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John W. King

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  1. Hello all, About three years ago, I built a computer to do lower-end editing with Premiere and AfterFX. Most of the projects were geared towards my high school AV class, so nothing more than 5 or so minute works with 1080p project files and H.264 codecs. Today, I'm still using the same project files, but I am editing much larger-scale works (15+ minute works, plus incorporating DaVinci Resolve into my workflow). With my most recent project, I have just color graded via Resolve, and I am finding a lot of difficulty in just opening the Premiere file now. Premiere itself crashes quite frequently, there are times when I open the project file and some of the color graded media is "offline" (when it typically isn't), and I have a hard time rendering this footage for preview (due to Premiere constantly crashing). My workflow is this: Import footage into Premiere, match audio & cut it together -> export XML file -> import XML file of Premiere sequence into DaVinci, color grade the shots -> export H.264 file out of DaVinci, import each shot and replace it's counterpart in Premiere in order to begin sound design Here are the specs for my computer: OS: WIndows 7, 64-bit RAM: 8gb CPU: Intel Core i5 4670K Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 So my question is, is this a hardware issue, or something in my workflow?
  2. Hey guys, I just installed DaVinci Resolve 12 (Lite Version) on my laptop, and I've noticed something when importing clips - on playback in the Edit and Color tabs, the clips have a flickering strobe of different colors. Is this something to do with my graphics? And if so, is there anything I can change to get rid of this issue? Here are my basic specs: HP Envy Laptop CPU: intel Core i5 Platform: Windows 10 Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 520 RAM: 12GB Thanks a lot!
  3. Let's say I were to take the first two minutes or so of this speech: and place it into my film.
  4. Hello, all! I am curious as to the legalities of using speeches given by individuals in the past. For instance, I am considering using a speech from Alan Watts, given during some lecture at a university as a voiceover. Is there any copyright involved with this, or the use of any other speeches? Thanks! John
  5. Hello, all! We are preparing to shoot a film out in West Texas (in the middle of the desert) soon. Our concerns are primarily with the heat (temperatures are expected to be a high of 101F) and bathrooms (as we will be far away from any nearby restroom). Additionally, we will be filming with RED cameras, and have a cast/crew of roughly 15-20 people. We have it in our plan to bring tents, massive fans, and water in bulk for breaks. And, we anticipate taking a 3-4 hour break during midday (when temperatures peak). However, we will have a lead actor in a fully black, long-sleeved/long-legged costume, plus another actor in a full body armor suit (a prop robot suit). Would any one care to share some advice, given past experiences with filming in similar situations? Thanks! John
  6. Hello all, For a class project we were assigned to make a music video. This is what I made, a fan production of the song "Baby Came Home 2" by The Neighbourhood. I would appreciate any and all feedback! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNdpX2hPpyQ
  7. Hello all, I am doing cinematography for a friend's film, and I was contacted by a local camera operator who was interested in working on our set. Coming from sets with a minimal crew, I'm used to operating a camera by myself when doing cinematography, so this is going to be a first time thing for me. As I'm new to this process, I wonder -- how does the relationship between a DP and a camera op go? I understand DP's will sometimes take the camera to get the shot they want, and therefore trade off with the camera op on-set, but my question is directed more towards pre-production meetings and such. For instance, are there any meetings that are meant to take place between a DP and his operator prior to arriving on-set? And if so, what exactly gets talked over? As a side note, I have yet to meet this local camera op in person. Thanks, John
  8. Makes sense, I remember pulling rather hard on the lever on some of that last few exposures; guess I must have misread the number of stills I was on. This brings me to another question: would a processing store (such as CVS) still be able to process this film, considering that it is no longer a part of the cartridge but has not yet been exposed to light?
