At this point my Fan Expo Doc project is stalled. I have not been able to get any response from Nadia since our shoot in August. This could mean that she is busy, that she is out of town or that she just has no more interest in continuing with the project. Or at any rate, no interest in going on cam and providing narration for the footage of her which I shot
Without her input there is no context to that footage. It's just me following around a couple of cosplayers. Certainly not enough to be the heart of a documentary
I've not totally given up on Nadia but I need to answer the question What do I do if she no longer wants to participate
I have to go through the footage to see what is there. Unfortunately, because Nadia was the last day of the shoot, I geared the previous footage towards her being the heart of the video, as in mostly what I have is B roll. The good thing is, this B roll is fairly generic, the bad thing is, it's fairly generic
I do have some interviews. The interviews with the cosplayers are short and really just like introductions, "I am ... I am playing this character ..." A few of them talked about why they were there and what they liked about the show. Again, fairly generic
I did a few other interviews with people who were at the Expo to promote a group and/or raised money in its behalf. The Toronto Steampunk Society, a Ghostbusters group, a LARP (Live Action Roleplaying) group, an X Men group that raises money for charity
There could be something there, it's actually fairly interesting stuff. These are fans who have taken their love of a certain genre and turned it into something beyond a simple hobby. If I chose to explore that avenue though, I would need more. I would have to contact one of all of these groups and get interviews with them, follow them to other events, get the history of their groups etc.
That could be interesting but it's not what I intended in the first place. I wanted something more from an individual's personal perspective rather than that of a polished and practised group. I wanted more documentary, less promo vid .. I've done those thank you very much
Another option is to try to execute my original concept, find a cosplayer and follow them through the expo and have them comment on the experience in VO. Fan Expo is over but Comic Con will be up in March; it's a different event though, usually much smaller and instead of taking up both halls of the convention centre, using only one. So I don't know how much of this current footage I'd be able to use
So what I'm left with is logging the footage and seeing if I can make something out of it. It won't be the first time
Monday, September 29, 2014
Monday, September 8, 2014
FAN EXPO DOC: POST PRODUCTION ONE
It would be nice if you could shoot a bunch of footage and just dive into the editing
Well, sometimes you can. When Collette and I are at some festival and I want to cut the footage into a music video, I can do just that, pull the footage into Final Cut, lay down my music track and start cutting
That will not work for this new project. There is no script for this video, not formally. I have a pretty solid idea of where I want things to go but I have yet to finish shooting. I'm still waiting to do my final shoot with Nadia, where I will have her narrate her footage from our day at the Expo
Still, I want to start organizing things. Post production is a lot more than just editing and music and graphics.
Right now, while I'm waiting for my final shoot, I'm concerned with two areas: Logging footage and Legal.
I'll deal with Legal first. I have no intentions of the finished video ever going to broadcast. But I will be posting it on social media (and perhaps some unsocial media) and I will be sending it to whatever "film" festivals I can get away with. That is a different level of legal concern than broadcast but it's still a concern.
Film festivals, amateur or not, like everything neat and tidy. You have to prove rights to your footage, your music, locations and to all principles involved in the production.
I will of course have Nadia and Brandon (her Spiderman) sign a release form that I've worked up. They were not the only people that I have on cam. The interviews I did at the Ex break down into two categories: Fan streeters and Organization Interviews
The streeters were just fans I corralled and had give me a minute or two on cam. I am not terribly concerned with these. I made of point to record them as they gave me consent to film them and that should cover it.
Besides talking to fans, I talked to a few orgainizations/groups who were at the Expo to promote themselves. Groups like The Toronto Steampunk Society and Superheroes for Charity were at the Ex to raise awareness of their group and to raise money for charity. I also talked to a non profit LARP group (Live Action Role Playing) who where there to drum up new members
For these people I'm going to need release forms, not just for the person but for the group. And I'm going to want proper contact info so I can credit them. They of course gave me consent to film but because they represent a group of people, I want to make sure I'm covered and beyond that, I support their causes and want to credit them. No matter how organized they are, they are fans and they are not looking for a profit
The other legal concern is locations. Very often film fests want to make sure you have permission to shoot in any venues in your film. Fan Expo itself is very liberal in its allowances for video. It's really a fantastic thing. You see camera crews all over the Ex and not just from TV and online stations. I felt very comfortable shooting there and never had an issue from the event staff .. except when I was standing in the wrong place. Hey, welcome to my world
Still, I will probably send them an email, let them know what I'm doing and get a response. And, again, I definitely want to properly credit them. After all, the Expo itself may emerge as the "star" of the video
The other location concern is the venue that hosted the Expo, the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. This is just as important, perhaps more so, than the Expo. This is the physical venue in which I was shooting and what film festivals are concerned with. Again, I'm hoping I'm covered because of the event itself. And I also want to credit them
I want to start this process now. I am a long ways from a finished product but while I'm waiting for my shoot with Nadia and before I get lost in the editing, I want to make sure I have this covered.
