Stuck in Paradise
“A finished project is better than a perfect one.”
Easier said than done.
I have a very long list of projects I want to finish. They range in complexity and progress made to date. Sometimes it is easier to just go out and photograph the sunset, or plan another roadtrip, or dream up another project than it is to actually sit down and tackle the editing process for the projects already in process. I feel real pain when I am not out capturing a particularly special sunset. Or when I sleep in past a full moon-set on a cloud-less morning. When everything around you is a paradise, it is easy to get stuck in a content-capturing limbo. The good news is that I have 10TB of content itching to escape my hard drives.
2023 is my year to get back to being serious about creating (completing) the content I truly love. Nothing is more satisfying than showcasing a finished product. Cheers to the future!
“Timeline Obsessions”
Obviously - videos play from start to the finish in a linear manner. Clips and effects play in sequence according to how they were edited down from the original source media. As a video editor, it takes a relentless process of tinkering, experimenting and learning to arrive at a finished product that you are happy with. I recently realized how much my editing process has evolved and how seriously I have been trying to represent a few specific principles in my process. I’ve picked up these guiding principles from a few different places over the years, and I want to briefly share them with the world. They overlap in many ways, but each produces a slightly different motivation for me to create better work. Without further ado, the guiding principles of a STEEP video edit:
The editing process is never over.
This guideline ties back directly to my Film Production course at Notre Dame where my professor repeatedly harped on this concept: It is actually impossible to finish a video. It can always be better. Keep refining until those improvements become infinitely small. But also, don’t be afraid to step back and totally re-think an entire sequence or major component. Just because your first idea works, doesn’t mean that a completely different idea won’t work even better. But maybe save a copy of your first idea in case you want to come back to it later if your new idea doesn’t work out like you envisioned…
Treat each clip like a work of art, then move on to the next one.
While my first guideline speaks to the editing process overall, this guideline speaks to the importance of making each and every clip a stand-alone masterpiece. This takes commitment, and I certainly can’t claim that I’ve strictly adhered to this principle in all of my video edits to date. In this ideal world, each clip is given the time it deserves to fully review and consider a plethora of different considerations. To name a few… speed up or slow down a clip (for the entirety of the clip of just a part of it to emphasize a certain moment), color adjustments to accentuate a certain palate and to better match the adjacent clips or the project overall, resizing the clip to focus on a certain area of the frame (and doing this statically as a single crop or reshaping dynamic to simulate a camera movement or zoom), overlaying lighting effects as a stylizing choice or as a transition to an adjacent clip, overlaying additional clips or video effects for some creative reason (choosing how they blend together, and if only certain parts are blended or not). The list goes on, and I risk stating the obvious by continuing - that it is a given that video editors do just that - they edit each clip. My point here is that you should avoid just being satisfied with a clip. The goal should be to fine tune each clip so precisely that it has some element to it that is surprising or breathtaking or inspiring to the viewer. If you saw that clip as a stand-alone piece of content would you find it compelling? If you can’t achieve this, then does it even deserve to be included? Make sure the answer is a resounding “Yes!”
Say something.
Pleasing visuals are great, but what am I trying to say? Taking a project to this deeper level is a worthy challenge, and one that I am still exploring. While I am planning to to further refine and push my “narrative” work, I have realized that a big part of my style involves at the very least making sure the viewer is “feeling” something. Even if I am not making a clear statement or telling a defined story, I hope that my work engages and evokes emotion from the audience. I know that my heart usually races when I watch my own work, which is hopefully a good thing.
Practice telling your story without audio first.
I dare you to try not adding any audio track to an edit timeline until you are 100% pleased with how the project conveys the story / feeling / objective with solely the visual element intact. Then work on adding audio to further tell this story. Obviously the video can then be refined to work best with the selected audio, but my point is that you should avoid getting boxed into a corner by selecting an audio source too early on in the project and then editing around that element. Why limit yourself? This practice of focusing on visual first is the best way to ensure that the project makes its point in the clearest and most powerful way possible. The temptation to add audio from the outset is often too alluring and I do at least experiment with audio earlier on in the process than I should. I’m only human. But I try to then subsequently mute the audio while further refining a video sequence before then working on the final audio-video mix once the video element is as powerful as possible. Give it a try. I’m not going to make a separate bullet point to say that audio is important, because that should be obvious. Audio makes a huge impact and can make a good project become great. My goal with this principle is to not rely on a catchy song or an inundation of sound effects to carry the experience for the viewer. If the visual element alone can sustain the viewer’s attention and convey the intended plot and emotion, just imagine how powerful the final product can be once the perfect audio is added to further refine, intrigue, and overwhelm (in a good way) the viewer.
