Make Film Work — I make videos. Sometimes I write about it.

Final Cut Pro is a huge application. It has loads of options, oodles of customizable features, and even a talking yak.

For real.

It also has something called Media Manager.

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If you’re the kind of person that spends any amount of time in Final Cut Studio, and you’re also the kind of person that went out and bought Apple’s 30in Cinema Display, chances are good you’re somebody who is a fan of keyboard shortcuts. So here’s one I think you’ll like.

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You probably already know this, but I also work on a podcast called SOLMI. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a (mostly) weekly comedy podcast made up of scripted episodes, a-la sketch comedy. Although I don’t really think we’ve every really called ourselves sketch comedy people.

We don’t know what we are.

We also haven’t had a new show out in a while, but that’s another story altogether. Anyway, I went ahead and took one of our recent episodes over to the Enzian, a film house that screens local filmmaker’s work at monthly film slams. From what I understand the barrier to entry into these slams is pretty low. That being said, we were probably lucky to sneak into the running with our (probably highly offensive) episode, Superhero.

Superhero from Jason Hawkins on Vimeo.

Superhero was actually originally shot as part of Apple’s Insomnia Film Festival, a 24-hour film competition open to students. It’s also a response to NBC’s Heroes, which includes a character (Isaac) that requires the use of heroin to activate his super powers. An interesting premise to be sure, but we wondered what it might be like if other people had similar… limitations. And what those limitations might be. And what that might mean for those close to that person.

So there it is. Enjoy the show, and if you’re in the Orlando area this Sunday at 1pm, we’d appreciate the support.

If you’ve ever tried to do it yourself, keying DV footage can ruin your day. The out-of-the-box offerings in Final Cut Studio 2 don’t really cut it, and trying to make a keyer yourself is, to put it mildly, insane. After spending some fruitless nights with the keyers in Final Cut Pro, and Primatte in Motion, I started to look for another, third-party, keyer.

I remember hearing something about Ultra 2 from back in the day. I recall it being really expensive, but especially powerful. Particularly on DV footage. Great, I thought. I mean sure it’s expensive but they’ve probably got a trial available. I’ll just check it out and… oh, Adobe bought them and the product is Windows-only?

Crap.

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A few months back I decided it would be neat to have a tape logging system that I could take with me while I was out shooting something. I took some time to get into Ruby on Rails, and eventually Tapes was born.

Tapes is free, iPhone compatible, and works pretty well on EDGE (so far anyway). I hope you like it, but more than that, I hope you find it useful.

I’m open to comments and suggestions about how to improve Tapes, if you feel like giving some feedback. You can always email me at jason [at] makefilmwork [dot] com.

Who knows… it might be your suggestion that ends up in a future update! And that’s exciting right? RIGHT?