My Letter to Apple Regarding Final Cut Pro X

Dear Apple,

As both a filmmaker and video educator I have a distinct perspective on the new version of Final Cut Pro X. In a nutshell, the new version is extremely dissatisfying and downright insulting.

As a high school video teacher, I've been slowly trying to switch my budget conscience school, to Final Cut Pro. We were fortunate enough to afford Final Cut Express, and I was slowly trying to turn over our older IBM G5s to Intel Macs which could finally run the latest Final Cut Pro software. However, after seeing the lack of professionally in the new version I'm sad to say I may have to abandon Final Cut altogether.

Now as a professional filmmaker, who has had and used Final Cut Pro since version 2, I cannot express enough how disappointed I am in version X. You have essentially locked me out of 10 years worth of older Final Cut projects, in order to supposedly usher in a new and revolutionary way to edit professionally. Not only that, but you fixed what was not broken. Final Cut 6 and 7 were amazing peaks in the softwares lifespan and now you've dumbed it down in order to get more entry level users and potentially higher profit margins.

This is completely unacceptable! I've invested literarily thousands of hard earned dollars into Final Cut, Apple computers, and all the third party accessories and software associated with Final Cut Pro all for it to essentially have gone down the drain. This is the thanks you give a loyal customer and promoter of your company and products?

I beg and urge you to see the errors of your decision and revert Final Cut Pro back to the previous architecture and design of version 6 or 7. If Coca-Cola can see the wisdom of returning "Coke" to "Classic Coca-Cola" after a resounding customer demand, I hope you can too.

I'm just a small fish in the large ocean of Final Cut Pro users, but in the interest and needs of my students and fellow filmmakers/professionals I hope that you will take my opinion and feedback seriously.

Thank you.

-Gustavo Guardado

Happy Anniversary!

Whoa! Has it really been half a year since my last blog post? Yikes! Ok lets get this party started.

Updates:

One Year Anniversary of the Start of Principal Photography.

Monday June 13th marked one year ago that the first scenes for Love, Concord were shot on location at Diggers Diner in Concord. That day will forever be etched in my brain as for me it was a culmination of literally years of work both for the movie and for my dream to direct a feature film. I remember at one point simply watching my crew setting up the first shot and thinking "wow, this is actually happening." Living out a childhood dream is a surreal experience.

Now I know what some of you might be thinking "One year later and the movie's still not finished?" My response to that is simply, you can't rush an artist. Actually in all practicality, being a full time teacher took precedence over the post production of the movie. It was my first year teaching at the high school level, and me being the perfectionist that I am didn't want do either of my passions (teaching and moviemaking) half assed. Therefore, I rarely had time to edit other than holiday breaks and the occasional weekend.

My other response to the notion that the film is taking too long to complete is to point out that, again, this is an independent film. I unfortunately do not have a full time staff to manage the day-to-day operations of traditional post-production schedule. Meaning, I'm doing most of the editing alone. Thus again why it's taking so long.

Change of the Timeline

So in one of my previous blogs I had hoped to have a 3rd cut by spring break of 2011. Well that didn't happen, obviously. Instead I'm currently working on the 2nd cut of the film. Which after the feedback from my colleagues on the 1st cut will be a very polished version of the film. In fact after I finish the 2nd cut, hopefully by the end of this week, I plan to hold one more screening for my colleagues to air out any last chance changes. Based on the feedback I'll either quickly in-act those changes or consider the film "picture-locked."

For those of you who don't know that term, picture-lock means all visual editing is done on the film. Therefore, sound can be focused on so that it can be enhanced or repaired where needed without the worry of the movie being changed and thus ruining any synchronization issues with sound. In other words, you don't start working on the sound of a movie until you know for sure the picture is not going to change.

Teaser Trailer and NALIP

So in anticipation of meeting distributors at the NALIP(National Association of Latino Independent Producers) conference this past spring, I asked Jimmy Freeman to edit a teaser trailer for the movie. We sat down and compared similar genre movies to ours and I gave him some guidelines as to what I didn't want included. Then he set about working on the trailer and less then a week later he was ready to show me his first cut.

Let me preface my reaction to his work by noting that Jimmy has always impressed me with his keen sense of editing. Of all his valuable artistic skills, it's his editing that truly sets him apart from others. Therefore, I knew his trailer would be good at the very least, but then he showed it to me. WOW! I was so moved by it and how well he represented the movie that it sent chills down my spine. It was so good that all I had him do was swap out a few shots, add a sound effect here and there and that was it.

