Events Rewind

Hi folks. This latest Webinar features Tips and Tricks for Creating Deko-signature Motion Effects. Deko Motion effects are well known to artists and operators as the easiest and fastest to create and deliver to air. Much of this because the Motion Editor toolset is so very intuitive.

This Webinar will take you through some special tips and tricks for:

     > Creating dynamic character glows and blurs

     > Animating live video clips

     > Creating 3D effects using Depth Rotation, Z-axis and Z-depth parameters

     > and much more!

Here’s a short segment on creating Deko Motion Behaviors for you to preview.

View this entire on-demand Webinar by registering online today.

Enjoy and look for more of these to come!

Teicia

Avid Deko Demo Days

See in person why many broadcasters still prefer Avid Deko real time graphics systems. Stop by your local Avid Deko Demo Event, ask questions and get answers from Avid Deko pros. You'll also be able to see the newly released features of Avid Deko 3000HD version 5.0, including:

• PowerClips
• Z-Depth animation
• Motion-in-Motion
• Auto-Motion

Chicago Event

When:
Tuesday, September 16th 2008
1:00pm - 8:00pm

Where:
Hotel 71
71 East Wacker Drive
Chicago, Illinois 60601

Register Now - Chicago



New York City Event

When:
Tuesday, September 23rd 2008
1:00pm - 8:00pm

Where:
Avid Technology
575 Lexington Ave.
14th Floor
New York, NY 10022

Register Now - New York City



Washington, D.C. Event

When:
Tuesday, September 30th 2008
1:00pm - 8:00pm

Where:
Renaissance Mayflower Hotel
1127 Connecticut Avenue NW
Washington, District Of Columbia

Register Now - Washington, D.C.

 

We hope to see you there!

The eagerly awaited Avid® DS 10 was introduced to a standing-room only crowd at the Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles on August 20.  What's new in DS v10 you ask?  Avid® DS 10 runs on a new high-performance platform and includes key features such as full color-managed workflows, advanced color correction capabilities, Interplay® support, improved conform options, GPU real-time processing, additional dual-link feature support, integration with Avid shared storage solutions, and a new stereoscopic 3D container.

The featured presenter for the evening was Michael Forrest, winner of 4 Emmy awards and one of the first instructors in the world certified to teach Avid DS.  He has been employed as a Broadcast Designer/Senior Editor, using Avid DS, Symphony, Media Composer, Photoshop and After Effects for the past ten years. Michael shared some footage of television commercials and film trailer work which he had done and explained how DS 10 was his product of choice for compositing, color correction and more. 

Avid Applications Editor Kent Petersen demos DS 10 for a group of guests.   

Find out about all of the DS v10 features and much more at: http://www.avid.com/products/ds-nitris/index.asp

During the Rhode Island International Film Festival, I had the opportunity to see an inspiring film by one of Avid’s customers, Alex Houston. Alex submitted his film, “A Swim Lesson: the Nick Irons Story” to the festival. Not only was the film selected to be shown at the festival as one of the 300 out of over 3,000 submitted; it won first place in the Short Documentary category. The 40-minute film, based on the book by Nick Irons, chronicles his 1997 fundraising swim down the length of the Mississippi River to benefit multiple sclerosis research.  He swam the river for the sake of his father, who suffers from the disease.

I had the opportunity to talk to Alex about his experience making the film. Nick and Alex went to Boston College together. When Alex heard about what Nick did, the first thing he said was, ‘Tell me you have footage of this.’ He knew right away that he wanted to make this film.  “This is such a compelling story, so much more than just a fundraising event.  This is the story of a family, and about sacrifice.  It’s a character study in perseverance and love.” says producer/director Houston.

How did it transpire that you directed the Nick Irons story?

