Adventures in Editing

Greetings! I just wanted to pop on here to mention that I have finally finished editing my sister’s independent storyboard sequence! Due to privacy, if you wish to view please private message me and I will provide you with the password for this link: There Goes the Neighborhood - Animatic

It was an absolute blast getting to work on this project, and a great challenge getting to see the project through from inception to the end. From recording the scratch dialogue, to discussing panel fixes, to the final rough mix in Avid, it was really exciting to get a taste of being in the lead editor chair.

I absolutely love animation editorial, and I’m so grateful for the opportunity to be able to practice my skills in a more laid back environment. Looking forward to continuing to hone my craft as time goes on!

Side Project Time!

Recently, my sister, Karina McBeth (INSTAGRAM LINK), approached me to collaborate with her on a personal project. As she is a professional storyboard artist, she decided to create a short story sequence for fun, and asked me to help cut the animatic for her.

Screencap of an Edit Session on Twitch

Personal Work Set Up!

It’s been an awesome challenge getting to fully dive in to editing this sequence as well as bounce ideas off of my sister. We’ve been running real time Edit Sessions thanks to the help of Twitch and Discord. Twitch allows us to run the cut back without any delays or snags in the playback, while Discord has given us a means of doing voice and video chat through a separate channel.

I can’t wait to eventually show you all the fruits of our labor. It’s a real passion project and has been a joy to work on. I’ll be sure to update here as soon as we’ve wrapped up. Until then, just know that we are tirelessly tinkering away on this and can’t wait to put it out in the world soon enough!

If you would like to follow along, be sure to check out my Instagram: the.bigchair . I’ve been starting to ramp us using this account a bit more, so stay tuned to see updates on it about work, editing, and other exciting side ventures!

Cheers!

The One and Only...VIVO!

The day is finally here! “Vivo” has officially been released on Netflix! I’m so incredibly proud of this film, and am so excited it's out there in the world to enjoy. It was an absolute blast and honor getting to work on this movie alongside such a talented group of artists and creatives (including my sister Karina McBeth who was a Storyboard Artist!). This was my first feature working as a 1st Assistant Editor and I thank my Editorial team for encouraging me through it all. It had a HUGE learning curve, and I'm so grateful for the patience they showed me each step of the way, allowing me to stumble and learn from my mistakes. I can’t express how excited I am to call this my first animated film that I have seen from beginning to end (previously had only gone up to the Layout stage). I hope you have fun getting to dive into the beautiful sights and sounds of "Vivo" soon enough. Congrats to Kirk and Brandon for directing such a enchanting film, and cheers to the crew!

Follow You

And so the adventure comes to an end. This past Saturday I flew back to Southern California, bringing my excursion in Dallas to a close.

My goodness, where to begin? This whole experience was such a lovely whirlwind filled with a lot of growth. This was the first time I had ever worked outside of LA, or even visited Texas for that matter. I was rather nervous about going in head first without knowing anything about the city or even getting to see the studio in person before I arrived. When I walked in on my first day, my head was swimming with questions and thoughts about how I would adjust. Would I be able to get around the city easily? What would the Editorial team be like? All of these fears were quelled two seconds later when I was introduced to the team I'd be working with for the next few months.

God not only gave me a fantastic Editorial group to work with, but a family that was extremely giving and loving. In no time at all, my homesickness subsided, and I was able to settle into my new environment with ease. Over the next few months we did the impossible of putting together 3 different screenings. It was a feat that couldn't have happened without the grace of God and the teamwork He instilled in us to push forward into the crazy hours and schedules set before us. And while tensions were high, we all still made time to check in with each other and catch up in between work.

I am going to miss each one of these Editorial comrades, and I hope that one day we'll be able to work together again. The camaraderie that comes with filmmaking is something that I treasure dearly and keeps me going in an industry filled with many ups and downs.

Thank you ReelFX for a memorable time and enjoy some chocolate pie on my behalf. Until next time, partner!

AE workspace attached to Editor's office

ReelFX Exterior

"Ugly Dolls" Editorial Team!

Rainy days in Texas

Walking Along

Hello everyone! My goodness it has been quite some time since I last wrote a blog post. A mixture of me wrapping up my job with Audience in October and the holidays put my update stream on hold. But I am back now and have some great news!

