All posts by jjartist

March has arrived with some  epic  winds, blowing everyone around in the marina and doing a fair share of minor damage.  Marlene’s little boat Pixie, which she keeps on a mooring, came loose and ended up aground.  Luckily it missed every expensive thing it could have run into and just ended up stuck in the mud and tipped over a bit.  She went out and put an anchor on it and when the tide comes in again it will float nicely.  On Hanalei Moon we had no problems just some very interesting bouncing around. I actually felt a little bit sea sick from the motion. Perhaps exacerbated by the tummy full of a nice dinner.

I’ve been quite busy on this project…editing several hours of video.  With many a surprising stumbling block.  I thought I had it all under control and hit a new stumbling block today:  A big section of an otherwise good video was just an orange field.  For some reason that section didn’t do like everything around it did.  I did work out a way to get what I needed…a workaround.  I still don’t know what the problem was.  I took some time this week to do videography at a wedding. My first wedding video, actually.  I’m looking forward to editing it.  I know I got a lot of great material.  Today at Filmsters, I watched part of a documentary with Patti White and Lee Anderson.  Lee took the time to talk to me a bit about setting up a subject for an interview and made me a little sketch.  It’s wonderful how much more meaningful it is to have an actual person show you something, rather than to read it in a book.

Working on video while on the boat is a little bit tough… especially with all that teak wood out there that needs sanding and that beautiful fall weather.  Still, I am keeping my nose to the grindstone just a bit longer at least. I managed to solve the last round of obstacles, or at least find a good work-around.  Now I thinking about what sort of editing program to install on the MFA’s newish Macs.  Since I’m using Premiere Pro CS5, that seems like a reasonable choice; but it might be a good time for me to think about upgrading to CS6.  There is a lot to  take into account here and I need to do a bit more research.  I’m open to suggestions, however.  Reviews of CS6 seem pretty good.  There is always the expense to take into account.

I spent about three hours today working at Filmsters. With my laptop set up at the big table, I started sorting through my collection of video files. I discovered that my editing program was freezing and crashing, though it they had run fine on my desktop PC at home. Lee Anderson came to my rescue and we had a fruitful discussion about how programs can get bloated with multiple versions of the rendered files. I was given an avenue to explore and so far it looks like things are looking up. I really would never have thought of the rendered files being the problem. Once Lee made the suggestion I went to Google and found a wealth of discussion about various approaches to dealing with the problem. Good, but not surprising that I’m not the first.

1. I had a very encouraging meeting with Patty White and Lee Anderson yesterday.  They both had a lot of good practical advice to offer as well as being very generous in finding ways to further my project.  It seems I have bitten off a pretty large chunk of business with this project and will be looking for some help in several areas…particularly in terms of crew for field work.