Every year I'm asked to film the local village pantomime. Every year I do so, and edit it and produce DVD copies of it. Every year I do battle with Final Cut Express, especially the "capture" side of things by which I load the camera footage onto the computer. For some reason, which no-one has been able to explain, the programme crashes unless I limit the amount captured to 5 minutes. So, for the two hours plus of filming, I have to load in at least 24 separate chunks - and then join it all together. And that's before I start to adjust audio levels and edit out gash bits. At least I've learned to film one night only to limit my editing options!
One year - probably the first one I did - I filmed three different performances from three different angles, and then edited it all together. I'm sure no-one appreciated the end result any more than if it had been all filmed in one take from one camera position.
I filmed last Saturday's evening performance, and have been spending my evenings since then editing it. The edit is at last finished, and I'm burning the first DVD right now. Well, it's doing something called "asset encoding", which takes a long time - a few hours. Once it's done that, the actual burning of the DVD takes only a few minutes. The computer will spit it out while I'm asleep.
I have to attach a carrier bag to the side of the iMac to catch the disc, otherwise it usually lands on the floor!
Oops - I've just remembered: This year I've included a roller caption with all the credits on - performers and crew - but I forgot to put myself on. Oh well. Too late now. I'm not changing it now.
I like to include at least one photo on every post, if possible, so here's Shadow on the Coventry Canal crossing the Tame Aqueduct near Fazeley Junction last April.
3 comments:
What was the pantomime this year?
H.S.
Dick Whittington. It was the sixth production of DW in the 43 years of the pantomime group.
I hope you enjoyed it, and I like this photo very much!
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