June 15th, 2009
The other day, Kara Swisher from AllThingsD.com interviewed us about Autumn Gem and making documentaries in the digital age. We talk about the genesis of the film, the production schedule, and provide hints at where we see the film being distributed in the future. Check it out!
May 11th, 2009
As we prepare for our upcoming two-week trip down to San Diego, we’ve been hard at work creating first version of the AUTUMN GEM DVD. This version contains the movie, scene selections and a support page. The Special Edition with photos and commentary will come out later.
Here’s what the DVD will look like:
Up till this point, we’ve been burning one-off DVDs using the SuperDrive on our Macintosh. We weren’t going to do that for 700 DVDs, so we went with DiscMakers to handle this job. With these DVDs, we’ll be able to give a version that we’re happy with to prospective screening organizations, donors, friends, family, and cast and crew members.
Here’s a photo of the DVD jacket. For eco-purposes, we’re avoiding the jewel cases and going for a paper jacket:
April 11th, 2009
For the past several years, I’ve been running a camera user group called COBA, or Camera Owners of the Bay Area. We meet every month to talk about the latest developments in the digital camera space and feature presentations from photography-related companies and photographers. For the April meeting, we screened AUTUMN GEM to the COBA crowd at SmugMug headquarters in Mountain View, California.
Many COBA members have known that Rae and I have been working on AUTUMN GEM for the past year and a half. It was great to finally be able to share the documentary with them! We’re currently arranging more public screenings around the Bay Area and at universities and Asian-American/Chinese Historical organizations across the country. Soon, we’ll have a section of the site devoted to finding the next screening. Stay tuned!
March 11th, 2009
Here are some photos from Timothy Chang from the cast and crew screening party held over the weekend. Thanks to the Domain Hotel in Sunnyvale for hosting and everyone who were able to take time out of their Sundays to come out! It’s now onward and upward with marketing and business development for the film.
February 25th, 2009
One of the very last things to complete with Autumn Gem has been the final credits sequence. I’ve been struggling mightily over the past few weeks trying to get the credits to scroll properly without jerkiness or stuttering. I’ve read all of the forums and tried many of the tips and tricks people have suggested, including:
Despite my best efforts and hours of render time, the credits never scrolled properly on our MXO-powered 23-inch ADC broadcast monitor or when output to a progressive QuickTime movie. They might start out fine, but every few seconds, the screen would suddenly jerk up a few extra pixels, creating an uncomfortable stutter effect.
At this point, I’ve about given up, and that’s a good thing, because I came up with a simpler solution that looks just as good. Instead of scrolling a 10800-pixel tall Photoshop graphic over seventy-two seconds, we’re cross-dissolving eleven credit screens over that same time. This comes out to about 6 seconds per screen, which is more than enough time for our cast and crew to find themselves.
One day, I’ll figure out the magical formula to getting silky smooth scrolling credits. I’ll leave that task, however, for the next film!
January 2nd, 2009
Last week, we went to Matt’s house to ADR dialogue with our actress, Li Jing. We also submitted our film to be listed on IMDB through our membership with Without A Box. I noticed that there’s another Adam Tow listed in IMDB; that means, I’ll be Adam Tow (II) once my listing is created.
Check out the Autumn Gem listing on IMDB!
December 21st, 2008
Lately, the numbers 0.82, 0.84, 0.88, 1.0, 1.24, 1.3, and 1.4 have been foremost on my mind. These are the gamma correction values that I find myself frequently applying to video clips coming into and out of Apple’s Final Cut Pro, Color, Compressor and DVD Studio Pro software. Although I’ve read numerous articles on the handling of gamma on Mac OS X, I don’t find myself anywhere closer to understanding the whole picture.
Exports from Final Cut using QuickTime Conversion and the ProRes 422 codec look great on my Mac in QuickTime Player. The same sequence exported using QuickTime Movie looks washed out in QuickTime Player unless I have the Enable Final Cut Studio Color Compatibility preference enabled. When I export the film using Compressor, I have to enter at least 1.24 in the Gamma Correction filter. This is done so the colors on the DVD, burned using DVD Studio Pro, don’t look washed out.
This has got to be a common problem for filmmakers using Apple’s professional products. Trial and error seems to be what most people do to get something acceptable across all broadcast medium.
When the final cut of Autumn Gem is complete next month, I’m sure I’m going to revisit this problem again when we transfer the movie to HDCAM and other festival screening formats.
December 16th, 2008
Well, it’s finally time to make it official! We’re transitioning away from our working title The Qiu Jin Project in favor of Autumn Gem as the official name of the project. The domain names have been purchased, email has been set up, and the redirects are now working.
You can still reach the website by typing in http://qiu-jin.com, but you will now be magically redirected to http://autumn-gem.com.
December 13th, 2008
The past few days, Rae and I have been preparing the film to submit to a number of film festivals in California and Oregon. We’ve been furiously finishing up cut number four, along with writing applications, burning DVDs and assembling press kits. On Friday, we drove up to Stanford and San Francisco to drop or mail our submissions. Now, it’s out of our hands and up to the festival screeners to see if the documentary is worthy!
