STANDUP: Matt Mira’s Day Off @ Meltdown Comics, 08/14/11

By now, I have some new sets and things standup related to post, but I'm going to go out of order. Here's my set from last Sunday - since I had a guaranteed spot on the show, I dipped into the world of Prop Comedy! (I'd never bring all this stuff with me on a night when I had to rely on the lottery for a spot.)  

Production notes:

Thanks to August Anderson for being the audience plant (and almost getting clobbered for having his phone go off during the show) and for the lending of some props - part of the bit was inspired by the stuff we threw together for a short film we shot last month that isn't edited yet. Also, my thanks to Josh Eanes and Jason Van Glass for shooting the videos.

On the Final Cut Pro X side of things, this was at times very smooth, but more often very frustrating to put together.  The 'synchronize clips' command lined up the two shots by audio very quickly indeed, which was great, but I would have preferred to do that manually if it meant not having to do color adjustments on all the b-camera shots one by one.  For some reason, the 'match color' command does not pick up the color correction from another clip, it makes a series of judgment calls that didn't even match each other from shot to shot.  The manual for the software describes a method for applying a color correction to many clips at once, but as best I can reckon, the method described is a flat out lie. Unlike old versions, where a color correction could be moved from one shot to another, or stored for later use, this seems to require saving it as a preset, then manually applying that preset from a drop down menu to each shot.  It appears to be necessary to close and re-open the properties inspector each time a new clip is selected. I suppose color correcting prior to editing would have smoothed that out a bit, but that's crazy.

From what I can tell, there is no text tool.  I feel like an idiot even typing that, but I've been consulting the manual with each project and it seems to be true.  There are a number of text presets, and probably I could theoretically edit one of them down into not animating in any way.  However, I wouldn't do that by clicking one of the buttons for adjusting the title clip that's built into the title clip, because that makes the program crash, 4 out of 4 times.  In a lot of ways, it feels like using a Chryon studio system from ten years ago - If you don't want one of their 5 presets, you're going to be making your graphics in advance in photoshop.  Prepare yourselves for a deluge of Gill Sans over the next year or two, is what I'm saying.

The timeline defaulted to 640x480, the frame size of the wide shot, which is fine since the closeup was out of focus anyway, but I don't understand how or why the 1280x720 frame of the closeup is also said to be at 100% size in the smaller timeline.  So, that's weird.

FLOODLAMP 7/29/11

1. Attend MaxFunCon over and over.
2. Make new friends
3. Start a standup comedy show with and for new friends.

Jason Van Glass and I started a new show.  We wanted more cool shows at which to perform, and I noticed that there's a park in Burbank that has a great big flood lamp pointed at nothing.  Something had to be shot there, or performed there, or both.

Look at this.  How could you not want to perform there?

So we did it.  Didn't have to build a thing, and they came!  About 30 of 'em, which is great for a first show upwards of 2 miles north of comics' comfort zone, and just about every one of 'em stayed for the whole show, which is even more impressive.

I said some things.  I didn't record it, and I don't remember all of it.  Or, I do, but I don't think it'd make good reading. The jokes turned into laughs.  Plenty of people had great sets.  Plenty of people need to learn to speak into a megaphone.  Yes, a megaphone.  Your regular comedy show has some wimpy microphone.  This is way bigger.

Your hosts.

Anyhow, it was such a success we're doing it again.   Really, how do you look at this and not want to put on a show?

STANDUP: Matt Mira's Day Off @ Meltdown Comics, 07/18/11

Tonight's all-new episode: Dial B for Charity! This was a new standup experience for me. I kind of disassociated, just thinking about what my hands were doing, and looking around to see what different people thought about the bit, while the rest of me told some jokes.

FCP-X Production Notes:

1. I played around a little with filters to make me sound like a Robot, or a Monster, or both! (but turned them off before making the file, thank you)
2. I tried making this in the same timeline as the last clip, and it doesn't seem to allow exporting a selection, only whole timelines.  But that sounds like one of those things people post angrily  about and then the answer is right in the manual, so I probably just didn't figure it out.
3. I did a nice job curbing the excessive UM and AH from my speech, mostly.  And then I started saying LIKE.  Weird. But errant syllables are no match for the power of editing!

Standup: Laugh Revival Comedy Show, 7/14/11

Here's a the bit from the first meltdown set I posted, having mainly to do with the subjects of Batman and Trains, but performed for people who thought they were going to a dance party in a warehouse, not people who were planning to see comedy in a comic book shop. (In fact, it's a cool warehouse full of weird percussion instruments!)

Photos taken by the quantifiably delightful Lucia Fasano.

FCP-X Production Note:  The very combination of characters "Jason Van Glass" is apparently a secret Apple test code that was not removed before release, chiefly useful for testing the crash report dialogue.  The save-as-you-go feature very helpfully kept me from losing data on the four attempts before successfully adding this name to the video.

Lies FCPX Told Me

Continuing to experiment with FCP-X. Oddly enough, I'm using it most for audio editing so far. The latest was a demo of how I could ensmarten myself by just removing 2 minutes of um-ing and ah-ing and pausing for thought from a segment of my appearance on The Projection Room podcast with Marco & Rebecka Duran.

The actual editing was fast and easy, and in all my previous time with FCP, I don't think I understood why I'd use the Range Select tool, and now I do. But exporting was a problem. It failed repeatedly and then told me:

Except, it didn't.  I could click okay and continue using FCPX.  It was like it couldn't handle the request I was making and just tried to distract me with a different problem.   A reboot solved this, for whatever reason.

"Excuse me, this isn't the sandwich I ordered." "I'm very sorry sir, but our restaurant is on fire."

In case you missed out on my guest shot, here's an excerpt from the show discussing one of my favorite movies you've never heard of, The Wizard of Speed and Time.