Archive for April, 2007
Back to reality
I’ve been back from Vegas for a week and a half now. The excitement of the trip is starting to wear off and now the next year lies before me. New prospects for work, videos/movies, experiences and travels. My imagination is running wild with ideas, but unfortunately few of them are within budgetary means or my technical skill level.
My first step is to make a short film. In my opinion the short may be the single greatest demonstration of story telling and movie making capabilities known to mankind. If a director can’t get a point across in 20 minutes or less (less is preferable) they won’t be able to sufficiently get a point across in a clean manner in 2 hours. That’s why so many of Hollywood’s output requires special effects, “wow” factor and overpaid incapable actors to sell tickets. Truth be told…there is a lot to be said for acting talent, but I feel the actor’s abilities to emote on camera are directly related to a director’s ability to direct.
As ideas abound and come into a more refined focus I hope to be able to see the characters of my story come out of hiding from within the people in my life. I can’t imagine who better to work with than those I’ve known the longest. Some would say don’t mix friends/family and work… I completely agree with that assessment. If you enjoy your job you don’t have to work though. I know who these people are, what they capable of doing, or who they can be… I see more within them than they can see of themselves quite often.
Stick around for updates as I start to layout the movie plans. I won’t get too specific with the details during the development but I’ll be sure to let you see the finished product.
Stay tuned.
NAB 2007 Day 3 and 4
Well folks this is the last NAB 2007 update. We went, we conquered, we’re exhausted.
We hit the show first thing yesterday morning and had to wait in line for all of 30 seconds because the doors didn’t open up until 9 AM local and we arrived at 8:59:37 AM. Bogus. Anyway, I hit Panasonic first and talked to them about their AJ-HPX2000, AG-HPX500 and AG-HVX200 I covered the entirety of the lower south hall (Post Production and Display Systems) and some of the uppler South hall (Management & Systems and Acquisition & Production). Ended up with, and this is a rough estimate, between 20 and 1000 pounds of schwag and manufacturer propaganda. My shoulders and arms are tired from carrying that around all day yesterday. I met Stu Maschwitz from The Orphanage, who just happened to write the book I am currently reading: “The DV Rebel’s Guide: An All-Digital Approach to Making Killer Action Movies on the Cheap“. He presented some of the finer points of Adobe After effects and demoed how it was used to make the bank robbery and falling scene from “Superman Returns“.
By the end of the day I had visited Ross, Grass Valley, Analog Way, Adobe, Autodesk, AJA, Boris FX, Element Labs, Sony, Canon, Manfrotto, Porta Brace, Kino Lighting and so many more.
Scott was being a fellow information kleptomaniac by camping out in the Apple booth for all of their Final Cut 2 demos.
We ate lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe and dinner at dinner at Bahama Breeze. Souvenir shopping followed and then a run and gun illegal parking jaunt to watch the fountain show at the Bellagio.
Day 4 included a fast dash to the Apple booth for me to run through the whole set of FC Suite demo, lunch at Cozymel’s and surprisingly short wait in line to get our board pass at McCarran International Airport. Now here I sit, waiting on a flight, talking to a couple of guys I met that work at OETA who were out here for NAB as well. I’m ready to go home. Who knows if I’ll go to the office tomorrow. May work from home.
Until next time.
NAB 2007 Day 2
Well, we shifted our plans today. We didn’t make it to the convention until a 6 PM Apple Enterprise Clients networking shindig. Spent all day shooting video for tomorrow night’s Revolution service. Got some decent shots but as always not enough b-roll. Still trying to burn that into my head. It’s one of my single greatest downfalls as a director/producer/editor. Lessons learned.
Saw the Oakely corporate jet, the famous Las Vegas sign, a guitar that Jimi Hendrix burned on stage, gondolas on the second floor of the Venetian, and what I will assume is America’s closest attempt to paint a Sistine Chapel inspire ceiling. Hitting the show all day tomorrow, and hitting it hard.
NAB 2007 Day 1
NAB 2007 Day 1. WOW! That’s the best word I can come up with for what I experienced today. So much information, so many eye catching, awe inspiring, “How’d you do that?” technologies. My mind is spinning. My feet hurt, my shoulders are tired from carrying around my PowerBook all day long, and I have 2 more days of this. We met up with Evan from Integrated Fusion for lunch and then he followed up with connecting us with the Martin Lighting church rep for dinner. He’s been incredibly helpful with insight regarding the ins and outs of attending NAB. This is his 5th NAB trip so he’s well versed. Met up with our Apple rep and chit chatted about the new Compressor and podcasting and FC Studio 2 and 8 Core Mac Pros and Red 4k and ProRes 422 and….well, you can take it from there. More to come tomorrow.
Live from NAB 2007!
Coming to you live from Sin City, Las Vegas, Nevada. I’m here with Pastor Scott from church for NAB 2007. Apple announced Final Cut Studio 2 today with many new additions and upgrades. Can’t wait to get my hands on it later. Should be ordering a copy later this week. Sitting here in the hotel room at Circus Circus, mapping out vendors to visit over the next few days and refining our purpose for being here. This is going to be an amazing 4 days.
Check out my Flickr for pictures. I’ll be updating throughout the week.
On a much different note I was contracted to video a wedding last night. It was Celtic, the groomsmen and groom were wearing kilts, and a man that appeared to be a catholic priest requested Strong Bad’s Trogdor during the reception. The DJ fulfilled the request. That one simple act elevated that wedding to my list of best weddings ever attended.
Overdue update
As you can tell I have been lax in my blogging activities lately. Very busy. So busy I am typing this entry on my phone while waiting on a meeting.
Let me know how everything is going and check out my Flickr for coverage of my recent BDay party.