*I would post it directly in my blog but the CSS gets all screwy…

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I recently returned from the Philippines, where I took an Apple certification course in FCPX over the course of four days at a training center in Manila. Like many people in my profession, I often have to learn new software in the studio, all alone, working on deadline. Much of what I know of design, audio and multimedia applications is self-taught. However, I was fortunate to learn the ins and outs of FCP7 from an Emmy Award-winning editor in Washington, DC years ago. And as Gypsy’s portfolio increasingly involves video production, I decided that formal training on the new FCPX was more than appropriate. Now, I’m proud to say that I am officially an Apple-certified Pro (the only one in Vietnam, I am told!)

So it is with that experience that I submit the second half of my review of FCPX:

-Organization

One thing I realized when studying FCPX—something you are less likely to explore when self-training—is how extensively the program emphasizes organization. From your initial ingest of footage to the editing stage, you are constantly offered opportunities to organize, organize, organize. When importing footage, you can tell FCPX to analyze your footage for everything from camera stability and color balance to the number of people in each shot. Then you can group your clips according to these parameters. You can create groups of clips based on keywords, shot type, and “ratings.” You can create Smart Collections and Keyword Collections, and you can search your clips based on any of these criteria, or even overlapping criteria. It’s insane how much you can organize, categorize and filter your footage for editing. For someone as disorganized as me, it is like having a personal life coach sitting next to you throughout the edit. And I dare say I’ve had a couple breakthroughs!

-Auto-Saving

As I mentioned before, Apple seems to be moving away from the concept of users having to save their work; the programs want to do that for you. Personally, I’m not too keen on this development. Believe me, I need all the help I can get and auto-saving can be a lifesaver in the event of an application or system crash (which, by the way, are becoming less frequent with each software update.) But I’m also old school. Sometimes I just want to mess around with a project, knowing I’m going to close it out without saving. Well, you can’t do that with FCPX, because before you know it you’re screw-around file will be automatically saved and then bang! it’s official: that crazy upside-down rainfall effect that you were dying to show your wife is now in there, ready for client review. Of course, all things can be undone, but the best way to avoid ruining a working draft due to autosave is to duplicate the project in your Project Library, and rename it something like “Bullshit File-Safe to Fuck Around With.”

-The Learning Curve
This is no doubt the greatest challenge of FCPX: the learning curve. There’s no getting around it; it’s a completely new program, redesigned from the ground up. What was really wrong with FCP7 in the first place? Nothing, really. But I’m telling you, the new version of Final Cut Pro is leaps and bounds ahead of FCP7 when it comes to speed and convenience. That’s because of its 64-bit capability, better memory management, and optimal utilization of multiple cores in your computer. These are all things the professional community had been clamoring for, and it all means it had to be completely re-engineered. There were a lot more than aesthetic considerations behind the new FCP platform.

Of course, changes like these create a learning curve that many people are simply not interested in, or don’t have time for. Not long ago, I was among the former crowd. It takes time to learn new things, and to unlearn old things. This, certainly among other reasons, is why so many editors have made the switch to Avid or Premiere as their NLE of choice. Me, I’m glad I stuck with it. I say full speed ahead! I believe FCPX will stake its place again among the standard applications for professionals in my line of work. But Apple can’t expect that to happen overnight.

I must point out something here: professional editors will all agree that FCPX version 1.0 was not suitable for professional use. There were too many pro features—many of which had become industry standards—gone missing. That being said, following the often-enraged cries from the editing community, Apple has been making significant improvements with each version. Final Cut Pro is currently at version 10.0.7, and it’s safe to say that FCPX is now a solid professional application. In fact, many production houses in film and television have embraced the FCPX platform.

-The Real World: Who’s Using It?

I don’t work in broadcast TV. For the most part, I create micro-documentaries for international NGOs. There are others out there like me, and they are the ones using FCPX, I believe. From everything I know, post facilities in Hollywood prefer Avid systems, and the release of FCPX only emboldened the Avid loyalty. At this point, FCPX is probably a tool best suited for freelancers who often need to work fast, and on the go. I’d venture to say Premiere enjoys a similar target audience. Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule. From Apple’s own website, here’s an article on Electric Entertainment, a Hollywood production company that uses FCPX on the hit show Leverage.