Now we come to logging footage. I began this process when I took the shots off the cam and put them on my computer. My cam can shoot in a variety of formats. For this shoot I chose HD 1080p at 60 frames per second. This gives me the best possible quality and because most web hosting sites want to compress your video (usually to 720 sometimes 1080) I feel that shooting at double the normal frame rate of 30 frames per second gives me the best chance of keeping my footage as clean as possible Plus, the slo mo is awesome
My Sony records the footage to its own internal hard drive. It compresses, or wraps, the footage to MTS files that can not be edited, not by Final Cut, not by any editing system. So I have to unwrap the files in order to be able to edit them. I use a program called Clirpwrap and unwrap the files to Apple's ProRes 422 standard, which keeps the files at their original resolution and makes for easy editing in Final Cut
After each day of shooting I downloaded the files to my computer, unwrapping them in the process. This cleared off the cam's hard drive and allowed me to do my initial orgainiztion: I targeted the unwrapped clips to a folder for each day of the Expo. Labelled them Thursday, Friday etc.
In traditional edits, like for a drama, I would log all the shots, pen and paper or with a computer logging program, describing each shot and it's location so that later, in the edit suite, I can quickly assemble these shots to match the script. In this case, at this point, I don't have a script. Eventually I will write some narration and if Nadia does her VO, that will constitute the script. What I need to do now is figure out what I have to make that latter process easier. In a sense, logging the clips is like writing a rough draft of a script
Some of the how I want to organize is obvious; for instance I want to put all the interviews into one location. That way, not matter how the video goes, I can easily find those clips. Now, you can do this kind of organization right in Final Cut. I can bring in folders from the computer, like the folders of clips organized by day and then create new folders, what FC calls Bins. I would rather do this work in my Mac's Finder. I created a folder called Interviews and dragged all of those clips over from the Day folders. It's easier to do in the Finder because I can expand the clips in the graphic interface so that they are easily identifiable.
This will be a rinse and repeat process. I can sub-folder this (yes, I just made up a verb, deal with it) as much as I desire. Folders for all cosplay, a folder for all footage from the North Building, a folder for all footage from the South building, a folder each for Celebs, Comics, Horror, etc Hopefully this will make it easier later on as I'm assembling the video
OK, this was probably a boring post and it deals with some of the less exciting aspects of video creation but it's all essential stuff and honestly, I enjoy this process. It gives me a chance to review all the footage, I can organize it, mark it and in some cases just trash the clips that will never be used
In the meantime, I did cut a little music video/trailer video that can be viewed here on my other blog
Well, sometimes you can. When Collette and I are at some festival and I want to cut the footage into a music video, I can do just that, pull the footage into Final Cut, lay down my music track and start cutting
That will not work for this new project. There is no script for this video, not formally. I have a pretty solid idea of where I want things to go but I have yet to finish shooting. I'm still waiting to do my final shoot with Nadia, where I will have her narrate her footage from our day at the Expo
Still, I want to start organizing things. Post production is a lot more than just editing and music and graphics.
Right now, while I'm waiting for my final shoot, I'm concerned with two areas: Logging footage and Legal.
I'll deal with Legal first. I have no intentions of the finished video ever going to broadcast. But I will be posting it on social media (and perhaps some unsocial media) and I will be sending it to whatever "film" festivals I can get away with. That is a different level of legal concern than broadcast but it's still a concern.
Film festivals, amateur or not, like everything neat and tidy. You have to prove rights to your footage, your music, locations and to all principles involved in the production.
I will of course have Nadia and Brandon (her Spiderman) sign a release form that I've worked up. They were not the only people that I have on cam. The interviews I did at the Ex break down into two categories: Fan streeters and Organization Interviews
The streeters were just fans I corralled and had give me a minute or two on cam. I am not terribly concerned with these. I made of point to record them as they gave me consent to film them and that should cover it.
Besides talking to fans, I talked to a few orgainizations/groups who were at the Expo to promote themselves. Groups like The Toronto Steampunk Society and Superheroes for Charity were at the Ex to raise awareness of their group and to raise money for charity. I also talked to a non profit LARP group (Live Action Role Playing) who where there to drum up new members
For these people I'm going to need release forms, not just for the person but for the group. And I'm going to want proper contact info so I can credit them. They of course gave me consent to film but because they represent a group of people, I want to make sure I'm covered and beyond that, I support their causes and want to credit them. No matter how organized they are, they are fans and they are not looking for a profit
The other legal concern is locations. Very often film fests want to make sure you have permission to shoot in any venues in your film. Fan Expo itself is very liberal in its allowances for video. It's really a fantastic thing. You see camera crews all over the Ex and not just from TV and online stations. I felt very comfortable shooting there and never had an issue from the event staff .. except when I was standing in the wrong place. Hey, welcome to my world
Still, I will probably send them an email, let them know what I'm doing and get a response. And, again, I definitely want to properly credit them. After all, the Expo itself may emerge as the "star" of the video
The other location concern is the venue that hosted the Expo, the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. This is just as important, perhaps more so, than the Expo. This is the physical venue in which I was shooting and what film festivals are concerned with. Again, I'm hoping I'm covered because of the event itself. And I also want to credit them
I want to start this process now. I am a long ways from a finished product but while I'm waiting for my shoot with Nadia and before I get lost in the editing, I want to make sure I have this covered.
