Today was the launch of the ReasonToLive.Ca website by Klinic and the Manitoba Suicide Line, with an event held at Klinics offices in Winnipeg. It’s a was a nice turnout, with local and national media there. Kudos to Tactica for the great job on the website, it looks great!.

We shot the video for this project a few months ago, and I was interested to see how it would be edited together. Usually I end up cutting footage myself that I shoot, but in this case another editor worked on it. Editing is such a craft, and a storytelling medium, that seeing how another storyteller interprets the footage I shot is not an experience I often have, and it can be a bit uneasy of a feeling, hoping that they do the footage justice.

As you can see below, the results are fantastic! The pacing is great, the music very fitting and the emotion conveyed through the edit fits perfectly what they were working to achieve. Great job all around, I’m glad that I was able to contribute to the final product. I don’t know if the footage from my Sony Z1U camera has ever looked so good!

Here are all 6 videos.

Suicide Affects Us All: You Can Help from Manitoba Suicide Line on Vimeo.

Suicide Affects Us All: A Story of Hope from Manitoba Suicide Line on Vimeo.

Suicide Affects Us All: John’s Story from Manitoba Suicide Line on Vimeo.

Suicide Affects Us All: Pearl’s Story from Manitoba Suicide Line on Vimeo.

Suicide Affects Us All: First Peoples Perspectives from Manitoba Suicide Line on Vimeo.

Suicide Affects Us All: Carson’s Story from Manitoba Suicide Line on Vimeo.

The Manitoba Film Training Expo 2009 DVDs are all finished up and delivered to Film Training Manitoba. There were only a few changes from early versions which made the post-production go by pretty quickly.

I ended up creating 3 separate videos, a 6:45 length feature about the Training Expo which had sections for the Stereoscopic 3d presentation, the Ben Davis Action workshop and the Music for Productions and Composers sessions; a 30 second version was also made. In addition, a separate video was made about the Poor Man’s Process workshop that took a week after the training expo.

FTM asked to have a version delivered that could be given to broadcasters and other media outlets when doing some promotional work. So in addition to a standard definition DVD, they were given MPEG4 files with the H.264 codec, both a SD version and a 720p version, which is the resolution of the original video. In addition, unmixed versions were supplied that had no graphics like name keys and lower thirds and also no music, just actualities and natural sound on separated channels.

Usually when completing projects I would lay them tape in this manner, with both a mixed and unmixed version, but with the advent of more tapeless acquisition formats I find myself less inclined to master to tape as well, instead I will keep hi-rez and medium-rez data versions, it really does depend on the project though, some long form projects I will still put to tape, and I imagine I will work it like that for a while still.

The full videos will be up on the Film Training Manitoba website soon.

MediaCircus.TV was glad to sponsor the Oak Park High School Short Film Night, which took place tonight with an encore screening tomorrow. We were treated to over an hours worth of high school student films, plus the debut of the high-end video done for Kerri Woelke’s song “Last Dance”.

I was impressed with the creativity of many of the short films, which showed originality in concepts and execution. The “Last Dance” video, which was lens on a RED One camera, was beautifully shot and well done. I am still amazed that this was put together by high school students, great job! Below is the video preview for the Short Film Night, including an excerpt from “Last Dance”.

Kilinic Community Health Care provides health, counselling and education services for people in Manitoba, with offices in Brandon and Winnipeg; one of the services they run is the Manitoba Suicide Line. The MSL is launching a new website (designed by Tactica) in the next few months to bring the hotline more attention and part of that launch includes video interviews with people affected by suicide.

A few weeks ago we traveled to Brandon Manitoba to shoot the first round of these interviews. I lived in Brandon for many years and got my start in media production while living there as an EFP/ENG camera operator for the recently closed TV station CKX-TV.  I enjoyed the chance to go back there and do some production. The morning of the shoot I had time to head to my alma-matter, Assiniboine Community College, to speak to current Media Production students who are in the same course I took many years ago.

The second set of interviews were done last week at Klinics head offices in Winnipeg.

The interviews were done first-person style, with the subjects looking directly at the camera, so that the visitors to their site will get a more personal message when they view them. Some of the interviewees were people that had attempted suicide, some were family members and/or friends of people that had completed suicide and some were councillors and people involved in their communities.

The subject matter was very different than anything I have worked on before. Talking to people about their very personal experiences in a sensitive subject was a humbling experience, and the people at Kilinic in Brandon and in Winnipeg were great to work with.

The videos and website launch will be highlighted here of course, I look forward to seeing them completed.

Last weekend Film Training Manitoba brought in William B. Davis, aka The Cigarette Smoking Man from the X-Files, to conduct a 5 day workshop with Winnipeg actors. There were 2 classes, an AM and a PM, that had a total of 13 participants.

MediaCircus.TV was hired to provide HD video recording and playback for the sessions, and create DVD’s for the actors of all of their takes. I was using the Sony XDCAM EX1 camera, which shoots on SxS memory cards, which is a perfect way of working for a project like this.

After a take was completed, I would switch the camera over to “media mode” where the material on the SxS cards would be accessed and  Mr. Davis would review the take with the class on a HD LCD TV, having instant HD playback of the scene that was just completed. It was a very efficient way to work.

