walter biscardi's Blog

Had to share this because it's just so well stated.  Here's a 16 year old American teenager who is a Muslim who is asking, "What's wrong with being a Muslim?"   

I'm sure most of us have seen the viral emails going around that two of the reason why someone should not vote for Barack Obama are 1 - He's a Muslim and 2 - He's an Arab.  Both of which have been debunked, but even two weeks ago I received a forward from someone I consider a friend with those two reasons at the top of the list.   

There are a lot of reasons why one might not want to vote for a person, but religion and race should not be two of them.  It's amazing how a 16 year old kid can bring up the obvious that grown adults just can't see. 

http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-114198  

Biscardi Creative Media principal, Walter Biscardi, Jr., will be Directing the Pilot episode of a new business television series. Being developed jointly by BCM, ideaWercs and Arriving with BB Webb, the series will feature success stories and inspiration from women in the business world.

"I'm honored to be launching this new series as the Director and have always believed that editors make great directors," notes Biscardi. "As an editor you know what you want to see and what you wish you had when cutting the show together. Knowing what will make the show better in Post helps me in making sure we get everything we need, and then some, in the studio and on location."

Production is scheduled for late October, 2008 with all editorial scheduled to be completed by early December, 2008. The series is tentatively scheduled to go into production by the 2nd quarter of 2009.

Biscardi Creative Media is creating an original lifestyle television series. Developed by BCM principal, Walter Biscardi, Jr. the series will be presented to major U.S. networks by a production partner.

The series re-unites Biscardi with actress Cynthia Evans who played the lead role in BCM's "The Rough Cut" short film, and Producer Sharon Collins who worked with Walter in the Environment Unit at CNN. The Pilot is scheduled for production in mid October 2008 with editorial slated for completion by late November 2008.

BCM has completed all BluRay disc production for Season One of "Assignment Earth," airing nationally on PBS stations.

Assignment Earth covers environmental and wildlife stories from the front lines around the world. Lead by Producer Gary Strieker, the series has traveled to Mexico, Thailand, China and Africa in just the first season bringing back stunning 720p and 1080i High Definition footage. Artists Walter Biscardi, Jr. and Aaron Stewart teamed up to create the first 5 episodes on BluRay disc, bringing the full quality of the original shows to the home viewer.

The entire series is being self-published at BCM's facility.

Tools used: Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, DoStudio, Panasonic BluRay replicator, FlexWriter IV Printer.

BCM has completed a new historical animation for Good Eats with Alton Brown on the Food Network.

Artists Walter Biscardi, Jr., Aaron Stewart and Brian Mead worked closely with Alton Brown and producer Dana Popoff to create the latest in a series of historical animation that have been created for the Good Eats. This time it's a look at crackers, which have a surprisingly interesting story to tell! Animated by Biscardi in 720p HD, the one minute animation will appear in an upcoming episode in Winter 2008.

Tools used: Photoshop, After Effects, Canon 30D camera, Crackers.

BCM has completed all color grading for the feature film, "Keepsake" from Stormcatcher Films.

Shot on location in Virginia, the film was Directed by Paul Moore and shot over a 24 day period. D.P. Todd Gilpin did an incredible job with setting up the look of the film. He created a very rich canvas from which Colorist Walter Biscardi, Jr. was able to create an incredible palette of color. Biscardi worked closely with Moore, Gilpin and Producer Scott Tanner to bring out the gritty details and haunting images of the fight for survival.

Keepsake is the first feature film project for Biscardi Creative Media. The film will debut in Oct. 2008 in Hollywood, California.

For more information about Stormcatcher Films visit http://stormcatcherfilms.com/site.html Tools used: Color, Final Cut Pro, AJA Kona 3.

BCM is proud to have recently completed a fund-raiser for the Preeclampsia Foundation. When we started this project, we honestly had no idea what Preeclampsia is or what it can do to pregnant women and/or their babies.