-Conclusions
I use Final Cut Pro X on client work now. I love it. It is super fast compared to Final Cut Pro 7. Now that I know the software well, I no longer look for excuses to go back to FCP7. The organization tools in FCPX actually encourage me to be more organized and, yes, they do speed up my workflow, as promised. Considering that, plus additional features like background rendering, the magnetic timeline, and built-in color tools, I’m glad I stuck with Final Cut. Even if the new version meant going back to Square One.

-Additional Reading
The Internet has no shortage of FCPX reviews. But if you’re looking for more insight from professional editors, I can’t recommend this blog post from Philip Bloom enough, featuring the perspective of 7 different professional editors. Note: this article is about a year old and, as I said, FCPX has made major improvements in recent versions. It’s long, it’s comprehensive, and it’s worth a read! A more recent (and glowing) article from the MovieMaker folks can be found here. Enjoy!

*Photo of Dean Delvin, Electric Entertainment © Apple, Inc. 

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But tonight on the patio, I had something to say. This is nothing fancy; it was recorded with an iPhone on my balcony. But it was something to say. Enjoy.

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But many video editors are still not so enthusiastic about Version Ten, and that’s understandable. For now, they insist on sticking with the previous FCP platform (Final Cut 7; don’t ask). Either they’re sticking with FCP7, or they’ve made that dreaded migration to an Avid system or, in many cases, to Adobe Premiere. To be fair: my optimism may fade tomorrow and I could end up being one of those guys too. But for the time being, I’m one of the editors that has decided to go along with what very well might be the future of NonLinear Editing.

Apple didn’t make a lot of friends when they introduced Final Cut Pro X. Make no mistake: it is a complete rewrite from the ground up. Of course, scores of video editors did not flock to the store when Apple released this product, all of a sudden, at a third of the cost of previous versions. In fact, once they got a look at FCPX, editors ran in the other direction. If anything, Apple lost a significant part of the market share. Although general acceptance of FCPX seems to be increasing again as Apple addresses the software’s most pressing professional concerns, I think it’s safe to say the company still has a lot of work to do winning back the offended video editor crowd.

So did I get rid of FCP7? Oh, hell no. (I do have a career to keep in mind.) And besides, does my job as a videographer-editor rely entirely on which NLE I use? Of course not. But I have worked with Apple products for many years, and I have always been willing to play along. While I know Apple has made its share of mistakes in the past—like Adobe—I  depend on these companies’ willingness to take risks that lead to bigger and better things. Besides, mastering Premiere CS6 and it’s companion apps at a professional level sounds like a professional pain in the ass. I’m willing to give FCPX a chance. Or several, if need be.

So away we go. iMovie Pro… ahem, I mean Final Cut Pro X.

It Looks like iMovie.

I imagine that the biggest qualm most had with FCPX when it was first released last year was the completely redesigned interface which looked unsettlingly like iMovie, Apple’s consumer-oriented editing platform that allows very little room for precision editing. Back in 2009, iMovie went from being a program that looked kinda like a standard NLE to a dumbed down, cutesy little app with a frustrating file storage system and a tendency to crash. Well, FCPX looks like iMovie ’09 and later. Naturally, that made people who were at all familiar with iMovie—myself included—quite uncomfortable. And if you weren’t familiar with iMovie, then you were even worse off when it came to navigating the interface.

What’s more, when the price was announced at $300 (a fraction of what FCP used to cost) editors were left scratching their heads. Think of it this way: you’ve driven BMWs all your life, right? You’re just a BMW guy. One day BMW announces the new F-series, a line of vehicles that look like Geo Metros (no disrespect to Geos) and they start at $7K a pop. You’re probably not rushing out to pick one of these up. Now imagine that BMW has just announced that the F-series are the only cars BMW will ever plan produce from here on out… Panic might start to set in.

It Feels like iMovie

Nobody likes “Events” and “Projects” for organizing files. Nobody. Personally, I’ve never really liked the “Movies” and “Music” approach to folders that OSX uses in general. But it’s easy enough to get around that, and not so risky when you’re just talking about some home movies or your iTunes library. Maybe I’m a closeted Windows lover, but I like to maintain and consolidate my files where I want them. While FCPX allows you to allocate external drives for footage and project files, it doesn’t want you to have much more control than that. And just like in iMovie, if you start moving files around from their original “Events” and “Project” homes, you start breaking things. This is an architecture that I’m sure Apple has no intention of changing, although I am 100% confident that 100% of all video editors around 100% the world think it’s a stupid setup, just like I do.