Each participant did 3 scenes over the length of the course, with the rest of the time spent observing the others and taking part in the discussion. Myself as a non-actor, watching the process they went through in order to make their performances as real as possible was quite an education. I’ve worked with actors before on commercial and promotion shoots, but rarely in any sort of scripted dramatic venue, which is what most of the performances in this course were focused on.

The classes participants ranged from people new to the industry to folks that have been in it for quite some time. Some people were getting back into acting after taking a hiatus to raise their family, and some of the participants I recognized from from other Film Training Manitoba workshops that I have either attended or been hired to provide video services for.

I’ll admit that I was somewhat intimidated at first working with William B. Davis (or ”Bill” as he suggested I call him)  having been quite an X-Files fan during it’s original run. I rarely get star-struck when working with well known people, and I wasn’t here either, though Bill carried a certain demeanor with him that left me in awe for the fist few days.   

As we would get ready for a scene I would do some basic lighting to flood the area with a lot of light, there wasn’t enough time to do proper dramatic lighting custom for each scene, and that wasn’t the point of the workshop.  Lighting is one of those things that makes a huge difference in the quality of a shot, so even just having flood lighting made a difference.

Between the lighting, the HD playback and the speed with which we were switching scenes (the workshop participants often would help move things in changing scenes) we moved along at an efficient pace and Bill remarked that this was a “high-end” workshop. That felt good to hear. He has been on numerous film and TV sets (including 9 years on the X-Files) , and has been in theatre for many years, and he called our little workshop production high-end. He wasn’t comparing to those big productions of course, but to most workshops that might have a small handycam with a TV set to playback material on, while we had proper lighting, mics, instant HD playback and DVD production and duplication on site. Film Training Manitoba is raising the bar when it comes to bringing in people to train Winnipeg Actors and putting on workshops that will help the participants improve in their skills, and I’m glad to be a part of it. 

 The Winnipeg Actors involved were;

Shannon Jacques, Dana Horrox, Dean Harder, Ashley Hirt, Cindy Marie Small, Sherry Coffey, Krysia Andrzejczak, Dan Augusta, Janet Shum, Jason Malloy, Tyhr Trubiak, Yvette Jones and Ali Tataryn.

Last weekend was the Manitoba Film Training Expo, put on by Film Training Manitoba. I was pleased to be hired back for a third year in a row to provide video production services for the weekend. I took footage of the various workshops and conducted interviews with several conference instructors and antendees.

In addition, this year as part of the package I am training people on Camera Assist, Editing and Motion Graphics with After Effects, they are Film Training Manitoba after all.

Over the course of the next month the footage that wa shot at the Expo will be edited by 2 students along with the creation of motion graphics to spruce up the final product. Once the training is done then I will take what the student did and make a final video that Film Training Manitoba will use for their archives.

The video I made from last years Expo is now up on Film Training Manitoba’s newly revamped website.

Here are some stills from the video that we shot this past weekend.

The Manitoba Workplace Health and Safety Videos that were produced in 2007 and 2009 for the Eritrean and Punjabi Communities have been put on-line by the Occupational Health Centre. They appeared today on Vimeo, which will hopefully benefit the larger Punjabi and Eritrean Communities in Manitoba, where previously they could only be viewed on DVD.

They were a lot of work to produce and I’m proud of the team at the OHC and MediaCircus.TV for putting together such unique videos.

Manitoba Workplace Health and Safety – Eritrean Community from George Harrison on Vimeo.

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Manitoba Workplace Health and Safety – Punjabi Community from George Harrison on Vimeo.

I’ve been doing a lot of dubs lately from DV tape (both mini-DV and HDV) to DVD for clients, particularly the Eritrean Community of Winnipeg We’ve been meeting.a lot lately, working on helping them get funding for a future, big project. One of the things I was making DVD’s of all of the footage we taken so far, about 10 tapes worth. They are going to be relying a lot on the community members to assist in completing the project, so they have timcode dubs of the footage for them to look at.

It took a lot of work to make that happen. I captured all of the material into Avid, added the generate>timecode effect and then exported out QT References. By doing the export I was able to render all of the sequences at the same time. Rending a timecode effect on 8 hours of footage, even on fast system, is going to take some time. I went to sleep and when I woke up, voila, it was done.

I took those QT reference files and brought them into Sorenson Squeeze to create the MPEG2 files I would need for DVD. Rendering all of those hours of footage into good quality MPEG2’s was going to take a long time as well, so I went away for the weekend and let them finish. When I came home, again, voila, it was done!

Tonight I brought all of these videos into Adobe Encore, let the audio transcode within Encore and burnt one disc per original shoot tape. I thought the burning process would actually take longer but it turned out to be the quickest step of the whole workflow.

Now the DVD’s are burnt, printed on (I use ink jet printable DVD’s, looks slick) and in nice cases, ready for delivery to the client.

About a month ago I reported that we were going to be working with non-profit organization Teen Touch. I contacted them and offered our services pro-bono because I heard them on a local radio show mention that they had about 50% of their funding cut and were having a hard time getting by. I suggested that a marketing video directed at corporate sponsors might help them meet their financial needs, and that MediaCircus.TV would be willing to donate our time to putting together the project.

Since we met with Teen Touch in July to talk about the video it seems that they have decided that they need to shut down their operations. We wish the folks there at Teen Touch good luck and give them thanks for the what they and their volunteers have done over the years in helping people.