Celebrating Dany’s birthday….

drinking…smiling…

Ale and Melissa eating all of Dany’s cake, shame on them!!! haha

That’s how we will remember it anyway…

Hello again! I haven’t written in a while because I’ve been, well, working.

I’ve been out of the country for a while now. My first year abroad, I never felt very homesick because everything was very new and exciting still.

This trip abroad has been a bit different. It’s now been two years since I’ve carved a pumpkin on Halloween or had turkey on Thanksgiving. But more than the food or the pumpkin it’s about who I used to carve the pumpkin with and who I used to cook with on Thanksgiving.

It’s hard to be outside of your country where something as simple as communicating becomes one of the most difficult tasks to master.

However, I did find one thing at the store down the street to make me feel at home…

mmmmm

And I found the GOOD macaroni and cheese….it’s got that delicious processed cheese taste I know from the US. Maybe with a little Mac N’ Cheese here in San Jose and a trip to the beach for Christmas and everything will be ok…:o)

Ok let’s see here….I am from Arkansas in the United States….typical North American climate with four seasons, which basically works like this: Fall(pretty leaves)-October, Winter (snow)-December, Spring(rain and later all the plants grow back)-March Summer-June(hot hot hot). Ok, I understand that.

Now in Argentina, specifically Buenos Aires, the weather is the opposite: December-very very hot you will be sweating on Christmas hot and July-wear a big jacket and a scarf cold. There is never any snow either.*

What is the weather like in Costa Rica? Well to put it simply, perfect in the morning, rain in the afternoon. Sometimes there is so much rain that I come home completely soaked. And if you forget your umbrella, well then you’re S.O.L. And soaking wet.

There is no definite summer or winter. December is the coldest month but the weather doesn’t fall below
59F/15C. But if you ask a Tico (Costa Rican),
“En diciembre hace MUUUCHHOOO FRIOO…..”
…But it is always between 58F/14C and 80F/27C.

So what changes? Basically, there is only two seasons: dry and rainy. The rainy season lasts from May to November, with September and October being the wettest months. December through April has very little or no rain.

What does this mean for me? I leave the house in the morning sweating to the bus stop. Come back in the afternoon soaking wet. Rain all afternoon so of course I don’t want to leave the house, so I usually end up going to bed pretty early.

It will stop in December though, I think….

*Although I think a few years ago it snowed in Buenos Aires for the first time in 80 years….but typically never any snow

CHECK IT OUT FOR YOURSELF: http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/businesstraveler/wxclimatology/monthly/graph/CSXX0009?from=36hr_button_business

Before the rain

clouds

He's not happy in the rain....

That’s right, teaching English once again. This time it is so different though. For those of you who taught with me in Buenos Aires, you will understand why these things are so great:
1. All of my classes are in one place.
2. They are opening me a bank account.
3. They are always going to pay me on time.
4. There is no moneda crisis.
5. They supply all of the materials.
6. They trained me to their method.
7. Very professional environment (no personal questions from students).

I had training the last two weeks, and today was my first day of teaching. I will typically teach two classes in the morning, starting at 7:00 am, and two at night, starting at 6:00 pm. Each is usually an hour and a half. This means that I get to come back home everyday during the afternoon as well, which is great because then I can eat at home and it is of course cheaper. And who doesn’t like to be at home?

Anyways it is a very professional company and they are very serious about teaching English (opposite of my personal experience of teaching in Buenos Aires). They have very specific methods of how to teach grammar without ever explaining it, how to correct students without telling them the answer, and how to maximize student speaking in class. I am learning a lot everyday about teaching, office life, and the professional environment. More than anything, for the first time, I believe in the product I am selling: language. From my own experience learning a second language has opened my mind in so many different ways. It has opened my mind to different cultures, lifestyles, accents, activities, food, drinks, travel opportunities, self-discovery, people, and much more. I want to help my students open their mind the same way I did when learning a foreign language.