  9. Hello all, I just recently shot a roll of Kodak 35mm color film, 24 exposures 400 ISO, on a Canon AE-1. However, I brought the camera into a dark room to check and see if the film had been entirely used (for there have been times in the past when the film didn't catch onto the spindle) and I noticed that the film was completely severed from the cartridge. This is my first time to use this particular camera, so I'm wondering how could this happen? I thought I had rolled all the film back into the cartridge after taking all 24 exposures. Thanks, John
  10. I have just begun to study Terrence Malick's style, and how he creates a sense of "stillness" in his images. However, there aren't many analysis over this style online, so I've resorted mostly to watching his films on my own and seeing how this style plays out; this is what I've taken from it thus far: For me his films are deeply personal, especially The Tree of Life (2011) and To the Wonder (2013). I was able to connect to these films because of personal experiences and how they are reflected in said films (according to Malick, they are his most personal films as well). Nonetheless, from a philosophical standpoint, I find them to be his most difficult films to understand. With that being said, I think these are his two greatest pieces of works, with the former being, perhaps, his masterpiece. But to go back to the discussion of Malick's style, I discovered a quote through mere accident which I think correlates to Malick's visual style. The quote comes from a screenplay of my own in which a character tells another that "We are ants among giants." My character spoke this while in a church, and the purpose of the line was to show how the heightened forces of nature (and from whatever nature is controlled by: whether that be a God, or some force of its own) constantly prevails over man. In this case, man is the "ant" and nature is the "giant". With that being said, notice how in each of Malick's films, nature plays a significant part on a visual perspective. He juxtaposes images of nature to complement the character's feelings, to explore the questions they ask. For instance, in the opening of The Tree of Life, Sean Penn's character (Jack) is troubled and searches for reason upon the death of his brother. He looks to the creation, or rather the creator (Malick leaves it ambiguous) in a 25 minute lapse of pure visuals of space, nebulas, the forming of earth, etc., accompanied by narration. It begins with wonder, Jack is looking for answers. Then, sequences of fire/volcanic explosions - anger - are presented, accompanied with Jack's continuing wonder. And throughout the montage, Jack's mother (played by Jessica Chastain) offers grace & beauty to a world that appears so destructive, with visual presentation of water, and the starkingly beautiful land that is being formed. In a way, she is the voice of balance/reason(?) that Malick uses to close Jack's wonder. What I took from this scene in TToL was that even though there is hate/unsoundness, there is also beauty/grace that forms over, to create "new lands" (I know that isn't the best way to word such, but bear with me). To wrap this up with my line of "ants among giants", Malick shows how dominating nature is to us. In The Tree of Life, it's almost like we are guests invited by our dominant host, nature, to live in her world. In some of his other films, especially The Thin Red Line (1998), nature is presented as a force which is a question in itself, for the film opens up with the question "Why does nature vie with itself?". Does anybody else find an interest in this style so as to add to this discussion? I'm just a high school student with a meager amount of knowledge in philosophy who has only recently begun to analyze his style, and I find him to be an incredibly powerful visionary. Any thoughts are appreciated!
  11. First of all, thank you guys for all of the responses! My question was more towards staying out in LA and working full-time after college, considering that I do take the internship for one summer.
  12. Hello all, I'm an aspiring film director/producer, entering UTA next year as a freshman. I constantly hear that you need to be in LA for the film business, or that everyone ends up in LA, and I wanted to know a little more about this. My question is, why? Why do you need to be in LA? I lived there when I was younger, and all that I remember was that the cheapest dirthole was still more expensive than my modest house in Austin. Also, I've had friends tell me how strict LA is on permits, whereas in Austin, I was shooting on the street w/o any permits and a police cab came up and offered to buy us lunch. So...why LA? I ask this question because Austin's film program is offering students internships at select studios in LA (such as Paramount and Lionsgate) as well as in NYC (but I believe that's more for TV). However, is this something worth looking into? To be honest, and I don't know everything about the industry so this is all coming from interviews/workshops, but the films I want to make I could make probably shoot here in Texas. I would be honored to hear what you guys think and what your experience is with this. P.S.: Money is a HUGE factor for me. Edit: added some line spacing.
  13. I am adding an 8mm film template to a scene I cut up in Premiere. So, just some fairly light VFX.
  14. Hello all, For the current film I'm working on, I had to go through an odd process to do what I needed to it. First, I imported the footage into Premiere so as to trim it down and piece it all together. Then, I opened up After Effects, and imported the project from Premiere into AE so as to do some edits to it that I could only do in this program. Then, after finishing these edits, I opened Premiere back up and imported this AE timeline that I had added the edits to into a timeline on Premiere. Basically, I did all this without ever having to export from a program. Just some specs: I use Windows 7 with 8gb of RAM. Also, the video files I used were ProRes HQ. Everything turned out fine, but there is one inconvenience: when I play the final video in Premiere, it has extremely choppy playback (even on 1/4 quality). I did do some pretty heavy edits to it in After Effects, but my question is, is this the best way to go about doing something like this? Or should I have exported an H.264 file from AE, then import it into Premiere? Thanks a lot! John
  15. Thanks Dom and Gregg. I was messing around with the camera and lens this morning, found out that the lens has a slight amount of wiggle room while mounted. Turns out if I pull the lens a little bit away from the mount, the focus works fine while at 12mm. I tried to take off and remount the lens, but I'm still getting that wiggle room. On further inspection, it looks like someone chipped away at the slit on the back end of the lens in order to make it wider (at least that's what I think, I could be wrong and it may just be a natural opening).
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