Becoming a Bit More Avid

Last weekend I took a 2-day workshop and learned how to use the leading industry software for video editing, Avid Media Composer. It was a really good workshop, only me and one other guy in it, so we both got quite a bit of hands-on time with the program to sort of get the feel for things and get the opportunity to ask whatever questions we had about the program.

Avid as a program has a very different feel to it than Final Cut Pro, or Adobe Premiere Pro -- both of which are programs that I am very familiar and comfortable with -- but many of the different features and more-so the variant workflow method which is much more closely adopted from the physical cutting and editing of celluloid, though a bit cumbersome at first but seems to be a bit more intuitive and stable in the long run. Basically it's a whole new approach to the editing process which is really refreshing and nice departure from that of Final Cut and Premiere.

So needless to say, I'll be fooling around with the program for a while to come and if I can manage to get another short film shot here some time in the near future, then I'll definitely be editing it with Avid!

A new steps in a journey of a thousand miles, hopefully a step in the right direction. ;)

Coming Down From the Summit

Well I must say, that Screenwriter's Summit was definitely worth the price of admission! The most surprising part to me though was that the two biggest names (Linda Seger and Syd Field) ended up having the least to say, and I would say, had the least impact on the audience. Where as the other two speakers, John Truby and Michael Hauge, had plenty to say about story structure, story design, character design, genre, creating backstory and character webs, developing the initial story premise, as well as pitching a scripted work or story, Linda Seger started to talk about developing theme for a story, which ended up as a mainly being a lecture about psychology which I was hard pressed to find note-worth material in and later touching on the topic of symbols which could be summed up by saying, "Use symbolic images, objects and ideas to support your theme..." That's it, not much in the way of explanation or suggestions on HOW to choose said symbolism in relation to you script or in what ways to write them into your script... which in hindsight is a bit dissapointing. And Syd Field's lecture was basically comprised of "Types of Dialogue" as well as ways of introducing your main character and story. Nothing in the way on groundbreaking information, but more useful than Seger's lecture. Field's lecture seemed to be hindered by the number of movie clips he decided to show us, as well as the 30 minute or so introduction he gave, basically just saying who he was and what he's done. Both Seger and Field are obviously knowledgeable about what they are talking about, but it seems as if they've grown accustomed to having there own 2-day seminars and aren't used to condensing into the 4-hour format.

All-in-all it was excellent though! If you ever get the chance to see a lecture by Jon Truby or Michael Hauge, and you're interested in screenwriting, or writing in general for that matter, then hop on that opportunity like cat on a canary!

Links Below:
Michael Hauge: www.screenplaymastery.com
Jon Truby: www.truby.com
Syd Field: www.sydfield.com
Linda Seger: www.lindaseger.com


That will be all!

Approaching the Summit

If you're at all interested in screenwriting, and more so if you ever studied it in any detail, there's a very good chance that you've heard the names of Syd Field and Linda Seger more than once or twice.

For the uninformed, Linda Seger and Syd Field are amongst the most highly regarded authorities on screenwriting the world over! And coming up on this weekend of June 7-8th is a 2-day Screenwriter's Summit featuring these two figure-heads, as well as two other guys that I've never heard of, but who sound important and like they've got some knowledge bombs to drop.

So needless to say, I signed up for the summit in order to give me a little extra edge in developing some of my scripts as well as making them more marketable; which is sweet!

Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, here I come!