Nick and I knew each other in college but had fallen out of touch after graduating in 1994.  I never watched the news that much, so I was never aware of the swim.  Right around our 10-year reunion I found out he was living in the DC area near me and tracked him down, because he was always one of those people I just had a good gut feeling about.  When he told me he “swam the Mississippi River,” knowing he was a competitive swimmer in school I asked, “Oh really?  Where?” thinking he swam across.  “No,” he said, “the length of the Mississippi River.”  The next words out of my mouth (after an unprintable expletive), were “Tell me you have footage of this.  Dude, we’re making a documentary.”  It was a no-brainer that I had to make this film.

How long did it take?

After I read his book for background, I started interviewing and logging the footage in earnest in early 2005, and continued cutting whenever I had a free moment from bread-and-butter projects right up until March 2008.

What equipment (hardware/software) did you use to create the film?

I shot the interviews on a Panasonic DVX-100B at 24pA with the “Cinelike-D” gamma setting using an anamorphic lens.  The home movies were shot on one of the better consumer-grade Sony Hi-8 camcorders available back in 1997 when Nick did the swim, and we had some news source material from BetaSP and DVCPro.  We did the editing on an XPressProHD system after converting all the BetaSP to DV with timecode, and onlined and color-corrected on a Media Composer Mojo.  Migrating the project from XPressPro to Media Composer was seamless.  Copy the project, plug in the drives, and bingo, it’s there.  Some of the Indiana Jones-style red-line map animations were created in After Effects, but we also did a lot of the straight photo treatments with the built-in Avid Pan and Zoom filter.  The acoustic score was recorded on a Mac/Logic system.  It was definitely a cross-platform effort.  There’s still lots to be done.  I’m hoping when we get distribution we can go to a Symphony and do a surround mix on a ProTools workstation.

What were some of the challenges you had making the film?

The biggest overall challenges (apart from working on a shoestring budget) were making an 11-year-old story relevant, getting beyond the superficial “believe-it-or-not” factor, keeping it moving, and going against industry trends.

Nick had plenty of press that summer, even going on Good Morning America a bunch of times, so some people thought it was old news.  I actually had a pitch meeting in 2007 with an industry gatekeeper – let’s just say a representative of a major independent film incubator somewhere out west – and this person told me, “So you’ve got a doc about a fundraising event.  Big deal.”   It was almost impossible to convince jaded industry people that Swim Lessons is a timeless story about a family, not a rehash of a stale news story.  I’m so happy the audience and the jury at RIIFF got what the film is all about!

Also I knew the film had to be a short right from the get-go to keep it moving.  Editors always talk about “killing babies,” those perfect takes, priceless moments, or interesting scenes that are good in their own right but end up interrupting the flow of the film.  Believe me, I killed plenty of babies on this one!  For structure, Kendra (my co-producer) and I used the Mississippi River itself as inspiration.  Sometimes it doubles back on itself and heads north for a few miles, but it’s always moving down-river.  We had to find the places where Nick and his family struggled, and make those the key turning points in the film, then craft the emotional arc around them, an arc which isn’t necessarily chronological.  So we did that with the structure of the film; between scenes of Nick on the river, we doubled back to the scenes about the events in his life that led him there.

Finally, there are so many “sky is falling” and “sick people in hospital” advocacy-docs out there it’s starting to define the genre.  To me, that’s low-hanging dramatic fruit.  You don’t have to go to a critical care ward of a hospital or some war-torn Third-World country to find drama.  Swim Lessons stands out because it’s a feel-good story, but still gives the audience that necessary element of struggle.  Dramas can have happy endings.  Just look at Michael Phelps.  Even he had a moment where it looked like he might not make it.  I’m really hoping that with my fellow Baltimore native’s Olympic success, interest in swimming will translate to interest in Swim Lessons!

Were there any problems using the original source video?

One of the biggest technical challenges was working with 30i/1.33 and 24p/1.78 source material in the same project.  I was pretty adamant about it being a 24p project.  I wanted it to feel like film, so I shot all the interviews at 24pA/1.78.  Converting the footage was pretty crazy and I’m flabbergasted it actually worked.  We didn’t have the budget to run the stuff through a realtime frame rate converter, so we had to do it with software.  The process was really complicated, and involved several stages of capturing and exporting my selects to end up with Quicktime reference files which we then used After Effects to convert to 24p.  The end result has a really warm, grainy, blurry feel, like it was shot on Super-8 film, not Hi-8 video.  It worked, but it was a lot of work!  I sure wished for the ability to edit multiple frame rates on the same timeline.  Some competing products claim to be able to do this but I can’t imagine it would look as good.  I really hope this feature will be included in the next release of Media Composer, along with the ability to control the frame blending.  I know I’m not the only filmmaker with this issue.

