June Meeting Cancelled

Hi, All. Disappointingly, our June guest speaker (rescheduled from last month to this month) has recently and unexpectedly become unavailable again. As I had anticipated that the planned presentation--music/sound for film--would essentially take up the entire evening, I had not arranged for any secondary or backup presentations. Therefore, with great regret, I am must call for a cancellation of any official gathering of MacFilmmakers for June. (Of course, if people still wish to gather unofficially at a restaurant/pub/whatever, please feel free to do so.)

We will regroup for a full meeting on July 30th (and have redundancy built into the evening should whoever our speaker/s is/are become unavailable we will still have presentations ready to go).

Next Meeting is Wed. May 28, De Anza 3, 7PM

Our next meeting is Wednesday, May 28, 7:00 pm, in Apple's De Anza 3 Auditorium. Apologies for this extreme last minute update but we quite unexpectedly lost our long-planned speaker and were scrambling to recover. Fortunately, Sabrina Nelson, who you will remember from our previous April meeting, has graciously agreed to speak again, following up on her very well-received presentation from last month. Thank you, Sabrina!

Indeed, we will continue on right from where we left off with "Editing 101, Part Two: Critiquing". Sabrina will bring in several samples of her students' work which we will view and then discuss from the perspective of successful editing. Following the student work, we will then view your Demo Reels (up to 5 minutes in length) and again participate in a group critique. For this special demo reels/critiquing session, please show work that is narrative or documentary in content, i.e., storytelling, not experimental/slideshow type of work. In particular, if we did not have time to view/discuss your project last meeting, or if you've since updated a piece we did critique last session and you would like to show your new edits, please DO bring in those demos!

We will follow this instructional/group particpation session with our as-always Fabulous Pizza Break. For those who are new to MacFilmmakers, we provide free pizza and soft drinks for everybody (completely optional donations cheerfully accepted!) and tonight, as a thank you for your loyal patience in getting this late notice, cookies from San Francisco's world-famous Hot Cookies will also be provided! The pizza/soda/cookies Pizza Break will cap off our meeting.

As always, our meeting is free and open to the public. Parking is plentiful and free as well. Note that the De Anza Three auditorium is at Apple's headquarters in Cupertino and is the room we have been using for our last few meetings. If you are uncertain about the location, simply go to maps.google.com and search for:

10500 N de Anza Blvd, Cupertino, CA 95014

The green arrow indicates the building where we will be; DA3 auditorium (and parking) is on the backside of that building.

Next Meeting is Wed. May 28, De Anza 3, 7PM

Like the title says...

More info soon.

January '08 Meeting Info & Photos

Hello all,

Mark, your itinerate MacFilmmakers sound guru here. I've been taking some pictures at our meetings recently with a new Nikon D40x SLR I received this last holiday season. Thought I would start posting some of these for all to see.

Our January session was very informative with Kevin Johnson and myself presenting. I presented a talk on "Duplication vs. Replication... What you don't know". Though the meeting was lightly attended, a lively discussion ensued, running well overtime as I detailed the substantial list of pitfalls and caveats that you never think about relating to the subject. I even touched on the Blu-ray format.

There have been requests to repeat the presentation again as many did not get sufficient warning of the meeting day so let me or Kevin know if you would like a reprise.

Kevin's presentation was very interesting, covering his January Sundance Film Festival trip. The photos he returned with included a myriad of industry shakers and Hollywood actors and were very entertaining. He also covered a subject, I never even thought about before... the only still cameras allowed on the sets of major film productions because of their stealthy, sound-related characteristics. Unfortunely, we learned that they are all discontinued models now so you can only get them as used items from Amazon.com, eBay and the like.

I have some pictures from the April meeting that I will upload soon. Later...

Mark Calice

Ardenwood Sound & DVD

http://www.ardenwoodsnd-dvd.com

Instant Gratification

Here is the email address (spelled out to avoid spambots from grabbing it) we just discussed at our meeting:

sabrina007 at mac dot com

Note: those are two zeroes in the address, as in James Bond.

Next Meeting is Wed. April 30, De Anza 3, 7PM

Our next meeting is Wednesday, April 30, 7:00 pm, in Apple's De Anza 3 Auditorium. Our topic for the evening is the aesthetics of film editing. Here is an overview of the meeting:

Agenda:
Editing 101, Part One: The Basics
The Fabulous Pizza Break
Editing 101, Part Two: Demo Reels Critique

Editing 101, Part One:
The Basics

Presented by MacFilmmaker's member Sabrina Nelson, this instructional presentation will cover:

• The How, When and What to Cut

• Practical Applications of Eisenstein's Theory of Montage

• Cut, Color, Size, Shape, Direction: What Do They Mean in Editing

Following the Part One presentation we will have--are you quaking with anticipation?--YES, our Fabulous Pizza Break! Stretch your legs in the De Anza 3 lobby while you munch on pizza and network with your fellow filmmakers.

After pizza we reconvene for:

Editing 101, Part Two:
Demo Reels Critique

As part of Sabrina's presentation, we will also discuss demo reels/samples of our members' work. All members are therefore encouraged tonight to bring short sequences (maximum of 5 minutes) of either your narrative or documentary work for viewing and discussion. We will take 3 samples from the pool of submissions, view them and then use them as a point of discussion as we talk about editing. Samples can be complete shorts or excerpts from larger pieces and can be either finished work or works-in-progress. Please note the focus of this presentation is storytelling, so we are looking for traditional sequential scenes or pieces, not experimental or slideshow type of samples.

Sabrina Nelson, a Final Cut Pro expert and 17-year veteran in all manner of video, TV and film production, is currently teaching at the Academy of Art.

As always, our meeting is free and open to the public. Parking is plentiful and free as well. Note that the De Anza Three auditorium is at Apple's headquarters in Cupertino. For those in attendace last month at our March meeting, DA3 is the room we used--and where, by the way, we had near-record breaking attendance at an estimated 210 attendees (see photo below). If you are uncertain about the location, simply go to maps.google.com and search for:

10500 N de Anza Blvd, Cupertino, CA 95014

The green arrow indicates the building where we will be; DA3 auditorium (and parking) is on the backside of that building.

---

MARCH MEETING: Lance Trumbull, Filmmaker/Producer of "Everest: A Climb for Peace", addresses the MacFilmmakers audience.

Meeting is April 30th

Our next meeting is Wednesday, April 30th (keeping in mind that our new schedule is now the LAST Wednesday of the month).