FCPX also makes you grab those little yellow sections of clips in the same way iMovie does. You don’t set in and out points by default. Just as in iMovie, you drag clips from your Events library into your Project, which feels clunky. To be fair, you do have the ability to set precise ins and outs, but this is not clear at the outset; it’s not the default approach. So you can’t help but wonder if precision editing was really what FCPX wanted at the top of its claims to fame.

And maybe one of FCPX’s biggest drawbacks is that it won’t import FCP7 files. That’s just wrong.

It Does Things That iMovie and FCP7 Have Never Dreamed Of

-Magnetic Timeline
It’s so cool. What the magnetic timeline enables you to do is move a clip within the timeline, and anything that is attached to it (cutaways, multiclips, audio tracks, sound effects, anything) will stay in sync with the clip you’re moving. Not only that, but all the other clips and their related content stay in sync as well as you push them around. You don’t have to make room in the timeline for extending or shortening a clip, everything just clings to the in and outpoints, and stays synced up. The implications here are pretty impressive when you think of what a timesaver this must be to a user who’s mastered it. Best of all, when you need to, you can just turn it off.

-Shot Stabilization in Post
Stabilization is something you might be accustomed to doing by exporting clips from FCP7 to Motion, stabilizing them, and then reimporting them back into FCP and cropping them. It essentially works the same way your video camera or DSLR lens stabilized shot: detect motion in a certain direction, shift ever so slightly in the other direction, then crop the whole shot to fit. It is something you don’t want to get too used to, but it can be a lifesaver every now and then. Post production stabilization is like Autotune; you should only use it when you have to. Just as there are certain performances in the studio that you want to save for their emotional or performance power—though they might be technically lacking—there are moments in video that just have to be saved. Sometimes the shot is not steady, but the subject is just too compelling to give up. This is when you go for digital stabilization, and you accept what residual artifacts may come. Bottom line: once you get the hang of the controls, FCPX handles stabilization in a powerful way—it’s quick, accurate and it’s all self-contained.

-Background Rendering
The fact that FCPX renders everything automatically is just logical. It makes sense that editors would want to see their cuts the way they will look in final production, as soon as they can. That rendering has been something traditionally handled manually is due to the fact that software is often developed much faster than hardware. This is the case no matter what kind of multimedia you work in. You want Maya to render a nice, long 3D animation in 1080p? Shut down Maya and open Maya Terminal to free up memory. You want to bounce a 64-track song from Pro Tools down to an mp3? Bus those complicated MIDI instrument tracks to audio and print some of those inserts. Well, the same thing goes for HD video. You want to do all these fast edits, add all this cool grading and apply a bunch of effects here and there? No problem. Set it to render, fix yourself a drink and catch up on Breaking Bad or whatever.

Except now, you don’t have to do that. Just as soon as you switch applications or take your fingers off the controls, FCPX starts rendering your work in the background. Preview a clip or scroll the timeline, it pauses the render. Get distracted, and FCPX gets back to work. As far as I’m concerned, this makes sense. Once again, when and if doesn’t make sense, you can turn it off.

-Color Matching
I’m on the fence with this one. It looks like a really cool function, but again, only if used when you really need it. Basically, with Color Matching, you can go into the color correction window of any clip, select “color matching”, and then select any point in any other clip to try and match that color space. For you print designers, think of it as eye-dropping an entire “style” in Adobe InDesign. At first, this seems like an invaluable tool. Especially if you’re working on one scene with different cameras, taping to different codecs, from different angles and lighting scenarios. In an instance where I needed to match colors on a multicam setup to get quick rushes out the door, I tried this function out, and I was more or less pleased with the results. The images below were from two different cameras (my AVCHD camera and an HDSLR rig):

But don’t expect Color Matching to give you a lot of control over the color parameters once you’ve copied them between matched clips. If you’re used to working with third-party grading applications like Red Giant or Davinci Resolve, you might be able to simulate color parameters from clip to clip, but you won’t really know what you’re looking at. This function seems a little iMovie to me, too. Great idea, something FCP7 never came close to tackling, but perhaps something best left to folks who don’t have the time or patience to go in and do it the right way.

