Links To Everywhere

This page lists a lot of links that might be of use to you in your trolling around the Internet. A few of the sections duplicate areas in other parts of the site -- but isn't that what the Web is all about? Confusion?

If any of these links are broken, please let me know so I can correct them.

Articles by Me
Avid Sites
Books about Editing
Digital Video Sites
Documentary Sites
Editing Theory
Editors' Sites
Experimental Film Sites
Film Sites
Filmmakers' Sites
General Editing Sites
Interviews and Other Information
Lab Sites
Music For Films Sites
Rhino Reviews
Society's Influences on Film
Streaming Video Sites
Video Sites
Video FX Sites (CGI)

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Articles by me

Interview with me on Moviemaker Magazine's website

Moviemaker Magazine, for whom I've written a few articles, did a two-part interview with me about the thought processes of editing, teaching editing, and much more. They also asked me for ten things I've learned in the editing world. The link above will take you to my copy of the interview. If you want to see the interview within the magazine's site (something that I'd recommend, since they have a lot of great interviews) click the link right here.

Avid Sites

Have a problem with the Avid???

Avid Knowledge Center is a huge library that can provide you with all sorts of solutions to questions and facts about the machine and how to edit on the system. You need to register to get to many of the features but they don't charge for it and you just have to fill out a few short questions.

Avid has created a really fantastic Film Guide which basically details the entire film process from pre-production through the editing, sound and negative cutting processes, chock full of great illustrations. You can also find it on the 24P Web Site. Be careful -- it's a REALLY BIG FILE!!! You might want to save it to your hard drive and print it out.

Avid Film Guide

If you link out to this PDF file, you'll see Avid's guide to their Express machine, along with guides on how to set up an Avid desktop and more. Print it out and enjoy! ;). You'll need the Adobe Reader in order to view it. You should already have it (it comes with most computers) but if you don't click on the button to the right.

Avid 7.0 Users Guide

Here are the links for the remaining Avid manuals. Be careful -- they are really huge. Once again, you'll need Acrobat Reader.

Avid 10.0 Effects Guide

This one goes over how to do the visual effects on this system. It's not as huge the one above, but it's pretty chunky. Once again, you'll need Acrobat Reader.

Avid 10.0 Universal Getting Started Guide

A more straight forward guide to what our Avid can do. It's actually a pretty good basic startup guide. You might to download this for yourself. You'll need Acrobat Reader.

Avid 10.0 Input and Output Guide

A downloadable PDF file of their 480 page manual on how to input and output from the Avid that we are using.

Avid EDL Manager Guide

This guide explains how Edit Decisions Lists work inside the Avid.

Avid MediaLog Guide

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Different Strokes for Different Folks

It is possible to set up your Avid keyboard in a zillion different ways and, as a result, a zillion different editors have done just that. Here is a page with a few samples of how some editors have set theirs up.

EDL Requirements

Victory Post, in Seattle, has certain requirements for the Avid EDLs that it uses for its online sessions. Their requirements are specific to them but are not unusual. This page gives the details as well as linking out to a screen shot of what the EDL dialogue box in Avid should look like for them. Another pair of EDL settings can be found here, note that there are two links to "screen dumps" which show what the EDL Manager should look like.

Ben Hershleder's Tips and Techniques page

Ben hHrshleder, an Avid editor, has compiled a great page of tips and suggestions for Avid editors.

Compilation of Avid Tips pages

Even better, here is a listing of a slew of pages of Avid Tips.

Alan Stewart's Zero Cut

Alan is an Australian editor who was employed by Avid for a while. He's compiled a great web site, which has a large number of documents specific to editing, including a list of items that should appear on a Telecine Spec Sheet.

 

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Books About Editing

Australian Screen Editors

This is a bibliography of books about the technical and aesthetics of film editing.

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Digital Video Sites

The Digital Television site has by far the most complete collection of links, articles and answers to any questions you might have about DTV including DTV and the law, DTV in the news, how tos, and much much more. They have a very large and pretty much complete glossary of DV and regular video terms. Learn all about 3:2 pulldown!!