After forcing both my lead actors, Angelina Leon and Jorge Diaz, to come to the conference we were all excited to see what the reaction to the trailer would be. We screened it at the filmmakers lounge on the Friday evening of the event, and got a decent reaction from the crowd. But it wasn't until Saturday morning when I started sharing the trailer with distributors that the excitement really started to build. Then what really gave me a sense of flattery was when my friend and fellow filmmaker Miguel Angel and his production team saw and enjoyed the trailer. Hearing from them how well done the movie looked based on the 2.5 minute trailer validated all me and my crew's hard work.

Miguel then took it upon himself to introduce me to a bunch of other industry people. All of which had ties to distribution, and all of which loved the trailer. In fact many of them were eager to see the first cut of the film, but to which I was not comfortable yet sharing. Nonetheless, based on the strength of the trailer we have a few interested distributors which is a HUGE deal! So hats off to Jimmy and his unbelievable work!

So where's the trailer already? Well we need to change the music before we can publish it on the internet. But we're close to being able to finally officially release it, so stay tuned!

The Next Movie?

Believe it or not I'm already thinking of my next feature project. While I can't give away much details I can say that it'll most likely be a project that's been running around in my head for a while. What I'm excited about is how Angelina (star of Love, Concord) has expressed interest in helping me write it. In fact her and I have already brain stormed the plot, characters, and setting. Our next step is to write a treatment and scene outline for the project. But again my main focus is to finish Love, Concord.

Well that's the much needed scoop of Love, Concord. Thank you all for the consistent prodding and excitement to see it finished. We're closer to end than the beginning that's for damn sure, and the journey has been quite amazing!

Forward!

-Gustavo

Jump Starting 2011

Hello readers!

Burrrr! It's cold here in the Bay Area! Kinda like this blog, so let's give it some love and start the new year off right.

Updates:

Love, Concord 1st Cut Almost done!

So as I wrote last time we have a finished rough cut which as been a HUGE help for me editing the 1st official cut of the movie. Instead of having to build it all up from scratch I can simply pull up a scene and it's footage and start tweaking shot selections, takes, length etc. I'm really methodical when I decide to touch up a scene, sometimes spending a whole day on just one, but luckily Jimmy's work is so good most scenes only need minor adjustments.

I spent about 4 days of my winter break from teaching to edit, and I'm really close to finishing the first cut. I estimate I should be done with the first cut by the end of the weekend so stay tuned for a cheerful post on our Facebook fan page if and when we hit this milestone.

Animation Domination

Part of the reason I'm really excited about the 1st cut is that my animator extraordinaire, Megan Johnson, has been hard at work cranking out the various animation scenes. She just recently finished them all for approval and they're simply awesome. The animation simply needs sound effects and possible some minor adjustments once the cuts of the movie progress, but for the most part they're all done thanks to my one woman army of Megan!

Other Creative Accomplishments

On a side note, I just wrapped up the final cut of commercial I shot and directed for the owner of Oodles of Noodles and More, in Brentwood, Ca. It's a 3o second spot that'll air on local Comcast channels, but I've posted it below so you can watch for yourselves. It stars two actors from Love, Concord and one of my current students from Heritage High School. Oh, and for the crew, see if you can figure out who the narrator is.

This commercial was done as a return favor to the owner who allowed us to use his other establishment, Digger's Diner in Concord, to shoot a whole day's worth of scenes for Love, Concord. I again want to thank them for their major contribution to my feature and hope that you readers will give their restaurants your patronage. Both places are quite delicious!

Well that does it for now I leave with another link to my good friend, fellow filmmaker, and supporting cast member of Love, Concord Miguel Caballero's website. He is producing his first feature film and needs donations to help make his film a reality. So please spread the word, make a small donation, or a large one, and help On the Run get to the editing room!

http://www.indiegogo.com/ON-THE-RUN-Corre-Ojitos-Corre

Until next time.

Forward!

-Gustavo

Out of Hibernation?

Hello readers!

You all must be saying to yourselves, "Where's the darn movie already?" Trust me I feel the same way so let's jump into our updates.

