The Future of Automatic Sync

Just in case you didn't make it to NAB 2012, here is the presentation I gave in the Manhattan Editing Workshop's training center. I talk about (and demo)

• CloudEyes
• PluralEyes Connector for Premiere Pro CS6
• PluralEyes 3

Filmmaking Crash Course: Los Angeles, CA and West Orange, NJ

Renowned instructor Ray Roman has created a two-day workshop for event filmmakers who want to challenge themselves. Covering everything from the nuts and bolts of shooting with DSLRs to techniques that best evoke emotion, the workshop will feature PluralEyes and its role in multi-camera and dual-system audio workflows.  For more information or to register, go to www.rayromanworkshop.com

Young Filmmaker's Talents Are Anything But Shipwrecked

When you think of 'award-winning director,' you might think of Martin Scorsese, Peter Jackson, Quentin Tarantino - but they all had to start somewhere, right? Meet Ben Kadie, a 16-year-old award-winning director (not to mention screen writer, producer, editor and the list goes on...), and you can say you 'knew' him before he was famous.

Ben has been making movies since he was in the third grade at Seattle Country Day School, when most of us were still learning how to tie our shoelaces. Now, seven years later, Ben’s got nine films under his belt – from Shakespearean interpretations to period pieces to dark comedies – and he’s not stopping there. One look at any of Ben’s films and it’s clear he has the kind of story writing skills one can only be born with, knowing how to expertly weave humor in with darkness or make the old fresh and new again – and he’s only getting better with each movie he makes.

Ben’s latest film, Alone Together, takes a somewhat different direction than his mysteries, abandoning the green screens of the past for real scenery and placing a deeper emphasis on the emotions and developments of the characters, Brendan and Eloise. What emerges is the tale of shipwrecks and unrequited love, when Brendan finds himself washed up on a deserted island with Eloise, the girl of his dreams, the two of them hundreds of miles from their families and real life. When Brendan discovers the radio transmitter that could lead to their rescue, he must decide whether or not to tell Eloise, and choose between selfish and selfless love.

Starring Seattle-based actors Asher Jordan and Bria Lynn Massie and shot in breathtaking Pacific Northwest locations including Whidbey Island and Cougar Mountain, and on the 100-year-old tugboat Arthur Foss, Alone Together is set to release this spring and with luck will be featured in multiple film festivals. As for Ben, his next big project is applying to university film programs, which involves creating a five-minute audition film. We have no doubt he’ll be receiving quite a few acceptance letters. We recently spoke with Ben to get the lowdown on his life as a young moviemaker.

You started making movies at a very young age – what inspired you to get into filmmaking?

Growing up, my dad and I would make little novelty and special effects videos together. They have titles such as “Whoopee Cushion Concert” and “Speed of Light Boy.” As I got a little older, I wanted to make videos that told a story. In sixth grade, my friend Noah and I made Perilous Skies, a WWI comedy. The film got into the Seattle International Film Festival via a newspaper contest. A month later it screened at NFFTY, which has since grown to be the largest youth festival in the world. Seeing the audiences enjoying the film was wonderful and encouraged me to keep making movies.

How did you handle the challenges there are to making movies at such a young age?

Two film books greatly influence me: Rebel Without a Crew and DV Rebel. Both say that you don’t need a lot of people and resources to make a film; you just need to use what you have. For example, between seventh and eighth grade I wanted to tell a story set in the Egypt of 1897. I filmed Murder at the Pharaoh’s Grave in my backyard, with a green screen, a tent made from cheap fabric, and 100 pounds of sand. By replacing the green with my digital matte paintings, I was able to tell a big story with little resources.

As a director with a specific vision in mind, do you find it difficult to manage actors in order to make sure your movies turn out as planned?

I love working with actors. In most of my films, the actors are friends who I know from school plays. I think it helped that my early films were small, with just two or four actors, and very collaborative. The film Molly and the Masked Storm was a bit of turning point. With five actors playing 12 roles in a 24-minute film, I had to get more organized. The actors seemed to appreciate me really leading the production while still letting them interpret their roles.

Finding the right actors to translate your story properly can be tricky. What was the casting process like for Alone Together?

This was my first film with auditions. I posted to several Seattle-area actors’ callboards on the Internet. The response was wonderful, but the two weeks of auditions were new and stressful. It felt strange to judge adults, in my basement, on how well they could pretend they were on a sinking ship. For the two lead roles, 30 young actors auditioned. I found two great 18 year olds. Asher Jordon, who is now studying acting at New York University, played Brendan. Bria Lynn Massie plays Eloise; she’s now pursuing acting professionally in Portland.