Reel_FX_Animation_Studios_Logo.svg.png

As of January, I am currently working as an Assistant Editor with Reel FX on the animated feature film, Ugly Dolls. I've never worked outside of Southern California for a job, and getting to come out to Dallas has been a wonderful change of pace. Even though I've really only just begun with the Reel FX team, I've greatly enjoyed the camaraderie they share. They're a very encouraging bunch who love their work as much as they love their Texas barbecue (the pulled pork here is amazing!). It's been such a blessing to not only be working again, but to be a part of a team that truly wants each other to succeed.

Though I can't say much about the project itself, I can say that I've had the opportunity to cut more sequences for the editors. In addition, I've created custom watermarks for us to use for exports. After seeing how many titles we were having to render out each time we did an export, I decided to research custom AVID watermark creation. I eventually created unique bin views with custom columns that we could fill out. The watermarks directly reference these columns and update with the appropriate information in real time, allowing us to make a quick changes to any text without bloating our renders drive.

I am truly excited to see where things go and I thank God each day for blessing me with a position that fills me with great joy each time I come in for a new day of work.

That's a Wrap!

This past Wednesday, March 22nd, I wrapped up my work on the Playmobil Movie before the production moves up to Montreal. It was a bittersweet goodbye, but I am so grateful for the relationships I formed and the experiences that came with working on this independent feature.

I unfortunately wasn't able to make a blog post last month as we were in major crunch time for February and March. Believe it or not, we put together a whole new movie for our second screening in about 9 weeks! It's a feat that should not be the norm by any means, but it was an impressive achievement for our team and I'm quite proud of what we accomplished.

Over these past few months I was definitely put through the ringer and stretched to and beyond my limits in Editorial. Myself and our 1st Assistant Editor wore a variety of hats and were asked to act outside of our job descriptions at times. However, because of this, I was able to truly push myself to be the best team player I could.

Not only would I run the scratch sessions and break down dialogue, I was also "talent" for a handful of characters. Because we lacked a script supervisor, I was in charge of keeping tabs on all the pick up lines the Editors requested as well as any new lines added by our writers. In addition, because we were pressed for time, I actually got to edit a short sequence and even went through the process of getting notes from the director and addressing them.

That's what I found to be the coolest thing about our production. Due to the fact that we were so small, everyone was asked to do more than what was asked of them on paper. Unlike a larger studio where there is a job for anything and everything you can think of, we became an interesting meld of various jobs all working together in order to make sure we made our screening on time.

It was an emotional day when our screening rolled around. After the hustle and bustle of getting the file set up with our screening room and setting up breakfast for our guests, we got to enjoy this near brand new cut of the film with an audience who had never seen the film. Suddenly all the long hours and late nights became worth it as our audience clapped and laughed at the appropriate moments and left the theater with big smiles.

I am truly going to miss this production as it moves up to Canada, leaving almost all of the LA group behind here in the States. From Editorial, to Story, to Production, they all inspired me to strive to be the best I could be at my craft and allowed me to experience a sense of camaraderie I hadn't felt since my time at Dodge. I am so thankful that God allowed all the pieces to fall into place for this opportunity to take place. It was the perfect first feature for me to serve on as an Assistant Editor.

As I get the necessary materials ready to apply to the Editor's Union, I can't wait to see where I am led next in this industry and beyond. :)

P.S. Hope you enjoy these pictures I took with some of the crew, as well as a snapshot of the half dismantled sound Cube we built.

Part of the Playmobil crew

The end of an era. The end of "The Cube"

A Sweet, Sweet Sound

One of the projects the team I'm working with took part in was creating a makeshift sound booth. Being that our production is working in a warehouse, we tended to get a lot of reverb whenever we recorded our scratch dialogue. As such, me, my 1st Assistant Editor, and our coordinator banded together to create a booth.

After throwing around a few ideas on how to craft it, we settled on making a 10'x10'x10' metal pipe cube covered in moving blankets. Excited to begin, we headed to Home Depot; a place we'd end up making more trips to than we would've liked over the next few weeks. With us being more versed in film and not DIY construction, we ran into some bumps in the road, including buying incorrect pipe fittings, misjudging exactly how high 10 feet truly was, and miscalculating the number of blankets we needed to cover the gigantic cube. However, after a lot of sweat, tears, and driving around town, we finally finished our beautiful cube.

Aside from the light chemical smell the blankets permeate the air with (don't worry, we've been airing it out and using Febreze), the cube has made a huge difference! Before we had our "booth" we had to be very cautious whenever we recorded. We couldn't bump the levels up too high and our editors weren't too thrilled with the nearly unusable, echoing scratch that resulted whenever our actors yelled too loud. Now when we record, you would've thought we were in a real booth! The sound is crisp and clear, with us only having to pause every so often when a particularly loud motorcycle plows down the street next to us.

