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A plane passes overhead and I'm happy to be on the ground, at home for a moment with my partner and 23 month old son. I start this blog as an open journal to keep track over the next six months of how I edit a DVD. This DVD will make up 50% of my Ph.D. titled "Masked Corroborees of northwest Australia and the Wurnan exchange system". The approach I take is to investigate the cross cultural performance aspects that are shared in these public corroborees. There are issues of intellectual property which I will not address in this blog and I will probably not discuss the actual material for these reasons. This blog may include parts of the investigation however it is intended to focus on the thoughts and practicalities involved in the digital video edit. That is something I can discuss. I expect to be writing about Final Cut Pro(FCP) issues, sound and still image use and a lot of what I might do better with the Sony PD10x camera next time.
The day before yesterday I bit the bullet and creditcarded a LaCie 500G harddrive (Aus$840) to add to the 120G, 160G and 250G drives I use already. Because those smaller drives were full I had to work out whether I would restructure and not have immediate access to all my footage or get more memory. There appear to be two approaches to this problem with some people downloading only what they will edit, using minimal space with an edit process in choosing what to download. Then there is the way I am approaching it playing the DV tapes only twice- once to make a backup and rough log and once to download, then put them safely away. I then prefer to make DVDs to look at material rather than use VHS tapes or try and carry the harddrive around with me. That may change now I have the 500G drive.
My biggest consideration is how to manage a question of distance and computer power. I edit in a suite with G5 macs but I generally work with my old G3 laptop 500mhz at home. I have FCP3 on my laptop which travels with me everywhere. The edit suite uses FCP HD. Here is the first problem. When I go home, 300klms from the edit suite, I can't work with the material I have been editing on the G5s because with FCP you can't go backwards. You can't edit in version 4 or HD then try and open up in version 3. You can go up from V.3 but not back. Perhaps I'll install FCP 3 on the G5 and work with that till near the end of the edit.
While it is the technical aspects of this endeavour on which I focus it is the poetry in expressing the whole experience that is the direction for the Ph.D. as a written and film project.
The day before yesterday I bit the bullet and creditcarded a LaCie 500G harddrive (Aus$840) to add to the 120G, 160G and 250G drives I use already. Because those smaller drives were full I had to work out whether I would restructure and not have immediate access to all my footage or get more memory. There appear to be two approaches to this problem with some people downloading only what they will edit, using minimal space with an edit process in choosing what to download. Then there is the way I am approaching it playing the DV tapes only twice- once to make a backup and rough log and once to download, then put them safely away. I then prefer to make DVDs to look at material rather than use VHS tapes or try and carry the harddrive around with me. That may change now I have the 500G drive.
My biggest consideration is how to manage a question of distance and computer power. I edit in a suite with G5 macs but I generally work with my old G3 laptop 500mhz at home. I have FCP3 on my laptop which travels with me everywhere. The edit suite uses FCP HD. Here is the first problem. When I go home, 300klms from the edit suite, I can't work with the material I have been editing on the G5s because with FCP you can't go backwards. You can't edit in version 4 or HD then try and open up in version 3. You can go up from V.3 but not back. Perhaps I'll install FCP 3 on the G5 and work with that till near the end of the edit.
While it is the technical aspects of this endeavour on which I focus it is the poetry in expressing the whole experience that is the direction for the Ph.D. as a written and film project.
posted by Dominique at 11:21 pm
1 Comments:
"I will probably not discuss the actual material for these reasons."
I understand the reasons for this, but Ack! This sounds like a fascinating PhD project - and for so many reasons (theatre/art, cross-cultural analysis, history and politics, landclaims, etc.). Many issues I am also interested in. Plus, your photos are lovely.
Good luck with your project (and I hope the equipment nightmares diminish for you!).
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