March 10, 2010

I grew up in San Francisco, and I still consider it my true home. Whenever I see a movie that features the city I feel my heart well up and a wave of longing hits me. Thankfully, most of my family is still there and I can go visit them when I have some extra funds. Now I live in Vancouver, which is basically the San Francisco of Canada, and it is very similar— but when I see that Golden Gate I know I’m not home unless I’m there.
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March 09, 2010

Recently, I had the chance to moderate a live chat with two members of the editorial department for Avatar. Not only is it the biggest box office hit of all time, it's also nominated in nine different categories in the Academy Awards. Joining us for the web chat were co-editors Steve Rivkin, and first assistant editor Jason Gaudio. Steve and Jason told us all about their journey through the world of Avatar and then took questions from our live audience. In case you missed it, here's an encore of our talk with Steve and Jason.
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March 09, 2010

My Avid Media Composer software has for years come with the visual effects plug-ins from Boris FX, the suite called Boris Continuum Complete (BCC). Boris is a software plug-in for Media Composer (and other platforms such as After Effects). It enables an editor to add effects such as colors, glows, distortions, lights, textures, keys, and mattes to any shot. Every once in a while I’d dabble with different effects, a blur, a glow, etc. It all seemed fun enough, but often too complicated to completely understand.
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March 09, 2010

Update your RSS Readers and favorites bin. The Ace Tech Web Discussion Blog has moved.
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March 09, 2010

MPEG is reprinting Chris Innis' article on editing The Hurt Locker:

After reading the warnings issued to travelers, I rushed out to get the suggested immunizations for typhoid and hepatitis. The US State Department also had a serious warning for Americans traveling to Jordan, a Middle Eastern country next door to Iraq. One well-known Hollywood movie producer, Moustapha Akkad (of the Halloween movies) had been tragically killed two years prior when a terrorist bomb exploded at a wedding reception at a five-star hotel in Amman.
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March 09, 2010

MPEG Sends congrats to the Oscar Award winning editing team of Bob Murawski and Chris Innis.
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March 09, 2010

Final Cut Pro, like most software developed originally for OS 9, is build on a type of code called (for short) Carbon. The Carbon APIs (Application Programming Interface – the building blocks of code) allowed Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, Illustrator, Media Composer and thousands of other applications to make the transition for OS 9 to OS X “reasonably painlessly”. (Meaning, hard but not impossible). Carbon code runs just fine on OS X and is no less efficient in and of itself than the more modern Cocoa code.
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March 08, 2010

Overlap cuts (split edits) are fundamental for any editor. Most people create them in a two-step process, making a straight cut first and then overlapping it using Trim Mode. But there’s a hidden, one-step way to do it.
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March 08, 2010

I was extremely pleased that The Hurt Locker won for both picture editing and sound editing and sound mixing too. This was a picture and sound editor’s movie if there ever was one and it previously won the A.C.E. Eddie award for best feature editing. Picture editing drove the rhythm of this story about an American bomb diffusion squad in Iraq and in a way, diffusion was the movie’s metaphor - trying to mitigate the harm the war’s causing.
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March 08, 2010

Have you been asked to to blur a face? Tej looks into how to blur faces and body parts.
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March 08, 2010

The Oscars announced the winners for film editing and the winners are: Chris Innis and Bob Murawski for The Hurt Locker. Congrats to both Chris and Bob as well as the other nominees. To see their thanks you speach and thank you cam click the link below.
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