The 1.33/1.78 aspect issue was also a challenge.  I shot the retrospective interviews in 1.78 because I wanted there to be a clear indication that these people were thinking back.  It was important to the story for the audience to remember that back in 1997, life was different in many ways.

Unfortunately that left me with aspect ratio issues.  Blowing up the 1.33 to fill the 1.78 frame was out of the question.  I wanted to keep as much of the raster as possible because only 360 NTSC lines would look like garbage projected on a theater screen.  We tried everything to make the horizontal fill the frame:  A straight stretch, a “smart stretch” (done with the Bezier Warp effect in AE), similar to what you see on many home flat panels these days, a pillarbox with duplicated, stretched video beneath and fuzzy borders, etc., all purely aesthetic treatments.

But the solution was simple once I refocused on what the home movies did for the story.  They put the audience on the river, literally looking through his brother Andy’s eyes.  I decided it was important to preserve what he saw though the viewfinder without distorting or masking it in any way to give the audience the most authentic experience.

We went with a straight 1.33 pillarbox with about an 18% grey background to mitigate the hard edges when dissolving between 1.33 b-roll and 1.78 present-day interviews.  Even though it’s not the most aesthetically pleasing solution, it ended up working for the film.  The net effect is a certain sense of claustrophobia, which helps the audience feel the limitations Nick and his family had back in 1997…no widescreen equals no wireless Internet, no GPS-enabled digital cell phones with navigation, no blogs, travel websites, etc.  It was the Stone Age compared with how somebody could do the same thing today.  It really emphasizes what an amazing feat it was to coordinate all the logistics and swim the length of the Mississippi River, all for his dad.

American Cinema Editors (ACE) is the premiere membership association for professional feature film and television editors in the world. This year, ACE produced a weekend long event purely focused on the art of editing. The program included panel presentations on film, television and animation editing, an evening reception with the ACE Board members and the “Prime Cuts” event, a joint presentation of ACE and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. Avid was the exclusive Platinum sponsor for this weekend event.

The event was extremely well attended with a sell-out crowd of 100 attendees.  The attendees were a very diverse group and included students from USC, UCLA, Video Symphony, Inner City Filmmakers and Chapman University, among others. There were members of Hollywood Post Alliance as well as subscribers to Post Magazine. Also, there were quite a few working assistant editors who wanted a chance to meet and learn from the established editors.

On Friday evening, the opening panel consisted of feature film editors talking about how they got their start in the field of professional editing. After the panel, a cocktail reception was held and the attendees had the opportunity to mingle with the panelists and ACE board members.  We set up a Avid demo area at the party and Michael Krulik, Senior Applications Editor, showed the new Media Composer v3.0 software running on a Mac.  

Due to the overwhelming success of the program, it will most likely be held on an annual basis.  Our congratulations goes out to American Cinema Editors and everyone who participated in this terrific event. 

The 7 day, Rhode Island International Film Festival wrapped up on Sunday.  They had record attendance and a lot of fun was had by all.  There were 300 filmakers there representing their submitted films.  The Key to City of Providence was presented to actor, John Ratzenberger (aka Cliff Clavin).  On Thursday there was a film forum at Brown University and Avid's Michael Phillips presented on the panel titled "Changing Technologies in Film".  Michael, having just finished his own film was a great source of information.  He touched on some important key components of filmmaking.  His introduction made some of the basic points such as "have a good story", "maybe you don't want to be both Editor and Director", and then there is always the options of good, fast and cheap.  It can't always be all three so there are choices to be made.  Michael then spoke on the new file based camera technologies.  He gave an overview of the Sony, Panasonic and Red Cameras and the pros and cons of each.  Michael also discussed the various deliver methods and also some helpful advise on how to get your film seen.