I'm quite proud of our booth, loving dubbed "The Cube" by our production. Though our resources may be limited, our team continues to amaze me with their resourcefulness whenever a need arises.

(P.S. I would've posted a picture, but I wanted to err on the safe side since we're sharing the space with another company.)

Driving Along

A few weeks ago, a spot Pilot created for BBC America and Mercedes-Benz called the "Mercedes-Benz Social Adventure" premiered. It was meant to get viewers excited about the new C-Class Coupe through the posts of a group of hand selected Instagramers that captured fun pictures of the car in different areas around Southern California. I acted as Assistant Editor on this piece, and was so thrilled to actually see it be featured on the official Mercedes-Benz USA Facebook page and have it air on television.

The biggest challenge for this project had to be up-rezing for delivery and working with mixed video resolutions. When we shot the spot, the car we used was a dark navy blue. Unfortunately, the footage that Mercedes provided for us to cut with featured a black car. As a result, any shot of the car that we captured had to be color corrected to a matching shade of black. Because of this, I eventually had a mixture of 1080p and 2K shots of the car; some from Mercedes and the rest from our colorists. However, because we were cutting in AVID, the question became how to maintain the resolution of the new car shots. While I could have easily just imported them at a higher resolution such as DNxHD 145, I was worried about the 2K footage looking compressed.

To solve this, I AMA linked the entire sequence back to their high res source files and applied any LUTs and additional color corrections to match the original sequence. My initial course of action was to just export out an EDL and then link up and export the sequence from Da Vinci Resolve. However, the issue came down to having a proper Broadcast Safe Filter to apply to the footage in Resolve. My company uses a custom filter created in AVID to throw on top of all of our deliveries. With this in mind, I knew that even if I exported out of Resolve, I'd have to bring the file back into AVID to apply the filter. Being pressed for time, I was unable to work with my Post Supervisor to create a new filter in Resolve. As a result, I settled on over cutting the sequence with AMA linked HighRes footage. It did take a while, and I'll admit it didn't feel super efficient, but it allowed the spot to be delivered on time and at the best resolution possible.

This spot was a fantastic group effort and I'm honored to have been a part of it. Hope you enjoy watching the final product!

Puzzling

Recently, my family and I have started to spend time putting together puzzles. We began with one that was 750 pieces, but have since then graduated to 1000 and 2000+ sized puzzles. In constructing these puzzles, it got me thinking about the editing process.

Traditionally, you begin a puzzle by putting together all the edge pieces. They're easy to find and, once connected, show you how large the completed puzzle will be. While my family is able to pick out most of these pieces shortly after opening the box, we always end up missing a few here and there. Likewise, when starting to edit a project, you need some sort of blueprint or groundwork to build upon. This can be in the form of a script, or even some written down ideas or pitches. But, like constructing a puzzle's frame, these editorial foundations may be incomplete, with stories and concepts often tweaked later down the line.

If upon my initial sifting of the puzzle pieces I'm unable to pick out all the edges, I tend to jump into filling in the middle, knowing that as I push forward, the sea of jagged shapes will reveal the smooth, stray ones I need. Editing also requires a lot of moving forward and back. You construct each scene on its own, but continue to keep the overall story and motivations of the characters in mind with every cut. If you ever feel that an actor's performance in a previous scene is inconsistent with how the later ones are playing out, you can always go back and adjust for a stronger edit, and in turn, a clearer and more solid film.

One of the puzzles my family and I completed

When the last piece is finally placed in the puzzle, you get a chance to sit back and marvel at your handiwork. You take a few pictures, talk about maybe framing it, and, inevitably, start thinking about buying another one to begin the process all over again. The thrill of crafting something out of the seemingly incongruent is what draws me to editing, puzzles, and even programming. You're given building blocks that look insignificant and useless on their own, but, when mixed together, make a product that would buckle if even one of them was out of place.

New Creations

It's that season again! Time to refresh my Editorial Reels. It's out with the old, and in with some fresh, new material.

My most recent addition is a short animatic that I helped cut and mix for my sister. She decided to create a storyboard sequence based off of one of the comics in her "Nickel a Day" series where she recounts funny incidents from her daily life. I won't spoil the story for you, but I will say it has to do with a certain colorful, natural beauty in the sky. It was a lot of fun getting back to editing again, working on making my cuts tighter and more seamless to move the story along. I'm hoping to cut more sequences in the future and do more collaborations to keep my skills up.

