GDC 2010: Call of Duty: World at War Zombies postmortem
March 10, 2010 by admin
Filed under: Gaming, Retail, Software, Developer, iPhone, App Store
The most major feature of the game’s development, he said, was the decision last year around this time to sit down and work on prototyping for about six weeks. Nowadays, there are a few successful first person shooters around the App Store, but last year, FPSes were still a new genre for the iPhone, so the team decided to really brainstorm how one would work on a touchscreen.
Continue reading GDC 2010: Call of Duty: World at War Zombies postmortem
GDC 2010: Call of Duty: World at War Zombies postmortem originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
GDC 2010: Call of Duty: World at War Zombies postmortem originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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GDC 2010: Street Fighter IV for the iPhone out now
March 10, 2010 by admin
Filed under: Gaming, Software, iPhone, App Store
Before you go press buy, though, I’ll also tell you that I got a chance to play the game, and while it is about as faithful a Street Fighter IV game as you can get on the iPhone, playing a fighting game without actual buttons is not really an ideal experience. While I was able to pull off a Hadoken and almost all of the other old moves after a few tries, the highest levels of competition in a fighting game require precision and subtlety, and this control scheme has neither of those. If you just want to play Street Fighter on an iPhone, sure — be an early adopter, pick up the game, and enjoy a few rounds of Guile vs. Ryu. But if you’re looking for the kind of in-depth fighting experience that Street Fighter IV on consoles and in the arcades offered, you probably won’t find it here — the controls are a little too inconsistent to really dig into the deep counter and powerup systems on display.
Continue reading GDC 2010: Street Fighter IV for the iPhone out now
GDC 2010: Street Fighter IV for the iPhone out now originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 02:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
GDC 2010: Street Fighter IV for the iPhone out now originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 02:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Why Apple Should Buy Adobe
March 10, 2010 by admin
The rumors of Adobe being bought by Apple come up every so often. Apple could easily afford such a purchase and the results would be interesting. I would love to see Adobe restructured by a company like Apple. Adobe has many applications that are the gold standard but it seems to lack focus. These are my thoughts on what Apple could do with Adobe’s biggest apps and make everyone’s life a lot easier.
Video
Adobe’s video market could be trimmed down. Anything that can already be done in Final Cut Studio should be gone, including Premiere and Soundbooth. I’m not sure if After Effects would even be worth it in the end. Most believe that Final Cut is a very nice video suite on the Mac platform and in the PC world, AVID holds the crown. Why is a program like Premiere needed? It’s not quite AVID but way better than Windows Movie Maker. Now throw Sony Vegas in there and it’s starting to get crowded. Apple could create Final Cut for the PC or forget about them altogether. This would come down to money in the long run. I personally don’t think Apple needs to worry about the PC side unless they are going to legitimately compete against AVID for dominance.
Design
Photoshop and Illustrator go hand in hand with Apple. The general public thinks of Apple when Photoshop is mentioned and vice versa. This is known as one of Apple’s strongest markets. Most believe that these design apps run better on a Mac but as we know, Adobe is slow in keeping these flagship apps on the cutting edge. Apple could force them to be designed for the latest and greatest environments. While they’re at it, stop releasing new versions every year that don’t have any significant improvements. Adobe needs the money to keep rolling in through yearly revisions but Apple wouldn’t have this problem. Make a new version when real features are created. In an educational environment, we are forced to upgrade every year because the textbooks only cover the newest versions. This puts a large strain on software budgets.
Documents
Acrobat should also be restructured and brought back to its core purpose. Every other week we hear of an exploit in PDF’s and it’s because they don’t do the simple task they were conceived to do. Strip out all the extra junk and just make PDF’s do what they need to do. Reader should be killed for the Mac OS also, Preview is way quicker and does the job just fine.
Flash
Then there’s the elephant in the room, Flash. Oh my dear old friend, you were once so cool. Animations, games, crazy navigation menus and long site intros were such a treat. Now I have grown bored with you.
