What’s with those new discs?

We don’t normally spend a lot of time talking about equipment, but we’ve been working with Sony’s XDCAM system for a little over a year, and it deserves a few kind words.

XDCAM started as a disc-based field recording system for standard NTSC. The camcorders now shoot gorgeous HDTV images on discs that use technology similar to Blu-ray DVDs. The real difference is that the video is recorded as individual files, rather than as a continuous stream on a videotape. Each file is recorded twice; you get both a low-res “proxy” file to view or edit and a high-res HDTV file to finish your program with.

The proxy files are easy to put on a disc for screening on a PC, and you can quickly load them into the Avid for editing. In fact, they load so quickly that it offsets a good bit of the extra cost of shooting in HD. As the video is recorded directly on a disc, you have a piece of physical media with your original footage that you can keep on your shelf.

While this may seem trivial, a lot of digital video is now recorded on reusable memory cards and then transferred to portable hard drives for storage. I’ve never been comfortable with this. It’s not unusual for video to be transferred incorrectly and the mistake not noticed until the original memory cards have been reused. Then you’re out of luck. That won’t happen when you record directly to an XDCAM disc. It’s a much more robust solution.

XDCAM is great for mastering, too. While it’s essential to keep a master copy of each project, videotape masters are obsolete. Our solution is to archive projects on XDCAM discs. Not only do we put a hi-res digital copy of the finished video on the disc, we put all the files related to the project on the same disc: the Avid project file, files for a DVD, a video file for the Internet, raw graphics files, etc. So you have everything you need in one place if you need to change the video down the road.

Over the years, I’ve found that it’s good to be skeptical about the never-ending stream of new formats that come along. XDCAM was worth waiting for.

Decoding the Messages Behind the Message

The NY Times reports that the Feds are launching a new campaign to help educate kids about advertising. A sample ad is at the left, for eco-friendly jeans made by an imaginary company. This ad and others are similar to those used to target kids, and I guess all of us.

As noted in the Times article, the government enlisted the aid of Scholastic, the educational publishing company and Fleishman-Hillard to create the ads, a website and game to help kids decode ad messages and "become critical thinkers."

Over the years I've spent a lot of time crafting messages for persuasive media, political campaigns and issue ads. So I've learned first hand how powerful a medium video can be to deliver those messages. And while kids are certainly a lot more media savvy in some ways, they and all of us are susceptible to the subtle messages so often embedded in advertising. We're so used to them, they don't even register in our consciousness.

As the lines have become blurred between fact and fiction, news and advertisements, political rhetoric and reality, etc. the ability to think critically is more important than ever. Nobody likes to be manipulated. So I'm glad that we're making an effort to help kids understand the motives and messages behind the message.

Copenhagen

I can't really say that when we won the competition to produce the State Department's video on America's response to climate change that we fully appreciated all that we were getting into. The project as described was to be mostly interviews and the timeline very tight (about two months to get it done).

But we presented a different approach, suggesting that going on site, hearing from real people and seeing first hand some of the public and private initiatives around the country would be very powerful. And a potent message to counter the skeptics who felt that the United States had been asleep at the wheel on this issue.

Yes, the quick turnaround and complicated subject was a challenge, but an exciting one. We sent two producers to different sites around the country to capture a glimpse of the state of the art of weatherization initiatives, solar, wind, and nuclear power, cellugesic biofuels, carbon capture and storage, the future of electric cars and hydraulic hybrid technology, smart grids, and the like. And we had to become instant experts on those and other subjects. And while all that was going on, events made the content areas a constantly shifting target. But the entire GVI staff pitched in to make it happen, and our client tells us from Copenhagen that the video has been very well received. You can check it out for yourself on Youtube.

Capturing the Stillness

The New York Times' Chang Lee has another breakthrough with his piece on Wonjun Park, an artist suffering with cancer at the end of his days. Chang Lee's video on the NYT Lens site is beautiful in its simplicity and moving in its silences. It sets the tone with comments by Park anticipating the ending of his life, as we see him submitting to another round of chemotherapy "My body started to leave my spirit."

Feeling numbed by Western medicines' attack on the cancer in his body, we see Park struggling to give meaning to his life through his art. Perhaps that is how he will be able to honor his spirit.

Once again in his Second Chance series, Chang Lee mixes photography and video to create an indelible portrait. But most profound are the moments of stillness and his use of photography to stop time and allow us to reflect, just as Park is reflecting on his art and life and art. They beautifully interwoven in this video haiku.

Now What is it Exactly That You Do?

Unsung heroes in the film and video world, editors are the interface between ideas and action. Still, it's hard to explain what we do. Ralph Rosenblum wrote a book, years ago, "When the Shooting Stops, the Cutting Begins." He worked with Woody Allen, among others and has great dramatic films on his list of credits. I liked it, and it was a great introduction to innovative thinking and the creative moment in feature film making. And a quick check at Amazon lists hundreds of books about the subject. But the feature film world always has a plot, characters and a story. The documentary editor has to find a different way to create a story. It's an elusive goal and a good documentary editor does a lot more than just put a bunch of sound and images together.
Recently a BBC editor, Bill McKenna, was named "Editor of the Year" by the White House News Photographers Association. He put together a short video, The Power of the Picture Editor, to explain what it is, exactly that he does.