Technical questions

[Secoh]

What sort of camera/sound gear and editing software are you using?

[J.Rai]

Our camera that we are currently using (if I'm not mistaken) is a Panasonic PVGS-150 with 3CCD color capturing.

For audio, I have a Rode VideoMic which we plug directly into the camera to record audio to the DV tape. The external mic gives us much better sound than the built-in mic would, plus we can boom it or put it on a stand closer to the action for less noise or interference.

[Threeboy]

For software we're using adobe premire, it's not 'industry standard' but it's relatively cheap and we all have PC's. We might look into a mac for editing down the line if we make money.

For sound J.Rai's got a crazy ass pro tools system - he can tell you more about it because I don't know the specifics. The other crew members (Cranston, Moze & Myself) use the open source Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net) to edit sounds it's solid.

[SiegeTheGrave]

premier isn't that bad of an editing program...plus it's damn easy compared to others. and it's really not much easier than final cut pro but final cut has better quality so you might look into that. as for audio...you really can't get much better than pro tools. i'm extremely interested to know how your set up is since i'm an audio nut. :D

[J.Rai]

Well the hardware setup is basically as described above. Nothing too complicated, I considered buying a seperate digital recorder with my student loan money but spent it on keyboard gear instead. Recording to DV tape keeps everything in sync much better and allows editing right on the original video capture.

Currently all audio editing has been done in Premiere when editing the video itself, because I haven't been keping up my part, HOWEVER, once I get rolling I'll drop in effects and transitions in a ProTools edit after we make the final cut on the video.

I have a fairly extensive sound effects library thanks to some of the programs I've been involved with at school so that's where our bloops and bleeps come from so far, but hopefully I'll get into recording our own effects when needed soon enough.

[Cranston]

It was really weird when J.Rai pulled out his dick and told Mose that it was a new mic. We weren't fooled though. J.Rai's one crazy mofo. I really have nothing to add to this thread , so I thought I would say something dumb. Yes!

[Secoh]

Good stuff! Some friends and I here wanted to have a go at a similar concept (not the same as you guys, not into ripping off ideas) and was wondering how to get started. I have a GS120 3CCD camera and that's about it.

[Threeboy]

premier isn't that bad of an editing program...plus it's damn easy compared to others. and it's really not much easier than final cut pro but final cut has better quality so you might look into that. as for audio...you really can't get much better than pro tools. i'm extremely interested to know how your set up is since i'm an audio nut. :D

when people say that final cut has better quality what do they mean?

[Jace101]

It's not better quality. I never understand what they mean by that. Final Cut and Avid are the two industry standard editing programs used. Premiere is almost the intermidete program between ammatures and industry standard.

Premiere is almost the same as Final Cut as in layout and basic features, but Final Cut improves on almost all those and taking them a step futher in functionality and the whole user friendly thingy.

I use Premiere Pro 2.0 because I use a PC. I like the program, but after using Final Cut HD I can see the advantages and now I want a Mac (those brain washing bastards).

If your acustomed to using Premiere the change to Final Cut is easy.

[Threeboy]

if the only difference is layout, then it should have no berring on quality - the end results would be the same; so you could theoetically accomplish everything in premire with a bit more effort.

[SiegeTheGrave]

layout isn't the only difference...as Jace said, Final Cut basically improves a lot of the features. for instance, better transitions, better audio things, shit like that. it also tends to export things to other file types better...not as grainy and shit. there are ways to do that in Premier but it takes longer and makes the file size a lot bigger. but it could've just been my experience, i dunno how Jace's experience with it is...

[Threeboy]

transitions are bunk though, most normal video edits are all cuts - for audio we have jeff's protools system (can't be beat)

for exporting we export to raw uncompressed video and then compress with windows media encoder and quicktime pro for our various formats.

I think we're fine :p

[koajack]

well a few of you are rather cute ;)

[Secoh]

Am I too late for the e-LegHumping?

[koajack]

um if you want to hump my leg, go for it i guess.

i can give you a doggy treat afterwards if you want

[Secoh]

only if they are chicken flavour!

What do you guys use for lighting? I'm having trouble getting levels right without having bizarre shadows everywhere.

[Jace101]

For what your doing Threeboy Premiere is more then enough. Once you start editing short films (10 mintues or so) and feature length is when you should start thinking about moving on.

I'm editing a 30 mintue short film on Premiere at the moment, and though I would prefer to use Final Cut I'm still getting everything done the way I want it, just taking quite a bit longer. (also wouldn't mind dual processors)

[J.Rai]

Lighting wise, we use industrial halogens. We have a pair of 250-watt lights and a pair of 400 or 500 watt lights that we use to flood the rooms with light (all reflected light of course, you don't want to close-light your subject directly). They're all floor lights too, it'd be nice to have them on stands but we're not there yet, plus you really only need those for outdoor or large space lighting. We only shoot indoors so far.

[Threeboy]

and we still fuck up with lighting REGULARLY.

:(

[SiegeTheGrave]

haha i was actually pretty good at lighting...of course i took special classes just for lighting so i guess that's why...too bad i don't live in candanadia or i'd help