The problem is that Flash is so ubiquitous with the web that it can’t just be tossed out into the street. Apple would need to clean it up significantly and keep it around until HTML5 took over. They should only provide security fixes but no new features. This would allow it a peaceful death.
Adobe has so many products that it’s kind of ridiculous. Most of them could either be worked into existing Apple products or forgotten forever. If Apple did purchase Adobe, what about the PC side of Adobe’s business? They would have to crunch the numbers to see what products are worth the extra cost of development, but Apple could really limit what’s available for Windows. Whether that would that be a good or bad thing, I’m not really sure. In Apple’s mind, if it sells more Macs then it’s worth doing.
I believe Apple could really improve Adobe’s products and make them more reliable than they ever have been. It would end the grudge that they have against each other and hopefully get applications like Acrobat and Flash back to their roots. Adding useless features just to sell a different version every year will not win you any fans. Make it a worthwhile upgrade or inexpensive and I will gladly support you.
Slate comes to the iPhone, along with a lot of advertising
March 10, 2010 by admin
Filed under: Multimedia, Odds and ends, iPhone, iPod touch, App Review
I’ve always liked Slate Magazine on the web. It’s sometimes sassy and irreverent, but always interesting — an eclectic mix of politics, culture and tech news.
Now, Slate has come to the iPhone in a US$1.99 app that features all the articles from the site, as well as the blog posts, staff tweets and streaming video from the Slate podcasts. Once content is downloaded you can read it off-line, which is a worthwhile feature. Access to Slate on the web is free, and you can read Slate from any mobile browser by going to mobile.slate.com.
So why the charge for the iPhone app? Slate says it cost something to develop it, and it gives you a much richer experience in a portable form. I can’t argue with that, but I can argue with the ads that appear absolutely everywhere. Even the splash screen popped up with an ad. I think that’s a bit much after I’ve paid for the app, but I’m beginning to see a lot of this in other apps as well.
I do like the app a lot, and it is a better experience for me than reading Slate stories in Safari on the iPhone. I even prefer the app to reading the site on my desktop or laptop. I just think the constant intrusive ads are a turn-off that will keep some people from pulling the trigger on what is an otherwise laudable effort.
Slate works on any iPhone or iPod touch with OS 3.0 or greater. I expect we’ll see an iPad version as well.
Full disclosure: In the dim, distant past I worked at the Washington Post Company, which owns Slate.
Take a gander at some screen shots below:
Gallery: Slate for iPhone screen shots
Slate comes to the iPhone, along with a lot of advertising originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Slate comes to the iPhone, along with a lot of advertising originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Report: RIAA pressured Apple into creating iTunes LP
March 9, 2010 by admin
Filed under: iTS, Retail, iTunes, Apple
This feature over at GigaOM has quite a few interesting insights about the iTunes LP program — while Apple sells it wholeheartedly as “the visual experience of the record album,” it appears the story behind the story is not quite so clean. According to an anonymous source in the industry (note, not Apple themselves), the service didn’t come from Cupertino. Instead, it was designed by record companies, and agreed to by Apple as a “concession” to “make a gesture in favor of album sales.” The piece also states that Apple subsidized the creation of the first few “LPs,” some of which cost up to $60,000 to assemble and license.
As you might expect with any other less-than-popular product at Apple, iTunes LP isn’t exactly being thrown into the spotlight, either. While a much more visual music experience would be perfect for the iPad, GigaOM notes that it didn’t even merit a mention by Jobs at the iPad announcement. It’s certainly possible that iTunes LP could find a new home in the future, if bands really get behind the service and make their own (a few have, as noted, but the cost seems pretty prohibitive, especially if sales aren’t that impressive), but from what this anonymous source says, the LP service is a record company concession that hasn’t paid off for Apple even in the way its originators hoped.
