My Birthday Wish…You Can Help Make It Happen

OK, my 36th birthday falls on May 31st, Memorial Day, most people will be off of work and have an extra day on the weekend. You can thank me by helping me celebrate my birthday by raising money for my friend Timothy LaFollette. He is battling ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease). My goal is to raise $300 by June 1, 2010.

I’m not asking for much but if my readers each donate $1 we would hit the goal and then some. If I don’t hit the goal I will donate the difference to the cause.

I’ve been so blessed to work with Tim and Kaylan on Often Awesome the series. They have become great friends and I deeply care about the both of them. So anything I can do to show my support I will.

You can donate here. Thank you so much for your time and I appreciate your support.

I will pass on to Tim and Kaylan who donated what. Thank you so much.

Question For The Peanut Gallery

I got an email which I would like to run by my intelligent readers. I hope you have a solution for Jenny. Here is her problem….

I am running Mac OS X 10.5.8 2.5 GHz Intel Core Duo with FCP 5.1.4, 4 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM with 2 exhdd one running time machine back up the other my video projects. These are both powered from mains current. Have just finished a big project on a trip to India earlier this year. 2 disks made , all finished except that I want to record back to a master tape for archival purposes. Always have and still think its the way to go. However I cannot ‘Print to Video’ nor even just record as it is playing. Have tried two cameras and a Sony player. I can import from all of these so know the connection is AOK.

Can you make any suggestions please?

Here is my suggestion and I hope this works. Hard to figure out what is wrong without working on your machine. But here is my idea. Sometimes the camera doesn’t want to connect to the computer for who knows why. So you have to go into the menu and make the software reconnect with the camera.

You want to make sure the camera settings match your sequence settings or it won’t recognize your camera. Go into the Final Cut Pro menu up top and select Easy Setup.


Now select from the drop down menu the settings that match your camera.



If it doesn’t recognize your camera right away. Do this.

Go into the View Menu on top of the screen and scroll down to External Video and select All Frames



In the same View Menu scroll down and select Refresh A/V Devices.



Last, in the same View Menu scroll down and select Video Playback and select the your camera.

If that doesn’t do it. Smash your camera and send a letter to the president. You might get a new camera.

How Should I Shoot This

I have a shoot Thursday morning at 10 with a client that needs a video in order to fulfill his posting on a popular listing service. In order for his info to be listed the video needs to be done. Here is the catch. He just moved to the area and doesn’t have any pictures or equipment or even clients on his behalf.

The business is a roofing company. No clients at the moment, no pictures from his previous clients in another state, no truck with the company’s name. The only thing I have is him and his word. I can’t move this shoot, not because I don’t want to. It is because that is what I am paid to do. Just him and his word about his experience and that is about all I have.

How am I going to shoot this? For starters, I have to interview him with questions. Each question I ask I will change the camera angle so I can edit between the questions. That is all I have right now. Please comment if you have ever come across something like this or if you can think of a unique way to edit together an engaging or interesting piece. Thanks.

Filmmaker Needs Our Vote For a Job

Jeremy Wallace, a reader of this blog and I can say a friend of mine is applying for the “Best Job in the World.”

The Caretaker of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef is a newly created position. There are a few minor tasks that need to be taken care of, but the most important duty is to report back to Tourism Queensland (and the world) and let us know what’s taking place on the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef.

Jeremy put together a 1 minute video about why he would be the best for the job. Help him out by voting him up…or you can apply for the position too. He is a great guy and a fellow NC filmmaker currently searching for his next gig. Good Luck Jeremy.

What To Charge

I got an email from a fellow documentary filmmaker interested in using some footage from my documentary, “Greensboro’s Child“. My documentary deals with the Greensboro Massacre, in which 5 anti klan protesters were shot and killed during a “Death to the Klan” rally on November 3rd, 1979.

The footage he is inquiring about is of the neighborhood in which the shootings took place, Morningside Homes. Morningside Homes no longer exists. The city condemned the buildings and built a new affordable housing “project” for low income people. Not sure how much he will use in his documentary but I want to give him fair market price.

Does anyone know what a good price to charge for that footage?

If anyone is interested in watching the film in it’s entirety click here.

Filmmakers I Need A Favor

I need HD footage of a locked down shot of a remote beautiful beach. Anyone have any footage they would like to donate to me for an episode of The Corporate Assassin, I’d greatly appreciate it. I only need roughly 5-10 seconds of footage. Asking on here is my first option. Second option, use a great graphic designer’s time and mine to do a cool effect. I prefer the first. You will get credit in the episode, and if you want money for it, so do I. Get what I mean.

If you are on vacation on the beach go ahead and roll a few seconds and upload it to vimeo.

Thanks Peeps.

Capture Now With HDV

Not happening! Tomorrow I’m going to shoot the audience for the private screening for Dogs of Chinatown. Only problem is I can’t figure out how to capture directly to my computer with a firewire connection to my camera. I can do it with no problem if I use DV-NTSC and capture in SD. But I want my cake and to eat it too.

I have all the right settings to capture HDV.

When I try to capture straight from the camera to the computer this is what I get.

The computer is looking for timecode so I understand why its shutting down…I’m not capturing from tape. There is no option to capture with uncontrollable device. So I’m left with capturing the HDV footage to Quicktime Pro. Weird how I can capture it raw to Quicktime Pro and not Final Cut Pro.

If anyone has a quick fix for this please hook me up. Thanks.

Why Does HDV Suck in Final Cut Pro

Why? Can anyone give me a reason why capturing HDV always crashes the log and capture and the timecode breaks so easily. The only setting that I can use without any worries is the Apple Intermediate Codec. The problem with that codec is the same as the HDV, it breaks the video into smaller video clips when capturing any long segment but it won’t stop the capture process.

I know HDV is not the professional standard but I am working with the dotmatrix project in which we use HDV to shoot the bands and this is making my life a living hell.

Any suggestions besides the obvious of buying a higher quality camera and smashing the current ones?

Mac Professionals I Need Your Help

The video card I’m looking at is the Radeon X1900 G5 Mac Edition. Here is some information that worries me this card is not compatible to my G5.

Exclusively for PCI Express® based PowerMac G5 systems

Feel the power of ATI’s world class Radeonâ„¢ X1900 G5 Mac® Edition. Designed exclusively for PCI Express-based Power Mac® G5 systems, this card will turn your computer into a sophisticated graphics workstation and a monster gaming machine.

My computer is a Power Mac G5 (June 2004) and is a PCI-X and uses an AGP slot for the graphics card.

I think I know the answer but when I was looking at the X1900 Starting guide I came across this info and it makes me scratch my head and I’m exhausted looking everywhere for answers.

ATI graphics cards only work in PCI, AGP, or PCIe™ based Power Macintosh® computers with a PCI
(33MHz or 66MHz), AGP expansion slot or PCIe™ expansion slot. The minimum system requirements for your specific ATI graphics card are listed in the User’s Guide and on the product box.

Thanks in advance if you chime in and take some of this stress off my mind.

If I Didn’t Have Bad Luck… I’d Have No Luck At All

My god this stinking saga continues. I bought an ATI X800 Mac Edition Video Card on ebay. I installed it and it sounded like my computer was ready to take off. Listen.

[audio:http://fcproducer.com/audio/card.mp3%5D

Yeah it’s an upgrade if I’m working with graphics but forget about me doing any more ADR from my home office or even podcasts. Back to square1 and loosing face. I have to return this back to the owner in Hong Kong. Damn Mongolians!!