Avid Tips and Tricks and other articles

Post Producer Magazine has a number of articles on post-production (on pre-pro and production also, for that matter) which might interest you. Some article subjects are A+B roll editing, Avid Secrets, conforming from an edit list, DV aspect ratios, sound for video, timecode, and many many more.

Keyframe.org

Subtitled "Cinema in the digital age" this is a growing site which is devoted to Digital Cinema. There is a great page of links to sites which show digital films, rent digital films, talk about digital films, and help with digital films.

Rule

Rule is an equipment sales and rental house, but their site has a number of great technical tips, ranging from synching HD video and sound all the way to setting up monitors. Highly recommended.

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Documentary Sites

Susan Perla talks about editing footage from the January 191 Tragedies

Susan Perla, an editor for CBS News, was in the thick of things during the days after the World Trade Center attacks. In this interview for EditorsNet she talks about what she went through getting the footage edited and on the air.

A Filmmaker Remembers G.I.'s Consumed by the Holocaust's Terror

This Nov 4001 article is about Charles Guggenheim's struggle to make a documentary film about a prisoner of war camp during World War II. Though the article is primarily about the events in the past, in the course of the piece Guggenheim discusses a number of things that Robbie Kenner talked about in this evening's class. I've highlighted them in yellow, as usual.

Deborah Hoffmann and Frances Reid Discuss The Making of LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO DAY

The two filmmakers discuss their involvement (from its idea through its shooting and finishing) of this documentary about the South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Committee.

Soros Documentary Fund

The SDF is a fund dedicated to funding (yes, that right, financing) documentaries. Well, that's not precisely true, they usually finanace documentaries. Right now they are undergoing some transition. But this link will help you to learn what to do when they start distributing money again. There's also a list of everything they've funded so far -- 124 at last count.

Film Documentario

A great site with papers on documentary filmmaking.

Cyber-College.com Talks About The Personnel Involved In Shooting News

The folks at Cyber-College have a typically simple-minded description of news gathering forces, but it's a great introduction to the who-does-what on a news crew out in the field. This is actually the first of two pages. The second page is here.

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Alan Stewart's Zero Cut

Alan is an Australian editor who was employed by Avid for a while. He's compiled a great web site, which has a large number of documents specific to editing, including a list of items that should appear on a Telecine Spec Sheet.

Alan's Stewart's Zero Cut Film Editing Glossary

A somewhat spotty but valuable glossary of film terms.

Michael Chaskes' Film Editing Home Page

This site, one of the first personal home pages devoted to film editing, contains a rather thorough and brutally forward, description of Michael's struggles to find himself a paying career as a film editor. Honest and, at times, compelling.

Reading A Film Sequence

Eric Rentschler and Anton Kaes have put together a succinct, though often difficult to fathom, description of the various facets -- picture and sound -- of a film sequence.

 

How To Splice Film

The techniques for properly splicing two pieces of film to each other are described in this article from City Net.

Motion Picture Editors Guild Newsletter

A large, very helpful, web site with interviews, tips and techniques and news. It is part of the larger Editors Guild site listed below.

Motion Picture Editors Guild

This is the site maintained by Local 700, the Guild which represents most professional editors in the United States (as well as sound recordists, rerecordists and projectionists). It contains the Newsletter/magazine mentioned in the previous entry, as well as a host of other valuable items.

Oliver Peters' Post Production Site

Oliver has a nice site which advertises the post services that his company offers. It also has a link to a rather comprehensive discussion of planning for all of the options of post production.

Heady Editing Theory

The Belgian research psychologist Filip Germeys, has a very heady breakdown of editing theory or, to be more precise, of how the human mind perceives flow of images. While it's a bit doctinraire for my taste, it is (in its own way) attempting to do what Kulsehov did empirically.

 

Flicker, A Web Site For Experimental Filmmakers

This site is a link for many experimental filmmakers, with places for them to advertise their works and display images from them.