[via iPodNN]
Report: RIAA pressured Apple into creating iTunes LP originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Report: RIAA pressured Apple into creating iTunes LP originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Setting up Parental Controls on the iPhone and iPod touch
March 9, 2010 by admin
My kid wants an iPod touch for her birthday. I’m inclined to fulfill her wishes, but I’m a little concerned about her looking at objectionable content on Safari or YouTube, or running up big bills downloading apps and music. Does the iPod touch come with parental controls?
It does. You can’t limit certain sites in Safari, but you could block the app altogether. And YouTube, the App Store, and the iTunes Store can all be restricted too.
To get started, open the Settings app on the iPod touch, then tap General, and Restrictions. You’ll need to enter a four-digit passcode–don’t share it with your kid, obviously. Then you can disallow Safari, YouTube, the iTunes Store, the App Store, the camera (iPhone only), and Location (which disables the GPS chip in an iPhone or the Wi-Fi-based Location Services on an iPod touch). That’ll turn those apps off completely and forever–unless you go back to the Restrictions list and turn them back on.
Setting limits, like a good parent should.
If you don’t want to totally disable the iTunes Store or App Store while still limiting what they can access, the Restrictions list also has an Allowed Content section. Here you can limit downloaded movies and TV shows by their age rating, exclude music and podcasts rated “explicit,” limit app downloads based on age ratings, and even ban in-app purchasing.
Oh, and if you want to protect your kid’s hearing, you can also check out Settings > iPod > Volume Limit to set the maximum volume to a lower level than the default. This can also be locked with a passcode so your kid won’t go right in and undo what you’ve done.
Steph Tirion, creator of Eliss, annouces Faraway
March 8, 2010 by admin
Filed under: Gaming, Software, Developer, iPhone, App Store, SDK
Steph Tirion is an excellent game designer who I’ve had the good fortune to meet a few times. He first released a great game called Eliss on the App Store and he’s now announced the second game he’s been working on, called Faraway. Eliss was a terrific little arcade game that made great use of the iPhone’s touchscreen, and Tirion says that while his first game dealt with “planets and space management in sectors, Faraway will be about constellations and infinite space travel.” Sounds exciting. The game will be playable at GDC this week, so I’ll definitely make time to run by and check it out.
Tirion has also announced a new company to represent and sell his iPhone games, and he’s calling it LITTLE–EYES. It’s really great to see a very smart, independent developer come into his own like on a platform like the iPhone — there’s really no other mainstream gaming platform out there that lets developers really jump in headfirst and release experimental games like these to a a mainstream market. We’ll keep an eye out at GDC this week for all kinds of indie developers making it big. While it’s cool that Valve and other larger companies are finally coming around, we have to be sure not to forget developers like this either.
Steph Tirion, creator of Eliss, annouces Faraway originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Steph Tirion, creator of Eliss, annouces Faraway originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Enter to win Trip Journal 4.0 for the iPhone DO NOT POST
March 8, 2010 by admin
Filed under: Software, Developer, iPhone
iQapps has updated their app Trip Journal to version 4.0, and the new update adds a fair bit of functionality to the already pretty impressive set of trip recording and tagging features. As with previous versions, you can track pictures, notes, and maps of your trips, and communicate via a number of social networks and features with friends and family. The newest version allows for either manual or automatic waypointing as you travel around the world, multiple trip management, and hooks into social networks like Google Earth, Picasa, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, straight from the iPhone 3GS’ GPS and video camera.
The app is on sale for 99 cents right now, but it’ll be back to the standard $2.99 price soon. We’ve got an even better deal, however — iQapps has offered five download codes for us to give five lucky commenters on this post. Just leave a comment telling us where you’d like to travel to, and we’ll choose five random winners after 48 hours to win the app for free. Here are the rules:
- Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia who are 18 and older.
- To enter leave a comment telling us where you’d like to travel with Trip Journal
- The comment must be left before March 11th, 11:59 PM Eastern Standard Time.
