Packafōma Philms
The Packafoma Post is the post-production, photo, and tech blog of Packafoma LLC, the Philadelphia production company of cousins Dax Roggio and Shea Roggio.
From photographer Dax Mackenzie Roggio, photos from the 2016 Democratic National Convention at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia and the post-convention campaign rally in McGonigle Hall at Temple University, featuring images of Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Tim Kaine, Joe Biden, Mayor Jim Kenney, and President Barack Obama. Also included are images of Mat Tomezsko, the Fishtown artist behind the mile-long public art project on Broad Street....
More »
I recently had the opportunity to edit the theatrical trailer for the award-winning feature film, Jack of the Red Hearts, starring Famke Janssen (X-Men) and AnnaSophia Robb (Mercy Street, The Carrie Diaries). The film will be released in theaters on February 26 at AMC locations across the country. I began cutting this trailer in Adobe Premiere Pro CC but switched to BlackMagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve 12, not for color correction, mind you, but for editing and delivery. My endless frustrations with Premiere Pro are well documented, but the final straw was the 5.1 surround sound mix....
More »
On location in West Philadelphia: Production stills from the Packafoma commercial shoot for Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business. Shea Roggio and I had a wonderful experience working with our local Philly crew and the excellent LeBow marketing team. Having worked on college campuses before, we found the students and professors at Drexel LeBow to be particularly genuine, intelligent, and passionate about making a difference in the real world....
More »
When FCP Classic was EOL’d in 2011, I was one of the first among my circle of editors in LA to give Premiere Pro a shot. Technically, Premiere had been around for quite a long time, but for Mac users, it was never even a contender. Plus, if you were like me, you mostly associated Adobe’s video products with Flash, which I loathed long before Steve Jobs famously published his thoughts on the subject....
More »
Use my 99¢ iOS/iPadOS time-lapse calculator app to quickly determine the shutter interval (time between shots) that you should set to achieve your desired clip length for a given recording duration. iOS app includes additional features for your iPhone or iPad. Besides serving as an intervalometer, my time-lapse app estimates the memory card storage that will be required for RAW or JPG image files, based on the megapixel count of your camera. I’ve also shared some time-lapse photography examples and video editing tips for Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Premiere Pro CC....
More »
Update October 15, 2014: The list portion of this post is current through Premiere Pro CC 2014.1 (8.1). I have placed check marks and notes next to items that have been fixed since the initial release of CC. August 16, 2013: I switched from Apple Final Cut Pro (versions 1 through 7) to Adobe Premiere Pro as my primary NLE in 2012. Since then, Premiere Pro has improved by leaps and bounds. Yet, it remains stubbornly rough around the edges and is, to quote C-3PO, “not entirely stable.” I use several Adobe apps on a daily basis, and I remain optimistic that Adobe will continue to make my Creative Cloud subscription worthwhile, but they need to release more frequent and substantial updates....
More »
This is a list of missing features in the Panasonic Lumix GH3 DSLM camera that I would like to see addressed in a firmware update, plus a few ideas for the next generation of the camera (GH4 or GH5). The list pertains primarily to the video functionality of the camera, which is what makes this camera a standout....
More »
Premiere Pro CC is the first major release that began development after the FCPX debacle, and it shows. It caters directly to Final Cut switchers. That’s a good thing. There’s a reason that Final Cut gained supremacy among Mac users while Premiere settled into its place as a second-rate Windows alternative. At this point, I recommend Premiere Pro CC to Mac users who must inevitably say good-bye to the venerable and rapidly graying FCP7. Your Final Cut Pro 8 has arrived....
More »
The CS6 version of Adobe Premiere Pro went a long way towards winning me over after Apple stranded the FCP7 community with the release of FCPX. I still have many, many gripes, including major stability concerns in the Mac version, but I believe Premiere is close to being awesome. So it is a shame that it is still missing an important feature: background rendering....
More »
Learn how to use Vimeo’s Simple API along with PHP and jQuery to display the play counts of Vimeo videos embedded on your web site. The method described in this tutorial works asynchronously, meaning that the API calls won’t cause delays in page loading....
More »