Writings On Avant-Garde Film

Fred Camperr, who compiled the Stan Brakhage Sites On The Web below, has a number of his writings on various Avant Garde filmmakers on the web. They are all in reference to particular filmmakers, but are fascinating nonetheless. There are also links to the webring for avant garde filmmaking. Webrings are collections of web sites devoted to the same topic -- in this case avant garde film -- that are all linked together.

What's Happening This Week In Avant-Garde Cinema

A rather comprehensive list of avant garde/experimental films screening that week. It's cool that it's still happening out there -- in this packaged cinema world.

Interview with Ken Jacobs, film artist

Ken Jacobs, a long time experimental filmmaker, sat down at UC Berkeley in 1999 for an interview on his thought processes and techniques. Interesting reading.

Interview With Stan Brakhage and Nathaniel Dorsky

The online magazine indieWIRE interviewed Stan Brakhage and Nathaniel Dorsky, two influential independent filmmakers, on the occasion of retrospective of each of their works.

The Importance of Stan Brakhage's Work As An Artist

Bart Testa talks about how to look at Brakhage's work as an art form, rather than as experimental.

Stan Brakhage Sites On The Web

This page is a list of Web sites in English concerning Stan Brakhage: reviews of his films, articles on him and his work, writing by him, interviews with him, and more.

A Short Film By Maya Deren and Sasha Hamid

A clip from "Meshes of the Afternoon", a short film by experimental film legend Maya Deren and Alexander Hamid, who later moved into making sponsored and exposition films with Francis Thompson. If this loads too slowly, there is a link to a smaller version of the film.

Film Sites

Kodak has a big film glossary, with definitions of many of the terms that we will get into when we talk about lab work.

MGM has a great site which talks about the various film size formats and letterboxing (those black bars at the top and bottom of many video transfers of films).

There's an interesting news site which has links to a dozen top industry magazines, and compiles the headlines from each one of them.

Filmmakers' Sites

A new movie called DEN OF LIONS, starring Bob Hoskins and Stephen Dorff, recently started filming in Budapest. The interesting thing about this film is that producer Brian Linse is keeping a web log (called a "blog" -- basically a diary) of the filmmaking process, including some digital photographs. It's a little scanty right now (production is like that, eh?) but will probably get more interesting as time goes on -- honesty permitting. You can reach the Den Of Lions blog by clicking. The blog will open in a new window. Close it to get back here.

General Editing Sites

All Movie Guide Glossary

A collection of some common and some not-so-common editing and lab terms.

American CinemaEditors Organization

In their own words -- Since 1950, ACE has been the honorary society of film editors dedicated to the advancement of our craft and to the conviction that the editor is one of the significant authors of a film. This site has areas of interest relating to the ACE organization including information on the history of ACE, a F.A.Q. on ACE membership,  excerpts from their Magazine,  educational programs and an opportunity to purchase items from the ACE store. Even more important, they sponsor several programs for students. Information on them is available on their site.

Annenberg/CPB Editing Glossary

A very basic glossary of editing terms. The one in the textbook is, in my humble opinion, much better. But these terms are more conceptual.

Internet Movie Database Glossary

This glossary contains common filmmaking terms for all disciplines -- not just editing.

Interviews and Information Links

Here are some nice links that you can use in the meantime. I will occasionally be using excerpts from interviews form these sites as handouts in class.

I also have done a few interviews with editors that are available on the Editors Guild Web Site.

Avid Production Network -- This site, from the Avid manufacturing company, is devoted to the oncoming DV revolution. Though it is still in its infancy, it already includes interviews with filmmakers, tips about equipment and techniques, white papers, links, as well as a resume posting site.

Dov S-S Simen's Blog -- Doug has been pushing the two day film school for years now. While it's hard to believe that you'll anywhere close in those seminars as you'll get in this one class (or any other one class, for that matter) there are some interesting points he raises on his site.

Editors Net -- This site is devoted to the working editor and includes many interviews with feature, television and commercial editors and directors. It is updated nearly every day so it usually has some new material, much of which is fascinating.