- You may enter only once.
- Five winners will be selected in a random drawing.
- Prizes: Promo Code for one copy of Trip Journal (Value: US$2.99)
- Click Here for complete Official Rules.
Good luck to everyone who enters!
Gallery: Trip Journal 4.0
Enter to win Trip Journal 4.0 for the iPhone DO NOT POST originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Enter to win Trip Journal 4.0 for the iPhone DO NOT POST originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Snow Leopard’s Been Out for Six Months, Why Are So Many of Us Still Using Leopard?
March 8, 2010 by admin
So here we are, just past the six month mark since Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard was sprung last August 28, and I’m still using OS 10.5 Leopard.
I have lots of company. The NetApplications HitsLink Market Share data for February 2010 shows that Leopard is still the most widely-used OS X version, with a 2.21 percent global market share compared to 1.8 percent for Snow Leopard, and good old OS 10.4 Tiger still hanging in at 0.72 percent.
Why the Procrastination?
So, why the procrastination about upgrading? It’s certainly not the cost holding me back. Snow Leopard is the cheapest Mac OS version upgrade in history, other than complete freebies.
Well, for one thing, Leopard works so darned well, and making a major OS upgrade always involves time investment and the hassle of upgrading at least some of your software and utilities (more about that in a moment), and I’ve been short of spare time the last several months. I also tend to be of the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” persuasion, and haven’t been convinced there’s anything Snow Leopard has to offer that’s a genuine must-have for me.
Some of the improvements — things like a more responsive Finder rewritten from scratch in Cocoa, faster Time Machine backups, a more powerful version of the Preview application — sound like welcome tweaks, but nothing I find compelling. Stuff like enhanced Microsoft Exchange Server support for Mail, iCal, and Address Book have zero appeal for me since I don’t use that service or any of those features, preferring third-party alternatives. Nor do Snow Leopard’s Safari upgrades fizz me much since I favor other browsers with Safari being my fourth or fifth choice, if that.
Bitten Once…
There is also the bitten once; twice shy factor. I ordered OS 10.5 Leopard from Amazon.com a day or two after it was released on October 26, 2007, and immediately installed it on my then main production machine, a 1.33 GHz PowerBook G4. I’m not by nature or temperament an enthusiastic early adopter, but Leopard, hyped by Apple as being “the largest update of Mac OS X” yet, incorporating more than 300 new features, had so much cool stuff I really wanted to check out. Especially the Spaces and QuickLook features, which were every bit as good or even better than I had anticipated, and what I miss most on the two old G4 upgraded Pismo PowerBooks I still have in daily service running OS 10.4.
However, there was pain associated with my early move to Leopard, notwithstanding all the good stuff. I’m a windowshading junkie, and I simply can’t abide not having that feature, for which no function built into any version of OS X comes remotely close to being a satisfactory substitute. Windowshading’s been integrated into my work habits for more than a decade. Typically I may have two dozen or so windows open, scattered amongst nine Spaces views, mostly windowshaded, conveniently identifiable by their full title bars being visible.
Unfortunately, OS 10.5 upgrade broke third-party WindowShade X, and I was obliged to struggle along for several months without windowshading until its developer, Unsanity Software, got a Leopard-compatible version of its proprietary and required system add-on Application Enhancer (APE) out the door in February 2008, mercifully restoring WindowShade X support to Leopard.
Withdrawal too Painful to Repeat
Snow Leopard broke Windowshade X and Application Enhancer redux, and I’m not willing to go through that form of addiction withdrawal again.
Unsanity say they’re busily rewriting their more popular “haxie” add-ons to support Snow Leopard, the latest word being that WindowShade X is largely redone, its MIP system rewritten from scratch, and currently at internal beta status, a new build seeded to testers on February 13. A public beta should be released any day now. Until it is, I’m sticking with Leopard.
