I’m neat by trade.  Perhaps too neat which makes me think that Avid is hard wired to my brain cause that is why SuperBin exists.  For me. Now I am sharing it with you.

SuperBin (Enable SuperBin in the Composer Setting) lets you open not just one bin but a billion bins!  When it opens, it looks like this:

See that bluish icon that looks like 3 bins stacked on top of one another?  That is where you’ll find the list of bins that are open and if you want to access a particular bin, chose it from the list.

Now I have the best of both worlds, one bin open but access to a billion.  Amazing.

But. (There had to be a but.) But you don’t have to keep everything linked to the SuperBin. If you want to have a hybrid SuperBin/Bin scenario, double click on the Bin name in the Project Window.  That bin, if a part of a SuperBin, will separate itself from the group.  (Conversely, if separate from a SuperBin, double clicking will add it to a SuperBin.)

SuperBin. SuperAwesome. Don’t believe me? Try it out for yourself!

It doesn’t matter what you do. You can beg. You can plead. You can pray. You can throw a temper tantrum, but it is all for naught ’cause it is G-O-N-E. Or is it?

Enter the superhero of the day: Avid’s Attic. It’s a magical place that many people don’t know about and those who do should unabashedly tell everyone about it. Avid’s Attic saves backup copies of all of the bins that are open in your project. Yes, including the one that just crashed. And it is possible that it saved it after you created that mind-blowing effect that will get you promoted on the spot.

Search for “Attic” on your computer’s idea of a file search and wait for the folder to appear that will potentially save the day. Within this folder, you will find a separate folder for all of the projects that you have ever accessed and saved on that computer. With a little digging, you will also find your bin (fingers crossed) that has your saved effect in it.

Retrieving from the Avid Attic is easy. Simply copy the latest saved bin and drag it to your desktop. Add the file extension “.avb” to the end of the bin, double click on it and watch with bated breath as you see if your work arise from the grave. It might work and it might not but when you crashed, you didn’t think you had hope and the Attic has – even temporarily – given it to you and what person would knock that?

If you want Avid to store more attic files or save more often, check out the Bin setting under the project window. You can tweak it to your heart’s content, but be careful when doing it in a shared media environment.

Crashing isn’t the end of the world. Definitely a reason to leave work early but not the end when the Avid Attic is there to save you. (Pun intended.)

According to mighty Webster an assistant is: (paraphased of course!)

A person who assists; a person holding an assistantship

That is nice to know but let’s pretend I’m a little slow and don’t know what assist means.  Which coincidentally is all throughout the definition of assistant, so shouldn’t be too much a stretch.  Let’s go back a step and look at assist.  This is what we get:

To give usually supplementary support or aid to.

That is a little better.  Big words, but I know what aid means.  Helper, number two, wing man, sidekick – basically you’re next to the person on top.   As an assistant, your duties can have a wide range.  You could get drycleaning, brew coffee, run errands or assist in flying a plane, assist in a life-saving surgery or assist an editor.

I don’t know everything about everything and I definitely don’t know everything about a lot but, taking a big gamble here, I am going to say that the assistant to the pilot  might know how to fly to plane. (Maybe.)  That person in the operating room assisting the surgeon, handing over instruments, may not know how to be a surgeon but I am sure they have seen enough surgeries to alert the doc-in-charge if something is amiss with their patient.  So, apply these templates to an assistant editor. (You can see where I’m going, right?)

Sure, they aren’t making the cuts and they aren’t making the decisions but that doesn’t mean if lead-editor extraordinaire is out sick and some last minute changes need to be made an assistant editor couldn’t take the helm  and make some things happen for the good of the show.

I mean, in all honesty, all AE’s are doing is running around vacumming, washing windows and taking lunch orders for editors. There is NO way, absolutely none, that AEs are running the show while digitizing, grouping, managing a team of assistant editors, doing outputs, troubleshooting malfunctioning machines, and doing minor edits for the editors. No, they are definitely not doing that.  If they were, people might think that they were integral to the show, invaluable even, and the world might come to a screeching halt if this were the conclusion.