Now we come to logging footage. I began this process when I took the shots off the cam and put them on my computer. My cam can shoot in a variety of formats. For this shoot I chose HD 1080p at 60 frames per second. This gives me the best possible quality and because most web hosting sites want to compress your video (usually to 720 sometimes 1080) I feel that shooting at double the normal frame rate of 30 frames per second gives me the best chance of keeping my footage as clean as possible Plus, the slo mo is awesome
My Sony records the footage to its own internal hard drive. It compresses, or wraps, the footage to MTS files that can not be edited, not by Final Cut, not by any editing system. So I have to unwrap the files in order to be able to edit them. I use a program called Clirpwrap and unwrap the files to Apple's ProRes 422 standard, which keeps the files at their original resolution and makes for easy editing in Final Cut
After each day of shooting I downloaded the files to my computer, unwrapping them in the process. This cleared off the cam's hard drive and allowed me to do my initial orgainiztion: I targeted the unwrapped clips to a folder for each day of the Expo. Labelled them Thursday, Friday etc.
In traditional edits, like for a drama, I would log all the shots, pen and paper or with a computer logging program, describing each shot and it's location so that later, in the edit suite, I can quickly assemble these shots to match the script. In this case, at this point, I don't have a script. Eventually I will write some narration and if Nadia does her VO, that will constitute the script. What I need to do now is figure out what I have to make that latter process easier. In a sense, logging the clips is like writing a rough draft of a script
Some of the how I want to organize is obvious; for instance I want to put all the interviews into one location. That way, not matter how the video goes, I can easily find those clips. Now, you can do this kind of organization right in Final Cut. I can bring in folders from the computer, like the folders of clips organized by day and then create new folders, what FC calls Bins. I would rather do this work in my Mac's Finder. I created a folder called Interviews and dragged all of those clips over from the Day folders. It's easier to do in the Finder because I can expand the clips in the graphic interface so that they are easily identifiable.
This will be a rinse and repeat process. I can sub-folder this (yes, I just made up a verb, deal with it) as much as I desire. Folders for all cosplay, a folder for all footage from the North Building, a folder for all footage from the South building, a folder each for Celebs, Comics, Horror, etc Hopefully this will make it easier later on as I'm assembling the video
OK, this was probably a boring post and it deals with some of the less exciting aspects of video creation but it's all essential stuff and honestly, I enjoy this process. It gives me a chance to review all the footage, I can organize it, mark it and in some cases just trash the clips that will never be used
In the meantime, I did cut a little music video/trailer video that can be viewed here on my other blog
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
FINAL FAN EXPO SHOOT
So Sunday was the last day of Toronto Fan Expo and thereby (duh) the last day of my shoot. It was the day I was supposed to meet up with Nadia and follow her through her Fan Expo experience
When I first envisioned this project I was thinking I would follow around some ardent fan as they interacted with the rest of Nerdom. Well, that is not what I got. Nadia is not a fan nor a nerd nor a geek. She came in costume as Black Cat but she is not really a cosplayer either. She is a roleplayer but not the sort you would find at a family friendly event.
Nadia showed up complete with her Spiderman, her own photographer and a couple of other superheroes. Not to mention a backback filled with handcuffs, riding crops and caution tape she later used to bind poor old Spidey up.
Yeh, not your average fan.
She was very much in "play" mode and was not very interested in stopping and talking to me. Some of that had to do with her entourage, they quickly became lost and disorganized without her. Most of the day was spent me following Nadia as she was stopped every four feet to have her picture taken, being asked for interviews etc
It did not take long for the play bag to get opened and soon Spidey was handcuffed, wrapped in caution tape, collared and led around by Nadia on a leash. I was curious to see what the reactions from the giant crowd would be and they were overwhelmingly positive. There were a lot of giggles, many "holy shit look at that" and from one little boy "Daddy, what did Spiderman do???"
