Hi everybody! I'm back! What I have been doing all summer.

Hi everybody! I'm back! My apologies for not updating my blog more often. Mostly it's because my summer up until now has been mostly uneventful and that I really had nothing new to report. However, over the last couple of weeks, things have been picking up and I now have some new things I'd like to share.

A couple of weeks ago, I agreed to help out a classmate with her film shoot. I volunteered to be the sound person, where my job is to make sure the audio is being recorded properly on the audio reel tapes on the Nagra (Hollywood uses the DAT, which stands for digital audio tape, but for now we're using the Nagra). We actually began shooting last weekend and we'll be shooting again this weekend. One of the things that I like about this shoot is that I get to work again with an actress that I directed on my first short film a couple of years ago.

One of the hardest things about this assignment is that on Sunday, we had to shoot outdoors from early morning to late afternoon. For those of you not familiar with Phoenix/Central Arizona weather, it is a desert here and the temperatures hit 105 degrees Fahrenheit/40 degrees Celsius. Plus, since we're also in the early stages of the monsoon season, it was also a little humid, about 30%-35% humidity. That might not seem too humid, but anytime the temperatures hit 100 Fahrenheit/38 Celsius, anything over 20% is considered humid. This means that I had to wear a hat and slap on lots and lots of sunblock with an SPF of at least 45, as the Arizona sun can be deadly. I read in a travel book ten years ago that Arizona has the second highest rate of melanoma (skin cancer) cases in North America. We shot that day on a bridge where the sidewalks were pretty narrow, we also had to compete with auto traffic.

The film is also (how should I say this?) "adult" in nature, meaning that here in the States it would be "R-rated", or in the U.K. "15" and in Australia "MA 15+".

Since early July, I began work on the film I shot last Spring. The nonlinear editing online editing system I'm using is Final Cut Pro, which can only be worked on the Mac. Two leading editing systems that can be used on Windows PCs are Avid Xpress Pro and Adobe Premiere. There are also Mac versions for both.

Here's a link to a GIF shot of a Final Cut Pro page:

http://static.userland.com/tower1/images/dvforteachersManilaSitesCom/FCPshot1.gif

This is the official link to Apple's Final Cut Pro:

http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/finalcutpro

Apple also has an expensive program called Shake, which works together with Final Cut Pro where you can create visual effects, especially if you're into science-fiction! Here's a link:

http://www.apple.com/shake

It carries an expensive price tag of US $3,000/UK £1,730/AUS $3,980/Euro €2,505.

A couple of issues have come up as I was editing my film. First, the sound person who was working on shooting the final shot at my house accidentally recorded over the audio recording of the football stadium shot. I was able to salvage only one recording of the stadium shot. As for the rest, I had to ask two of my actors over to my house to do ADR (audio dub recording) of the stadium shot. That went smoothly, so no harm done. As for the audio sound recording that took place at my house, for some reason, I was having trouble getting it to sync with the film shoot part. The audio was going slightly faster than the film part. I was able to correct this with Final Cut Pro by slowing down the audio part by 2% to bring it in sync with the film and at the same time I couldn't tell the difference of the tone of the sound at 98% or 100% so there are no "slow deep voices".

In any case, I hope to have a rough cut finished by the end of August and have the final product ready by Christmas. I'm not making any promises, since I do not have 100% technical knowledge, but assuming that I have my film ready for release by Christmas, I hope to convert it to Quicktime and post it right here on my blog for all of you to witness my work!

I promise to update my blog more frequently.