Well you know what? At 02:58:44 pm (ET) the world stopped. (You might not have noticed cause I got things moving along – I’m powerful like that!)  Assistant Editors and other assistant positions have the potential and most definitely are the backbones of the industries they work in.   For a fraction of the cost, you are getting the packaged deal of the century and usually harder working employees and with better attitudes than the head honchos.  (Trust me, I’m not knocking the HH’s, when you get there, you deserve a break after being an AE!)  Always willing to jump in to troubleshoot anything so production doesn’t stop and money doesn’t pour down the drain.

It is desirable to move up the ladder to earn more money, have more recognition and hopefully lighten your workload.  This isn’t for everyone and I admire and comend the people who choose to be assistants because that is a lifetime of working in the trenches or being the first mate.  And if I haven’t completely convinced you of the worthiness of assistants, consider this:

Steve Williams. Spock.  Ethel Mertz.  Ed McMahon.  Tonto.  Vanna White.

Who would the number 1’s be without them?

Candidates should have minimum 2yrs experience as a Sub/Associate Editor

Job Description:

• Prepare, rewrite and edit copy to improve readability
• Read copy or proof to detect and correct errors in spelling, punctuation, and syntax
• Plan the contents of publications according to the publication’s style, editorial policy, and publishing requirements
• Verify facts, dates, and statistics, using standard reference sources
• Oversee publication production, including artwork, layout, computer typesetting, and printing, ensuring adherence to deadlines and budget requirements.
• Confer with management and editorial staff members regarding placement and emphasis of developing news stories.
• Interview and hire writers and reporters or negotiate contracts, royalties, and payments for authors or freelancers.
• Direct the policies and departments of newspapers, magazines and other publishing establishments etc.

Educational Qualifications:

Post Graduates(MA)

Graduates(BA,BMM,Journalism)

Mail your applications to consultant03@netsyscon.net to apply or call Sneha 9920211038 for details.

at the end of the street was the lake

a blue you wanted to belong to.

Who hasn’t felt a desire to belong—to people, to a place, to colors. As someone who grew up next to a lake (but not “on” a lake), this poem made me think of sneaking down to swim in a place that I didn’t “own,” but certainly belonged to. I think of Turtle Lake during a full moon when Cuffe writes:

You never seen a thing so calm under your hand

as a lake at night, in the summer.

This poem deals with the our physical relationship to space and to others, even when that intimate “belonging” is forbidden; Cuffe isn’t afraid to explore the danger of that.  The speaker and her sister “stole the lake” while they stayed in an unwelcoming neighborhood with “stiff-assed robins.” This exclusion from the lake makes the speaker’s love and knowledge of the lake by the end of the poem that much more powerful. This hidden love, this stolen love, is dangerously close and dangerously real. What do you want to belong to like that?

To read more from this fascinating collection (and get 10% off and free shipping while it’s still our August “pick of the month”), order a copy here.

I know what it means to be a feminist.  To me, it means a freedom of choice.  It’s not about women or men necessarily; it’s about the freedom that we deserve as human beings to choose what kind of lives we make for ourselves.  To some, this means the choice to have children, marry a partner, and be a stay at home mom.  For others, it means traveling the world or owning a motorcycle.  For me, it means living in Oregon apart from my family and devoting my life to books and writing because that’s what I love—I’m grateful that I had the ability to make that decision for myself.

So how does that freedom translate into publishing? Well, for one, the women of CALYX have always had freedom of editorial choice.  All of our editorial decisions are made collectively—that means that every submission that comes into the office is read by at least two women.  Twenty-five percent of all submissions are then discussed by 6 women and voted on—we sometimes hold stories and poems to read again later.  That means that we practice equality and fairness in our decision-making.

Freedom of choice is also big around the office in how we run our non-profit.  We work collectively to get jobs done, from our Director down to our wonderful student interns—everyone is encouraged to share their ideas about how to get the word out about different projects.   You should have seen us Wednesday crowded into the backroom, every staff member sticking stamps onto envelopes because that’s what we needed to get done and we all wanted to help.