Alone Together is 24-minutes long. What was your production timeline?

After drafting the script, preproduction took about four months off-and-on (because of school). It included many camera and effects tests, script revisions, and then making storyboards. Production was seven shooting days in the middle-to-late summer. Post-production, including editing, special effects and music, took about six months. I finished Alone Together on New Year’s Day.

At every step, I tried to put on a new hat (screenwriter, then director, then editor) and be tough. Sometimes as editor, I had to kill a scene that I loved as screenwriter.

Alone Together was set in Chile – how did you find Seattle locations to portray a deserted Chilean island?

The Seattle area has many beaches, but most have views of houses and other land. To find close beaches with open water, I used Bing maps and “discovered” the Strait of Juan de Fuca. I scouted twice by car, even getting some of my Driver’s Ed miles in. At Deception Pass State Park, on the Straight, I fell in love with a certain cliff and its rocky beach.

For the boat, I expected to use green screen. But then I visited the Northwest Seaport and saw their wonderful ships. They generously gave me permission to shoot for a day on their 100-year-old tugboat Arthur Foss.

With both the cliff and the tugboat, I updated the script to highlight the locations.

Did you write the script for this movie and other movies you’ve made?

Yes, I’m very interested in writing and have attended programs such as TheFilmSchool’s Prodigy Camp that emphasize storytelling. Knowing that I am going to produce what I write helps me write. For example, Mack is a Macbeth-like story of a painter whose ambition is tragically larger than his talent. I knew I could buy inexpensive landscape paintings at Goodwill and that I could paint my own abstracts, so I wrote the script around those two art styles.

Filmmaking sounds like a huge part of your life – do you have time for anything else?!

I’m in the International Baccalaureate program at my high school, so academics keep me pretty busy. My high school doesn’t actually have a film program, but I take fine art classes and theater classes. After school, I’ve also been in all the school plays and I’m co-president of Improv Club.

What role does DualEyes play in the production of your movies?

I filmed Alone Together a total of six days, spanning from August 7th to August 18th. Using a dual audio set up and DualEyes, I was able to cut together a teaser trailer immediately and post it to YouTube on the last day of shooting. This was only possible because DualEyes allowed me to sync the sound with the video immediately without any hassles.

Before DualEyes, I was not able to use a dual audio set up. It would take too long to manually sync the material. Instead, my microphone was tethered to my camera. This was a bit of a challenge as we would get tangled up, and the recording quality was often not what I wanted.

With DualEyes, I can have the microphone go with the actors. This gives better sound and simplifies shooting. For example, in Alone Together, it allowed me to film the actors from the other side of a cliff while the microphone was next to them, hidden behind a rock. DualEyes synced the video and audio correctly. It works so smoothly, giving me one less thing to worry about.

What did you use to shoot the footage, record the audio, and edit?

My last three films have been shot on a Canon T2i DSLR. For audio there is a VideoMic Pro microphone on a homemade boompole recorded to a Zoom H2 recorder. For editing and effects, I use Sony Vegas, Magic Bullet Looks, DualEyes, Cinema 4D, and After Effects.

To learn more about Ben and his projects, visit him at slugco.com or on Facebook.

Watch the Alone Together trailer

Late nights reconciling random shots and sound clips: stop that!

When Matt Davis came across the PluralEyes plug-in, he recognized it would enable his guerilla style of shooting by allowing “some really smart software to sort it all out.” Matt explains, “All the key opinion leaders were onto PluralEyes from the start as the one way that made DSLR shooting with audio ‘a workable solution’. Clapperboards? Log sheets? The discipline in shooting to make that work? That was never going to happen for the DV shooters – far too arcane. I joined the industry synchronizing rushes, and I’ve done my fair few late nights trying to reconcile seemingly random shots and sound clips into some sort of order. PluralEyes just stopped all of that.”

As a photography student Matt watched the 1966 feature film Blowup directed by Michelangelo Antonioni about a British photographer's accidental involvement with a murder, and the seeds of a filmmaking passion were planted. The next revelation came with Ingmar Bergman’s 1992 feature, Fanny & Alexander. He recalls, “I couldn’t stop thinking ‘this is what photos should be: presented in a designed sequence, containing the time element and encapsulating motion…’ I dropped Photography and switched to Film.”