Updates:

Sundance 2012

As I've mentioned here and elsewhere my hope was to submit to the Sundance film festival in hopes Love, Concord would be accepted for 2011. Unfortunately, the closer we got to the September 25th deadline, the more I realized how unprepared the movie was to submit to any festival let alone the Country's premiere festival.

While I was ready to throw in the towel for Sundance 2011, my Co-producer and Co-editor was satisfied with that so he took it upon himself to edit my portion of the scenes and managed to put together a great rough cut before Sept. 25th. We screened it together one night and were both impressed how well the movie came together even in it's rough form. It really sent chills down my spine to see all our hard work and my life's dream come together for the first time in a rough cut. I immediately called Virginia to share the news, and as the wise veteran filmmaker she is, she convinced me that I shouldn't let the adrenaline of seeing the rough cut cloud my judgement to postpone entry into Sundance.

So I've officially decided to apply the movie for entry into the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. I feel that gives me a full year to polish the film to its absolute best shape and therefore, hopefully give the film the best possible chance to impress it's entry screeners. By waiting it allows me time to work on not only the editing but the sound and graphics as well. If I had submitted the film it was in rough form it would have been without at soundtrack, without sound design, and with a few missing shots still needed to be shot or animated. All of which don't help to impress festival screeners.

Next Steps

So what I plan to do is hopefully take a look at it again over the Thanksgiving holiday. I plan to screen it with my producer Virginia, take some notes and then hopefully begin another round of intense editing during the December break I have from teaching. Once the first official cut is done I'll screen it to to a select few to get more feedback and then begin working on the 2nd cut. I'd like to then have 3rd cut of the movie by the time Spring break comes around

in March.

That's the game plan for now. I'll try to keep you guys posted more often, but again with teaching at the high school level for my first time, I'm finding it difficult to plan my class and devote time to the movie. But I'm confident I'll be able to make the new deadlines and thus submit to Sundance 2012.

Well that's all for now folks. I leave with you some more photos from the production. Have a great Turkey Day!

Forward!

-Gustavo

Back From Hybernation

Hello readers!

I'm finally back from a very long hiatus to shoot Love, Concord and then recuperate from that marathon that it was.

But before I start the usual updates allow me to say thank you to all of you who have made a contribution both large and small to the movie. I want to specially thank my extremely talented and hard working cast and crew. You were all amazing to work with and I would jump at an opportunity to work

with you all again.

Next I want to thank all my friends and family who did favors here and there to helpthe project come to reality. There's too many of you all to thank, but know that I'll always remember your contributions and consider myself fortunate to know such kind people.

Updates:

So what have I been doing since we wrapped you ask? Well I took a much needed mini vacation and purposely didn't think, look, or deal with movie stuff. I purposely wanted to put some distance between myself and the movie so I could enter post production with a fresh set of eyes.

I also began my video teaching job at Heritage high school, so that took up a lot of time also.

Post Production has begun

About two weeks ago I finally sat down with my Producer Virginia and Co-Producer Jimmy to finally start the post production process.

The first thing we had to do convert the raw footage to a format Final Cut Pro (our editing software of choice) could work with.

Next Jimmy and I began syncing all the individual shots and takes of the movie and synced them up to all the individual sound files. And when I say Jimmy and I, I really mean Jimmy. Because with the exception of the last two days of footage, Jimmy synced pretty much all of the footage. If not for his help I'd be about two weeks away from editing.

Instead Jimmy and I will be meeting tomorrow to do the final data arranging so we can both begin editing the movie separately on two different hard drives. While in the past I'd have never let anyone edit my movies, having realized how much we actually shot, there's no way I can edit the movie and have it anywhere near close to ready for Sundance Film Festival deadline of September 25th. Luckily for me, I have someone I trust and who is amazingly skilled to help me edit. That person again being Jimmy.

Lead Animator Hard at Work.

During my hiatus from Love, Concord my lead (and only) animator Megan Johnson has been hard at work doing animation for the feature. While I can't go into detail about what she's been up to, what I can say is that it's looking amazing! She really is quite a gifted artist and her ability to turn my idea and vision into actual animation is just simply amazing!

She's still working on the animation and I hope to meet with her soon to see the final details in motion.

After Editing, Then What?