I mean, from a business viewpoint, isn’t language the best product you could dream of? A student (aka, client) could never have enough! I know that I will never stop learning Spanish, there will always be more or accent reduction to learn. It is never enough when it comes to languages. So the company, Berlitz, is a perfect combination of business and education, and I know I will learn a lot working here. (As well as how to use the usted which I need practice with….)

Check it out for yourself

Hey everyone.  First of all, a quick thanks to Bruce Sharpe, CEO of Singular Software.  His company made PluralEyes, the company I referenced in my previous Dear Production entry.  A few days ago posted my blog on his twitter feed.  That’s big for someone like me who is brand new to this web 2.0 linked economy.  He also recommended a good story about I Love Lucy and how the show really innovated multi-camera production.  You can find Bruce on twitter and on blogspot, and probably at NAB this week.  From his twitter feed:

Here’s the video I recommended about his company:
(I’m just learning how to embed video on WordPress)

Also thanks to Lindsey Rundell, my assistant editor amigo, currently working on .  She read my post and told me about Quickeys, a macros program which should make half of Avid Multi-Grouping easier.  The program allows you to program a series of keystrokes into one keystroke so that, in her words, “It does the F1-6 deal for you AND adds the Aux TC.”  It looks like it would be a great help, but nothing is a replacement for proper production techniques.  Thanks Lindsey!

Okay, I’m not one here to criticize people in production. Post-production is almost a completely different beast from production and I’ve walked very little in the shoes of the camera department (enough to know I didn’t want to do it for a living). That said, DEAR PRODUCTION: JAM SYNC YOUR DAMN CAMERAS!!!

For those unaware, jam syncing is a process used by productions when sound is recorded separately or when multiple cameras are shooting the same event. It’s used in features, television, music videos, documentary, and especially reality television.  Simply put, the production team uses a machine to send continuous matching timecode to each camera.  Once the footage lands in my hands, that allows me to simply hit “Sync By Timecode”, create synced groups with every angle’s action lined up, and start editing immediately.  All production has to do is occasionally set their timecodes to match that machine.  Working with it is great…IF it happens.

What production doesn’t understand is that if at any point the timecode drifts out-of-sync – at any point – then the amount of time I have to spend syncing clips increases exponentially compared to the amount of time they delay stopping to sync their cameras. And every camera has a tendency to drift out of sync. All too often, they decline to be diligent.  On one project, this showed up during a live-to-tape session where six cameras and an audio recorder were recording the same group meeting.  NONE of these cameras were synced.  Despite the fact that each camera was stationary and the location did not move, there was not even a slate to provide me with a point of sync.  Each clip had to be synced according to some random point in the action.  And that took over two days with a second-shift assistant editor working on it as well.  If they had simply jam synced, this would have taken us minutes, not days.  And I should say that while this was a bad experience, I’d be a rich man if I only had a dollar for every time I had to deal with timecode sync issues.

Here I’ll post what some of you may be looking for: Tim Leavitt over at View From The Cutting Room Floor has a great blog post about fool-proof Avid MultiGroups.  That describes the process you have to go through if you’re editing in Avid and you have the problems I describe here.  If you’re working in Final Cut Pro, here’s a great post from our dear friends at the Los Angeles Final Cut Pro User Group (who are totally awesome, let me just say) about syncing multicam clips.  As an added bonus, you should check out this little plug-in gem called PluralEyes.  It’s a Final Cut Pro plug-in that scans your audio waveforms and aligns your all your clips in your sequence so that you never have to sync again! It’s only in beta phase now, and I’ve downloaded it but haven’t had the chance to use it yet.  I’m looking forward to the opportunity.  This video also has a great explanation of what I’m talking about as far as jam syncing.  Email me if you need any additional help.  I’ll see what I can do.

Just to make a final point and show I’m not really just sore about my experiences but that this is really a good idea.  Imagine that this happens on a Michael Bay movie. There’s some action sequence that has ten cameras covering some big explosion. Imagine getting all that footage and not having timecode to sync the entire action.  It would be hell to edit, right?  Well, my dear friends in production, please remember: jam sync your damn cameras.

-Rob