Choosing Hard Drive Differences

Episode #38 - WARNING: This episode is a workflow episode.  It is made for people with extensive knowledge in post-production and can be a confusing listen if you do not have an interest in the material.  If you do not have that particular background skip to another one of our episodes.

Welcome to another Feature & a Short workflow episode where we chat about differences in working in Feature versus short movies. In this episode Director, Editor Justin Joseph Hall explains what criteria to look for when choosing a hard drive in general, but specifically what will save you time on feature projects.

Thank you to Bobby O’Brien for requesting this podcast

The Biggest difference between a selecting a hard drive for feature or a short movie is really the transcoding, export time, and transfer times (time to create backups).

The first thing to look for in either a feature or a short movie is the connection. There are three modern connections found in the fall of 2022

1. USB-C

2. Thunderbolt

3. USB-3.0

Ethernet connection to a network is also an option if you happen to be working off of a large storage network in an office. Otherwise another storage device to consider is a RAID = redundant array of independent disks. It’s probably not worth it to invest in an expensive RAID for short. There are 3 main ways to set up your RAID.

1. RAID 0

2. RAID 1

3. RAID 5

We go through all types, but recommend RAID 0 for editing digital video, mainly because it’s the fastest way to read and write data.

Don’t forget to backup your hard drives in three separate physical locations. Plan out before you start post-production where your three locations will be.

Justin suggests a few brands

1. G-RAID

2. Seagate

3. LACIE

4. OWC

Justin also suggests to diversify backup types including going through what an LTO tape is. Quatre-Vents is Fourwind Films’ sister company in Minnesota!  They can be your solution for LTO Tapes and all other Post-Production needs .  In the podcast Justin tells how you can get 70% back on video expenditures through tax incentives through Quatre-Vents.  Some are direct rebates, just by hiring us and others in the region. Justin also goes through various options of powering your drive and pricing for drives. And don’t forget to always include hard drives in your budgets!

Thanks for listening! For more content like this check out other podcast episodes as well as our blog posts, where a wide variety of film and multimedia professionals share what they’ve learned.

Credits:

Production Company - Fourwind Films

Host - Justin Joseph Hall

Editor - Billie Jo Laitinen

Audio Mixer - Hans Bilger

The theme song of Season 6 is Getting It Done by Kevin MacLeod.

Assistant Editing Differences

Episode #26 - WARNING: This episode is a workflow episode. It is made for people with extensive knowledge in post-production and can be confusing if you do not have that background. If you do not have that backgorung skip to another one of our episodes.

Welcome to another COVID Feature & a Short episode: Assistant Editing.

Most assistant editors want to advance their career to become and editor someday.
Owner and Editor of Fourwind Films, Justin Joseph Hall, has worked on many projects as Assistant Editor. In this episode he gives us some tips about Assistant Editing. First off to know the different jobs in Post-Production to find opportunities to experiment and try different things. Always discuss at the beginning of the project how your credit is going to be. Remember that as an assistant editor you gotta be the organizational voice. You want to have an easy-to-read organizational format. Be consistent with the way you label files as you working on a team! Talk to the editor about gaining a system for ingesting and synching. Color-correction and sound-mixing are essential parts to consider for a complete proper project.

It’s your job to make sure that your work is accurate and that you maintain a high quality product for finishing your video!

If you have any Post-Production questions, email Justin Joseph Hall directly at justinjosephhall@fourwindfilms.com or check out Fourwind’s blog page for helpful tips in creating media.

Credits for podcast:

Produced by Fourwind Films

Host: Justin Joseph Hall

Brian Trahan - Sound Mixer, Additional Music

Theme song of Season 4 is Loopster by Kevin MacLeod.

Justin Joseph Hall: Wasp, Rock & a Hard Place

Episode #17 - Justin Joseph Hall our owner from Minnesota has been working hard in post-production at DCTV this year. For this episode that was recorded on his birthday he decided to share how vérité documentaries can be made and aspects of using documentary style camera work can be used in narrative filmmaking.

Justin started with Andrea Arnold’s famous short film Wasp. It is entirely shot in handheld form with little or no music. It follows a family in real time evoking well-known vérité cinema techniques brought forth to documentary filmmaking by folks like the Maysles brothers in the 1960’s and beyond. It is a short intense drama about family responsibilities colliding with personal freedoms.

The feature Justin brought forth was Downtown Community Television’s Rock and a Hard Place that they made for HBO Documentaries in conjunction with Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. The film is a vérité documentary by the legendary modern vérité directors Jon Alpert and Matthew O’Neill and was the first documentary Justin Joseph Hall had worked on with DCTV. He began as an assistant editor and many of the montages in the film for editor David Meneses.

To learn more about Justin’s work in conjunction with DCTV, please check out FRONTLINE: Life on Parole and the new series Axios on HBO.

Episode hosted by Daria Huxley.

Justin Joseph Hall - Assistant Editor

Host - Daria Huxley

Sound Mix & Additional Music - Brian Trahan

Theme song of Season 4 is Johnny's Tune In Waltz by Salitros’ Ridin’ Rainbow.