Next Post: Auto-Saving, the Learning Curve and How it Works in the Real World…

*Additional screenshots courtesy of T. Payton, One Creative, Creative Cow and the Indianapolis Final Cut Pro User Group

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I know, I know. You only work with DVCAM files from the field. That is, of course, if not film. You won’t deal with footage provided by clients, because it just looks so shitty. If you weren’t hired to shoot it yourself, then at the very least, you expect a RAID drive sent to you with all the HD footage already converted to ProRes so that you can edit with ease.

And you haven’t worked in 3 months.

The truth is—at least with my business—from time to time you are going to have clients that want you to include the footage they shot on their flipcam, their iPad, or (God help ‘em) their Blackberry. Maybe they have a guy in the field with a consumer camera that just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Maybe they recorded a Skype call and just have to include it in the edit. *gasp!*

The point is, it’s gotta make it into your cut and your artistic integrity be damned.

You already know how to work with the AVCHD format, but every so often, you end up getting a file called .MTS over email or DropBox. I know it sucks. And fortunately, there are programs that can re-encode these files to a format that’s editable in Final Cut or Premiere. If you’re serious about editing, you already have MPEG Streamclip and Voltaic installed, just for these purposes.

But sometimes, even those apps won’t play nicely with the dreaded .MTS file. It’s happened to me, and even the snarky old pro geniuses over at Creative Cow didn’t seem to have a solution. So I worked one out, and I’m offering it here.

The Problem

What often happens with MTS files is that Voltaic and MPEG Streamclip either won’t open them or won’t export them. They will tell you that they can’t identify the first frame, or the frame rate itself. The net is the same: you got nothing. Normally, for me, the next option is to use the Adobe Media Encoder (AME). But what happens when you convert the file in AME and you end up with a beautiful video file with no audio? From reading various forums, I can tell you it happens all the time. Yes, VLC will play the file with audio, but your newly AME-converted Quicktime or mp4 is silent.

The Solution

We’ve ruled out MPEG Streamclip, Voltaic and AME as one-stop solutions. (And don’t even think about trying to do the stream/export from within VLC.) Here’s your last resort, in 4 easy steps:

Step 1:

Open your .MTS file in Adobe Media Encoder. Export as usual, using the codec of your choice. I recommend the highest h264 you can handle. (It doesn’t matter, you’re not going to use the h264 to edit anyway.) Do your export. Now you’ve got your video in a Quicktime-readable format that looks as shitty-beautiful as it did in VLC, just without audio. Keep reading.

Step 2:

Open your .MTS file again in VLC and run an internal audio recorder like Wire Tap Pro or Audio Hijack Pro. Play the video file within VLC and record the audio to something decent like AIFF or AAC audio. Don’t worry, the Amazon Kindle footage your client sent you won’t suffer at all in the audio encoding process.

Step 3:

Open up a program like iMovie or FCPX (I admit: at this point they are still more or less the same to me.) The reason I’m suggesting this is because you’re not going to keep your native files. There’s no point in starting up a whole new project in Final Cut Pro 7, resetting your scratch disks, etc. You want quick and dirty.

Import your silent, beautiful footage that you just exported from AME. Drag that into your timeline. Now import your new audio file that you recorded from within your Mac. Drag that into your timeline as well. Sync up your audio. If your files are too big to sync manually, I highly recommend PluralEyes.

Step 4:

Now it’s time to feel professional again. Export (or as FCPX likes to call it, “share”) your file with the ProRes422 codec. What you’re left with is a perfectly good video file that will work in a professional editing session. I can’t say it looks awesome, but that’s because your client shot the footage on their HD Flipshit or whatever. The process above is virtually lossless at this stage. Now you can edit those gorgeous shots in FCP7 or whatever you like.

In Conclusion

This entire process doesn’t taket that long. It depends on the length of your video, of course. God help you if you’ve got an entire :30-min interview in an MTS file.

There are plenty of “pros” out there who will tell you to never bother with anything captured by the client. I used to be one of them. But there are also a lot of pros out there watching marathon Game of Thrones episodes, because their former clients think they ought to know how to do this kind of thing. None of us like working with iPad footage, and you should discourage it whenever you can. Like you, I prefer the highest quality footage that I have shot myself.

But one thing I like even more is clients. I like to think that the reason they come back is because I make their lives easier, not harder. I hope this makes editors’ lives a little easier.

Note: my apologies to Windows users; I don’t know that all of these processes will work the same way for you. But most of the essentials are the same. I hope it’s still useful.