December 11th, 2008
During the filming of Autumn Gem, we used Phoxle SpectraSnap White Balance Filter 1 to set a custom white balance for each scene. I’ve used many white balance products in the past, including ExpoDisc, WhiBal, and gray cards, and I’ve found the SpectraSnap to be one of the better products out there. Its ability to fit a wide variety of lenses, including the two Sony videocameras we used to film the documentary, was key. I also appreciated the fact that it is a shoot-through white balance filter; I’ve found the accuracy of those to be higher than reflected light WB filters.
In the film, however, we’re not always looking to have a neutral color tone throughout our scenes. Getting neutral-looking footage, however, makes it easier to color correct — or color grade, as it’s called in the film industry — afterwards. I’ve been using a combination of Final Cut’s Three-Way Color Corrector filter and Apple’s Color application to perform various color grading tasks.
Here are screenshots of a before and after scene from Autumn Gem. The photo on the below is what was recorded by the the camera. As you can see, there is still a slight cast to the photo, even when using the SpectraSnap. I suspect that’s because the lights we used to light the background versus the foreground were different.
The original look of the serving tea scene.
The next photo is the same scene that was corrected using Color. I set up a number of Secondary Rooms to apply color corrections to only specific parts of the scene such as the walls or Qiu Jin’s outfit.
The serving tea scene that has been color corrected using Apple Color.
Once we have picture lock on the film, I’ll continue to color grade certain scenes from the film. Not all scenes require such work, and for those, the built-in Three-Way Color Corrector in Final Cut does as admirable job. For more complex scenes, however, Color is a powerful tool for getting the look that we want out of the film.
1 Phoxle is run by Chris Pedersen, a friend of mine whom I know from my Camera Owners of the Bay Area user group meetings.
December 6th, 2008
How time flies! A year ago this time, we were planning our trailer shoot and preparing for our trip to China. The film has been built out in six month increments. Rae started pre-production work around July of last year. We started filming in January, wrapping things up around the middle of June. The past six months have been spent in our home office, slaving away at Final Cut day in, day out.
A little over a month after completing our first rough cut, Rae and I are putting the finishing touches on the third cut of the film. Though the running time difference between the first and third cuts comprise just a few minutes, there’s been some substantial changes in the pacing. It’s amazing how trimming a half a second here and there can improve a scene so much! We’ve also moved some scenes around to improve the narrative structure.
I’ve been spending the past several days color correcting the film, trimming edits, and adjusting the captions and subtitles. Every day, we’re getting closer to completing the film, but there always seems to be more things to be added to the task list! Fortunately, the light at the end of the tunnel is just ahead.
We’ll try to post more frequently to the blog from this point forward. Writing is kinda like brushing and flossing your teeth every night; you just have to get in the habit!
October 29th, 2008
We’ve reached an important milestone with the film today with the completion of the rough cut of The Qiu Jin Project: Autumn Gem!
It took me 22 hours to go from picture lock to burning the first DVD; the long delay was a result of my supreme struggle to get Final Cut to export the movie without crashing. I searched long and hard for a solution on the Creative Cow Final Cut forum, Ken Stone’s site, Google, and on Apple’s own forums. I eventually settled on using the instructions on Ken’s web site using the Export using Quicktime Conversion command in Final Cut to export the HDV timeline to Apple ProRes 422. To get around the “out of memory” errors, I had to break up the export into several pieces.
From there, I brought the video into Compressor, where I could now export a version for DVD and iPhone. That took a number of hours even with an 8-core Mac Pro! After that, I popped the video into DVD Studio Pro and quickly pumped out a DVD.
With the rough cut complete, we can now show the documentary to our crew, potential donors, family, friends, and other interested parties.
October 20th, 2008
The past few weeks, we’ve been recording music and audio for The Qiu Jin Project. Melody Chen and Min Seun Kim have recorded their guzheng and flute pieces respectively for the documentary. Rae went over to Matt’s house in Campbell to record the narration. We’ve been laying these clips on top of our existing audio and video tracks, and everything is turning out great. There are a few more musical pieces that we need to record, including a choir, cello, and piano piece. In addition, there are a couple of foley sound clips just waiting to be created.
Click on the link below to view the photos!
September 13th, 2008
This afternoon, we edited a scene from our filming of the Chinese Women’s Army at Tilden Park in Berkeley. Li Jing, who plays Qiu Jin in the documentary, is running through a hand form.
Nine takes were used to construct this scene. One take was a wide shot which we use to start the sequence. Mixed throughout are eight closeup shots detailing the action as Li Jing goes from one move to the next. Add in a little wind sound, and we’ve got ourselves a nice 34-second clip!
There’s a saying that a film is really created in the editing room. After having spent several months living in Final Cut, Rae and I certainly agree with that statement!
September 8th, 2008
We’ve been hard at work editing the film over the past two months, hence our long delay between posts. It seems once filming is done, the only “exciting” photos we have to share is us sitting in front of our computers staring at Final Cut and Aperture! So far, we have assembled nearly 50 minutes of footage for the final film. There’s still much to do, but we have a good sense for the narrative is shaping up to be.
There remains a few more pickup scenes to shoot along with recording the music and narration for the film. Our target is to complete those tasks by the end of this month.
In other news, we should announce that our fiscal sponsorship has moved from Film Arts Foundation to the San Francisco Film Society. After thirty-two years of serving the independent film community, Film Arts is closing its doors; fortunately, the SFFS was there to take on the task of supporting existing fiscally sponsored projects, including ours. Visit our support page to learn how you can donate to our project. It’s tax-deductible!