Also presenting on the panel was Mark Almark Altekruse, Director of Sales and Marketing for Abaltat.  He demonstrated their music composing software Muse.  This neat software will analyze the colors on your video and create the music for you.  It provides a wide choice of musical genre and has seamless integration with Apple, Avid, Adobe and Media 100 editing applications. Mike Bell of Embee Studio also presented on Blue-Ray Authoring. 

Finishing up the Film festival on Sunday, August 10th, was the awards Brunch where the winning entries to the festival received their awards.  Awards were presented in a variety of categories.  Avid Technology also presented a copy of Media Composer Software to the winner of the "AVID's Student Filmmaking Achievement Award".  This years award went to Zia Anger, Director, Producer; Billy Feldman, Writer, Producer; and Ashley Connor, Cinematographer/DP for the film "Lover Boy". 

Synopsis:

For his ninth birthday Myles asks for nothing but wood. With his once vivacious grandmother slowly dying, and his burdened mother struggling for relevance he is constructing the everlasting life he desires. Within this wintry upstate New York world, there are indeed mighty forces at play.

Link:  Avid Student Filmaking Achievement Award Winner

The Oregon Public Broadcast studio was the site for Avid’s latest New Thinking event stop. Local editors and engineers from both broadcast facilities and post production houses and Avid enthusiasts had the opportunity to hear from Patrick McLean, Director of Product Marketing for Avid Technology. Patrick discussed Avid’s “thinking” behind “New Thinking” and the commitment to providing customers with a complete solution – a response to a customer problem. Questions from the audience provided great discussion and talking points.

Corey Tedrow and Tony Dragon, both Avid Product Specialists demoed various Avid broadcast and post production workflows and showed some of the newest features found in the latest product releases.

For a complete list of what Avid gear was shown at OPB or for further questions please contact Ken Sargent by emailing ken_sargent@avid.com.

Check out the photos below from the event! 

Next stop Baton Rouge, LA on September 3^rd. Register now to attend!

This summer, Avid Technology and local reseller Productions brought the New Thinking tour to the sunny shores of Honolulu, Hawaii.  

Avid Senior Applications Editor, Michael Krulik introduced the crowd to Avid's DX editing family including Media Composer Nitris DX, Symphony DX and Mojo DX, as well the latest editing software Media Composer v3.0 running on the Mac. Afterwards, attendees had the opportunity to take a close up look at the systems and talk with Michael and a few of the Avid account managers.  "Mahalo" to all of our friends, customers and prospects for the warm and enthusiastic welcome to their Island. 

Avid recently participated at the 2008 DGA Digital Day in Los Angeles.  It is an annual one-day event hosted by the Directors Guild of America as an educational and networking opportunity for their membership and invited guests. The agenda features presentations and vendor exhibits on the latest digital technologies. This year’s theme was content creation for new media distribution and included seminars on new internet platforms, performance capture and the 3D pipeline and workflow.  3D technology continues to be the hot industry topic and this year's audience got to experience a "3D Home Viewing Experience" which was filled with people all day. 

The vendor exhibits were extremely diverse this year with demonstrations of digital cameras, 3D scanning and animation software, 3D visualization technologies, color correction software, and, of course, the latest editing systems.  We presented the latest version of Avid Media Composer software running on the Mac, as well as the new Media Composer Nitris DX, to a capacity crowd of over 450 attendees.

Hey folks, for anyone out there interested in learning more about the Deko graphics system -- here's a great way. Avid just launched a Deko Webinar Series. The first, What's New in Deko 5.0, is now live on the web. Here's a short segment on PowerCips.

You can watch the entire 27-minute presentation on-demand by registering online today.

Some background: Avid Deko is a real time graphics system, delivering high quality graphics and effects for a variety of needs including live news and sports broadcasts, post-production and even plugin graphics for news and editing.