 From the Preeclampsia Foundation website: "Preeclampsia is a disorder that occurs only during pregnancy and the postpartum period and affects both the mother and the unborn baby. Affecting at least 5-8% of all pregnancies, it is a rapidly progressive condition characterized by high blood pressure and the presence of protein in the urine."

Ultimately the condition can lead to death of the mother and/or the baby in some circumstances. Editor Aaron Stewart and Artist Walter Biscardi, Jr. worked with Producers Pat Etheridge and Cindy Beckler to create the 24 minute feature presentation and an 8 minute preview. The preview version was featured at a major fundraiser in Washington, D.C. with 500 copies of the feature presentation given to the audience.

To learn more about Preeclampsia visit http://www.preeclampsia.org/index.asp

 Tools used: Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, After Effects, DVD Studio Pro.

Well, we've got our HP workstation up and running with DoStudio's Trial Version now installed.  The Trial version is the complete application with only the commercial replication features turned off.

First impressions are this thing is definitely NOT DVD Studio Pro or Encore.  This is a very serious tool along the lines of Apple's Color compared to the 3 Way Color Correction filter in Final Cut Pro.  There is a learning curve as a lot of programming is manually done rather than simple drag and drop type of operations.   This feels more like a professional authoring tool and less like a toy.  Don't get me wrong, I love DVDSP and it's simple drag and drop functionality, but it's nice to essentially have almost endless possibilities open to us and forcing us to actually learn what we're doing.  Anybody can drag and drop, but it's nice to be able to get your "hands dirty" and go under the hood to see how to really operate authoring software.

In just one day, we've been able to get a nice main menu and chapter selection pop-up menu already underway.  A little snag on the pop-up where we can get it to pop-up but it's not going to the various chapters like we programmed.  NetBlender's support has been great to work with so far and we've uploaded the project file for them to poke around and see where we went wrong.  I'm sure it's operator error as we've been using the software all of about 6 hours.

One big thing that is missing as of right now is an "Undo."   This is reminiscent of Final Touch before Apple purchased it and turned in to Color.  Final Touch did not have any sort of Undo so you had to be very careful of what you were doing.  NetBlender tells me that Undo is a feature that will be added on this fall with an update and we're already looking forward to it!  :-)

The big adjustment is that we have to essentially "forget" the DVD mentality.  There are so many different possibilities in authoring BluRay that you have to design the menus and even the overall flow differently.   Still wrapping our heads around this, but using this software definitely calls for more planning and thought than just hurry up and get it done.

More soon! 

So many of you have read of our failings with Adobe Encore trying to create BluRay discs.  Today we start a new chapter in BluRay authoring by transferring all our needs to NetBlender's "DoStudio."  

NetBlender has instituted a really neat month to month licensing option that's approx. $250 per month to use the software.  This is truly a month to month deal.  So I can activate it for September for $250 and then sign up again in December.  There's no extra fees, nothing.   They have several plans for 6 months, 12 months or you can outright purchase the software if you want.   But in my case, we plan to produce maybe 10 BluRays all of 2009.   Probably in batches of 3 or 4, so I might spend $1,000 total next year in the licensing fees, which is significantly less than $8,000 for the permanent license.  So to start out, I can just go $250 per month which is easily charged back to the client per job.

The only caveat to this software is that it requires a Window machine, and we're a full blown Mac shop here.  So I did what I swore I would never do..... purchased an HP Workstation loaded with Vista.  Of course, the sad thing for me is this is a fully loaded workstation for less than $1,700 and I know that if I created a fully loaded Mac Pro it'd be around $5,000 or more.  So that's one good thing, I guess!  

One really neat little gadget I added on is a 160GB "pocket drive" that slips into the bottom of the HP machine.  We'll use this to transfer the large MPEG-2 files and graphics files from our Macs to the HP.  Neat idea to essentially put a portable drive that slips in like a USB stick. 

So that's Step 1 - get an HP Workstation!   I went by NetBlender's recommendations and picked up the following machine:

- HP Home & Home Office Store in-box envelope 

I'll give you folks regular updates as we move forward with this new BluRay authoring tool!