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!

In Motion

At long last, the day has finally arrived - I am now officially eligible to work as an Assistant Editor with the Editors Union.

Following the completion of my time on Playmobil, I gathered up my paystubs and began the 3 month trek that was the application and approval process for joining IATSE Local 700. It was a journey that not only pushed me to wait on God's timing, but also allowed me to complete tasks and explore new avenues that I never would've experienced otherwise.

Having recently gotten engaged, I was actually able plan out pretty much my entire wedding over the course of these past few months. Humorously, the date isn't for another year, but with the intense hours of post production, having this time off granted me the ability to check off the larger aspects of the big day without having to worry about trying to plan meetings around my busy work schedule.

In addition, I've begun teaching myself the Unity 3D game engine. Having heard great things about it from one of my mentors and school, I decided to give it a shot as I've always been fascinated by visual programming; more specifically in relation to video games. Thankfully, I didn't have to learn an entirely different language as scripting is done in C#. However, Unity's API and editor did take a bit to wrap my head around as game programming is built around triggers and manipulation of physical objects in space - a change of pace from the command prompt based programs I wrote in school. While I'm still continuing to delve more into the documentation and use of Unity, I'm hoping to eventually create a small adventure game to combine my love of coding with storytelling.

Now as I look forward, I'm nervous and excited to see what God has in store for me. Whether it be Union or Non-Union, I know my next job will be exactly what I need to discover, explore, and stretch myself both mentally and spiritually. Here's to this next chapter!

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!

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)

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.