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| Meeting Summary |
OK. So last month we
have overflow crowds and folks hanging from the rafters and laying
on the floor so we decide that our next meeting should be held
in larger facilities. So we find Moviola in Hollywood and the good people
there work their tails off to accommodate us and the facility
looks great and ...overflow crowds show up. So the next meeting
will be held at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena Ca pending negotiations
with the local City Council.
A great big thank you must go to Chriss, Matt, Patty,
and the other good folk at Moviola who worked tirelessly to set
up the facility to accommodate us, the 500+ members that make
up the lafcpug.
First up was our second
installment of what we like to call, "Stump the Gurus"
where members try to get their FCP problems solved by asking
our resident Gurus, Ralph Fairweather and
Andrew Balis. No one stumped the Gurus again this month
so we roll over the "prize" to 3 raffle tickets for
next month. Some of the questions asked this month were:
Any easy way to export audio into ProTools?
No, not really, but there are articles on 2-pop.com and Apples FCP web site on this that will help you.
What extensions do I need to turn off to use FCP?
Don't worry about extensions. Use Mac OS ALL and you should be
fine.
Is there any way to clean out my capture scratch drive when it
gets filled up just leaving what I have used?
You can use the Sequence trimmer or the Media Mover for this.
You can dump the renders files and re render. The sequence Trimmer
and recapture is the best method but you must of captured properly
the first time and Andrew recommends that you first use
RS 422 capture as Firewire seems to have a one to two frame inaccuracy
rate.
Note. This is a bit of a sad note for us as Ralph Fairweather is leaving us to go to San Francisco to be the FX supervisor on a Imax movie. This doesn't mean that Ralph won't make a few trips back down to visit, but it does mean we will miss him terribly.We all wish him the best and as a token of our affection the lafcpug presented him with a $50.00 gift certificate to go to the movies when and if he ever gets a break.
DVCreators.net's Steve Martin was up next with with his now famous 5 minute
tip/trick of the month. This month? How do you get that "Cops"
like blur on the face of people you want unidentified, like,
well, those crooks on "Cops."
Well not only did Steve show us, he also wrote it down
for us and everyone in attendance got a step by step on how to
do this. For those of you who couldn't make it to the meeting,
click here to get your own step by step.
You can also catch Steve at NAB in April where they will not only be giving
free FCP and DVD authoring training to anyone who signs up, but
will be selling 2 volumes of tips/tricks that Steve and
Josh have compiled over the last several months. As a
teaser, Steve showed us one of those tricks, a cool explosion
of a mans head. Gotta love that.
Dawn Cichon was up next with the soon to
be released SonicFirePro, a very impressive audio and music editing program
from the good folks at SmartSound. Now, you can finally edit your
music and audio to your Video. This new version includes the
following;
Video Import: DV, AVI, MPEG, QuickTime
Score Videos Inside SmartSound - Automatically
Preview Ideas in Real Time with Your Video
Score Multiple Scenes & Events - Fast
Complete Support for DV Audio and More
Edit Your Own Music - Automatically
New Streamlined Professional User Interface
Includes More Music & Sound Effects ..... And more.
There were lots of oohs
and ahhs from the gallery and I for one think this is a pretty
dang good looking app. And we only saw the beta release with
many of the features in the "soon to be shipped" version
missing.
Dawn was a lot of fun, very skilled in her presentation, and
since so many of us were so impressed with what this program
can do for us and our budget, we wrestled her to the floor and
made her give the lafcpug a discount on this fine app. So, after
intense negotiations, SmartSound is kindly offering us a discount
on two SonicFirePro packages until March 16. So click
here and read the instructions carefully
and take advantage of the price break if this is the sort of
thing you might need.
Now if only SmartSound would bundle this app with FCP as it does with
Premiere 6.
Philip Hodgetts from the "must have or
you are really making your life difficult, DV Companion, and here in the US for a few
months, dropped by to share his expertise and give us 3 quick
tutorials on animating titles using the much maligned Title Generator
in FCP.
Philip, like Steve Martin before him, also handed
out a step by step on what he showed so I don't have to write
it here. So click here
and you too can do what Philip showed us. Also, if you
are an owner of DV Companion, just download the installer and that will drop
the tutorial into your existing copy of DVC so you can bring
it up, when you want, because you want, just because.
We thank Philip for allowing lafcpug to be the first in the world
to have and use these tutorials and showing us that the titler
in FCP just ain't THAT bad.
Anthony
Scarpa was
first Show and Tell of the night giving us a glimpse of his movie
DunceDance, a mockumentary recently shown to a standing
room only crowd at the "SlamDance" film festival in
Park City, Utah. Because of technical problems, Anthony
was unable to show off his brilliant sound mix but with the help
of Ron Margolis and Charles McConathy and one of
our members who held a mike to the GL1 camera we were able to
hear the movie as well as see it. While all this was going on
Tony gave us a how2 on exporting audio out of FCP into ProTools,
the SIMPLE way. Click here to see Tony's solution.