We also choose to publish exceptional work by women that is representative of that freedom to be ourselves.  Some of the poetry and prose that goes into the journal has nothing to do with women or personal identity.  One story going into the new Summer Journal Vol. 26:2, for example, has a homeless man as the main protagonist (you’ll be excited when Lego Bionic Moses comes into the story).  On the other hand, some poems in Vol. 26:2 deeply personal and intimately explain experiences from women’s perspectives: what it’s like to give birth, look for a job as a woman, learn to Kayak for the first time.  The editors of CALYX choose work that we feel is well-written, interesting to read, and represents some important part of the diverse and dynamic experience of women.  There’s no one perspective that embodies everything that it means to be a woman (or a feminist, for that matter), so representing as many different viewpoints as we can is a good place to start.

What do you think about this? How does a business, a person, or a piece of writing be “feminist”?

-Rebecca Olson, Associate Editor

It’s a scary world out there. In the past few days, there has been disturbing legislation passed in Arizona stripping away the rights of people of color, a potential car bombing in NYC, the 40th anniversary of the Kent State shooting, and a disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  It’s hard to say how to stay positive in the face of so many different kinds of horrors, especially when our country faces so many threats–to the environment, to equality, to our safety, to our rights, to our minds and bodies.

CALYX is a publication dedicated to the idea that reading, writing, and publishing are acts of social justice. We would like to take the opportunity to remind our readers, writers, and ourselves, that activism isn’t limited to getting on a bus to hold up a sign in DC–opportunities for defending important causes are all around us.  Continue to read, continue to write, continue to listen and question, and above all–continue to stand up for what you believe in to the best of your ability.  We’re all in this together, feminist or not, and we have a duty to continue to fight for justice and equality in this country.

-Rebecca Olson, Assistant Editor*

(*These ideas are a personal statement and do not necessarily embody CALYX Press)

Other Christians murdered in area that continues to be wracked by violence.

LAGOS, Nigeria, April 27 (CDN) — The killing of Christians in Jos, Plateau state in Nigeria continued over the weekend with two journalists and five other persons falling victim to Muslim youth gangs.

Nathan S. Dabak, an assistant editor at a newspaper of the Church of Christ in Nigeria (COCIN) called The Light Bearer, and Sunday Gyang Bwede, a reporter at the publication, were stabbed to death on Saturday (April 24) at Gado-Bako in Jos North Local Government Area along with an unidentified motorcyclist.

“The staff of the church were murdered in cold blood by some Hausa Muslim youths,” the Rev. Pandang Yamsat, president of COCIN, told Compass today. “This is clear because they have been using the hand phones of the deceased journalists and boasting that they are the ones that killed them.”

The young Muslim men have been boldly answering calls to the cell phones of the deceased journalists, he said; when a friend of Dabak called his cell phone number, an unknown voice responded, “We have killed all of them – you can do your worst!”

Dabak, 36, and the 39-year-old Bwede had left their office on Saturday morning and were on their way to interview local politician Bulus Kaze when they fell into the hands of young Muslim men, Yamsat said.

The church started a search for the two Christians that day but did not discover their bodies until about noon on Sunday at the mortuary of Jos University Teaching Hospital, he said. He added that the church was eagerly waiting for results of a police investigation.

“The security team of the church has been communicating with the police, but they are yet to make any headway on this unfortunate incident,” he said.

Burial of the slain journalists is scheduled for Friday (April 30).

In his statement on Monday (April 26), Yamsat lamented that “while efforts have been tailored towards the return of peace to the state by the military Special Task Force, it is regrettable that the state is confronted with a spate of killings.”

“The church is still mourning the death of its pastor and his wife killed in Boto, Bauchi state,” Yamsat said, in reference to the April 13 kidnapping and murder of the Rev. Ishaku Kadah, 48, and his 45-year-old wife Selina. “It is sad that it should again be left to face another brutal murder of two of their staff.”

The state branch of the Nigerian Union of Journalists also condemned the circumstances that led to the death of the two journalists, expressing deep concern over what it described as “a series of attacks on its members in recent times in the course of carrying out their legitimate duties.”

