Yesterday I started on the new book – managed to write a draft of a chapter on simple editing with Windows Movie Maker. It’s a limited program, but if you really want to you can produce good results with it.

In fact, it’s a good deal more powerful than the editing systems used to make some classic films. Up to about 10 years ago, holywood feature films were all edited using nothing more sophisticated than a razor blade and sticky tape.

The fantastic new editing tools available ought to mean that films are much better now than they ever were – being able to cut and paste and alter edits to your heart’s content should mean editors can produce much better work.

Last night was the 10x10 documentary evening organised by the DFG – where documentary makers meet to show 10 minutes of their work and get 10 minutes of criticism from the audience… It’s a great environment to try out your work’s in progress in a way that doesn’t just involve showing it to friends.

The films shown last night were of a really high standard and were interesting in terms of their style and content. Everyone seems to have clever and quirky ideas about how to put their productions together. Watching them makes me feel as though I’m not being arty enough in my programmes – but at the same time, I’m not sure. I think a traditionally told story isn’t a bad thing….

Anyway, there were some really promising movies last night – one very unfinished about a German airman re-tracing his World War II bombing campaign over England… One about the killing fields of Cambodia which has such strong material in it that it’s bound to succeed…. One about a 10 minute journey to drop a child off at nursery – in which the mother and child were ignored while various interviewees discussed aspects of the journey… and one in which an unseen interviewer revealed to each of her ex-lovers and crushes the exact dates between which she thought she was in love with them.

With this last film, the genuinely unprepared responses from her exes revealed little, but the whole film cleverly asked strong questions about the filmmaker and her attitude to love…

Science reporting
I’m including here a video clip from a TV interview which I’ve been pointed at by the paleontological mailing list I’m part of.

It’s an amazing piece of television – showing just how low it’s possible to sink in terms of insulting the intelligence of yourself, your interviewees and your audience. It’s also a great lesson about the dangers of allowing yourself to be lead by the pictures you’ve got access to rather than the theme of the story you’re trying to tell.

I challenge anyone to learn, understand or be interested in the subject matter from watching this:

stills into movies

I had to write a feature for Digital Video today about turning still images into moving shots. The idea being to do something with a still other than just pan and zoom over it in the traditional rostrum camera way.

I’ve been doing this a little for my latest documentary, but I think the shot I did today really worked, so I’m posting it here.

I created this in After Effects using three stills bought on a stock image site.