Dweezil Zappa World

Hello Everyone,

After nearly 3 whole weeks of 'round the clock, nose to the grind stone editing I'm finally starting to wrap up production here in Austin. I parachuted in not knowing which buttons to press or how to use the software at all and I will leave having edited 20 songs without assistance. It's been very rewarding to learn this new skill. I have always wanted to take the time to learn video editing and this was a great way to dive in. I'm going to get myself certified.

I chose to edit this upcoming DVD with Sony Vegas software because I was aware that it had a well constructed multi camera edit platform and a pretty easy basic learning curve. After about 15 minutes of reading the manual and asking my friend Charlie Boswell some pertinent questions I was up and running and actually editing.

This new knowledge has been so helpful in saving time and facilitating artisitic decisions. I know this music very well. I know where it breathes, and where all of the entrances of every instrument are located. This is very helpful as an editor. I know what I want to see because I know what I am listening for. For me the end result resembles the feeling of actually playing this music on stage. I definitely feel as though I am seeing what I am hearing when I watch these edits.

(I may be almost finished with the edits but I still have to go home and mix all the audio in stereo and surround... that'll take another 4-5 weeks)

I must thank Charlie Boswell for assisting me with this project. We assembled a crew at the very last possible moment and had no production meeting or rehearsals. It was a fly by the seat of your pants film making. That fact that we captured the concert  at all is a minor miracle. Charlie got it all organized and directed his camera wielding buddies that night and we all should be glad he did. We captured some pretty entertaining stuff. It was a marathon setlist.

We filmed it with 6 Sony HD cameras. The coverage we got is good overall.  An interesting problem did occur during filming. One camera suffered from interaction with sub-sonic frequencies. It was on a tripod but it must have been in a bass trap in the room.

If you you've ever wondered what a sound wave looks like you should watch this camera footage. It's like and earthquake meets alien abduction. The sub-sonic frequencies made the camera shake and lose focus a lot.

Unfortunately, this was the camera that was assigned to capture most of the tight shots for Scheila and Ray's vocals. I wasn't able to use much of the footage. There are times when I have used it  and you might notice it a bit. Or maybe you won't...

There may be some plug in type of anti-shake software that could potentially help it look a little smoother but it most likely would have to be done frame by frame. That's what all of my video editing expert friends have told me after watching the footage. I doubt I'll have time to experiment with that. We'll see...

Anyway, I've featured the details as best as I possibly could with the footage that I have on hand. That's how it goes with this stuff. I look forward to showing it to all of you very soon.

Here are the songs we played on December 12, 2009 - 35 years to the day that FZ played at the Roxy:

1. Purple Lagoon

2. Imaginary Diseases

3. Pygmy Twylyte

4. Village Of The Sun

5. Echidna's Arf Of You

6. Don't You Ever Wash That Thing?

7. Dog Breath

8. Dog Meat

9. Inca Roads

10. Billy The Mountain

11. Fembot In A Wet T- Shirt

12. Outside Now

13. He Used To Cut The Grass

14. Flakes

15. Broken Hearts Are For A******s

16. Bamboozled By Love

17. King Kong - With Band Solos

18. Zomby Woof

19. Dirty Love

20. G-Spot Tornado

P.S. The FZ ROXY audio is being assembled - tapes are being baked - so that the process of synchronization can occur. The film negative was transferred to Hi Def and the audio is captured at the highest resolution from the original analog tapes. YES this is getting underway... Had to get this one done to clear the way for the ROXY And ELSEWHERE film.