John Farrell's new book, Digital Movies with QuickTime Pro, is a complete QuickTime moviemaking course in one package. John took some time to talk to Clifford VanMeter of QuickTiming.Org about his book and offered some insights on the digital filmmaking process in general and QuickTime in particular. The book is published by Charles River Media, Inc., Hingham, MA.

John Farrell (Brookline, MA) is a video producer and editor with over 20 years
experience in independent, cable and broadcast production. He has been using
QuickTime for movies and educational multimedia since 1995. He has contributed to online magazines such as Salon, National Review Online, About.com, Arts & Letters Daily and SciTech Daily. His recent digital feature of Shakespeare's RICHARD THE SECOND was hailed by Hollywood Film Threat as "one of the finest contemporary Shakespeare films," and by the New York Times as "a startling way to present the play."

Here's the interview. PUB

CVM: It's our standard lead-in question - Why QuickTime? What attracts you as a filmmaker to using QuickTime?

JF: Three key reasons: ease of use; the power of the program, and its lack of expense. Even before Apple started charging $29.99 for the Pro version (I think with version 3.0), QuickTime allowed you to cut, paste, add extra sound tracks, present your movie in "Movie" mode (now called Full Screen) and save as independent files. That was back in 1995 and 1996, when I first started using it for work projects in the office. But I started playing with it in 1991 when it first came out. (It's funny to think, at the time, the IIci was considered Apple's hot machine--and all the engineers and graphics people at Channel 5 had
them. What: 80MB hard drives? 68040 32MHz processor or something like that??!). Basically, there's little QuickTime can't do: from 320x240 web sequences right up to DV-powered files ready to import and 'print' to broadcast from Final Cut Pro or Premiere. If you're just starting out and getting your feet wet in digital video, or if you've been a pro for years and like to have a reliable tool to support your main authoring/edit programs, QuickTime is the best.

CVM: Then you've been involved with filmmaking for quite some time; in fact I understand its something of a family affair. Tell us how you got into this kooky biz that we call show.

JF: My family's sort of a media family to begin with. My father was the managing editor of one of Boston's two remaining daily newspapers, the Boston Herald, (back in the days when it was the Herald Traveler). The paper also secured
(for a few years) the license to own one of Boston's network affiliate TV stations--back in the days before it was forbidden by the Courts for one media (newspaper) to own another. So I was used to seeing him appear on a
weekly political issues show in the 1960s (and I'm trying to track down some kinescope footage for the Video Archive on my site if I can). In 1954, he and my mom bought an 8mm (and later Super 8mm) camera and started taking movies. In 1975, we got a 3/4-inch Panasonic VCR. It was huge, and was basically for recording broadcast. But it did have a jack for a video camera and for a
microphone. So after my father brought home a Hitachi CCTV camera, one of those closed circuit types you see in banks, etc., we plugged it in and started making little videos.

I have no way to be absolutely certain, but I think we shot one of America's oldest home videos in 1976. My 8-year-old brother spoofing a soft-drink commercial. (It's on my VideoArchive page for anyone who wants to check it out.)

CVM: I've got my trusty DV-cam in one hand and a script in the other. I'm headed off to do some filmmaking 21st century digital hub style. What else should I be carrying?

JF: No matter how good your camcorder is--whether it's a Canon XL1S or Sony VX2000, you should always invest in or rent from your local community TV stations some external microphones and a good-sized head set for monitoring
your sound. I think the built-in microphone on my VX2000 is pretty good. Very little (if any) hum noticeable. But if you're shooting sound for a movie you want to submit to festivals or to distributors--the sound has to be superb. Any
trace of built-in camcorder hum, or worse, the sound of your fingers sliding over the Zoom control button or camera lens--is going to under-cut the professionalism of your movie.

It took me a while to appreciate--especially in screening situations, that your audience will forgive a picture that sometimes goes too dark or too bright. But if your sound craps out--it will annoy your audience immediately. I go into this is more detail in Chapter 8 of my book, Shooting Video to Look Like Movies.

CVM: Filmmaker's I've talked to tell me that the planning process, is every bit as important as the actual shoot. What's your take on that?

JF: Absolutely. Almost the entire first half of my book is all about planning the production: storyboards, setting up your own company, auditioning actors, arranging for location use, etc. If you're shooting a lot outdoors, there's the
weather to worry about (well, okay, if you live in the northeast anyway) so you need to set aside contingency days for your actors.

Having said that--one of the great things about DV and the freedom you have to produce on the desktop at your leisure, is that if you want to be the next Michael Moore and just follow people around, pound the pavement, and assemble footage to shape into something after the fact, well, you can do that too. I think a lot of people who aren't necessarily interested in cinema, are very interested in family, documentary or community history, and a lot of them will be using QuickTime to produce their own chronicles for their web sites and for home video and DVD.

CVM: I'm a one-man-band, and I can only focus (so-to-speak) on a couple of aspects of the shoot. What are the one or two things I can do to add immediate professionalism to my final product? What do you look for on a reel that says "Pro" as soon as you see it?

JF: I'd have to say it's shooting in three dimensions. Anybody can shoot hand-held. But only the ones, who take the extra time and effort to build themselves a dolly, for example, and some tracks in order to get that nice dramatic tracking shot, are really going to impress their viewers (whether it's their peers or it's potential distributors or employers). If you're shooting on weekends, see if you can borrow or rent at a discount from a contractor a scissor lift or boom crane. They're not hard to operate. There's nothing like making your camera rise off the ground up and over your actors and the set to make you feel like Stanley Kubrick or Alfred Hitchcock. If you can't get a lift--then use your car and climb onto the hood. Anything that makes your picture more dramatic. But always try to avoid using your zoom lens....

CVM: Looking at the consumer and pro-sumer equipment available today, can you summarize some of questions that a filmmaker should be asking themselves when they pick out their gear? Is there such a thing as a "perfect" camera - one that will shoot anything, under any conditions and give you a good result?

JF: The quality of DV is so high, compared to what consumers were used to, that I'd recommend anyone getting serious about making his or her own movies to look at the lens. That's what you're paying for when you see the cost of models like the GL1 or VX2000 or XL1S. The better the lens, the more crisp even your background image, behind your actors, will be. After that, you want to find out how durable the camcorder will be (let's face it, it's going to do double duty, as your camera and as your edit deck).

The other thing is, if you are on a budget, and you're not planning on making an epic, or even pretending to, then $500 will get you a really nice Canon DV camcorder. You don't need special effects and filters built into your camera
either. They may sound cool (the 'widescreen' look, for example, or giving your picture a certain tint), but they basically cut down the amount of image resolution you get, and are better off applying in the edit process--not when you're shooting.

Clifford VanMeter is a freelance writer and QuickTime developer. He is also a founding partner of and Editorial Director for QuickTiming.Org (quicktiming.org), a recently launched QuickTime resource site.
His own skills with interactive QuickTime has brought him such clients
as Warner Records, Apple Computers, and Presto Studios (makers of Myst).
You can email him at cliff@quicktiming.org.