Hope you enjoy viewing these updated reels!

Movie Time!

Grab some popcorn and a comfy seat everyone! I am very happy to announce that all three of the films I edited last year as part of my Senior Thesis (Prism, Doppelganer, and For Jacob) are now available online for viewing. I am very proud of the teams I had the pleasure of working with, and I hope you enjoy the collective fruits of our labor.

Dan Warner is a desaturator, tasked with sapping beauty from the world in a future where color is used as energy. (Directed by Jackson Miller)

-SEMIFINALIST in the 42nd ANNUAL STUDENT ACADEMY AWARDS
-63rd ANNUAL MPSE GOLDEN REEL NOMINEE VERNA FEILDS AWARD
-SAG 2015 LA SHORTS SHOWCASE
-AUDIENCE AWARD for BEST SHORT NARRATIVE at PRESCOTT FILM FESTIVAL 2015
-JURY AWARD for BEST COLLEGE SHORT FILM at CINEQUEST FILM FESTIVAL 2016
-JURY AWARD for BEST SCI FI at LAGUNA FILM FESTIVAL 2015
-OFFICIAL SELECTION at HOLLYSHORTS FILM FESTIVAL 2015
-OFFICIAL SELECTION at SKYLINE INDIE FILM FESTIVAL 2015
-OFFICIAL SELECTION at LONESTAR FILM FESTIVAL 2015
-COLLEGIATE SHOWCASE at NEWPORT FILM FESTIVAL 2016
-2015 DMA AWARD for BEST VFX (DODGE COLLEGE OF FILM AND MEDIA ARTS)
-Featured on Film Shortage 2016
-Featured on shortfil.ms 2016

A little girl’s relationship with her inattentive Father is changed for the better after an eerie and dangerous encounter at the neighborhood playground. (Directed by Carly Lambert)

-Los Angeles Cinefest's Official July Selection 2015
-29th Braunschweig International Film Festival Official Selection
-Official Selection Woman Up Independent Film Festival 2015
-Best Drama American Motion Picture Society Film Festival 2015
-Big House LA Entertainment Festival 2015

After his mother is arrested, a young man is forced to partake in a robbery in order to protect his little brother, Jacob. (Directed by MacMullin Freeman, password: jacob2015)

What's Up?

This past Saturday, February 27th, Prism was honored at the Motion Picture Sound Editors' Golden Reel Awards, being nominated for the Verna Fields Award in Sound Editing for Student Film Makers. I continue to be amazed by my team and the audience reception to this short. While the journey may have been rough to make this film a reality, the response has made it all worth it.

Production on AOI has begun to slow down a bit due to having to make larger story tweaks, as well as scheduling conflicts between myself and my sister. We hope to be back at it though soon enough, steadily working to piece together this fun project!

Photo Cred: MPSE Website (www.mpse.org/golden-reel-awards)

A Look Back

I'm a bit late, but happy 2016! I didn't realize just how fast 2015 passed me by until I pieced together my annual "Second a Day" video. I always enjoy cutting it since I'm able to take a trip down memory lane and reflect upon the various events from the past year. To think, just a year ago I was finishing up my AVID Certification course and preparing for the conclusion of Senior Thesis!

Flash-forward to present day. Now 8 months into working at Pilot, I feel that I've finally hit my groove. Heading deliveries and running freelancers through orientation no longer overwhelms me like it once did. I've come to realize the importance of strong communication, as well as taking initiative when you see a need. My confidence in AVID and Final Cut has been strengthened, allowing me to become more efficient in my work through the discovery of new shortcuts.

I look forward to the opportunities 2016 presents, and trust that God will continue shape and challenge me each day. This year's "Second a Day" is going to be wild!

And the Days Go By

Time for some updates! Prism received the Grand Jury award for Best SciFi at the Laguna Film Festival, and was also screened this past weekend at the Lone Star Film Festival. It's been six months since the film debuted, and it is still going strong in the shorts circuit.

AOI Title (Art by Karina McBeth)

My sister and I have decided to combine episodes 1-3 of AOI for a stronger opening to the series. While this means that our premiere date will be have to be pushed back, it will allow us to thoroughly address the story issues that came up in Editorial. You can check out the introductory animation I cut for AOI here to get a feel for the style and tone of the webseries.