How about you? If you’re among the plurality of Mac users still running Leopard, and not because you’re on a PowerPC Mac, is something else in particular holding you back?
Oscar Nominated Documentary Film Makers Talk About Their Films and Final Cut Pro
March 8, 2010 by admin
Don’t get us wrong, we appreciate tasty eye candy like Avatar. But documentaries tend to be the films that really amaze us. The impact of the right story told by an artist compelled to share it tends to stay alive in our hearts and heads long after we’ve forgotten whatever passed for a plot in the big blockbuster productions.
And our fondness for documentaries and independent film makers was deepened this year when we found out that nine of the ten Oscar nominated documentaries in both the "Documentary Feature" and "Documentary Short" categories were made using Apple’s Final Cut Pro software.
Some of the 2010 documentary nominees kindly took time out of their busy Oscar weekend to talk to us about their films and how they made them.
Credit: Errol Webber
Music by Prudence
Director: Roger Ross Williams
The story of Zimbabwean singer-songwriter Prudence Mabhena, 21, who was born severely disabled and has struggled to overcome poverty and discrimination
What made you want to make this film?
Roger Williams: I was very interested in making a film in Africa, yet I didn’t want to make a film about struggle, war, or aids. I wanted to tell a story of hope. My producer lives part-time in Zimbabwe, and she told me she saw this amazing singer that she thought would make a great story. Prudence is a disabled girl in Zimbabwe, abandoned and seen as a curse by her family, who conquered so much and offers the world so much with her beautiful music.
Credit: Errol Webber
What was the most challenging part of creating the film?
RW: The hardest part of shooting the film was really the actual shooting of it in Zimbabwe. It’s the country with the highest rate of inflation, the supermarkets don’t have food, so you have to buy it on the black market. You literally need a wheelbarrow of money to buy a loaf of bread. There’s a shortage of water, food, electricity. Also, we shot during a year of violent elections. It was tough.
What did you learn about the story while making the film that surprised you?
RW: Though the film focuses on a band of disabled kids, and the school they’re in, I knew even before I went there, that the film had to have a central character, and it was obvious it’d be Prudence. It became more obvious when I met her. Oh my God, I thought, she’s charismatic and brilliant, and engaging. She’s a very independent person, and she prides herself in doing what she can. But there are limitations. She gets frustrated by her challenges: going to the bathroom, eating, rolling down roads marked by potholes.
During our first interview Prudence told me about her childhood, her suicide attempts. She’d never told anyone before. She cried, and I cried. The process of being interviewed: you become self-reflective; it’s like being in therapy. She couldn’t wait to tell her story. Nobody had ever heard her story before–or asked. Afterwards, I went to the place where I was staying. I cried and cried and cried. I was just devastated. I was so moved by her strength–her ability to get beyond the moment when she was at her lowest. I was determined to get her story out there, and tell it to the world.
Credit: Errol Webber
How long have you been working with Final Cut Pro? What does it enable you to do that you couldn’t have done without the application?
RW: This film project was the first time I worked hands on with Final Cut Pro. My background is in TV news, and this was the first film I made independently. When I started this project I flew to Africa with a budget of $6000. Coming back with my first material, having an editing program that can do anything you’d want for your documentary, at such ease and at such a reasonable price, is really a blessing for current documentary filmmakers. That, and in my case, having a wonderful editor, Geeta Gandbhir.
Anything else you’d like to tell us about?
RW: Being nominated for an Oscar really is a wonderful experience. Getting this huge platform for a film that started out on such a small scale, always having believed in the strong story it could tell, is just so rewarding. It opens doors.
Food, Inc.
Director: Robert Kenner
Food, Inc lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government regulatory agencies, the USDA and FDA.
What made you want to make this film?
Robert Kenner: I read Eric Schlosser’s book, Fast Food Nation, and was surprised that the world of food had become vastly industrialized. I wanted to understand how food gets to our table and look at the growing problem of how we’re going to feed the world.
