MediaStorm DVDs now available on Amazon.com
February 7th, 2010
In addition to the MediaStorm store, DVDs are now available on Amazon.
Get yours here.
‘Getting Good’ on the MediaStorm Blog
January 25th, 2010
I’ve written a short essay for the MediaStorm blog on how to get good.
Here’s the essence:
People tell me they want to produce work like MediaStorm. You can. Yes, we are fortunate to work with many incredibly talented photographers. But the storytelling techniques we use in our work are not revolutionary. They’re the same techniques described by Aristotle in his Poetics, 2000 years ago. What’s different is that we work our stories. We watch and re-watch literally dozens of times, replacing soundbites, removing the inauthentic, rearranging, restructuring, often for weeks at a time. Sometimes it feels endless but in the end, it works.
And it can for you, too.
Read the rest of the article here.
The Collaborative Habit by Twyla Tharp
December 31st, 2009
I just finished Twyla Tharp’s The Collaborative Habit, the follow-up to her successful 2005 book, The Creative Habit.
Here are some of my favorite passages:
“A great partnership is a lab where change happens every day.”
“In any collaboration, no one likes to let colleagues down. Crisis focuses energy. When it really matters, people rise to the occasion.”
“All artists have signatures. Most guard them closely. And again and again, I’ve found that really smart and talented people don’t hoard the secrets of their success – they share them. It ain’t as if you could use their methods and duplicate their results. Excellence is about so much more than craft.”
“The more you ask, the more you get back. The more you challenge an audience, the moe challenging you can be to yourself.”
And finally, my favorite:
“In the end, all collaborations are love stories.”
Go buy the book.
Thomson MediaStorm, Reuters Foundation, and Red Cross and Produce Surviving the Tsunami: Stories of Hope
December 25th, 2009
I produced the stories section for Surviving the Tsunami: Stories of Hope.
From the MediaStorm blog:
MediaStorm along with Thomson Reuters Foundation and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) announce Surviving the Tsunami: Stories of Hope. The project marks the fifth anniversary of the Indian Ocean Tsunami.Combining imagery by Reuters photojournalists with eyewitness testimony and interactive graphics, the documentary reveals the strength of the human spirit in the face of catastrophe. These are stories of compassion and hope.
See the project here: http://tsunami.trust.org
10 Final Cut Keystrokes I Use Every Day
December 20th, 2009
Here are some of the bread-and-butter shortcut keys I use most frequently:
Command-Shift-A Deselect all.
Contorl-B Enables/Disables a clip. This is a great one to use when trying to compare clips. Stack one on top of the other and use Control-B to turn your alternative on and off.
Control – and Control = Raises or lowers the audio levels 1db, respectively. Make sure to either select your clip or place the playhead over it first.
F Loads the clip under the playhead in to the Viewer.
J, K, L These are the transport keys. They move you through the timeline. J is backwards, K stops, and L is forward. Pressing J or L twice in quick succession doubles the speed. Also, holding J and K together moves backwards in slow-motion while K and L moves forward in slow-motion.
Keypad ‘del’ The keypad delete key performs a ripple delete, collapsing the space left after removing a clip. The result is the same as using shift-delete but simpler.
X Marks an In and an Out point on the clip beneath the playhead.
Option-V Paste attributes. First, select the clip whose attributes you want to copy (command-C). Then, paste on to another clip using option-V. Great for pasting size and level attributes between clips.
TTTT or Shift-T Changes the cursor to overlapping arrows. Touch any clip and all clips forward will be selected. Great for moving around large chunks of an edit.
+ and [number] Moves the selected clip forward – to the right – by an increment of the entered number. - and [number] moves the selected clip backwards, or to the left.
For more Final Cut keystrokes, check out my twitter feed @fcpkeystokes where I post a new shortcut every day.
Replacing Footage With Pixel Accuracy in After Effects or FCP
December 13th, 2009
Say you need to replace low-res footage with a new, high-res version while maintaining pixel accuracy.
First, create a new layer. Stack the new footage of top of the old.
In Final Cut, right-click on the top layer and choose Composite Mode>Difference. In After Effects, use the layer’s drop-down Mode menu.
Your footage will take on an inverted and somewhat psychedelic appearance. But here’s the great part: when the two versions are perfectly aligned, they will cancel each other out and your Viewer will become black.
Credit to Chad Perkin’s and his excellent After Effects CS4 Beyond the Basics on lynda.com.
