Bill Cammack

Tom Smalls demonstrates the compositing techniques he used to edit Indy Mogul’s “The Shadow’s Day Off”:

YouTube Version

Related Posts:
“The Spirit’s Day Off” – Indy Mogul Test Film
Bill Cammack is The Millipede
Bill Cammack on Indy Mogul

Whomever you think is the best candidate, it’s in your best interest to VOTE this Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 in the United States Presidential Election.

Bre Pettis, Justin Johnson, Clint Comer and I are all releasing new videos every weekday of November 2008, and re-releasing “old” videos every Saturday and Sunday. Check the far right sidebar for avatars with links to their videoblogs.

My first contribution is this video I made in March, 2008 which shows how to scene-match video footage using filters in Final Cut Pro. I figured I’d bring it back since the election’s so close, and it reminds me of how different things were back in March, before the Democrats or Republicans had selected their representatives and before their representatives had selected their running mates.

It’s been interesting. Let’s see what happens on the 4th! :D
~Bill

Bill C., originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Bill Cammack

Bill – Edit, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Bill Cammack – Post Production (Editing)
Chicago, IL

It’s easy to take people for granted that you see all the time… Until you’re in a totally different place and can’t reach out and touch them…

In this episode of Indy Mogul‘s “4 Minute Film School”, Emmy Award Winning Video Editor, Bill Cammack, teaches Steve some handy dandy tips for using Final Cut Pro.

Written & Edited by Steve Nelson & Bill Cammack
Park scenes filmed by Ramon DeSouza

Learn how to scene-match video footage using filters in Final Cut Pro.

Bill Cammack Editorial Resume: http://alum.mit.edu/www/billcammack

Click To Play

Direct Download: BillCammack-259060925_BillCammackVideoEditorialDemoReel635.mov

billcammack reelsolidtv video editorial demo reel blog freelance fcp avid finalcutpro finalcutstudio

So we got to Uptown Lounge, and decided on Calamari as the fun-food while we “got our martini on”. We tried out the camera in low-light, but it didn’t work out at all, which was to be expected since I hadn’t read the manual. I had no idea of what I might have been able to change to produce the best setting.

Anyway… X hours later, we headed for a pizza shop, where I shot an extremely mellow (for ME) video with my new, fresh-out-of-the-box Samsung NV3. :D

When I got home, I plugged the camera in via USB and uploaded the videos really quickly. They open up in AVI format, 640×480, as advertised:

Format: XVID Decoder, 640 x 480, Millions
Audio: Microsoft ADPCM, Mono, 22.050 kHz
FPS: 30
Data Rate: 1615.81 kbits/sec

Here’s where things got tricky. :D Originally, I loaded the clips to my iMac. As soon as they uploaded, I double-clicked one of them and it appeared in Quicktime Player. I played it immediately, and it had these black clipping blotches where the camera was aimed directly at bright lights, like the menu signs in the pizza shop. I figured this had to do with the camera and that I didn’t read the manual before just pointing and shooting. So then, I went to transfer the videos to my MacBook, and they didn’t run at all. Quicktime Player would open the first frame of the cips, but it would “quit unexpectedly” when I pressed play. I tried restarting and rebooting. No difference. I looked in the manual on the disk, which is way more extensive than the hardcopy they give you, and it said to install the XviD codec.

To install the XviD codec, you have to install DivX. I installed both and rebooted. I opened the clip in Mpeg Streamclip, and the “blowout blotches” were gone, except there was a large section that glitched at the bottom of the pizza shop counter, where there were no lights at all. I figured the problem had something to do with interlacing. I could be wrong, but the programs were looking for interlaced video, and the NV3 shoots 30 frames per second. That’s different from 29.97 frames per second, and that’s certainly different from 60 interlaced fields per second like NTSC television has. I decided to render the video that had this one large glitch in it out to DV codec, using Mpeg Streamclip. I could have exported to Mpeg-4, but I wanted to see if it would look good in DV, since most of the time, I’ll want to bring the clips into FCP for editing.

I rendered to DV and resampled the 22 kHz audio to 48 kHz for the same FCP compatibility reasons. The DV file opened up in quicktime player, looked good and ran flawlessly. I imported that file into Compressor and used my iPod settings to make the m4v to send to blip and iTunes. I cropped the end of the video in Compressor.

After that test, I changed the flow. I made it so that all AVI files open in Mpeg Streamclip. I selected in and out points by pressing “I” and “O” where I wanted my in and out to be for the clip. I selected “export to mpeg-4″ with the settings of 50% quality, 1100 kbps data rate, sound AAC 44.1 kHz stereo (even though the NV3 records in 22 kHz mono) @ 96 kbps, 640×480, upper field and everything else deselected. I got the same results, except the file was named mp4 instead of m4v.

I was very happy with the results. The colors are a little oversaturated, but like I said, I never read the manual, and the video’s straight out of the box. Insert battery, insert 2gig memory card, spin the dial, point & shoot. I barely knew how to play the videos back on the camera at the time. :D

Anyway… A good time was had by all… as you can probably tell from the video! :D I’m definitely looking forward to ReelSolid.TV expanding past the borders of the U.S.A.! We’ll get to find out what’s going on in Japan from Masami, and what’s going on in France from Laetitia. Cheers to both of the ladies for helping me to NOT waste my day! :D

Tonight, I headed back over to phovi.com for “Zoom In: Producing Movies Today!”, hosted by Jason DaSilva.

The show was billed as a discussion on financing, production resources and distribution, but we actually covered many different aspects of filmmaking. A new documentary filmmaker, Vexcellence had many questions, so we ended up chatting about pre-production, post, legal, lighting, crews, cameras, product placement…..

“Zoom In: Producing Movies Today!” is a LIVE video talk show on phovi.com on Sundays from 7:00-8:00pm EST. Check it out if you’re in the film industry, or just getting started. :D