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Pho—more or less pronounced “fuh”—is the traditional noodle soup of Vietnam. I won’t go into detail about the history of the dish, because I’d inevitably get it wrong. Nor will I get into flowery descriptions of its complexity or simplicity or the way it “approaches the palette”. Pho is not unfamiliar to most Westerners who live in areas with Vietnamese people. Which is pretty much anywhere.

Generally, Pho consists of four things: the broth, the noodles, the meat, and the vegetables. Sounds pretty simple. But what makes Pho so special is the way the different ingredients are added at different times during the process. Each element tends to retain its unique qualities. And that’s what makes Pho awesome.

It’s All About The Broth:

For my first try at the Pho broth, I did some ad-hocking. I had prepared a basic chicken broth from bones and parts left over from a previous meal, which I combined with more water and “sour crab stock” that I found at a local market. With a little salt, this made for a soup that honestly could have stood on it’s own. But having talked to a few people around town, I added two components that pushed it over the edge: charred onion and charred ginger. Not having an oven here, I roasted a few chunks of onion and ginger over an open flame, and when they were fully blackened, I threw them in the pot to boil slowly. Maybe it made the broth more authentic, maybe it just made me feel more hardcore. Either way, it added a degree of deliciousness.

After about an hour of boiling this down, I strained the liquid, threw away the solids, and put it back on the fire. Then I threw in about a half a pound of shrimp. Low heat, another 20 minutes or so, and the soup was ready to go, complete with meat.

The Noodle Issue:

In my limited experience in SE Asian markets, I have found that there are 7 million varieties of noodles. Typically, Pho is made with rice noodles, but I opted for dried egg noodles that had been made with carrots and cabbage for color variety. The reason I did this was because I have a particularly picky four-year-old food critic to please, and frankly… having the choice of different colored noodles just makes freaking sense. For the Pho purists still reading this, you can now comfortably take your leave and go surf other cooking sites. But as this was my first attempt at Pho, and because it’s just the way I cook, I can assure you that moving forward, I will try any and every kind of noodle I find.

The Greens:

This is what makes Pho so wonderful. In a typical Vietnamese restaurant, you will be served a bowl of piping hot broth and meat, alongside another bowl of veggies and herbs. Sometimes the meat is served raw on the side, the idea being that it will sufficiently cook within the soup. The green stuff might consist of anything from whole basil leaves to stalks of cilantro. And of course, bean sprouts. You add what you want, however much you want, to the soup.

These ingredients are both cooked and not cooked. Had they been boiled down in the broth, they would certainly have affected the flavor of the soup. But the idea with Pho is to add the greens and herbs at the last minute, so that they add flavor the broth, but they also retain their own characteristics when it’s time to eat. Imagine the difference between basil that’s cooked into a pesto sauce versus basil served fresh with mozzarella and tomatoes. This is somewhere in between.

For mine, I included fresh basil, cilantro, mint, been sprouts, green onions and a couple other whole herbs that I have no idea what are. They smelled good.

Last But Not Least—The Spice:

I have yet to eat anywhere in the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, (or the continents of Africa and South America) and not be offered a side of fire. My current favorite condiment is the combination of vinegar, soy sauce and raw chiles. If it gets too hot, fresh squeezed lime takes the edge off and adds a bit of refreshment. I like a lot of lime, but I also like a meal to clear the sinuses, so I just add a lot of everything. Which just makes sense for a dish like Pho. Again, uniquely it’s own thing, but entirely customizable.

The Perfect Meal:

Yum yum yum. Suffice it to say, the reviews were outstanding. Even Siena Kaya—a connoisseur of chicken nuggets and peas—said, “Daddy, this is the bestest dinner ever.” While I might disagree with her on that, I’ll take it tonight.

Though I have promised my family that I won’t, I would be content to eat Pho for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the rest of my life, save only for those opportunities to discover new dishes from around the world. There are infinite varieties of this stuff to suit your mood. Pho can be a filling warm-up on a rainy day, serve as a refreshing alternative to the fried, baked, and sauce-laden foods we’re so accustomed to in the West, soothe a hangover, inspire you to drink more, and perhaps save the world. I would vote for Pho for president, or prime minister or whatever. Once again, apologies to the purists, and I encourage you all to seek this dish out. Or be hardcore like me and prepare some Pho on your own!

The post My First Crack at Pho appeared first on Gypsy Creative Communications.