Editors Local -- This is the official site of the Motion Picture Editors Local (number 700 for those of you who care). Though a large portion of this site is dedicated for members only, the Guild Newsletter, which is a rather impressive publication, is available to all. There are usually interviews, tips and techniques for using digital editing machines, and much much more.

AFI -- The American Film Institute's web site, while embarrassingly out of date, still has a few articles of interest. Right now, they have two devoted to editing -- interviews with the late Verna Fields and the very-much-with-us Thelma Schoonmaker, Martin Scorsese's editor for many years, including his latest film.

Have a problem with the Avid??? -- Avid Knowledge Center is a huge library that can provide you with all sorts of solutions to questions and facts about the machine and how to edit on the system. You need to register to get to many of the features but they don't charge for it and you just have to fill out a few short questions.

 

Lab Sites

Tips on Cutting Negative

Northeast Negative Matchers put together this list of handy tips for preparing your film for negative cutting.

What Happens to Your Film In The Lab?

This series of explanations about the work of a film lab suffers by being a bit out of date. Well, actually, it's quite a bit out of date. But, aside from the last page, which describes edge numbering by the lab, it still remains one of the best descriptions about what happens once your negative goes in through the door of the lab. Another blow-by-blow description (more up-to-date, but less illustrated) is available at the Kodak web site.

Laboratory Operations

It sounds dry, but Film Lab in South Africa, has a fairly comprehensive and very readable overview of most lab processes. Well worth taking a look.

List of Los Angeles Film Labs

This is a, more or less, complete list of film labs in the Los Angeles area.

Kodak Support Documents

Kodak has a comprehensive web site with helpful papers on selecting a lab, what a lab does, and a host of other production and post-production issues. One interesting note is copies below:

 

Airport X-Ray Security and Film
Security precautions at US airports are currently being upgraded following the tragic events of September 11th. Although detailed information about new security procedures is not yet available, it is likely that the use of high-intensity X-ray machines for screening passenger baggage and freight will be increased.
While in the past, passing film through an ordinary X-ray scanner at a security checkpoint usually did not affect film, travelers should be aware that the high intensity machines now in use at many airports, will fog all unprocessed film, whether exposed or not -- and that all baggage may be subjected to scanning in such machines.

 

Kodak's Tips on Selecting A Lab

This page from Kodak's web site discusses what you should look for when you're searching for a film lab. Understand that film labs are decreasing in number all of the time, but Los Angeles still has the biggest selection of labs, so there are choices to make.

Log Line Sites

"The Anatomy of a Log Line" -- SCREEN TALK Article on Log Lines

Rob-Gregory Browne writes about creating a log line, from the point of view of the writer. Though he doesn't really deal with the issues of adjectives and how to turn the log line into something dynamic (as opposed to concisely telling the story) much of what he says has validity to the editor trying to do a story analysis.

How To Write A Really Good Log Line

Wendy Moon discusses the elements behind writing a great log line. One of my favorite lines is this:
"You've heard over and over, "If you can't say it in three sentences, you don't know what your script is about." Trust me--they're right ... You have to, absolutely must, learn to get to the heart of what your script is about--your career may very well depend on your ability to state what your script is about in a fascinating way."

Music for Film Sites

Glossary of Terms Used In Film Music

This is a list of tons of terms that people use in film music, in particular in licensing music for film, that I compiled for a Web site that I'm doing for the Universal Music Publishing Group.

Film Music Articles on filmsound.org

A list of intellectual articles, useful links, and other assorted Web sites on film music. Excellent.

What Does A Scoring Session Look Like?

The first picture on this page, borrowed from trumpet player Jon Lewis' web site (which is a sort of scrapbook about the Los Angeles music recording scene) shows the set-up of the big music recording stage on the old MTM lot. The second shows David Newman conducting his score for GALAXY QUEST.

Wolfgang Peterson Talks About "High Noon"

In this interview from the New York Times Peterson talks about the influence that this 1952 Fred Zinneman had a young boy in post-war Germany. Along the way he talks about the use of music in the film, expecially the use of silence combined with music.