The next webinar, Deko Motion Effects Tips and Tricks, will launch on Aug 26. If you're interested in the next session, stay tuned for registration information.

Thanks,

Teicia Joffe

PS: Here's that link again to register to view the entire presentation on-demand.

Now in its twelfth year, the Rhode Island International Film Festival™, (RIIFF) will take place August 5-10, 2008. This is the largest public film festival in New England and is also an Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences qualifying event. RIIFF is designed to foster contact among film directors, producers, distributors, backers and audiences. Filmmakers will have an opportunity to share new film product, test-market films in development, and share the film-making process with industry peers, students, and the general public.

The Festival's goal is to recognize achievement and innovation in a variety of filmmaking and storytelling disciplines while providing an opportunity to secure wider distribution. The Festival also actively supports and encourages film preservation and its restoration, thus ensuring future generations of this unique artistic medium.

On August 7^th at 10:00 AM, Avid’s Michael Phillips will be presenting at the Film forum on the “Changing Technologies in Film”, where you can learn about new technologies available and how you can make it work for your independent films. This will take place at the Brown University's Hunter Auditorium on 89 Waterman Stree in Providence.

Avid will also be hosting a Rhode Island User Group Reception on Saturday, August 9^th, at 5:00PM also at Brown University's MacMillan auditorium on 167 Thayer Street, across the path from the Sciences Library.  Avid’s Bob Russo will be on hand to present the tools and techniques for the filmmaker.

Avid will also be presenting an award at the Sunday Awards Brunch to the winner of the AVID's Student Filmmaking Achievement Award!

During the Festival there will be a screening of 297 films selected from a submission of over 3,000. One of films being screened at the Festival was directed by Avid customer Alex Houston. The film, Swim Lessons: The Nick Irons Story, will be screening Wed, August 6, at 5PM at the Columbus Theater in Providence.

For more information on the Film Festival and to purchase tickets go to: RIIFF

Hope to see you there!

The Dog Days of summer… a perfect time to take a break from the serious User Group demos and presentations.  A perfect time to spend a hot evening with a cold beer and mingle with the friends and colleagues you’ve met throughout the year.

That’s exactly what the Boston Avid User Group did last week.  With a small threat of isolated thunder storms, a crowd of about 50 made their way to the Avid Tewksbury headquarters for a BBQ.  Yes there was a brief rain shower as we took cover under the tent for about 15 minutes.  The rain did make the 90+ degrees a bit cooler.  The Boston User Group members were joined by 15 or so Avid employees from various departments…  SQA, support, engineering, product marketing, tech pubs, online marketing, field marketing, sales, engineering, operations and manufacturing.

We all enjoyed burgers, hotdogs, caesar salad, pasta salad, corn on the cob etc. while we mingled and discussed future user group meetings, what others were up to, and had the opportunity to discuss the future of products and any issues or concerns with Avid Product Designers and managers.

Several attendees had the opportunity to tour the manufacturing facility.  Ed Weingartner, Director of Manufacturing operation, gave the tour.

Ed showed the factory commissioning room – This room was built so we could offer a customer the service of having the opportunity to see their system up and running executing their workflow.

Next were the environmental test chambers where Avid products are put through some very stressful temperature, shock, and vibration testing to be sure we have a solid enterprise product.

Then the on going reliability test area where the Quality group sets up a number of different Avid products and runs them 7 by 24 hours for 30 days.

MONDAY, JUNE 9, 2008 - DAY 15

I began cutting Scene 2 today with my editor Gena Bleier. She was the editor on Andrew Wagner's STARTING OUT IN THE EVENING and is a joy to work with - a wonderful collaborator. The problem is that the scene is actually made up of two separate scenes intercut as a "parallel action," and one of the scenes isn't complete. The reason: I didn't finish shooting it. The reason I didn't finish shooting it: 1) one of my actors (who shall remain nameless) showed up to set 40 minutes late for the afternoon call time, and 2) some actors didn't know their lines.

There was a reading of Dee Rees's feature screenplay PARIAH tonight in the Wasatch Room. It went really well, as it is a well written, funny and poignant Black *** coming-of-age tale set in Brooklyn.