MediaStorm and CFR.org Win Emmy for Crisis Guide: The Global Economy
December 13th, 2009
Crisis Guide: The Global Economy, for which I produced the multimedia overview, was honored with an Emmy Award for New Approaches to Business & Financial Reporting.
Pictured from left to right are: Jacky Myint, Michael Moran, Brian Storm, Eric Maierson, Jeremy Sherlock, Lee Hudson Teslik. Image by bryan-brown.com
Changes Coming
December 12th, 2009
I’m about to update my blog with a new, more spacious wordpress template.
I’m not sure how long the house cleaning will take so please bear with me.
Thanks.
Profile Piece on InnovativeInteractivity.com
December 11th, 2009
Tracy Boyer at innovativeInteractivity.com was kind enough to interview me as part of her innovative individuals series.
From the article:
Question: How do you drive innovation in your work?
Answer: I want to be a better storyteller. I want to be a better editor. I just want to get better. I never want to feel like I’m doing the same thing I did last time.
My background is in film so I watch plenty of movies. And as anyone who knows me will tell you, I spend lots of time watching things on the Internet, too. I like to think about what others have done, particularly in other fields, and how I can incorporate that into my own work. In the end, though, it always comes back to the basics. How do I create a greater meaning from the combination of two specific images? On my to-do list is producing a story that is complete in just four shots. I like limitations, as they force me to think in new directions.
What I like so much about my job at MediaStorm is that there’s always an openness to try new things, to produce in a way that best fits the story at hand. We strive to find the essence. Brian is fond of the quote, “I would have written a shorter letter, but I didn’t have the time” which illustrates the difficulty in achieving simplicity.
Plus, I read a lot. If I’m working on a story about a particular subject, I’ll read as much as I can. I want to surround myself with material about a topic. Editing is an act of empathy, and the best way to be empathetic is to understand.
Read the rest of the article here.
Navigating the After Effects Timeline
December 5th, 2009
One of the more fundamental challenges I’ve faced learning After Effects is how to navigate the timeline. While I can fly in Final Cut, I tend to putter about in AE. One of the obvious reasons for this is that the key strokes are so wildly different.
To help me through this new terrain, I compiled a list of shortcuts. Try them out for best results.
View Timeline One Frame at a Time
Page up moves current time indicator one frame backwards.
Page down move current time indicator one frame forwards.
Two Ways to Select a iLayer
Type the layer number on keypad to select it.
Use command up and down arrow to shuttle through the layers, respectively.
Jump to Current Time Indicator
If you’ve zoomed in too far and can no longer find the current time indicator, hitting d will bring you back to it.
Jump to In and Out a Layer
First, make sure the clip is selected.
I will jump to the in point of the clip.
O will jump to the out point of the clip.
Set In and Out for Playback Work Area
B sets in point for playback.
N sets out point for playback.
The Playback Work Area are the indicators above the timeline that determine how much of your composition will play back.
Jump to In and Out of Playback Work Area
Shift-home jumps to the beginning of the work area.
shift-end jumps to the beginning of the work area.
Make Playback Work Area the Size of all selected layers
command-option-b
Jump to the Beginning and End of Timeline
Home key jumps to the beginning of the timeline.
End key jumps to the end of the timeline.
Transform Property Shortcuts
S show scale
T show opacity
A show anchor point
R show rotation
P show position
See More than One Transform Property at a Time
Hold down shift while hitting another keyframe shortcut.
For instance, if the scale property is currently displaced, pressing shift-r will show the scale and the rotation property.
View Keyframes
U shows all properties that have key frames applied.
UU shows all values that have been changed from their default.
Insert Keyframe Shortcuts
option+transform property shortcut key will place a keyframe in the timeline for that attribute.
For instance, option+t will insert an opacity keyframe at the current time indicator position.
Replace Footage in Timeline While Keeping the Original Keyframes
First, select track with media to be replaced.
Next, hold down option as you drag replacement footage on to selected track.
The media is replaced but the keyframes will remain intact.
Markers
Markers are added using the Layer>Add Marker menu
K jump forward to marker
J jump back to marker
Right-click to delete or lock
Drag to move
* (star key) makes marker on audio timeline
Move Beginning or End of Footage to Current Time Indicator
[ (open bracket) moves start of clip to current time indicator.
] (close bracket) moves end of clip to current time indicator.
These keys do not change the length of the clip.
Trim Layers
option [ (option-open bracket) – trims the footage so that the clip begins at the current time indicator. Shortens the clip’s time.
option [ (option-close bracket) – trims the footage so that the clip ends at the current time indicator. Shortens the clip’s time.
RAM Preview to Hear Audio
Keypad 0