Knowing What You Don't Know

I had a silly little experience at Pixel the other day. A young programmer we've got doing some Flash stuff for us did some audio editing of a high quality MP3 I had sent him, a simple single-channel, mono voice over track. And it came back sounding like crap. Plus, the bitrate was higher than it was when I sent it to him. So, more bandwidth, lower quality. I think not.

It was the result of a cascade of little mistakes he'd made when recompressing the files, little compression tricks he didn't know about. Tricks that I do know about. I redid the compression myself, and ended up with a file that was one quarter the size of his, yet indistinguishable from the original.

The situation made me realize that sometimes I don't give myself enough credit, and I forget that, yes, I've been working with digital media since, well, digital media was invented, and I've picked up a thing or two along the way. Knowing the proper data rates for various flavors of digital audio just happens to be one of many little recipes filed away in my brain. These things usually sit in there like the Ark at the end of Raiders - it's in there, but good luck finding it. But every now and then I think to myself, "Hey! I know how to do that, and that's a pretty cool thing. Most people don't know how to do that."

Sometimes it's important to sit back, take a moment, and be thankful for the things you do know, and humble about the things you don't.

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Star Wars meets Saul Bass

I was recently chatting with a childhood chum of mine about Star Wars, and we agreed that one of the things that makes the film timeless is the orchestral score, composed and conducted by the brilliant John Williams. Just for a moment, imagine Star Wars with a cheesy 70s synth soundtrack - it could have just as easily gone that way, especially with the budget pressure George Lucas was under from the studio.

This, however is just plain brilliant -



If you're unfamiliar with the work of Saul Bass, he's got a wiki here. And if you're looking for some of these groovy fonts, they can be found here.

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Preparing for the Interview

Let's start off today with a brief video clip -

Ahem. Yes.

This little gem illustrates a couple of points. First, the young lady doing the interview is clueless. She also seems to be someone who seems to be quite comfortable in her cluelessness. She seems to wear it as a badge of honor, or, at the very least,  is used to getting through life in spite of it. 

Second, John Cusack is a true professional, suffering through what is clearly an excruciatingly dull press junket. In a way, this was probably one of the more amusing moments of his day, and he's smart enough that he probably enjoyed toying with her. 

The main point, though, is how important it is to prepare for your interviews. Do your homework, do your research, invest time in preparing. I doesn't matter if you're interviewing the biggest star in Hollywood or your grandmother, the more you know going in, the better results you'll get. One of the most critical elements for the success of any interview is establishing rapport with your interview subject. Putting them at ease makes it much more likely they'll open up, relax, and share their story with you in an engaging, personal way.

I was once shooting for a producer who interviewed people like they were on a witness stand. He'd bark out the same preprepared questions, not looking at them, not listening to a word they said, not asking a single followup question. It made for a horrible experience for the people being interviewed - they couldn't wait to get the hell out of there. It was aggravating for me, because I kept thinking about all of the great material he would have been able to get if he would just listen to the people he was interviewing.

Interviewing is a skill, and the more you do it the better you'll get. My wife and business partner, Ilana, is a master at the sit-down interview, after almost fifteen years experience. She's able to sense when people are nervous, put them at ease, and get the answers she needs for the story she want to tell. Many times she'll ask a half dozen or more questions to start that have nothing to do with the subject at hand, just to be able to build rapport, put the subject at ease, and get them to relax. Sometimes she senses the person being interviewed is completely comfortable from the get-go, she gets what she needs and sends them on their way, not wasting anyone's time. She's a pro, and she makes it look easy. 

Who can you look to for inspiration? Some of my favorite interviewers are Charlie Rose, James Lipton and Terri Gross. (And for a fascinating example of a good interviewer faced with a bad interviewee, check out this example of Terry Gross interviewing Gene Simmons from Kiss.)

Who do you like? Who's interview technique inspires you?

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Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star

Ah, the classic star field background. Ever since the Tantive IV came screaming by with a Star Destroyer in hot pursuit, I've always had a obsession with space-fantasy, (I got one of these for Christmas when I was a wee lad!) and what I would have given to generate realistic star fields back on my first computer, when I was ten years old!

Star fields are pretty easy to conjure up in Adobe After Effects, but I'm going to share a quick and easy technique for making your star fields really shine!

Okay, first, let's start with a simple composition in After Effects. A single layer with a black solid that's the size of the layer. That's your black deep-space background, where no one can hear you scream. Next, create another solid layer on top of your black layer, this one white. Now, go to Effect:Simulation:CC Star Burst and apply this effect to your black solid. This effect comes with After Effects, and is a good starting point for your star field. With the default settings, you should have something that looks like this -

Not bad, but it looks more like you've been drinking too much Fizzy Lifting Drink, instead of being ready to zoom through space. No worries. Let's make some adjustments to the effects settings. Make these adjustments -

Scatter - leave at 100
Speed - change this to .10
Phase - Leave at 0
Grid spacing - make this 8
Size - make this 20
Blend w. Original - Leave at zero

Okay, so now you should have something that looks more like this -


Much better. But it's still got that too-perfect, computer generated look. One way to improve this situation is to use the Effect:stylize:glow effect, which will give the stars a nice subtle halo. The default glow settings actually look pretty nice, but go ahead and fine tune them to your taste.

My favorite way to make stars really shine, however, is to use the Trapcode Starglow effect. Yes, it's a third-party plugin, but trust me, the Trapcode plugins are well worth the money. They are reasonably priced, and you'll find yourself using them all the time. Download the free demo and give them a whirl.

The default setting for Starglow is a bit strong, looking like something out of Superman The Movie, so let's dial them down a bit. Use the Warm Star preset, and set your streak length to 2.

Now you should have something that looks like this -


Fine tune this to your taste, but you can see what a huge improvement this is over the original, and how well it matches the traditional cinematic star field look.

Got your own tasty AE star field effect? Let us know in the comments.

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Say Your Name and Spell It

Here's a simple, yet often overlooked technique that will make your editors love you, save you and your clients time and energy, and will make you irresistable to members of the opposite sex. Okay, that last one's an exageration (and by exageration I mean "lie").

When doing on-camera interviews, roll tape (or start capturing to your memory card, as the case may be) and ask the talent, "Could you please say your name and spell it for me?"



This does several things for you. First of all, it gives you a record of the correct pronunciation and spelling of the person's name, specifically, the way they prefer to be identified. Your editors and graphics people will thank you for this, since they won't have to chase down this info for lower thirds, and they won't end up making last minute changes because no one knew that Sir Richard Dovington the Third preferred to be called "Skippy."

Perhaps more importantly, though, making this "no brainer" your first question sets the tone for the interview, and puts the subject at ease. They're thinking, "Hey, this is easy! I can answer that! Maybe this won't be so bad!"

In fact, when interviewing someone who's visibly skittish about being on camera, it's often best to have a few soft-ball questions lined up to use first, to help establish repore and give them time to get comfortable.

Interviewing is a skill, and the more you do it, the better you'll be. You'll develop a sense for what you need, what you don't and how to guide your subject toward the content you're looking for through the clever formulation of your questions.

Oh, one more thing - We've found it much more effective when dealing with non-professional talent to use an interview technique, rather than having them read from a prepared script. They tend to come across much more naturally when having a "conversation" with the interviewer (even though the interviewer is never seen) than if they are reading prepared copy, usually written by the folks in marketing and gutted by the folks in legal.

What do you think? Got any lower-third nightmares to share?

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