Matt’s life is now completely focused on moving images as he heads the full-service production company MDMA Ltd from his hometown of London, UK. He creates short- and long-form international corporate videography, but also offers training in editing and camera operation to others who share his enthusiasm for digital images.


Matt writes treatments, directs and shoots footage – sometimes with additional camera operators, edits and polishes the final story, and delivers videos in a variety of formats for individual entrepreneurial clients and sizeable corporations including Cisco, IBM and Sony.

Depending on the assignment, he switches between his Sony PMW-EX1 camcorder, a Canon Rebel T2i DSLR, and a Sony NEX-FS100 camcorder to produce event summaries, educational and marketing videos, and digital presentation material of all kinds. He trusts a Zoom H4n audio recorder to capture sound, and completes post-production using Final Cut Pro, Apple’s Motion, and Adobe After Effects.



As a video enthusiast serving the technology arena, Matt is immersed in leading edge conversations about his field. And yet he recognizes that technology is only part of the process. “I love telling stories. I love delivering a sequence of experiences that add up in the audience’s mind to something bigger than a few spoonfuls of entertainment. I think it’s like how a chef will create a banquet, not just a recipe or a course. What I really love is that moment when the audience goes ‘aha!’ – all the connections, all the little surprises and twists align for them and they ‘get’ it.”

Matt’s biggest challenge as a one-person enterprise is in juggling the quantity and variety of jobs that come along. His is continually on the lookout for workflow improvements that speed up his process so he can deliver increasing value to his clients. MDMA is becoming known for on-site editing and same-day delivery, which requires the utmost efficiency. “There’s so much cool technology we’re using now, it’s hard to stop and say ‘I don’t think that’s possible’.”



As a corporate filmmaker, Matt compares his role to that of a graphic designer. He takes others' ideas, and shapes them into visual presentations for a broad audience. A particular skill is in bringing visual interest to stories told primarily through talking heads. His eye for movement and his sense of fun ensure stories are told with vibrancy and hold a viewer’s interest.



Matt balances his corporate work with inventive projects that satisfy his filmmaker’s creativity – where he steps out of the designer's role and becomes the artist. He considers all technological mediums fair game for sharing ideas. “… The artist in me is getting impatient to tell some stories that I have. Will it be documentary? Will it be narrative? Will I even use film? I love well-presented audiobooks and may just make the biggest movie imaginable that’s presented as a stereo audio file.” We’ll be watching for that one!

Find more of Matt’s work on his Vimeo channel and keep an eye out for upcoming projects from MDMA.



Writer Sara McIntyre is a Communications Specialist and Filmmaker who calls Vancouver, BC home.

Startup Weekend Vancouver: myBestHelper.com

"What did you do over the weekend?" Well, how about start a company! That was the objective of 14 teams that recently participated in Startup Weekend Vancouver.

Startup Weekend is a global network of leaders and entrepreneurs on a mission to inspire, educate, and empower people with entrepreneurial ambitions.  They give the participating teams just 54 hours to put together their concept for a startup, in a supportive mentoring environment.  At the conclusion of the weekend, they compete for prizes in a final presentation show down, with just four minutes to pitch their ideas, and another four minutes to respond to questions from the panel of judges.

The first place winner of this year's Startup Weekend Vancouver was myBestHelper.com, with their concept of a networking site that connects people in need of home help with locally available helpers looking for work, using an eHarmony style approach to finding a good fit.  myBestHelper went on to compete in the global startup "battle" with winners from 34 other Startup Weekend events, placing 10th.  Not bad for a weekend!

With several groups recording video at this packed event, this was also an opportunity for us to exercise Presto's ability to work with multiple presenter angles, and to leverage Presto for OS X new found integration with Adobe Premiere Pro to put the whole thing together.

Real-Time Editing and Immediate Video Release

Adam Wygle and Bryan Zug make up Bootstrapper Studios, a video production company forming part of the new wave of real-time editing and immediate video release. Located in the vibrant tech community of Founders Co-op in Seattle, WA, they work fast and inexpensively to capture the momentum of an event as it’s occurring, and to give participants instant tools for sharing their experience.

Seattle is host to numerous start-up forums and at Startup Weekend Seattle EDU in September, Bootstrapper documented the progress of contestants who built web or mobile applications over the course of a weekend. Throughout the 54 hours Adam would regularly pull someone from each of the 15 teams and ask the questions: What have you done since we last talked? What are you working on now? What’s blocking you?