What was the most challenging part of creating the film?
RK: I was amazed at how off-limits the industrial food world is. Food production has changed drastically in the last 40-50 years, but the major companies don’t want consumers thinking about that. It was very challenging to make a fair and balanced film when the vast majority of the industrial food companies wouldn’t talk to us.
What did you learn about the story while making the film that surprised you?
RK: We filmed a California State Legislature hearing on SB63 - a "consumer right to know" Measure which requires that all foods that are cloned must be labeled as such. I was shocked when a representative from the California Farm Bureau stated that labeling would confuse the consumer. We live in a free society with a free market and yet we are being denied information. It struck me as very un-American. I always believed that a company with a good product would want to advertise it, not hide information.
How long have you been working with Final Cut Pro? What does it enable you to do that you couldn’t have done without the application?
Kim Roberts, Food, Inc editor: Almost all the films I cut now are on Final Cut Pro. For a documentary like Food, Inc. with hundreds of hours of material, I really like the Find capabilities of Final Cut Pro. It’s also very easy to set up mirrored projects on two different computers, so my assistant could find shots for me and send the project files across a simple Ethernet. I find Final Cut very intuitive, and use the color correction tools to mock up looks, as well as doing all my photo moves.
??We also did our online on Final Cut. It was a huge challenge bringing in all kinds of different archival into an HD sequence. Every shot had to be assessed and processed differently, using various applications and techniques.
Dan Wilken, Online Editor: I’d also like to mention Apple’s seamless integration of workflow, from offline through the DI (Editor’s note: DI = Digital Intermediate, the stage between editing and release).
With Apple’s Mac Pros, we set up two offline edit systems, each with a 4TB Raided internal volume, which allowed for a fast, cheap, and most importantly a simple storage solution that could easily be mirrored for the Editor and Assistant Editor to work in tandem.
I brought in a very similar system for the DI, with the additional AJA KONA 3 card and an HD LCD TV, we were able to bring the DI into Robert Kenner’s studio. Here we would monitor our online, knowing exactly what our 24p product was going to look like and how our footage was going to hold up on the big screen.
The only tasks that were done outside of Final Cut were a little Photoshop work and some Magic Bullet frame rate conversions. Every year, a greater percentage of the online is addressed without leaving Final Cut, a great savings in time and media management. In fact, it was as we wrapped Food Inc. that Red Giant announced Magic Bullet Frames, one more tool to simplify a film’s workflow.
What else would you like to tell us about?
RK: The film is about more than food: it’s about sustainability, our environment, social justice for animals and workers, and ultimately about our rights as individuals. It’s exciting to be part of an exploding food movement and to witness the film’s impact. My website has links to further reading and ways to take action
The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant
?Directors: Steven Bognar and Julia Reicher
Steve Bognar and Julia Reicher on the left
The inside story of the last days of a General Motors plant in Moraine, Ohio, as lived by the people who worked the line.
What made you want to make this film?
Steven Bognar: We’re documentary filmmakers based in Dayton, Ohio. When General Motors announced they were closing their huge truck plant in Dayton, we thought, how can we respond to this? We knew it was a bomb about to go off in our community, and we figured, we are ‘citizens with cameras.’ We can start to document. As time went on, we felt it was a story the world should know. Specifically, how would this impact the generations of auto workers who had worked in that plant.
What was the most challenging part of creating the film?
SB: This film had several very challenging aspects to it. First, earning the trust of the auto workers in the film. They’ve been maligned in the media over the years, and here they are dealing with the pain of having to shut down their own plant. So having cameras around wasn’t welcomed. We kept showing up, week after week. The workers tested us, and eventually many of them really opened their hearts to us.
The filming process required us to work outdoors in freezing temperatures, day after day, that was hard on us and our deeply dedicated crew. We’re so grateful to our crew for their endurance!