The first night in town was rough. The kids had been fantastic for the 22 hours of travel; they slept off and on, rarely complained. Light years above the dreadful trip we had anticipated. Siena Kaya is a natural when it comes to this; she’s been through countless airports and customs lines, and has a healthy number of stamps in her passport for a 4 year-old. But even Dom was a trooper. He seemed to understand that there wasn’t much he could do about his circumstances, and went with the flow. We’ll see how he approaches the trip back next summer, at almost 2 years old.

But neither was quite ready to go to bed when all the clocks back home struck 1pm. The second night was similar, in how the kids were adjusting to the time difference, but a little more interesting… In an effort to get the kids to sleep so that Tara could face another long day of house-hunting, I strolled both kids up and down the streets of District 7 by moonlight for hours. Then, exhausted, I decided to take a shower.

Big mistake. Some of Tara’s colleagues had warned us of the slippery tile floors all over Vietnam. In fact, one of their own kids had already broken a tooth in their bathroom. Well, at 3am, after a few beers and a few sweltering walks with the kids, I was simply in no shape for a shower. Sure enough, as I climbed out and reached for the towel, lost my footing and next thing you know, everything went black. I came to almost immediately to find Tara helping me up, holding a towel to my eyebrow. Busted wide open, about 3 ½ inches across. Fortunately, Gary—kind man that he is—showed up within minutes and drove me to the ER, where two very serious medics on the graveyard shift sewed me up. 7 stitches in less than 30 minutes.

The third night was great. We all fell asleep at 7pm and slept through till 6 in the morning. I dare say that the jetlag has pretty much worn off and we’re close to a normal schedule. The heat still takes it out of the kids so it looks like naps might be a part of our lifestyle again, but this would be a welcome little change.

Tara has narrowed the house search down from 16 to two, so we all went out this afternoon to check out the final choices. Both apartments are beautiful. 3 floors each, with ample bedrooms and bathrooms and gorgeously decorated. SK and I chose apartment #1 over Tara’s preference of #2, and we’ll be putting a bid on it tomorrow morning. Hopefully it will work out and we can move out of our little hotel room and settle in. Pics to come soon.

So far so good. The climate is right up our alley (at least for Tara and I; the kids will just have to adjust.) The food is incredible. And those are really our only criteria when it comes to falling in love with a new country. I wouldn’t presume to make any judgments about the culture so early in this new adventure, but we have no complaints to speak of. The language is a challenge; very few people we’ve encountered seem to be even conversational in English, but that’s our problem, isn’t it? Personally, the lack of any real presence of Al Qaeda—or affiliate thereof—is a big plus for me. I’m sure the fam will come to appreciate this over time, as well.

More to come as we gradually settle in to South Saigon!

The post First Days in Vietnam appeared first on Gypsy Creative Communications.

The day Siena Kaya was born, the first thing I did was lie to her face.

As the nurse put the tiny bundle in my arms, I looked into my daughter’s still blind and bruised eyes and, overcome with emotion, I told her, “I’ll never let anything happen to you.” For the first time, I felt the honor of being in the presence of true innocence and I vowed to protect it like Superman. My immediate reaction to her immaculate purity was a bald-faced, if ambitious, lie.

At that moment, reality gently tapped me on the shoulder and I was brought to tears.

Almost instantly, you realize how empty such promises are. Bang-ups, burns and busted lips are inevitable. They come without warning and without provocation. Heartache, deceit and loss come soon after. It’s only when you come to grips with the unfairness of it all (What did my little girl ever do to deserve this?) that you can accept the fact that, no, we cannot protect our children from all of the ugly tragedies in life. Reality digs in deeper each day; all you can do is fight like hell.

Parenting small children, at its most fundamental, comes down to getting them through today and into tomorrow. Every so often, you stop to watch in amazement as they learn to manage the world on their own. But you spend most of your time balancing inequities, righting the wrongs, and often narrowly skirting catastrophe. Fighting reality. Even when your adversary seems to be the child herself, the most powerful weapon in your arsenal is unconditional love, exempt from justification.

Sometimes even a love that profound is not enough.

I met Susan in another lifetime. A gringo living on the Chilean coast, I was struggling to drop out of school and cobble a life together working with the local fishermen, playing guitar and teaching art. (Perhaps my war with Reality had already begun.) My good friend, Yuri, took me into his home. Like so many Chilean families, Yuri’s had been devastated by the brutal regime of Augusto Pinochet. Despite this, I remember that house in Villa Alemana as one filled with generosity and warmth: home-cooked meals, dogs spoiled rotten, guitars, wine, and song. This was also Susan’s family. And we all knew Susan was the best guitarist and singer of the lot.