Four other Christians also were killed on Saturday (April 24) in the Dutse Uku district of Jos’ Nasarawa Gwom area in a revenge attack following the discovery of the corpse of a teenage Muslim who had been missing. Their names were not released at press time.

The four Christians reportedly died, three of them stabbed to death, when hundreds of Muslim youths rampaged throughout the area in protest.

Earlier, police reportedly exhumed eight bodies from shallow graves in a predominantly Christian village near Jos. The discovery of the bodies brought to 15 the number of corpses found in three days in an area fraught with Muslim aggression that has left hundreds of Christians dead.

Jos has become a flash-point for ethnic and religious tensions in Plateau state, which is located between Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north and Christian south. Previously hundreds of Christian villagers were struck with machetes and burned to death on March 7 in Dogo Nahawa, Zot and Rastat, three villages in Jos South and Barkin Ladi Local Government Areas.

On March 17, Muslim Fulani herdsmen assaulted two Christian villages in Plateau state, killing 13 persons, including a pregnant woman and children. In attacks presumably over disputed property but with a level of violence characteristic of jihadist method and motive, men in military camouflage and others in customary clothing also burned 20 houses in Byei and Baten villages, in the Riyom Local Government Area of the state, about 45 kilometers (29 miles) from Jos.

On Jan. 17, two pastors and 46 other Christians were killed in an outbreak of violence in Jos triggered when Muslim youths attacked a Catholic church. Police estimated over 300 lives were lost in subsequent clashes, in which 10 church buildings were burned.

Report from Compass Direct News 

Enter LogMeIn, the great series of programs that allow you to remotely manage your computers from any Internet connection.  While its not quite fast enough to play back video (hopefully that’s not too far away) you can certainly navigate all your assistant duties from your remote connection.  From managing media to encoding Quicktimes to anything you can imagine, you can do it all without needing to be there.  All you have to do is create an account, download and the program, and presto!  You can visit that computer from the internet.

It works with Windows and Mac, is incredibly secure with AES 256-bit encryption, and best of all, they have a FREE VERSION!  While LogMeIn offers many different products, but if you’re a handy Assistant Editor such as myself, and you’ve got an iDisk or some other type of cloud storage, then all you need is LogMeIn Free.  Also, if you’ve got $30, it is also totally worth purchasing LogMeIn Ignition for the iPhone or iPod Touch.  Now you can remotely log in to any computer you’ve registered with LogMeIn, as long as you’ve got an iPhone and an internet connection.

Obviously this is not a new concept.  VNC remote management has been around for a long time.  But this has a few twists I think make it the best.  First of all, the entire list of your available computers is right in front of you when you log in, and you don’t have to worry about IP addresses and other such networking information.  Second, it works seamlessly on both Windows and Mac, so you only need to pick one app to do the job.  Lastly, it’s all user-friendly, with one of the best iPhone apps I’ve seen for remote management and truly helpful options when it comes to the desktop mirror.

I can’t count the different ways this product has saved the day.  One day, an editor called because she needed me to help her find her project files, which had been moved from their current home on her hard drive by no fault of her own.  Went to LogMeIn.com, logged in to her computer, and found the file.  Bam, five minutes, day saved.  Another time, I was on a day trip on a Saturday when a director wanted to come into the editing back to screen the film.  He could press play, but I didn’t want to walk him through the hour of rendering that needed to take place to prep the film.  So I logged in from my iPhone, strung out the reels, and rendered the film.  When he got in, all he needed to do was hit play, and it was ready to go.  To finish up on the story I started at the top, to save the day, I strung out the reels, applied the burn-in, and send the Quicktime Reference to Compressor, all in the same amount of time it would’ve taken me were I sitting right there, and went to bed rested.  In the morning, I ran the MPEG-2 through DVD Studio Pro, and the DVD was ready before the director even showed up.

Do yourself a favor and go download this right now.

I still wish I worked in a room that had any sort of natural light allowed into it.  But I have conned my way into getting a drawer and a desk lamp.  I may even get two, because it’s dark back here.

