One of the world’s most renowned skydiving videographers, Greg Gasson, whose footage has appeared on “Fox Live,” “Hard Copy,” “Real TV” and “How’d They Do That?” has made over 3000 total jumps. But hurtling towards the Earth with his DV camera doesn’t scare Gasson as much as running out space on his disk drive while on a tight deadline to edit a trailer of his upcoming film “The Wondrous Void.”
Gasson was in the middle of editing his favorite skydiving scenes he shot over the past six years for his movie when his friend, who was about to release his own skydiving video, offered Gasson the opportunity to include a trailer of “The Wondrous Void.” The only catch, his friend needed the trailer in three days. He began rapidly pouring through more than seven hours of footage to edit a :30 trailer, but he ran out of disk space. For storage, Gasson has two external storage bases with three Seagate Barracuda 18GB drives and four 36GB SCSI drives.
Gasson immediately placed a rush order with his supplier for overnight delivery of a new Seagate Barracuda 36GB drive. But when he installed the new drive he found that it had a problem. At this point, Gasson seriously doubted whether he would be able to complete the trailer on time.
With the deadline approaching faster than the Earth on one of his skydives, Gasson called Seagate technical support and asked for help. Seagate Disc Presales Representative Bobby Finch, who is also a skydiving enthusiast, picked up the call and recognized Gasson’s name from numerous parachuting magazines. “When Greg called, I could tell he was in trouble,” says Finch. “He needed help immediately – that’s what we are here for.”
“Bobby listened to my situation, determined that I needed help right away and took immediate action. They didn’t stop to worry about getting the bad drive back, all they were concerned with was helping me finish the project. They met the delivery deadline that I gave them, which made it possible for me to complete the trailer on time. Seagate immediately sent me a brand new drive. I finished the project before they even came by to pick up my old drive. “I have gravitated to Seagate drives over the years because they have demonstrated far higher reliability than other drives I have used,” Gasson says. “In my day job as a UNIX software engineer, I have seen scores of drives fail, but very few Seagates. The reason, in my opinion, is the care that Seagate takes in protecting their drives from shock during manufacturing, shipment and operation. Besides that, I have received excellent service from Seagate technical support whenever I needed help or had a problem with a drive.”
“The Wondrous Void” will feature include freestyle footage from world meets in Germany, Turkey, Finland, Portugal, Australia, US Nationals at Skydive Arizona and Lake Elsinore California, as well as Skydive Arizona’s South of the Border Boogie’s in San Carlos, Mexico. Footage will feature the best of the best, Dale Stuart, seven-time Women’s World Champion, and Omar Alhegelan, five-time Men’s Freefly/Freestyle World Champion. The movie will also include music from White Zombie, U2, Robert Miles, and The Cult.
Gasson is editing the film with EditDV from Digital Origin using the FireWire interface to download video from his camera. Digital Origin EditDV is a nonlinear system for DV camera owners that provides an intuitive user interface and a QuickTime compatible integrated environment. EditDV supports QT/FX, Apple’s new plug-in architecture for QuickTime applications. QuickTime, DV format devices, and EditDV enable professional nonlinear editing on the desktop for the Mac OS. EditDV includes DraftDV, a specialized rendering mode that provides a three-to-five times improvement in rendering time.
With the help of the new drive, Gasson finished editing the trailer in time to meet his deadline. The fact that he was able to include it in his friend’s video resulted in many inquiries and helped him obtain the additional footage and music he needed to complete the film. He is currently putting the finishing touches on the film, which will be released on video and DVD for private showings.
“By the way, ‘The Wondrous Void,'” Gasson explains, “refers to the special feeling when I jump out of an airplane. As my poem says, leave your worries and your fears behind and dance with me in The Wondrous Void.”