So while I hope to have a rough cut done by the end of September, it should be pointed out by no means does it mean the movie will be ready to screen. The rough cut will be simply that, rough. I'm hoping it'll show enough quality, even at the rough stage, to be accepted to Sundance. However, after the rough cut is assembled I'll most likely screen it to a select few fellow filmmakers in order to get some feedback, and then it's back to the editing room. This cycle will repeat until I feel the film is clearly telling the story I intended it to.

Once I have a final cut done, I'll begin doing sound work on the movie. Again, many people forget that most of the sound you hear in films is recorded after the fact or pulled from a library of sound effects. Luckily for me I had Dan Jasper as my production sound recordist, so my dialogue is amazingly clear and won't need much if any re-recording! Thanks Dan!

After sound is done hopefully I'll be premiering it either at a popular film festival or in the very least somewhere in Concord.

So that's the post production game plan. While I hope to continue posting blog updates about editing, there wont' be much to write about until we get the work done. That and my full time teaching job kinda makes it hard to write weekly now. Nonetheless I hope to write at least bi-weekly to let you know what cool scenes I've worked on.

Also I plan to slowly release the many thousands of productions photos taken by the awesome Mike Padua!

Well that's all for now folks. Thanks for being patient with me and I look forward to sharing the post production process for you.

Forward!

-Gustavo

Just because principal shooting is over...

It doesn't mean that this blog is over. Quite the opposite, actually.

It's been a few weeks since we wrapped principal photography for "Love, Concord", and I'm just now settling back into things in So*Cal. I have 6-7 hour-long Mini-DV tapes filled with my footage shot from the set, including interviews with actors and crew to silly behind-the-scenes stuff that was amusing, to say the least.

Under the oh-so-helpful eye of Jimmy, I bought a Lacie Rugged external hard drive to house the huge video files that I'll be using for my project. I chose that HD because it's the same type Jimmy was using to wrangle footage from the set, so if it's good enough for him to rely on, it's good enough for me. I wanted a good, reliable hard drive to use since the one I bought two years ago to backup my iPod died on me in a few months.

Now that the shooting is over, I can finally turn my attention to my thesis project...Soon, I'll jump headfirst into watching and capturing all my video footage in order to make sense of it all.

It's still pretty surreal that I spent a nearly a month with the cast and crew of the movie, as it went by so fast...you always hear people say "man, that went by so fast!!" but I can really say that about my experience on and off the set for the three week period in June.

I have a lot of great interview footage with Gus and most of the principal actors, and it will be a lot of fun (and a lot of work) to compile it all together. But hey, I'm in grad school, I'm supposed to lock myself in the library and slave away at a computer screen all day...right?

I'll check in soon with more updates about my project and anything pertaining to post-production for the REAL movie, if necessary. It's my understanding that post-production will start up shortly.

Until next time, hope you stay tuned to this blog and the movie Facebook page... :)

--Adrian

THAT'S A WRAP!!

Yep, production is officially in the can for Love, Concord. We started our last day of filming yesterday at around 4 pm and finished...at 5 in the morning. Yes, a 13-hour day.

Needless to say, I felt beyond tired by the time we wrapped as the sun rose in the Concord hills. I have to commend Angelina and Jorge ("Gerry & Melinda") for their tireless energy all throughout the night, as they filmed scenes at our first location and then all night until 5. We were at a spot with amazing views of the Bay Area...to wrap shooting just as the sun was rising was beautiful and quite metaphoric, as you could say the sun is rising on our movie. :)

This has honestly been one of the most amazing experiences of my life. The entire cast & crew of the movie are now my friends, and the thought of not spending 10-13 hours a day with them on various sets is sad. We all teamed up to help Gus reach his dream, and in doing so we've created a movie that I know a lot of people will love. All the actors did fantastic jobs with their roles, and I can't wait for the world to be able to see what we were up to these past 3 weeks.

This blog will definitely stay active, so don't think that just because production is finished, that the blog is too. That's not the case at all...I'll keep everyone updated about post-production tidbits and news leading up to our eventual movie premiere sometime in the (hopefully) not so distant future.

As a former student, I have to congratulate director Gustavo Guardado on living his dream. He's always wanted to direct his own feature film, and thanks to our wonderful cast & crew, that dream was realized just as the sun came up last night/this morning. That must be a pretty surreal feeling, and I know it will be just the beginning for Love, Concord.

Thanks to all you guys for reading my updates, and stay tuned for more soon! :)

--Adrian