Video Production

Some Things I Saw at NAB

I was fortunate enough to be covering new gear at NAB for Filmmaker Magazine. It was my first time there and overall a great experience.  There was a lot of cool updates and little gear solutions like clever light stands or inflatable softboxes, but no one item that...

Coffee Break – Blue is the New Red Huge Roast of Links

So a while back I used to post cool links each Wednesday for a Coffee Break series. For many reasons (mainly time and laziness), I haven't posted cool links in a while. But I still have a bunch saved up. So in the spirit of new beginnings, I'm just going to offload...

Drawing The Line

So as noted here before, and it's a pretty big distinction for how films are crewed and scheduled at The Film School and in the real world, jobs are classified as Above-the-Line (ATL) and Below-The-Line (BTL). It's not too hard to remember the difference. Writers,...

On the Road Again

Some back story: So the other two members in the Doc group are focusing on the Patriot Guard and Celebrity Impersonators, while I'm doing Cubicles. The Patriot Guard is a group of motorcyclists that go to the funerals of Iraq soldiers per the family's request to...

Documentary Tools 2.0

I'm a big Web 2.0 fan, so I unsurprisingly relied heavily on various tools to aid in research, notetaking, and organization to manage filmming the Cubicle Documentary. Here's a list of some of the tools that greatly helped me out, and others that I tried but didn't...

Who Produces What?

Since thesis films have started, there's been some confusion as to what the difference is between the Unit Production Manager (UPM) and Second Assistant Director (Second AD), both first year jobs. On F3s, there was only a Second AD and everything seemed to work out...

Make a UPM Kit

During my first semester in the Film School we had a Production Management class. In it we were required to create a UPM kit. Shopping for these items brought back grade school memories. Here's what we had to pickup: One portable file box or satchel - the UPM kit One...

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