s hard drive has slowed right up (I think there’s a corruption there somewhere and it’s going to give up). I’ve bought a replacement, and bought a utility for cloning my disk, but the company selling me the software (regsoft) are having trouble with there servers so I can’t download it. They’re also refusing to answer my emails which is annoying.

Anyway, can’t edit with Premiere Pro right now, so I’ve been doing two things today:

Making a mock-up of a video podcast on paleontology using footage from my last doc and some 3d animation. I want to sell the idea to the Natural History Museum – because I’d love to make it – I’d even give them a knock down price because it would allow me to do interviews with lots of their experts which I could then edit into my own productions! The result needs polish – but this is just a taster, so it should be OK. Hopefully should be getting a meeting with them in the next couple of weeks.

Starting to research my next projects. I’ve ordered lots of books on lots of subjects I’d like to make programmes about (from robots to trilobites) and I’m now trying to track down people who might be able to help with advice and interviews. It’s quite a process, but I think I’m covering a lot of ground. I want to make programmes in parallel rather than one at a time because whenever I hit the roadblocks on one programme (which frequently happens when you can’t get interviewees or you’re waiting for rendering to be done for 3d sections) you can be working on something else.

There’s also an “economies of scale” thing – if I’m doing several interviews for different projects then it will be worth my while traveling a little to do them – hopefully I can schedule all my Scotland or Paris or New York interviews over a couple of days.