Over time, Susan and I grew close. In addition to teaching me a thing or two about music, she gave me a deeper understanding of fairness, and unfairness, in the world. Today, a lifetime later, we have created new families. Susan got married and had two children. A boy and a girl. I did the same.

I never had the pleasure of meeting Susan’s daughter, Rayün, although I know spending time with her must have been a joyful, intense experience. Tragically, Rayün was struck by a car on Friday and soon after, her little body succumbed to the injuries. She would have been five years old this week. Of course, she did nothing to deserve this fate. Susan’s family doesn’t deserve it. Reality simply won over innocence, and there will be no tomorrow for Rayün.

When my own 4 year-old daughter came home from preschool yesterday, I rushed out and held her so tightly that I think I scared her. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to show her the pain I felt. I didn’t want tell her how much worse the world had become for the loss of Rayün. Not yet. I just wanted her to believe that, for now, Superman is right here.

If you believe in God — and in all honesty, it’s times like these when I find that notion very difficult — please pray for Susan, her husband David, and their little boy Newen, age 8.

More importantly, please do this for Susan and her family: Go hug your children. Go hold those children as tight as you can — scare them if you have to — and you lie to their faces and you tell them that you will never let anything happen to them. They are innocent in ways that you and I have long since forgotten. You protect them with everything you’ve got, and play guitars and sing with them, and celebrate their innocence. You fight like hell.

And as our friend Rodolfo said, recalling Susan’s loving and musical family, “we will continue singing, both to celebrate our joy and to calm our pain.”

Coraje y fuerza, Susan, David y Newen. Y que descanse en paz con los angelitos, Rayün.

The post In Memoriam: Rayün Cuerpo Escobar appeared first on Gypsy Creative Communications.

These were shot at 60fps and opened up to f2.8 (plus a ND filter) to allow good depth of field on the tighter shots. The first one started out in the front yard and made its way inside:

After the first test run, I made some changes to the slider and the tripod head to make it glide a little more smoothly. Felt good about some of the piano shots, so I decided to wander the studio and give the second shoot a “musical instrument theme”:

There’s always room for improvement. Would love to hear what you think! Build details are forthcoming.

The post DIY Camera Slider, Part 1 appeared first on Gypsy Creative Communications.

And be sure to visit the expanded list of social networks, for sharing all sorts of different media and ideas. As I’m preparing for the upcoming move to Saigon, Vietnam, I’m exploring all the newest ways to share my work and experiences, using the web and mobile tech.

(In fact, I’m writing this post remotely using WordPress for iPhone!)

So I hope you’ll spend some time here on the new GypsyCreative.com and, by all means, let me know what you think!

The post New website, new post appeared first on Gypsy Creative Communications.

(Photo: © Jennifer Davis)

Because I struggle so to be a reliable, consistent blogger (kidding) I am always happy when someone else does all the work for me!

I traveled to the southern town of Yanfolila, Mali with Jennifer, a Peace Corps volunteer. Jennifer did a wonderful writeup of our trip, so rather than rehash all of her great work, I’ll just point you in here direction:

“Talk of the Town: Jeff Nesmith and Gypsy”

Check out Jennifer’s new blog here.

Thanks for everything, Jennifer. Best of luck and I hope to see you again soon, somewhere!

The post Jennifer in Yanfolila, Mali appeared first on Gypsy Creative Communications.

The post Patrick – Kigali, Rwanda appeared first on Gypsy Creative Communications.

The Philippines is a country to I hope to get back to soon. Not a lot of time here, and I only got to see the Mindanao region. What I did see was strikingly beautiful. Not just picturesque, but inspiring.

When you’re face-to-face with utter poverty and cruel brutality, and you witness human beings finding happiness and hope in the midst of it all, you can’t help but be humbled. These are people who are far stronger than I am, who have no time for cynicism, and who consistently teach me the meaning of civilization.

(And of course, the team on the ground here is top notch!) Suffice it to say, I’ll miss it here.

Next stops: Bangkok > Addis > Nairobi > Burundi > Kigali. Shooting youth programs in Rwanda. Can’t wait to get back to Africa!

The post Paalam and Salamat! – Zamboanga, Philippines appeared first on Gypsy Creative Communications.