Adam describes his workflow: “I’d have an H4n Zoom audio recorder, hit Record on that, let it sit there and just run. Then I didn’t have to think about it. Then whenever someone walked up to the camera, I’d hit Record on the camera. When they walked away I’d stop the recording. We’d shoot fifteen different people over the course of 20-30 minutes. We did it really fast because each person only had 30 seconds. At the end of one of those sessions I’d go back to the computer, dump my camera and audio footage, throw it in Premiere, export it so PluralEyes could look at it, render it and I was done.” The cycle was repeated every two to three hours. By Sunday night all footage was synced, assembled, and ready for release as soon as the final pitches occurred and winners were announced.



Adam adds, “Without PluralEyes I would have had to cut audio between each interview. I wouldn’t have been able to just turn the mic on and let it go. We would have had a clapper or have the interviewer do a clap in front of the camera, then I’d have to go back and sync it all up. That would have made the process between sessions a lot more time consuming with fifteen different clips, especially considering that fourteen of them weren’t going to be featured right away. The idea was that we could get the video out right away.”

Adam and Bryan work predominantly as a two-person team and stay effective because all their technology is digital. They reach for a Canon T3i DSLR camera, or a Canon Vixia HF20 camcorder, and use a wireless handheld mic, or a boom or lavaliers to record to the Zoom H4n. Their favorite new acquisition though, is an ATEM 1 M/E Production Switcher from Blackmagic Design. It allows for four SDI inputs, four HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) inputs for cameras or computers, and is used for event streaming and live switching.

“We have the problem first and then we go looking for the solution,” comments Adam. “We used to run a Mac pro tower that had multiple HDMI cards in it and the process was so complicated, there were so many moving parts, there were so many things that could go wrong. When we started using this, the speed at which we could get up and running increased by 50 percent. We went from three to four hours set up time to two hours.”



In the early- to mid-90s Adam remembers how his dad was baffled by all the advertisements that had web addresses in them. Adam predicted a time when URLs would become standard business practice, and his eyes are again on the future where he sees that anyone without video on their websites will soon be left in the dust.

It was an easy decision for him to accept Bryan’s invitation to turn his passion for video production into a business as more and more people began asking for his services. “We’ve got a small studio in the heart of the startup world in Seattle. We’re using gear that would have cost thousands and thousands of dollars a few years back. What would have been an HD television station truck - you know those big semi-trucks - we’ve got that in a box that’s sitting on my desk.”



Adam also experiments with video innovation in his rare free time by creating music videos of local Seattle bands using his All Cameras On approach. With the band’s permission, he asks everyone at the concert to record a few songs using their handheld devices. If the venue has a professional recording facility, he’ll ask if they can turn it on to capture a good quality audio track. Then he collects all the various footage and edits it together for unique, collaboratively generated music videos that reflect the audience’s authentic experience.

“It’s a lot of fun. It’s time consuming so I don’t get to do it as often as I’d like to. Each one takes a little bit more time than the last one because I add more complicated things, but I also shave time on some other things, like creating templates. I use this as a way to teach myself the tool of Adobe Premiere … I’m definitely going to be using PluralEyes on these from now on!”

Adam’s enthusiasm for his work and the success of Bootstrapper Studios are a direct reflection of their personal love for the tech and creative community in Seattle. “There are lots of fun, different things we can do with social media. With our clients we’re more partners than we are the help. When we go to some of these events, they’re events that we want to be at. It’s really exiting for us.”



Check out HiveSeattle and IgniteSeattle for more insight into Seattle’s tech community and Bootstrapper’s work. 

Writer Sara McIntyre is a Communications Specialist and Filmmaker who calls Vancouver, BC home.

MoMoVan: Ryan Storgaard on Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango)

In our latest instalment from MoMoVan (Mobile Monday Vancouver), Canada's lead technical evangelist, Ryan Storgaard, talks about Microsoft’s strategy for Windows Phone and the opportunity it offers to mobile app and game developers.

Microsoft’s latest release is Windows Phone 7.5 (coded named "Mango"), which continues to garner rave reviews from customers and critics as it edges its way into a crowded and complicated mobile marketplace. With 40,000 apps now in the marketplace, a significant global partnership with Nokia, and integration with Xbox Live and Microsoft Office, there is no doubt Microsoft is making a deep commitment to Windows Phone. With its innovative approach to weaving apps, tasks and experiences together into Live Tiles and Hubs, Windows Phone is aiming to differentiate itself as a fresh and exciting platform for consumers and developers.

