MediaStorm Guide to Importing Canon C300 Footage into Premiere Pro CC [Screencast]

This article is part of a series of posts with tips and tricks from our producers' experience working with Adobe Premiere Pro after years of working in Final Cut Pro. To read more about why we made the switch, check out this post. Recently, while importing Canon C300 footage into Premiere Pro CC, I realized that many of the longer clips were being duplicated on ingest. For instance, I’d have three of the same files, the only difference was their last two digits. This happened both when I used File > Import and when I double-clicked the Project window. The trick, I discovered, is to import via the Media Browser. Select your file, right-click, and choose Import. You’ll ingest the files properly, with no duplicates. Check out the accompanying screencast, for a more detailed explanation.

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Eric and Tim. Photo by Shameel Arafin.

#AskMediaStorm: Our Producers At Your Service

Have a burning question about storytelling? Is Premiere Pro driving you crazy? MediaStorm Producers Eric Maierson and Tim McLaughlin are ready to answer your questions for their next blog post. You may know Eric from his rants on multimedia or his countless Premiere Pro tutorials here on our blog. Tim’s pretty amazing, as well. Between the two of them, they’ve logged a decade at MediaStorm, produced dozens of projects, and launched our new Editing Workflow Workshop. So we’re fairly certain they know what they’re talking about. Tweet your questions to @MediaStorm with the hashtag #AskMediaStorm, leave us a note on Facebook, or in the comment section below. We’ll pick the best questions for a special crowd-sourced blog post from Eric and Tim.

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MediaStorm Guide to Setting Up Shots

At MediaStorm, we ask one important question to test the veracity of our work: does it deceive the viewer? The most fundamental way to break trust with not just your audience, but also your subject, is to set up shots. [1] How to Set Up a Shot If you ask someone to repeat an action, you are setting up a shot. "Could you walk through the door again so I can film you from the other side?" "Will you put your shoes on again so I can get a tight shot?" "Can you pick up your coffee again? I missed it the first time?" If you attempt to direct the action or ask subjects something they normally wouldn’t do, you are setting up a shot. "Would you mind dancing?" "Can we take you to visit your dad?" "Will you turn off the lights so I can get some pictures that look more…

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Time Lapse: The Making of Darkness Visible Afghanistan

In 2011, along with Leandro Badalotti and Brian Storm, I produced Seamus Murphy’s A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan. It remains the largest, most complex project I’ve ever tackled. Seamus began work in Afghanistan in 1994. By 2010, he had made 14 trips to the country, producing more than 35,000 images and recording 25-plus hours of video interviews. Leandro and I spent the better part of 4 months organizing the vast amount of material. To document our editing progress, I wrote a Python script that generated a jpeg screen grab every five minutes. The result is a time lapse that begins on June 6 and ends November 8, 111 weekdays later. There are approximately 4,300 images in total: one frame for every five minutes of work. You’ll see the entire project take shape, from radio cuts to final output. And if you’d like to learn more about our editing methodology, please join Tim McLaughlin…

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