It was interesting how some of the dedicated comic nerds seemed to totally disregard the fetish aspect of the scene and concentrate on the nuances of the costumes "That's the Black Cat from Issue 20" "Oh no, I would say it was from earlier than that" etc etc
Although mainstream comics probably do not dabble much in fetish it certainly is a large component in the fan scene. Nadia was attracted to some of the cosplay elements like corsets and waspies of course but there was also a lot of art on display that almost mirrored her play.
I know that that fan fiction, stories written purely by fans, often veer into the erotic and two of the most popular areas are LGBT and fetish. Fifty Shades of Grey, after all, started out as fan fiction based on the Twilight vampire books
An interesting moment happened when Spiderman (real name Brandon) asked Nadia to reverse the roles. So he collared her and led her on the leash. Miss Nadia was clearly unamused. More interestingly, there was very little reaction from the crowd. They seemed much more interested when Nadia was in control
As I followed them around I began to wonder how all of this would fit into my video. As I stated in an earlier post it's counter intuitive to shoot all the B roll before you do the principle shoot. How am I going to bring all this together; hours of convention footage and interviews with eager fans and Nadia playing our her fetish games on the convention floor
What I need is context.
My first instinct was to gather some shots of Nadia as she encountered certain events on the floor, showing her the footage and getting her reaction on cam. Then I could cut that into the video, perhaps mostly as voice over. Then I could contrast that with the other interviews I have, showing the diversity of experiences people are seeking when they go to the expo
Or, I could further explore the fetish elements of fandom, from costplay and art (which is ripe with stilettos and corsets and chicks getting tied up) to the fan fiction to roleplaying. That would require more info, back ground research and really, more interviews with people into the fan-comic-fetish scene, not just Nadia's perspective. That sounds like a whole other video to me, and perhaps I will go there but that would be a larger project with much more work ahead
At this point I need to touch base with Nadia, get some interviews from her, try to get that context before I can even determine if I have an actual video here
When I first envisioned this project I was thinking I would follow around some ardent fan as they interacted with the rest of Nerdom. Well, that is not what I got. Nadia is not a fan nor a nerd nor a geek. She came in costume as Black Cat but she is not really a cosplayer either. She is a roleplayer but not the sort you would find at a family friendly event.
Nadia showed up complete with her Spiderman, her own photographer and a couple of other superheroes. Not to mention a backback filled with handcuffs, riding crops and caution tape she later used to bind poor old Spidey up.
Yeh, not your average fan.
She was very much in "play" mode and was not very interested in stopping and talking to me. Some of that had to do with her entourage, they quickly became lost and disorganized without her. Most of the day was spent me following Nadia as she was stopped every four feet to have her picture taken, being asked for interviews etc
It did not take long for the play bag to get opened and soon Spidey was handcuffed, wrapped in caution tape, collared and led around by Nadia on a leash. I was curious to see what the reactions from the giant crowd would be and they were overwhelmingly positive. There were a lot of giggles, many "holy shit look at that" and from one little boy "Daddy, what did Spiderman do???"
It was interesting how some of the dedicated comic nerds seemed to totally disregard the fetish aspect of the scene and concentrate on the nuances of the costumes "That's the Black Cat from Issue 20" "Oh no, I would say it was from earlier than that" etc etc
Although mainstream comics probably do not dabble much in fetish it certainly is a large component in the fan scene. Nadia was attracted to some of the cosplay elements like corsets and waspies of course but there was also a lot of art on display that almost mirrored her play.
I know that that fan fiction, stories written purely by fans, often veer into the erotic and two of the most popular areas are LGBT and fetish. Fifty Shades of Grey, after all, started out as fan fiction based on the Twilight vampire books
An interesting moment happened when Spiderman (real name Brandon) asked Nadia to reverse the roles. So he collared her and led her on the leash. Miss Nadia was clearly unamused. More interestingly, there was very little reaction from the crowd. They seemed much more interested when Nadia was in control
As I followed them around I began to wonder how all of this would fit into my video. As I stated in an earlier post it's counter intuitive to shoot all the B roll before you do the principle shoot. How am I going to bring all this together; hours of convention footage and interviews with eager fans and Nadia playing our her fetish games on the convention floor
What I need is context.
My first instinct was to gather some shots of Nadia as she encountered certain events on the floor, showing her the footage and getting her reaction on cam. Then I could cut that into the video, perhaps mostly as voice over. Then I could contrast that with the other interviews I have, showing the diversity of experiences people are seeking when they go to the expo
Or, I could further explore the fetish elements of fandom, from costplay and art (which is ripe with stilettos and corsets and chicks getting tied up) to the fan fiction to roleplaying. That would require more info, back ground research and really, more interviews with people into the fan-comic-fetish scene, not just Nadia's perspective. That sounds like a whole other video to me, and perhaps I will go there but that would be a larger project with much more work ahead
At this point I need to touch base with Nadia, get some interviews from her, try to get that context before I can even determine if I have an actual video here
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