We also hear from Miles Donald of Nokia's Partnering Team, who is also based in Vancouver. Miles brings us up to date on Nokia's upcoming Windows Phone devices including the Lumia 800, and explores the opportunities for Nokia developers afforded by the partnership with Microsoft.

(We had some problems with the lapel mic for this recording, so our apologies for the intermittent bursts of static).


MoMoVan: Ryan Storgaard on Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) from Singular Software on Vimeo.

Automatic Sync Gives Editor a Week of His Life Back

What do you do if you're starting post-production and realize you have to organize hundreds of audio files with no timecode, useful metadata or even names? Todd Batstone is the lead editor of an independent feature film called Dreadful Sorry, which he’s making with friends from his days as an actor and theatre producer in New York. As part of a grant from the South Carolina Film Commission, the production became a teaching project for students at the University of South Carolina College of Arts and Sciences.

Dreadful Sorry - Behind the Scenes - Video 4 - "The Future"


The footage was beautifully shot by veteran cinematographer Dan Kneece who used the new ARRI ALEXA camera, but when Todd opened the files to begin preparing them for editing, he found the students on set had named none of them. He was looking at three gigabytes of wave files with no indication of their corresponding scene or take.

Todd edits in Avid in his professional life, but was cutting Dreadful Sorry in Final Cut Pro because of the file format. Without an assistant, he faced weeks of manually searching for and synchronizing hundreds of files. It wasn’t until two days into the workload that he remembered the PluralEyes plugin for synchronization, and verified that it also works with FCP.

Todd recalls, “That was the lifesaver. I'd still be sitting here probably automatically lining these clips up and syncing them, and more than that, playing each one of them down to discover which tape it corresponded to, and there's several hundred files. I really put it to the test.

“I literally pulled almost every single clip, put them in a sequence, then dragged every single audio file into that sequence. Then let PluralEyes run. And it's magic ... you're looking at maybe 180 or 190 sound files and it matches them up with the wave form from the reference audio, and suddenly, magically you have this sequence with synced audio.”

Todd was so relieved with the solution that he wrote to Singular Software. “I just had to tell these people what this is doing in the real world, what the field experience is from somebody who really appreciates it and is having a very real world experience of the power of the application. I'd say it gave me a week, probably seven to eight actual working days of my life, of my editing life back.”

Dreadful Sorry is a suspense thriller seen through the eyes of a ten year-old girl who returns to her father at the family's plantation house after being sent away for seven years during the Civil War. Far beyond just synching clips, Todd is intrinsically valuable as a creative editor who collaborates with his director to write the final version of the story.

He explains, “There's just something about having been a performer and knowing what it's like to be in a scene with somebody, and having to listen to them, that lends itself to understanding the importance of creating a good rhythm in the editing room and creating a good rhythm with their performance.”

Todd first learned about PluralEyes as a member of the editing team on the new scripted MTV series called Death Valley, produced by Liquid Theory. Death Valley was shot in Los Angeles on the RED digital camera and edited in Avid. For the first week of shooting there was a problem with the jam synch so the time code on the audio and video files didn’t match up. Finally someone researched synchronization solutions and discovered the PluralEyes plugin.

Death Valley trailer for MTV

Todd recounts, “It saved our ass for a week until our production got back on track. That was my introduction to it, and the timesaving nature of it. If we hadn't had it we’d wind up syncing these things by hand, like the old days on a Moviola where you’re moving your film along on these plates, and moving the sound along until you get to the marker. We did that for a day or so because we didn't want to fall behind. It's an unreasonable, and tedious, and horrible process.”

Todd balances freelance work with his projects at Liquid Theory in L.A. Dreadful Sorry is sparking ideas for more independent collaborations with like-minded creative friends. “We have this pool of talent to pull from to begin to develop and create our own stuff … Conversations have been about what's the next project going to be for all of us, the people in our network who have known each other for all of these years, who've spent that time training, working for other people, and working in film and TV and theater. Now, we’re ready to pull all of those resources together and present something to the world.”

Follow Dreadful Sorry's progress through their production blog and FaceBook page, and catch Death Valley Monday nights on MTV - and keep an ear to the ground for Todd Batstone’s next creative revelation.

Comic Con Sizzle Reel edited by Todd Batstone

Writer Sara McIntyre is a Communications Consultant and Filmmaker who calls Vancouver, BC home.