Digitizing from the camera was not an option. Destroying the camera is a possible consequence, and the fact that we don’t have access to the camera doesn’t help either.

Me: “Can we tell the camera dudes to stop shooting in this weird format?”
Boss: “What format? Will it look different? They’re not going to do it if it looks different”
Me: “Otherwise, we have to rent the M35U to play the tapes”

So we have rented the expensive HVR-M35U, which comes with “all the bells and whistles”.

————

Sony Tech Support: “Hello this is Bruce”
Me: “I have some tapes shot on the Z7U, and to my understanding the M35U is the only deck that will play these tapes.”
STS: “Yes, it’s the latest HDV deck from Sony. It comes with all the bells and whistles.”
Me: “I use Avid for video editing, and when I hook up the deck with the firewire connection, it won’t capture across timecode breaks. I have to restart the deck every time there’s a timecode break.”
STS: “There’s a setting in Avid…”
Me: “It’s turned on…  I can capture across breaks whenever an HDV deck is hooked up with a 9-pin connection, such as the HVR-1500, but not with a firewire connection. Are there any other decks with a 9-pin connection that will play these HDV’s”
STS: “No…”

Avid Tech Support: “Hello this is Bill”
Me: “The deck….firewire….timecode breaks…yada yada yada”
ATS: “Try this, that, the other thing”
Me: “Doesn’t work”
ATS: “I’m looking at the notes for the deck to see if there are any problems with timecode breaks and I don’t see anything. The notes do say the deck has problems batch capturing, but nothing other than that”
Me: “How are we going to upres these tapes later?”
ATS: “Hmm”

I decide to capture the HDV’s anyway because they need to get in the system asap. Excruciating babysitting of the latest greatest HDV deck has me ecstatic. After week 1, we decide we should not be capturing 4×3 letterbox due to possible complications later when the shows go to online, so all the media needs to be recaptured. I proceed to smash my head in with a hammer.

————

January 29th, 2010

Night Assistant Editor: “I tried to batch capture one of the HDV’s from January 14th but the deck can’t seem to figure out how to batch capture.  Unfortunately I blew away the media for that tape before testing it.”

Editor: “WHY’S MY FUCKING MEDIA OFFLINE?”
Boss: “WHY’S HIS FUCKING MEDIA OFFLINE?”

Bells and whistles.

We are now dubbing all HDV’s shot with the Z7U to XDCAM.

If you have tapes to digitize and not the time or means, I’m available to work. Check out my services and contact info here.

-Matt Rittorno

I just joined the Post Production Networking Group for Picture Editorial on facebook and checked out your blog.

I have been an aspiring editor (scripted TV and features) for a few years now. I have some formal training for Avid and FCP from interning at Moviola. The only real experience I have in post so far was as an Avid AE on a Discovery Channel reality show. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite ready for it and they couldn’t afford to have someone learning on the job. It didn’t last long and that was almost 2 years ago. I’ve been doing background/extra work for the last year and was a regular on Scrubs this season. However, I have no desire to pursue acting and would like to try getting into post again. I always apply for internships, post PA and runner positions with no success. Friends of friends who work in post haven’t been any help either.

My experience and contacts are minimal. I’m also not getting any younger at 32. What are your suggestions to pursue this elusive dream of becoming an editor? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
John

————————————-

Thanks for the email John. With the turn in the economy, I have realized exactly how important networking is in finding a job. In the past year I applied to every job post on the internet, called companies cold, emailed companies, and even drove around dropping off resumes a couple of days. Out of over 100 applications, no one called me back.

I did find 4 jobs over the course of the year though, and every single one of them came about by emailing people I’ve worked with before. It would be hard for me to recommend you for a job where I work, because I can’t attest to your work personally and if you do a poor job then I look bad and we lose time and money. Plus I know very qualified people who are out of work that would do great.

If you want to get into post-production, I recommend going back to a school where you can meet people that can get you a job. Then impress them. Or, email people you’ve worked with in the past that can and want to help you get a job. Or, start interning for free at post-facilities and impress some people that way. That’s the best I can come up with.

