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Autumn Gem
A Documentary on the Life of China’s First Feminist
Category Archives: Technical
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City College Screening Recap and Photos
We had a couple of firsts at our Autumn Gem screening at City College of San Francisco yesterday. The place was packed, thanks to the combined efforts of the Asian Studies, Asian American Studies, Cinema and Women’s Studies Departments; we had over 90 people in attendance. The second first is one that I’m not all [...]
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Final Cut and Cast and Crew Party
How time flies! It was a year ago when Rae, Rae’s parents, JP, and I travelled to China to start production on Autumn Gem. Earlier last month, we’ve completed the final cut of the film. Tomorrow afternoon, we’ll be showing it to the first time at our cast and crew screening party!
An so begins the [...] -
How I Learned to Hate Scrolling Credits
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, [...]
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Subtitles
While we finish up the audio mixing with Matt this week, we decided to make a change to the look of our subtitles in Autumn Gem. Up until today, we’ve been using Final Cut’s standard Text generator to create our subtitles. Here’s a screenshot of what our subtitles used to look like:
This afternoon, I [...]
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ADR Wrap Up
We’ve completed our ADR recording yesterday at Matt’s house. Preston was the final actor to come in and record his lines. Now, Rae and I are off to make the final picture lock on the film while Matt continues his audio mixing magic. Here are some photos from the past three weeks of ADR work [...]
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Final Cut Tips for Documentary Filmmakers
Rae and I have learned quite a bit about using Final Cut to create our documentary, Autumn Gem. Here are some tips that will save you a lot of time when putting together your film.
Backup regularly
Run Final Cut Pro on a clean system
Get out of GOP and embrace ProRes 422
Use whole integers with Ken Burns [...] -
Gamma Gamma Gamma
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 [...]
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Picture Lock and Compressor
Here’s a screenshot from the Mac OS X Activity Monitor showing all eight cores on our Mac Pro working hard to encode Autumn Gem into a DVD. Our documentary is about 60 minutes long, and it takes roughly two hours to perform a 2-pass MPEG-2 encode.
As of today, we’ve created five different cuts of the [...] -
White Balance and Color Grading
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 [...]
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How Time Flies… and the Third Cut
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 [...]
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Rough Cut Completed!
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 [...] -
Wushu ala Final Cut
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 [...]
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Priming Walls
This morning, we primed the walls in our Chinese house garage set. We’ll be painting the walls in the next few days. This weekend, we’ll be filming several dramatic recreation scenes with Li Jing and members of Qiu Jin’s Women’s Army.
Enjoy this short 12-second time-lapse photography movie of us priming the walls.
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Chinese Furniture
We are looking for traditional Chinese furniture items to be used in several scenes set in Qiu Jin’s residence and school. These scenes will be filmed in the Bay Area. If you have traditional-looking furniture similar to the ones pictured below that you can lend to the production, let us know!
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Costume and Hair Tests
Today we had a friend come in to try out some costumes that we brought back from China. Edric is modeling two outfits, a Qing Dynasty Soldier uniform and a gentry class scholar outfit. Let us know what you think!
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On Route to Shaoxing
We’re on route to Shaoxing, where Qiu Jin’s former residence and school reside. We arrived in Shanghai in the late morning. The taxi drivers are crazy! Ours was weavng in and out of traffic at high speed, sometimes making three lanes where there were only two! After settling into our hotel, we walked around the [...]