TUESDAY, JUNE 10, 2008 - DAY 16

It snowed today at breakfast. It was amazing because it wasn’t even that cold. According to the Sundance people who were here on The Mountain earlier than everyone else, winter ended the third week of May (i.e. the week before us directors got here).

If you look closely, you can see the snow falling in Utah's summer sky.

I spent the day editing Scene 2 again. Because one of the two scenes being intercut into the "parallel action" of Scene 2 is unfinished, there is definitely an imbalance in the overall scene. I also tried to use black "slugs" between the intercut scenes in a Jarmusch-esque editing experiment. I guess it will be determined whether or not this experiment worked tomorrow after Scene 2 is screened for the Creative Advisors.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11, 2008 - DAY 17

I screened Scene 2 for the Creative Advisors early in the afternoon. Afterwards we all assembled in the Wasatch Room to discuss the work. Apparently the Jim Jarmusch inspired black "slugs" between the intercut scenes didn't go over too well. Curtis Hanson (dir. L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, EIGHT MILE) thought that the “black outs hurt the scene,” and that the energy between the characters is most important in the scene. His advice was to “zero in on the moments your are getting and not getting” and then do pick ups for the moments you didn’t get. I agree: although the black outs initially helped solve a location issue (we were shooting in an empty stage for a tenement building courtyard and need the black outs to bridge a “spatial gap”), they eventually became a detriment to the scene.

In addition, one of the Creative Advisors, Gyula Gazdag (dir. HUNGARIAN FAIRYTALE), made me realize that not finishing the second scene of the two scenes comprising the "parallel action" was actually my fault - and not just in the classic sense that everything that happens on set is ultimately the director's fault. Gyula was one of the advisors that actually visited my set. While on it, he realized that instead of focusing on the meat of the second "scene" - the dramatic essence of the "scene" - I focused too much on getting the pretty dolly shots leading up to the meat. The lateness of one of the actors to set didn't actually hold me back because I used that time to practice one of the dolly shots with a stand-in.

The rest of the day I spent rehearsing Scene 3 in Rehearsal Hall 1. Fernando Leon (dir. MONDAYS IN THE SUN) showed up to the rehearsal and quietly watched me work on the car interior scene with my actors sitting on some dining room chairs in front of a makeshift wooden steering wheel (since the actual car we are going to shoot in wasn't on set by then). Afterward we went over my shooting plan together and he offered some great suggestions for shot coverage in the car tomorrow.

Charles "Rock" Dutton (dir. THE CORNER) showed up for the Blocking Rehearsal and watched as I went over the shot coverage with my DP and crew. Afterward he spoke to the actors for quite a long time, telling them stories about Tupac in Hollywood, giving them suggestion about craft and advice on how to move forward in their careers. They were obviously psyched to be in his presence.

THURSDAY, JUNE 12, 2008 - DAY 18

I shot Scene 3 in Rehearsal Hall 1 today. Fernando Leon visited the set and seemed to have a good time watching us. I think we all - cast and crew - hit our stride today; we got everything we needed "in the can," and had time to experiment a little with the lighting of the closing shot of the scene.

The set: an empty studio with a car in it.

T.J., Lara and Carmen begin setting up the lights.

T.J., Andy and Jared build the "street light" rig. Jared eventually had to spin this thing in a wide arc over the top of the stationary car in order to make it look like the car was passing under street lights while driving. It actually worked really well.

The actors (from left to right) Anthony Gaskins (blocked by the camera), E.J. Bonilla, Shawn T. Andrew and Julian Joseph prepare for the scene.

Julian Jospeh prepares for an "over the shoulder" shot.

A view through the monitor.

"Hurry up and wait!" E.J. Bonilla (as Third) and Shawn T. Andrew (as Adrian).

And "Gumby," my Sound Mixer...is just plain crazy.

I met with Charles "Rock" Dutton at lunch. The guy is an inspiration, and he apparently really likes MEADOWLANDZ. He suggested I take the script to HBO. He thinks they would be interested in producing it. I would love for him to be involved in some capacity - maybe as a producer.