-Matt Rittorno

P.S. If anyone is interested in contacting John, I’d be glad to point you his way.

Guests:

Christopher B. Swanson, Director, Editorial Projects in Education Research Center

Amy M. Hightower, deputy director, Editorial Projects in Education Research Center

Mary Ann Zehr, assistant editor, Education Week

Click here to view the on-demand event now.

Obviously, it was very productive.

Bonanza Jellybean

Boss: “Soooo Matt, things are going to start winding down here pretty quickly”.
I nodded in agreeance with a slight smile and attentive look on my face.
Boss: “Oh, ok then”.

It’s not that I enjoy getting fired, but I understand why. The boss wants to make money too. Now I have all the time in the world to plan my next move. I feel the same excitement and fear that I felt the day I left college. The same emotions I battled with when I quit my full-time job. I’m freelance!

So I left work and drove to my future mother-in-law’s house to pick up my fiance. As the two of us drove back to our North Hollywood home:

Me: “I have bad news…”
Nancy: “Your job’s over?”
Me: “Yes, but I’m excited. I’m going to start a blog.”

I could see the look on her face. She looks to me to make good financial decisions. If I don’t, her and our children will suffer. She sat next to me in the car waiting for my explanation.

Me: “I look at post-production supervisors and that’s the job I want one day. A good post-super should be able to do everyone’s job on the team, and should be able to answer any question when it comes to saving time and money on a production.”

“I’m going to start a blog and become an expert at motion picture workflows.” She sat quietly next to me, contemplating my thoughts.

————————————

Before my job ended, I was introduced to the XDCAM PDW-F70. The first day that I walked through the door the deck was setup nicely beside a personal computer ready for digitizing. Down the hall in another bay the tech geeks were hooking up a DVD burner for outputs.

Boss: “We’re getting 11 tapes in tonight. I need you to digitize them here, and then burn DVD dubs of each tape down the hall.”
Me: “Got it.”

As soon as the tech geeks were done, I went down the hall to marvel at their setup for 2 seconds. I then unhooked the DVD burner and carried it back to my bay.

Over the next 6 weeks I digitized and dubbed 60+ tapes from one bay instead of two. I had connected the burner to the video and audio outputs from Avid, so as soon as I started digitizing, I would hit record on the burner. When a tape was done, so was my dub. I would then take the dub, make 5 copies in a stack burner, and give them to the post-coordinator. I created and labeled over 300 DVDs for the project!

Three days after my job began, the first editor started working… in the bay where the DVD burner was initially. What!? The workflow that I was initially handed would have been fubar after just 3 days?! I couldn’t burn DVDs from the Avid if there’s an editor working on the system. The producers also started coming in, and were using the DVDs that I was making as their means of viewing the footage. Not a horrible way to view the footage, fairly cheap and efficient, but later they requested:

Producers: “Can we view quicktimes instead? We hate popping in and scrolling through all these DVDs”
Boss & Me: “That would take a lot of time exporting from the Avid. We’d have to spend more money to make that happen.”
Producers: “Nevermind then.”

Time went by and all was well. The project went smoothly in almost all aspects. The team was made up of experienced post professionals, and we had a workflow down that was efficient, and cheap. As an assistant editor I had a reasonable amount of free time, and spent the majority of it helping the two editors edit some segments. I also got to tinker with the XDCAM a bit too. It’s quite a cool format.

The first thing I learned was that you can put the deck into local mode and skip to the front of the disk. No need to rewind every tape. I also learned to pull up the thumbnail viewer and see how many clips were on each tape, and the duration of every clip. If a clip was only 2 or 3 seconds long, I could conveniently delete it so there wouldn’t be a problem while digitizing. Now we’re talking!

As the project was nearing an end, I realized Avid had a function in its file menu that hadn’t flipped the switch in my brain before. “Import XDCAM Proxy…”

“What does that do?”

I went scouring through the F70 manual and found a chapter on File Access Management (FAM). Supposedly, if I hooked a firewire cable from the deck to the computer, I could import all the files on the tape instead of digitizing. I immediately went into denial and started destroying everything within arms length.

