Meet Jiggy Gaton

Jiggy Gaton Phoenix Studios Kathmandu, Nepal

Jiggy Gaton is an expat living in Kathmandu Nepal, running a small A/V studio with family and dog. He is an author/cartoonist, filmmaker, and overall geek from way back. Not the kind of geek who would ever be sitting in a Star Trek Captain’s chair – more likely to be sitting on the back of a 500cc Royal Enfield Bullet somewhere out in the middle of the Himalayas (see picture below) - but only when he’s not behind his Macbook Pro hacking out whatever needs to be done in the studio.

His interests lie anywhere within Apple Final Cut Studio, iWork, and Adobe Master Suite CS4, as well as anything to do with CD4 or Poser7...if it moves and makes noise, he’s into it - and that includes his loud Enfield and barking 60kg Alsatian named Krypto The Superdog.  Also self-taught on the mixing boards with Protools LE/HD and Logic 8, he is often seen in the control room with the boys, tinkering on a new Nepali Rock song, even though his skills run along post production lines and not in playing a real instrument.

He’s a good listener however, loves both music and film, and likes to put them together in interesting ways for interesting people. Schooled in the fine arts and mass communication, he’s worked for both IBM and Microsoft, as well as with many UN agencies around the globe, helping them with creative ideas and productions. Lately he’s been out in the villages: working on one documentary about the rural elderly, and another about the Nepali Brick Kiln donkey - as well as shorts on endangered wild and domestic life for his pet project www.animalnepal.org.

You can find Jiggy Gaton hosting in Creative COW's and CatDV Forum.

Articles by Jiggy Gaton

	SmartSound - Sonicfire Pro Quicktracks: Low-Cost Scoring at the Speed of Sound The COW's man in Nepal, Jiggy Gaton, investigates SmartSound's Quicktracks while away from the studio, in Monsoon conditions, and finds it no longer necessary to have 100gb of music in tow. With Quicktracks, one can create scores and tailor tracks without leaving the comfort of the cloud. Review

	Apple Soundtrack Dialogue Fixin' using Soundtrack This Soundtrack Pro video tutorial covers two useful techniques for fixing dialogue used in documentaries or other productions. 1) Time stretching for dialogue will fit a bit of dialogue as needed within a scene, and 2) Matching voice levels between two or more dialogue clips will make one clip sound more like another. Both tasks are easy to do for anyone working within Final Cut Studio, and this tutorial will walk you through the two procedures. Tutorial, Video Tutorial

	Cinema 4D Poser & Vue Integration Within C4D One of the wonders of the C4D platform is it's interconnectivity with other sources of 3D models. Let's be honest, who has time to handcraft thousands of blades of grass or populate the night sky one star at a time? But using the content available in Poser and the generators found in Vue, it takes just a little longer then this 5 1/2 minute tutorial to put that content into C4D for integrated scenes and robust animations. Tutorial, Video Tutorial

	Adobe InDesign Using Adobe Kuler in Your Favorite Apps Let's face it, not all of us are good at picking contrasting colors, or colors that don't clash, and colors that are not downright ugly mugly. So that's where Kuler comes in, allowing you to, say, based on your corporate logo, a photograph, or a single frame of your movie, provide you with a set of color choices (often called swatches) that can then be applied throughout the project creation process - and across all the applications that you use. Tutorial, Video Tutorial

	Audio Professionals The Journey To A Nepali Recording Studio There aren't many straight lines leading to Nepal, and not many once you arrive, either. Here is an inside look at the challenges and triumphs of running an A/V studio in the Himalayas. Feature, People / Interview

	Apple Final Cut Pro Final Cut Studio 3 is here, and all is good! Our man in Nepal, Jiggy Gaton, likes to live for danger. He installed a major software upgrade mid-project, with virtually no preparation, just to see what would break. Lo and behold, it all worked! And the more Jiggy works with it, the better he's liking it. Join him in this Creative COW, Real-world, Real-time Report on Final Cut Studio 3. Review

	Apple DVD Studio Pro Mac Subtitling Software Round-up: The COW's man in Nepal, Jiggy Gaton, gets asked all the time about subtitling DVDs -- and cringes every time: editing software suites just don't have that much to offer. However, Mac DVD authors have some standalone alternatives worth considering. Review, Feature

	SmartSound - Sonicfire Pro SmartSound SonicFire Pro 5: Low-cost Scores at The Speed of Sound The COW's man in Nepal, Jiggy Gaton, has found a balance between easy, automated music production, and high-quality results with SmartSound SonicFire Pro 5. He has also been impressed with how easy it is to create variations of his custom scores, and has come up with some unexpected workflow innovations. Review

	Apple Final Cut Pro Get Your FCP Timelines in Motion with Final Cut Studio Having both FCP and Motion in Final Cut Studio means more options for effects creation with your video projects -- and FCS integration makes it easy to work with them together. Having Motion projects sitting on your FCP timeline even helps keep your projects organized! Our man in Nepal, Jiggy Gaton, shows just how easy it can be to take advantage of it all. Tutorial

	Apple Final Cut Pro Make Your FCP Timelines Sing By Roundtripping to Soundtrack Pro The COW's Jiggy Gaton owns an audio studio -- but has created a tutorial for those of us who don't have an audio studio within earshot when editing video in Final Cut Pro. He's not sure if he's being lazy, or just efficient, to use an integrated Soundtrack Pro project inside FCP. Either way, read on to learn how to do it yourself. Tutorial