Bob Elswitt (d.p. PUNCH DRUNK LOVE) screened THERE WILL BE BLOOD tonight. During the Q&A he told crazy stories about shooting the film with P.T. Anderson. They definitely have an interesting work method and philosophy. Apparently all the crewmembers have to be "filmmakers" and no one yells "action" or "cut" - everyone just kind of exists on the set in a perpetual state of readiness. Elswitt says the process allows for some really great work (i.e. performances), but can be seriously exhausting.

FRIDAY, JUNE 13, 2008 - DAY 19

I edited Scene 3 with Gena pretty much all day. It was one of those strange editing days in which, at first, the scene seemed fairly easy to cut, then, as the day progressed, the scene seemed subtly problematic. More specifically, I based the coverage of the scene around a master shot in the backseat of the car that just didn't want to cut with the other footage. At first we decided that the shot just wasn't going to work because it was an interior of the car and was too jarring when cut into the scene from the shots taken from through the windows from the exterior. We experimented with cutting around it and after this proved futile I insisted on using the backseat master. Eventually the shot ended up cutting pretty well with the rest of the footage and we realized that the problem wasn't so much the angle as it was the "cut points." Once we stopped experimenting with other angles to make the scene work, and more with the cut points of the mastershot, we found a solution. Again, Gena was nothing short of amazing, as lot of Creative Advisors were milling in and out of the editing room, looking over her shoulder, and firing suggestions at the back of her head. She handled the combination of limited time and a packed editing room brilliantly.

SATURDAY, JUNE 14 - DAY 20

I screened Scene 3 for the Creative Advisors today and they all seemed to really like it. There were still some “notes,” of course, but I dare say it was an unequivocal success.

Gyula Gazdag (dir. HUNGARIAN FAIRYTALE) reinforced the fact that the issue with the backseat master shot initially “not cutting” had less to do with “angle” and more to do with “cut points.” Michael Almereyda (dir. HAMLET, NADJA) thought there was an “eerie oddness” in my light and sound draining experiment at the end of the scene. Charles “Rock” Dutton (dir. THE CORNER) thought the weariness of the characters was captured, partially due to the lack of music used in the scene. I had to admit that this had more to due with the lack of time given to us in the editing room. If I had another hour, I probably would have tried out some music – at least some hip-hop coming from the radio. I think he and Michael are right, though. There’s something about the eerie quietness of the scene that works.

Whatever happens in the final week, I will always have Scene 3.

The Seminole Hard Rock and Casino in Hollywood, Florida was the last stop of Avid's New Thinking tour for the summer.

On the evening of June 26th, 2008, digital media enthusiasts from all over the Greater Miami and Ft Lauderdale areas came out to witness, first-hand, Avid's hot, new editing line-up.

Greg Estes, Avid's Chief Marketing Officer, kicked off the meeting by explaining Avid's "thinking" behind "New Thinking: our commitment to quality, performance and value."

Avid Application Editors Bob Russo and Kevin Camoosa were on hand to demonstrate the new Avid Media Composer Nitris DX and Avid Symphony Nitris DX.

Avid Gold Premier Reseller, Virtual Media, was also present to answer any questions from the crowd.

We would like to thank all who participated in making this event a success. We would like to wish everyone a healthy and happy SUMMER, and we will see you all in the Fall in such cities as San Juan, PR; Baton Rouge, LA; and Dallas, TX!

Codex Digital presented Production 2.0, co-hosted by Avid Technology, FilmLight and Clairmont Camera, to a packed theatre at the Directors Guild of America on June 11.  This event highlighted how digital workflows allow people to acquire, view, test, edit, conform and finish material all the way to projection, at cinema quality with a small amount of equipment. The stage presentation was a live demonstration of all these concepts showing the perspective of an entire production from acquisition to delivery.  The goal of this presentation was to show the audience how the flow of information is fast, simple and interactive, how time and money can be saved and a great result is produced.