“NO! Somebody would have told me! The tech geeks would have known! The post-supervisor! The other assistants in the building! The online supervisor! The machine room guys! The entire Home Entertainment staff!!  Somebody should have said, ‘STOP!! YOU CAN IMPORT INSTEAD OF DIGITIZING!!’

I went to Sony’s website, downloaded and installed a program called PDZ-1 which contained the driver the deck so desperately needed, connected the deck via firewire, and had desktop access to the machine like it was an external hard drive. Back in Avid I clicked “Import XDCAM Proxy…”, and stood back. The deck started to click and wiggle. Lights started shooting out from every crack. Progress bars went whizzing across the screen. A frog leaped out, tapped me on the nose with his magic wand and screamed “LIVE FOREVER!” Three minutes later, an hour of footage had been imported into the project.

I went over to the corner of my bay, squatted down, and proceeded to shit a brick.

The only thing left to solve was distributing copies of the media to the producers. Exporting wasn’t a very good option. Every clip that was imported had Mpeg-4 525 resolution. Avid wouldn’t let me export this resolution, not even as a quicktime reference. The only option was to either mixdown the footage to another resolution before exporting, or transcode all the clips. How about nooo, Scott.

What about the PDZ-1 software? Could the producers have used that? The answer was yes. If we had a hard drive for each producer, all the XDCAM clips could have been copied to an external drive along with the software. Or, if their laptops were hooked up to our network, then the files could have been centrally located on a single PC. They could then use the PDZ-1 software to scroll through and view all the media. The producers would have had the equivalent of their quicktime request.

————————————

To simplify, I was given 60 tapes to digitize for the project. Approximately 60 hours; or six 10 hour shifts. This could now be done in 60 * 3 minutes = 3 hours. I don’t consider copying files to a hard drive as a time consuming task. This can always be done in the background or overnight.

This experience was a great learning lesson. I should always research the advantages and disadvantages of new equipment before going too far with it. Also, the assistant editor’s job is quickly becoming more and more obsolete. On projects with only 1 or 2 editors, I can foresee the post-coordinator and assistant editor jobs merging into one position. I’ve also noticed that there are a lot of inefficiencies in post-production environments. Every technological advantage I can find in my job has the potential to save time and money.

I would make a great post-supervisor one day.

Without reservations,
-Matt Rittorno

If you have tapes to digitize, XDCAMs to import, or DVDs to burn, I’m available to work. Check out my services and contact info here.

http://www.youtube.com/user/foundationcontent#p/u/0/m6WVv7ijlZU

Suzie says of the experience, “I just love Steve Carrell so when I watched the movies I knew I wanted to do something funny with him as the main character. It was a lot of fun to put together. As first runner up I won a blu-ray player!” Her trailer is absolutely hilarious, so be sure to check it out at the link above!!

There were 25 entries from assistants in Chicago. We’re proud of Suzie every day – this is just “splicing” on the cake!

Pretty tired this morning. Not from being up extraordinarily late last night but from a very early start this morning. There’s a lot happening today ranging from training courses to writing and a fair bit of website work, so I wanted to get a head start on everything.

I’ve just wolfed down a roll with egg and black pudding in it along with a strong coffee, so I’m feeling pretty damn good for now.

Speaking of food, I found myself in the canteen for lunch again yesterday, and it was worth it because it was the infamous, glorious and infinitesimally orgasmic Cheese Macaroni Day. I had a big plate with a pile of chips on the side for good measure. Stuffed I was—stuffed!

I almost finished writing PAINT last night, a short story initially intended for a cover design competition, except I’m not quite sure how to end it. I have, for the first time ever, a final line that I want to use, I’m just not sure how to get there and I went to bed last night feeling confused and trying to visualise the best ending. Oh, the trials!

I’ve taken on a new roll in my capacity as Assistant Editor at The Scruffy Dog Review and am now the “website bloke”. I’ve been in discussions with the Editor-in-Chief and we came to the decision that we should use my website skills to free up more of her time to do more actual editorial tasks as opposed to website maintenance.

