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Me and Esteban with our class from Autumn 2012


12 December 2011

Foley Essentials


Foley art is an ingredient in film making that can add the polish to your film which would make scenes much more convincing. An essential element of Foley art is a cloth pass and pat pass, the cloth pass is basically what it says a peace of cloth is waved or passed across a surface to fake actor’s garments moving, a pat pass is faking walking. Just these small indiscreet qualities make a large difference to the quality of your sound track and over all production

Final Cut Pro or Premier (Part-1)

I have recently been reading and listening to interviews given by big budget editors and cinematographers on their choice of tools for a range of film processes. Interestingly enough there is no definite preference for one non liner editing tool over another. Director of Photography Paul Cameron (Collateral , Gone in 60 Seconds, Total Recall 2011, etc) refers to Final Cut Pro as an NLE for pushing the effects and visual language for the images he creates, specially as he specialises in working in the new medium of digital cameras (Total Recall was shot using digital cameras). The debate between Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premier in most instances seems to be led around costs and value for money and skill and knowledge. Yes the workflow between Premier and After Effects is very seamless (this is to the uninitiated) but it is also the same between Final Cut, Premier and After Effects. The one over arching advantage between FCP and Premier is efficiency, Apple have created a product in FCP that makes working with moving image material a pleasure and an enjoyable experience. The key here is experience, Adobe (in my opinion) still haven’t done enough to optimise their product so you are no waiting for huge render times. Both the new incarnation of FCP and FCP studio are holding their own in the choice of tools for Non Liner Editing. I have worked with footage from a range of the recent digital cameras (Sony NX70 Sony FS100 and obviously the Canon Mark 2’s and 3’s) and for me FCP comes out on top Hands Down. Once the main work on the NLE is complete then any post processing grading and so on is still pushed out to After Effects and or Colour (only with a control surface).

Online Resources

An interesting site Digital Cinema Tools with links to articles and interview for film techniques and discussion by practitioners on other aspects of film making.

12 December 2013

In the recent Autumn term class of 2013 we had some very good out comes with a number of students creating work and putting into practice the ideas and processes taught on the course, a good example of this is the film about Tim Andrews by Stacey Hatfield.  It's beautiful short snapshot of Tim, nicely created in a short space of time by someone who hadn't edited before joining the course.