Tag Archives: Final Cut

  1. 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 [...]

    Posted on February 17, 2009 in Post-Production, Technical | 1 comment

  2. 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 [...]

    Posted on January 17, 2009 in Post-Production, Technical | 1 comment

  3. 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 [...]

    Posted on December 16, 2008 in Post-Production, Technical | No comments

  4. 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 [...]

    Posted on December 11, 2008 in General, Post-Production, Technical | No comments

  5. 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. [...]

    Posted on September 13, 2008 in General, Post-Production, Technical | No comments