I’m a video editor, not a color grader, but for most projects I have to do my own color adjustments, and I’ve been using three-way color correction tools to manipulate video color since the days of Final Cut Pro 5. When you first start playing with a three-way color corrector it can be both fun and very disorienting. Small adjustments in color can look right at first, then look horribly wrong when compared to another scene. It can be easy to know what you want, but very hard sometimes to get “there.” In short, color correction is hard. It’s part […]

The iPad is my favorite device of all time, yet, after a brief stab at writing and editing for this site on it when the first iPad came out, I pretty much gave up on it as a productivity device. I’m waiting for iOS 11 to see if that changes — I suspect for me it won’t, actually; I’m too committed to my multi-window writing workflow. But one app I may try to play around with is the new Luma Fusion, which looks like an impressive leap over iMovie and other iPad video editors. Here’s 9 to 5 Mac’s Jeff […]

It’s a fraught moment for any director — “locking picture,” with all the finality the term signifies. But, as a panel on “Scoring for Television & Film” at the recent Independent Film Festival Boston (IFFBOSTON) revealed, for composers it’s a vital stage in their process of scoring a film. The panel was moderated by filmmaker and musician Tim Jackson, and the panelists were composers Mason Daring, John Kusiak and Sheldon Mirowitz. The discussion covered how they got into the business, how they write music, the differences between drama and documentary and much more, but Daring’s fairly lengthy exhortation on locking […]

It’s six months after my first-ever film shoot on my first-ever film, the short documentary Sole Doctor. And yes, I’m still working on that documentary! After grappling with self-doubt and fretting about the narrative arc, I feel both confident in my vision and totally confused about how to shape the story. In other words, it’s time to find a good editor! But first, a little refresher about the project: Sole Doctor is a short observational-style documentary about George, a 78-year-old African-American shoe cobbler who has owned a business in Portland for over 50 years. Preparing to retire and pass the business on to […]

When you announce to the world (or at least on social media) that you’re making a short documentary, you’re bound to be asked the obvious question: “What’s it about?” As any documentary filmmaker can tell you, there’s a short answer to that question and a long answer, depending upon who is asking and how much time they have to spare. In the case of my short documentary film in-progress, Sole Doctor, the short answer is, “It’s about George, an African-American shoe cobbler who has owned a business in Portland for over 50 years and is getting ready to retire and pass […]

In Weiner, Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg’s documentary about Anthony Weiner’s attempted political comeback running for New York mayor, there’s a scene of Weiner shoveling a drippy deli wrap with a side of crispy fries in the back seat of his car. Between bites, Weiner chews through his hopes of a rebounding campaign after having sabotaged it by, once again, sexting on Twitter. He gazes out the car window, jaw muscles flexing, trails off mid-sentence, and dumps the plastic to-go container’s final fistful of french fries directly into his mouth. The masticating sounds of Weiner lunching were produced at Alchemy […]