What did you learn about the story while making the film that surprised you?
SB: Like many people, we started this film with certain assumptions about auto workers. That they were in it only for the money, that they didn’t particularly love their job. These assumptions were so wrong. The people in the plant worked incredibly hard, they were very proud of the cars they made, and they loved the community that they and in many cases their parents had built over the years. Their true grief was not about the loss of their jobs, it was about the loss of their community.
How long have you been working with Final Cut Pro? What does FCP enable you to do that you couldn’t have done without the application?
SB: Maybe the hardest thing with this documentary, as it is with most documentaries, is finding the story in the editing. We’ve been using FCP since 2000, back in version FCP 2.0. It’s been great to see the program evolve and grow over the years. One great feature that was crucial for this film was FCP’s ability to mix formats on one timeline. We shot THE LAST TRUCK on multiple high-def formats, including DVCPRO HD, XDCAM and HDV. Integrating different scenes shot on different cameras was critical to our editing process.
What else would you like to tell us about?
SB: We’re so grateful to the people from the GM plant in Dayton for sharing their stories with such courage, amidst such heartbreak. The film would be nothing without their generosity in sharing their stories with the world. There are a lot of great folks in Dayton, Ohio - hard working people, talented skill trades folks, hungry for work.
The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner
Director: Daniel Junge
Producer: Henry Ansbacher
Left to right, Henry Ansbacher, Dan Junge, Davis Coombe at the Oscar nominees’ luncheon
While dealing with the devastating effects of Parkinson’s disease, Washington’s former governor Booth Gardner leads a campaign to legalize assisted suicide in the state.
What made you want to make this film?
Henry Ansbacher: When we heard about Washington’s former Governor’s struggle with Parkinson’s and his decision to try and get physician’s assisted suicide legalized in the state we knew that there was a great story there. Booth was a very popular two-term Governor, and we wanted to know what it was like to go from there to having to struggle to walk and even speak. His effort to give the citizens of Washington a choice about how to end their lives was a controversial issue, but he saw it as a right that everyone should have. We also knew that lots of people would be opposed to the law, so getting in with the other side and telling their story was important to us as well.
What was the most challenging part of creating the film?
HA: The most challenging aspect of the production was balancing both sides of the issue while maintaining access and trust from both campaigns. We were lucky to eventually get the cooperation of Booth’s campaign staff, his personal assistants and also the campaign opposed to the Initiative. It was a political chess game, and both sides wanted to get the drop on the other side so staying in the know was a bit of a challenge. It was also difficult to watch the Governor’s health deteriorate, but at the same time his determination was inspiring.
What did you learn about the story while making the film that surprised you?
HA: We learned a lot about both sides of a complex issue, and most importantly, that this is an issue that most people don’t think about until it’s too late. I think a lot of end-of-life issues are that way so we hope the film helps to start conversations about these things. As filmmakers, we learn more on every film and this one was no different. That’s what’s great about making documentaries: you continue to hone your craft but are immersed in a new world with every project.
?How long have you been working with Final Cut Pro? What does FCP enable you to do that you couldn’t have done without the application?
Daniel Junge: I switched from Avid to Final Cut 5 years ago, and I’m never going back. The entire picture was edited and color-corrected using Final Cut Pro and Color, and the workflow between the two applications meant that we were flexible all the way to the finish line. The flexibility of Final Cut with the different Apple computers we used was also key to keeping things moving. We were able to cut rough sequences on smaller workstations and move them to our main editor for polish without losing a beat, and Apple ProRes 422 made it easier to output beautiful video at full 1080 resolution at every stage of post production. We’ve come a long way from the old off-line resolutions I started working with years ago. Since we finished the film the workflow with using XDCAM EX has only gotten easier, so we look forward to cutting our next film on Final Cut Pro.
?What else would you like to tell us about?
DJ: We are happy to say that Governor Booth Gardner will be attending the Oscars with us! ??
