Poor Man's Fantasy

I remember I didn't like him much at first — in fact, I think I sort of hated him. Yet because of the close proximity of our childhood homes, we often found ourselves in the same pack of kids walking to and from school. And when my best friend at the time suggested that he join our band — because he was after all a drummer who actually knew how to play — I proceeded to do the child equivalent of scoff at the idea. Yet eventually I was worn down, and so began my friendship with Patrick Seager.

Now, Patch and I never got to play together in that fateful band (which broke up so quickly I don't recall if we ever settled on a name), but in the years that followed he became one of my closet and best friends. We eventually did get to play together in other bands  — most notably the year long alt-punk group Identity Thieves — but whereas for me musical performance and songwriting has slipped into being a simple hobby, Patch kept with it and has just released his first solo studio album, "Drifter".

Ask anyone who's been there, witnessing the transformation of a creative voice is a immeasurably fascinating venture, and for over a decade I've been lucky enough to hear the evolution of Patch's craft. From the early punk rock days of singing about lack of athletic ability, all the way through to the musical maturity on display with this album, it has been an pleasure and a joy to be privy to it. Best of all, this album is really really good.

But as this album is the brain-baby of one of my very best friends, I'll acknowledge that I am completely biased to love it. And while that is true, I honestly think it is a fantastic album, regardless of my predisposition.

So please, give it a listen and pass it along.

FCPX - First Impressions

Yes, it looks like iMovie. Yes, it functions a lot like iMovie. No, this is not iMovie Pro.

The newest version of Final Cut Pro was finally released today, and after many questions about what I think of it, I figured I'd write up a few quick thoughts here. 

INTERFACE

First thing to notice is that the entire interface has be consolidated into one window. The good news about this is you don't have 7 different windows popping up and moving all over the place. The bad news is you have less customization over the layout. In fact, if you edit with two screens, you only have the option of either having the full Viewer on the second display, or having the media library on the second display. Depending on how you work this would be very frustrating.

And yes, it's very pretty.

THE TECHNICAL

If you're thinking of using FCPX as a professional business tool anytime soon, you'd best rethink your plan. While this software would be perfectly satisfactory if you were simply running a birthday/wedding video enterprise, for anyone out there seriosuly working in the professional video world, this just ain't gonna cut it. Gone are some key import/export features that sadly render this software almost completely useless if you have any serious work to do. 

THE CREATIVE

However despite all the technical limitations, within one hour of using the software I can safely say that actually editing with FCPX is an absolute joy.

As a test, I took a small film project I was currently working on in FCP7 and started again in FCPX. Sure I was just recreating the edit I had previously done, but it was easy and quick to accomplish. More importantly, I was able to make creative changes so quickly that I completely forgot about how I would have done the same edit in FCP7. There were a few occasions where I had to look up how to do a simple task that I could have done in the old software while blindfolded, but I'm fine with learning the new way to do things if it makes things easier, and in this case, it has.

Now I'm not going to wrap this up with any sort of conclusion; I need more time to come to that. A more detailed post will be forthcoming, once I've had a few days to play with it.

If you have any specific questions about FCPX and how it works, leave them in the comments below and I'll try to answer them as best I can.

Thank You Nanaimo!

Well, what a weekend it was!

Thank you to everyone who voted for my pitch at the Vancouver Island Short Film Festival. It was truly an honour to be able to share the stage with such great pitches. Hopefully all the films pitched will be at the festival next year!

Now onto the long, hard, stressful, amazing, rhinocerous and slightly itchy procress of making a film. More immediately, writing a film. Even more immediately, sleeping. 

I'm going to start actually updating this site as frequently as things happen, to keep all you readers reader in the loop.

So keep checking back often(ish) for production updates!

Podcast? I hardly knew her!

That heading doesn't make sense.

But neither does this! My good friend and fellow bearded film geek Chris Hernandez and I have decided to start a podcast about random film things and call it "There's a Monkey in My Soup"!

What will we be talking about? Probably movies.

When will it come out? Sometime.

How can you listen? Here! (And hopefully soon in the iTunes podcast directory.)

Why? Why not?

Have a listen and send us questions/comments/concerns/eulogies on Twitter, or by email.

Site Updates

I've just finished a slightly massive redesign of the site. I say slight because I didn't really change all that much, but also massive because it took me hours to do it. Oh, the learning process. How I love and hate thee.

The biggest change you'll find on the site is the addition of the DISQUS comment system on the site. What does that mean to you? Not much. But, you will now be able to add comments to the site by logging in with your Facebook or Twitter accounts, so I guess that's something.

Also new is the addition of the Reviews section. For those who haven't been following — aka, all of you —I've been doing some reviews over on another site called Omniflic. Well now all those reviews are now on this site, and I'll be adding new reviews here. Watch out for those coming sometime in the near to distant future.