Piece by Piece

Photo Credit: Karina McBeth

My sister and I have recently started collaborating on a webseries called, AOI. At the moment, it is slated to consist of a series of 13 animatic "episodes," with my sister providing the storyboards, and me doing the editing and sound design.

After creating and tweaking a rough outline of the story, my sister began boarding Episode 1. Once she completed her first pass, she handed the storyboards over to me to start editing in AVID. As I went through the cut, I made Editorial suggestions to my sister, such as removing whole scenes and adding in beats to help move the story along. My sister is currently working on revisions for Episode 1 as well as the storyboards for Episode 2. I will continue to post updates about our progress as the months go on. If you want daily updates about AOI however, you can also check out my sister's blog.

This week I was also added to PILOT's official website. I've been with the company for a good few months now, and am greatly enjoying it there. I am thankful for the challenges that have come my way, being stretched in my skills as an Assistant Editor and learning to be more observant in my work. Be sure to check out the rest of the team on the website as well. They're a fun bunch who are a joy to work with each day.

Festival Time

With the rush of thesis over comes the next step in the student film process -- the Festival circuit. Recently, I received word that Prism has begun to make its rounds, and has been accepted into the Screen Actors Guild Foundation LA Shorts Showcase, the Prescott Film Festival (going on now), and the HollyShorts Film Festival. The film has also caught the attention of the Academy and is now a Semifinalist for the Student Academy Awards. It's been quite surreal and exciting to see the response and watch the film take off. I am extremely proud of the team and am thrilled to see what these next months hold.

Next Chapter

Last week, I completed my first job as a Freelance AVID Assistant Editor for 7ate9 Entertainment. Basically, whenever the studio has a new project they're putting together, they call upon their pool of assistant editors to come in and work until completion.

My first task included transcoding a variety of footage in Resolve. There were about 5-7 different cameras used, ranging from the RED CineX to GoPro. While it took a bit of time to get the exporting going, the real challenge came once I brought the media into AVID. I began by making folders for each of the spots, creating bins within each one of them with the names of the cameras that were utilized. With a structure laid out for myself, I was able to sort and move the footage around with ease.

The footage was often shot at a frame rate other than 23.976, ranging from 48 fps to 120 fps. Initially, I was terrified as to how I was going to sync it with the sound as it played back in slow motion. However, it was because of this fear that I was able to challenge myself to figure out how to troubleshoot the problem on my own. It had been a concept I remembered one of my Pixar mentors mentioning to me about how the job of the Assistant Editor is to find the answers versus constantly asking others for the solution. After much searching, I discovered that the motion effect editor would allow me to type in a new frame rate to convert my footage to. Soon enough, I had converted and synced all the footage just in time for the Editors to begin working.

On Monday, June 15th, I begin my first full time job as a Post Producer/Assistant Editor at Pilot, a company that creates promos for major television networks. I look forward to the new lessons I gain at Pilot, building upon those from 7ate9 and others.

Grand Finale

Link: Prism Facebook Page
Prism (2015) Copyright by Jackson Miller, David Reynolds, & Chris Purse

This past Thursday, May 14th, the third and final thesis film I edited this year premiered. It was the first VFX film I have ever cut, and I am pleased with how it eventually turned out. Our visual effects team did a great job at creating a believable world within the time they were given, and our audience seemed to appreciate their efforts. It was the film I spent the most time with this year, and served as the biggest learning curve in terms of communication and designing a workflow that accommodated both Editorial as well as the visual effects artists.

As this film enters the festival circuit, I am interested to see how it fares. I hope to stay in contact with the team I worked with, especially the director, as I feel given a story that we have more time to develop, we can create something even stronger. Working on this film was an experience I will truly never forget, and I am glad to have been given the opportunity to be a part of it.

Premiering

This past Friday, April 17th, the first film out of three that I had the pleasure of editing this year premiered. Doppelgänger was a success and played well for our audience. I received some compliments from viewers commenting on how eerie the film was. I was worried as to how the short would be received as I had been with it for so long and wasn't sure if the scares in the film were landing. Sure enough though, there was an audible gasp throughout the theater during the reveal of our title character.

With the film completed, I am able to take a step back and reflect on the timeline of creating this short. Our director did an excellent job communicating with each department, inviting their perspectives and collaborating in a way that allowed for creative freedom on both ends. Seeing the final piece colored, with a sound mix, and score in a full theater was surreal, and I'm so very proud of our cast, crew, and director for bringing this psychological thriller to life.

Link: Doppelgänger Facebook Page

Doppelgänger (2015) film Copyright by Carly Lambert