Filmmusic Magazine

A series of links from the rather thorough and interesting Filmmusic Magazine, including an article on what everyone in the film music industry actually does.

Music Editing On "Return To Me"

Michael Jay, the music editor on Bonnie Hunt's film, talks about how he confronted two complicated music editing problems, relating to using old songs in the soundtrack and recording music to a pre-existing track with a variable tempo.

Sundance/Slamdance directors talk about using music in their films

What most of them discuss is creating an atmosphere for communication between themselves and their composers.

Reviews of Rhinoceros Eyes

Alibi
MSN.com

Society's Influences On Film

The National Coaltion Against Censorship

As artists/filmmakers we should be aware that there is a long, complex dance that is done between the artist and the society which views, listens to, and/or pays for the works that we all create. The NCAC has a great website which documents all forms of censorship. This link takes you to the first page of their censorship timeline -- in 1989. To get to the home page the whole site, click here.

Streaming Video Sites

Here are a list of some interesting streaming video sites. USC has an "output deal" with AtomFilms for films done under their auspices. However, you should visit all of these sites and check out what is being done in short films, Flash films and more.

There is an interesting discussion of Web content on Internet Content's web site.

Anteye Films
AtomFilms - One of the largest and most diverse streaming video sites.
eveo films
iFilm - This site is trying to be a main "portal" site for the Entertainment professional, especially with their site ifilmpro.net which is designed to be a meeting place and shopping heaven for people who work in the industry. Once you sign up on that part of iFilm, you can participate in gossipy chat rooms about agents, television and more.
Minute Movies - A good selection of foreign films and filmmaker resources.
NetFest - Old, new, fun films and documentaries are rated by viewers.
The Romp - A site dedicated to those who find Maxim too deep. Some clever pieces, some interactive games, all most with a sexual bent.
ShortBuzz - You can submit your own or watch anything, sorted by category. An uneven but sometimes interesting source for films.
Streaming Media - An excellent site dedicated not to films but the techniques and business of stemaing media. A great glossary and more.
Trailvervision - Watch trailers for films that exist only in the minds of their makers. Fun sometimes.
Z.com

Video Sites

I don't know who this guy/gal is, but there's a fantastic site on Angelfire.com, which (among other things) has a massive collection of links to all things video, computer, and web. It's part of a larger site where he/she gives a basic course in video production which looks to be directed at people producing programs for public access cable in Fayetteville, Arkansas. There's a section on video post-production which talks about the difference between a "cuts only" and an "A/B editing suite" as well as giving a good description of several editing systems.

The Television Teachers Association has put together a great collection of links and discussions of how video works. Further up on the page are some good resources for seminars and papers delivered. Learn how television works, how chroma key works, and see the craziest resolution chart ever put in front of a video camera.

Avid Tips and Tricks and other articles

Post Producer Magazine has a number of articles on post-production (on pre-pro and production also, for that matter) which might interest you. Some article subjects are A+B roll editing, Avid Secrets, conforming from an edit list, DV aspect ratios, sound for video, timecode, and many many more.

Video FX Sites

Visual FX Headquarters

A very extensive site, full of articles about the special effects work on many movies over the last five years. Interviews, detailed behind-the-scenes, and more. Well worth the trip.

The Blue Screen/Chroma Key Page

This site wants to take the place of a book on the blue screen, but it's really just a great place for a user and fan of the process to put up links and talk about the process. Has some good descriptions.

Bob Kertesz's Page

Bob is one of the inventors of Ultimatte, which is one of the better compositing software programs for video. It has now been adapted for digital video platforms, such as Avid and Final Cut Pro.

The T-Matte Company

This site sells compositing technology and has a good page of tips for shooting composited elements.

How To Save Money In Visual Effects

This page, from Aftershock, goes over some great time saving (and, therefore, money saving) tips for creating visual effects. It all boils down to planning ahead - that is, knowing what you want and what it will take to get it.