Anyway, back to DunceDance. Directed by David Mcclellan,
and edited by Tony, it tells the story of a group of Filmmakers
at Sundance Film Festival and is very funny and sure to be a
big hit especially with those who have been to the festival before.
DunceDance has also been accepted into the New York International
Film Festival.
We were so far behind at this point and it was getting quite late, that not only was a break in order, a nap was a good idea. So for 15 minutes, some of us did just that.
Allan Hamill of Adobe was first up after the break
and bravely stepped into the "den of lions" we call
the FCP faithful to demo the brand new version of Premier, called "six."
While we might of called this night, Premiere 6 vs FCP 1.2.5,
it really wasn't about that. Premiere is a very different
program incorporating many features FCP does not have, but, (and
this is a modest "but,") FCP still has the edge as
a professional editing tool in my humble opinion.But, by gosh,
I sure would like some of the new features P6 is offering and
Allan so entertainingly showed us. So would lots of others
judging from the response.
In between hurling Adobe
rockets into the audience, Allan gave us brief glimpses into
some of the new features of P6, such as the real time audio preview/mixer.
(I want that) The integration with After
Effects and
Photoshop had me drooling while the web export function,
using a "lite" version of Cleaner seemed just
plain awesome. The story board feature was pretty cool and the
integration of SmartSound into the program seemed to be quite functional
and clever.
This is a MAJOR upgrade and one that will give FCP some serious
competition. There are significant differences that you will
see once you get under Premier's hood that might prevent you
from going "over," but for the price, this is a NLE
program worth considering.
Thanks Allan for braving a FCP group and showing us that competition is what will drive FCP forward, and in the end be good for all of us.
Dan
Fort was
up next with "Life after Bojangles." a 15 minute presentation
of life after cutting the Showtime TV movie "Bojangles" on FCP and a iMac. For
those of you who might not know Dan, he has almost single
handedly persuaded the Motion Picture Industry that FCP is an
affordable alternative to the Avid editing system. Because of
Dan and people like Ramy Katrib, and Loran Kary of Film Logic, over 25 feature films have
been cut on FCP, Showtime still uses FCP as it's editing tool
for its TV movies.
Dan showed us clips from Bojangles as well as a slide show of
his visit to Sundance where Apple hired him to talk to filmmakers
about FCP. Seemed Dan didn't have too as most of them were already
using it. If Dan ever takes this show on the road you would be
well to book him. 
Dan has showed us before some of what he showed tonight,
but no matter how many times you see it, you still can't believe
you an cut a feature film on an iMac.
Hollywood is taking notice and FCP is slowly finding it's way
into the mainstream as a result of what Dan has accomplished.
As long as Dan continues pushing the envelope and getting his
message out to the skeptical what FCP can do as a tool for cutting
Film, it is not far out to believe that FCP will give the Avid
some serious run for it's money.
Fascinating and eye popping, we are very lucky to have Dan
Fort living in our neighborhood so he can drop by and wow
us with his stuff.
BTW, Dan is also writing the Filmmakers Guide to Final Cut
Pro. I'll let you know when it's out.
JC
Cornwell
had the unenviable task of being last to show and tell, as the
evening was now slowly approaching morning - or so it seemed.
Of course we had technical problems which extended the time even
further until Dan Fort came to the rescue and showed us that
by turning the power ON you will be able to get the deck to work.
Thanks Dan for that invaluable tip.
JC showed us a clip from the mockumentary "Life Planers,
a Documentary about the Tuttle sisters." and you can
get samples and more info on his web site, www.reelcheese.com.
Shot on a PD100 PAL camcorder, and directed by his wife Autumn,
this movie is about two "twisted" sisters who run a
company called Life Planners which plans and details the
lives of their clients whether their clients need it, want it,
or not. Very funny and all too true in many places, my only regret
was I was too tired by that time to laugh much. But, the audience
did and thats what counts.
World famous raffle was up next and it was not only WORLD famous tonight but Solar System famous as the prizes were just that good. (Just try being me for awhile having these in my home for weeks daring me to rip open the shrink wrap and install. An exercise in discipline, let me tell you.
Special thanks to Allan
Hamill for the Hats and T-shirts and rockets
Adobe
for Premiere 6, Illustrator 9, and Acrobat 4
SmartSound for SmartSound
SmartDisk for VST 45 gig FW Drive.
Winners were:
Adobe Hats - Leslie
Taylor, Dennis Lu
Premiere T-shirts- Bill, Barbara, Andy B, and Ned Soltz
SmartSound - Frank Grekowicz
Acrobat 4 - Mark Herbert
Illustrator - Kerry Millerick
Premiere 6 - Anthony Delasandro
VST 45 gig FW Drive - Frank Grekowicz
Next month I promise to bring in a very large hairy man with tattoos and a stop watch and get you all home at a decent hour.
Special thanks to Chris Coe for the still pics. Dan Brockett for taping the meeting, Doug Lindeman for taking notes, and a big thank you to the good folks at Moviola for all their hard work.
See you Wednesday, March 21, (one week earlier) for another marathon edition of the lafcpug
Michael
Horton
"HeadCutter"