Keep surprising the viewer.
What makes a Hollywood film or premium TV show compelling? The acting, visuals, sets, locations and special effects grab your attention, but the unknown of where the story will turn next is what keeps you engaged. My goal is to scale this concept down to a 1-10 minute long short film project. I try to remember to keep each project moving in a new direction that the viewer won’t guess in order to keep them engaged and excited to continue watching until the end. This can mean a variety of things from shot variety to new scenery to adding an unexpected element or change in look or mood. In my absolute ideal vision, this concept is actually slightly more nuanced - I want the viewer to think things are about to head one way or expect a certain thing to happen next but then actually do something counter to that. This would continue to create more engagement. Your favorite comedy sitcoms, or anything well written, do just this. You are expecting a given statement or situation to produce a corresponding result, and just when it seems that the idea you’ve predicted is bound to come true - something very counter to that occurs. That’s what keeps you engaged and guessing about what will happen next. I certainly can’t say that my current library of work achieves this feat very often, but it is definitely an aspiration of mine.
Is it a bad thing to incessantly re-watch your timeline after every minor edit? It definitely can seem to be a waste of time if I already know a certain sequence by heart, but not if I look for new details during each re-watch and how they could be improved. My real dilemma at times can be a kind of paralysis when the amount of choices or choosing where to pick up a project can be overwhelming. Sometimes I get stuck re-watching portions of the timeline out of fear of making the next big decision. But mostly I just love the early versions so much that I can’t resist watching. Even though I know the final product will be even better.
Editing is definitely where the rubber meets the road when it comes to crafting something truly worth watching. As a one-man-band filmmaker, I need to juggle all of the steps in the process of creating a video. Editing is one step that I am confident can be improved by working to adhere to a set of guiding principles…but then being unapologetically creative within that framework.
“The Edit”
Quick note -
The edit is not a given. Only with direct and intentional action can you take the infinite world and compress it into something specific on a 2D plane. The crazy thing is how specific you are making the world. Even with a limited amount of source media to reference, the editor faces a dilemma of endless choice in deciding how to cut, arrange, overlay, modify, color, re-size, re-shape, augment, and stylize. The simplest story can be told in a countless number of different ways. Some are most definitely better than others, and the truth is that editing is a more a process of refinement than is it about outright vision and execution.
If you see an edit somewhere and think to yourself that you would have made the same editing decisions and resulted with an end-product that was just as compelling…you are not being honest with the facts.
“Mixed-Media”
I wanted to get something off my chest… creating compelling content is hard. There are no shortcuts, at least no shortcuts that actually save time. Most of the techniques involved with creating a final image or video are actually a series of distinct, time-consuming layers that compound the complexity of the entire project. The “shortcuts” I use don’t magically make a particular image or video clip an instant beauty. They usually make everything more complicated (frustrating?), and more prone to needing to conduct multiple iterations before achieving a final product, but ultimately these techniques result in a more powerful end product and a better mastery of my craft. The reality is that almost every piece of content has touched at least three pieces of software and often times many more individual edits. I wanted to discuss a recent unique workflow of mine to better address the unseen complexity of creating a STEEP visual.
I recently rediscovered the joy of my original 35mm film camera circa 2001. As I should have expected, this opened up a specialized new nerd-world for me to dive into. Fast forward a few weeks and I am now the proud owner of a more advanced 35mm camera (thanks Ebay!) after mine died during its re-birth trip to Montana (I don’t think it liked the cold), and a shockingly expensive collection of professional-grade (and hard to find) film stocks. When I wanted to experiment with a new method for creating wide-angle images using a 50mm lens that I’d read about (50 & Stitch), I figured I’d take it one step further and try to achieve this effect using my newly delivered Nikon F100 35mm camera and my first ever roll of Kodak Ektar 100 color negative film stock (known for its super fine grain and great colors). I’d been exclusively using my 50mm f/1.8 prime lens on the 35mm cameras to really embrace the non-flexibility of the film-world, and this merging of projects seemed only natural.