The magazine has gone through a tough time lately and I feel like this change could breathe new life into it. A re-launch was discussed and communications will be sent out to the other editors today about the change. One of the first things I’m going to look at is a revamp of the site to make it more web friendly and modern.

The gig listings for this week have been pretty poor, though if I get the chance I might pop up to the Citrus Club tonight to see punk band The Vibrators and get a review in for Sunday’s NotW online edition. Also might pop along for The Black Seeds gig at the Picture House next week, which would make it through in time to be a contender for next week’s print edition.

My old man phoned from outside a pub on Tottenham Court Road in the evening. He had just discovered Hairspray has cross-dressing in it and wanted to let me know how happy he was to have been stitched up again. “It’ll do you good,” I told him with a loud guffaw. Sounds like they are both having a great time in Landahn Tahn, though.

Remember I mentioned the guy from Leith who works for the Scottish Parliament and submitted some poetry to the Ranfurly Review after reading my interview in The Leither Magazine while lunching in far flung Beju? It turns out he got he can’t spell and what he really meant was Bijou, the small coffee shop at the bottom of Restalrig Road! Oh, well!

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Company: AG ENERGY CO-OPERATIVE LTD.
Location: Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Company Website: www.agenergy.coop
Job Posted: May 26, 2009
Application Deadline: Jun 3, 2009

Director of Market Research

Company: SPIELO, A GTECH COMPANY
Location: Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada
Company Website: www.gtech.com
Job Posted: May 26, 2009
Application Deadline: Jun 3, 2009

Brand Analyst

Company: LEVEL5 STRATEGIC BRAND ADVISORS
Location: Toronto / GTA, Ontario, Canada
Company Website: www.level5.ca
Job Posted: May 26, 2009
Application Deadline: Jun 3, 2009

Economic Development and Tourism Proposal Writer

Company: TOWN OF HOLYROOD
Location: Holtrood, Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada
Company Website: www.townofholyrood.com
Job Posted: May 26, 2009
Application Deadline: Jun 3, 2009

Bilingual Associate Editor – 4 Month Contract

Company: REDWOOD CUSTOM COMMUNICATIONS INC.
Location: Toronto / GTA, Ontario, Canada
Company Website: www.redwoodcc.com
Job Posted: May 26, 2009
Application Deadline: Jun 3, 2009

Assistant Editor

Company: COTTAGE COUNTRY COMMUNICATIONS
Location: Bracebridge, Ontario, Canada
Company Website: www.whatsupmuskoka.com
Job Posted: May 26, 2009
Application Deadline: Jun 2, 2009

Or not…?

Just sent off four and a half minutes of rough cut of Be Careful… – the scene with Lisa Chappell and Craig Hall in the apartment, with flashbacks of Narelle’s stunt fall and the courtroom – to a Screen Innovation Production Fund meeting of Creative New Zealand. Think it looks pretty good, despite no grade or colour correction; no sound mix; no music, etc, etc.

I’ve applied for postproduction funding, but won’t find out if I’ve been successful until some time in May. (My birthday’s in May… what a nice gift that’d be!)

A big thanks to 3rd year editing student Daniel Struthers who got the footage sound synched and into Unitec’s Avid. He also put the cut together and will get credit as Assistant Editor.

Wish us luck!

1. First, we have the KB Covers. The KB Covers are very thin silicone covers that cover your keyboard with the key layouts for your favorite and most used programs. This includes everything from Photoshop to Avid Media Composer to Final Cut Pro. They are extremely durable, long-lasting and KB Covers guarantees the paint will not chip after a hard day of work.

KB Covers Website

Editors Guild KB Covers Article

2. Second is a wonderful and time cutting program called QuicKeys. This is a great program for assistant editors who have to do a lot of repeated tasks. This is a favorite of mine and I am definitely not alone. Both Robert Bramwell, A.C.E and Harry Miller A.C.E like this program as well. With QuicKeys you can create your own hot keys for any program. You can even set it to monitor your key strokes while you are editing. Then you can just go back and see what pattens you are using the most frequently and program it into one hot key.

America Cinema Editors QuicKeys Tutorial

QuicKeys Website