Fast-forward to a few days later and I find myself taking the scenic route in the hopes that the sunset is worth making a pit stop for somewhere along the coast during my drive North. It is the rainy time of year in San Diego, and we’d been getting some huge midwest-style rain clouds that are rare for Southern California. Everything lined up perfectly for me to test out my new camera, film stock and stitching methodology when the sunset was an absolute BANGER with lots of well-defined clouds to provide a unique contrast. The hight contrast of sunsets can make them difficult to photograph, with many photographers relying on creating High-Dynamic-Range (HDR) images which are a series of differently-exposed images overlapped together (your iPhone does this automatically these days). Film is actually very good at naturally capturing a wide dynamic range within a single exposure, so I was excited to capture this stunning sunset on my fancy new film stock. I tried to get a variety of shots to test the limits of the film and camera, but paid special attention to my attempt at the “50 & stitch.” Unlike with a digital camera where I would have made as many attempts as needed to feel confident that the individual frames would work together, I really only had one chance on the 35mm camera to nail the setting and get the shot (#GTS). After all, I’d only brought one roll of film and no backup cameras (gasp!). I set the exposure to what seemed like a happy medium for the entire scene, locked in the focus, and took a deep breath before snapping the frames handheld - trying to keep the horizon level.
I dropped off the film at a local high-end film developer, North Coast Photographic Services, that I am very lucky to be able to drive to (my understanding is that they are primarily a mail-in business, processing film from all over the world). One day later I raced through rush-hour traffic to retrieve my prints and scans. I then spent a few hours merging the images in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. One aspect of film developing is that the developer typically “corrects” each image if needed to achieve proper exposure, so I had to deal with some slight differences in exposure in each image. Additionally, there was a fair amount of vignetting (dark edges) which is also characteristic of 35mm cameras. I adjusted each image for image warping imperfections caused by the specific lens I was using using a Lightroom Profile. I had trouble getting the water in the images to merge perfectly (unlike famed landscape photographer Peter Lik, I didn’t have a custom-built rig to hold three cameras to take three simultaneous pictures, and I had to physically turn my body and take the 4 separate images which were then subject to a delay between shots during which the waves moved a few yards) and decided to use an effect that I’ve been using recently where I subtly blur the water portion of the image using a Motion-Blur effect in Photoshop. This creates the impression of a long-exposure and is really quite something. A few final touch-ups (very little color adjustment thanks to my impressive film stock and the desire to keep the image as natural as possible as to not defeat the purpose of using a film camera in the first place), and I exported my baby from Lightroom - a 50 Megapixel yet-to-be-named gem.
All this is to say that, yeah, a little more goes into the work over here at STEEP STUDIOS than a quick iPhone panorama and an instagram filter. Thankfully, I love the work. It’s a combination of vision, preparation, spontaneity, and lots and lots of problem solving.
Cheers!
Update: My friend thought of a fitting title for this piece… “Thy Kingdom Come”
STEEP Beginnings.
The year is 2021 and the future is bright. My name is Matt and I am the creator of Steep Studios.
It has been an ironic past few weeks. My goal had been to do some of the best skiing of my life in some of my favorite locations with my favorite people. After that, I would officially launch Steep Studios and see how far I could go. Instead, I tore my ACL on day one of the first major trip and subsequently learned that I actually also tore my other ACL 10 years ago. Zero ACLs, still can shred. With my physical future in limbo, I found myself a crossroads regarding how to proceed with STEEP.
Taking the Steep mantra to heart - “Steep is a lifestyle” - the only option is to push ahead with the launch and to let the chips fall where they may. Even if I am unable to pursue as many professional opportunities as I had hoped to in 2021 while I am recovering from ACL-reconstruction surgery (surgeries?), I am steadfast in my goal to make Steep Studios a reality.
2020 was a year of exploration, refinement, evolution, and commitment. 2021 is the year of mastery, opportunity, and resolve. Cheers to a future of slick video edits, meaningful connections, photography-overload, and my personal comeback to skiing mountains all across the globe.
-Matt