Sony and Samsung announce a wireless HD signal that would send HD signals to multiple TV's in your home from a single box. But Sony is also involved in another effort to achieve the same goal. Wonder if the signals will ever been good enough for smaller Post houses like mine to send signals wirelessly to our production monitors. that would be pretty cool actually!
Ok so first you have to win some festival awards or at least be an official selection. Then you have to be on Windows. That said here's a very cool application that will make the creation of festival laurels for your movie's poster, DVD box, etc very simple.
EZLeaves is a FREE application that allows to quickly and easily generate custom festival laurel leave images. Features include:
Choose from four different laurel leave styles
Use any system-defined font
Export to JPG or BMP
Define up to 10 lines of custom text
Full control over the height and font settings of each
line, or you can use one font and color for all lines
EZLeaves runs on Windows and requires at least 1024x768 desktop resolution. For more information, visit this site:
Well, I've been posting about it. My first comedy production, How to Live and Eat like a Southern Jewish Princess...We have a teaser clip. Check it out and we'd love your funny vote!
Press release for my new site. It's going quite well. Be warned, the comedy on this site has some adult content. If you are offended by Southpark, you won't want to go there...
FunnyNotSlutty.com Gives New Home for Funny on the Internet Southern Jewish Princess Media Launches Alternative Comedy Site for the Fairer Sex
I thought it would be good to have funny content geared toward women in one spot. It looks like a lot of web humor is more guy oriented. Does not hurt to support female comedians, writers, humorists and producers either.
There's a social network too if you want to check it out. Click "Network!" in the nav bar. Please take a look, let me know what you think, join the network and pass it on!
Published this sucker this weekend and I still have a lot of work to do, but hopefully you will get the idea. Suggestions always appreciated.
If you're having any problems with Sony XDCAM EX footage the latest version of the XDCAM transfer software might be a big help. It has some new error correction built in that can recover corrupted material.
The PDZ-KP1 XDCAM Transfer Software is an import plug in for Final Cut Pro. XDCAM Transfer Version 2.5 supports the current XDCAM HD and SD optical products, the new PDW-U1 optical XDCAM drive, and the PMW-EX1 XDCAM EX camcorder which records on SxS flash cards.
Once we have the actual shot, we can then control the downloading of footage from the camera using Vision Research’s software. Thus far they’ve only released a version that runs on Windows. In order to preserve the Mac-loving image of Simplemente, we decided to run it on a MacBook Pro with Boot Camp. We can then select the ins and outs of any particular shot. Typically the exact moment you want to save is a tiny fraction of that 6 minute take and the rest is a lot of frames with no activity you can delete. The selected portions are then saved out to a hard drive using Vision Research’s proprietary Cine file format.
I wrote two articles for the Final Cut Pro User's Group Supermeet at NAB. They appeared in the SuperMag magazine. Here's part one of the second article looking at Simplemente's work with the Phantom HD camera:
Rune Hansen and Monica Reina at Simplemente in Mexico City recently acquired a Phantom HD Digital Cinema camera from Vision Research. We got to shoot a bunch of slow-motion footage and then worked with it in Final Cut Pro to create demo reels for theatrical projection. We needed to accomplish all of this in the space of about 48 hours.
The Phantom HD’s claim to fame is the ability to shoot uncompressed, high speed footage at up to 1,000 frames per second (fps) and up to 2K (2048x2048 pixels) resolution using a special CMOS imager. It accepts standard PL-mount 35mm cinema lenses and is also capable of capturing in standard and HD resolutions from 1 fps all the way up to 1,000.
Ok, to start, I've been reading about Shane's exploits for a long time on lafcpug here and now on his blog and he's had some interesting rigs involving rubberbands (i seem to remember that was you in a g5 with a rubberbanded set of drives) and now his latest macbeast.
Well i've had my mac pro since about a month or so before the octos came out. And Since then I've added a HDD a few times, which started first as a place to put media, than it was a third drive to put music and project files on. then it was another drive which i raided with the other 500 inside to create a 1tb raid 0 setup. I repartitioned 1 drive to install leopard on 1 part and keep music and projects on another.
So at this point I'm up to 4 drives, and 1 optical drive and the stock 2 gigs of ram (i know...i know)
True confession: I hated The Matrix and its sequels. Absolutely despised them as dreck, a colossal waste of time, talent, and money. I really hate those movies so much that I can't find the words to describe it. Really, really, really hate them. A lot.
I didn't hate Speed Racer, but I didn't love it as much as my friends did either. When it showed up in 1967, it was the first major Japanimation to hit these shores, nothing like the early Warner Brothers cartoons that I loved, and still do. I eventually got into it for what it was, which was pretty cool.
(See below for the opening theme of the original Speed Racer. It's the only clip I can find...which tells me that it'll probably be gone soon. Don't blame me if the link is dead when you try to get there.)
I've written before about my enormous respect for Trent Reznor and his impact on popular music. Now, he's raising the stakes for everyone distributing any kind of music on the web.
There was a lot of talk recently about how the release of Radiohead's latest album, In Rainbows, on the web before it was released in stores as a traditional disk, and how this was going to shake the music industry to its very foundations.
Here's the exact headline of one such story, one of a gajillion you can find on the topic: Radiohead's Album Threatens Music Industry. No need to mention the name of that news outlet here. You probably caught the story at the time, if not, you can look it up. The fact is that virtually EVERYONE got this story exactly wrong.
The move "Once" was one of my favorites from 2007, and against all odds, a song from this lo-budget indie WON the best song award. It led to the most magical moment I've seen in over 35 years of avid Oscar watching. Too bad you're never going to see it. It only aired ONCE, and Oscar is trying to make sure that you never see it again.
"Once" is the story of two musicians who accidentally develop an intimacy that ultimately, very gently, pushes them back to their previous loves. It's sweet and beautiful, and has GREAT music. Hence the Oscar nom and win.
Among the reasons the movie itself felt so fresh is that the two lead actors are actually musicians who've never acted before. Glenn Hansard is a member of The Frames, another member of whom made his directing debut with the movie. Marketa Irglova, a classically trained Czech emigre, plays a...classicly trained Czech emigre. The Oscar-winning song is "Falling Slowly," and was written together by both the actors and the characters. Check it out on YouTube while you're waiting for Netflix to deliver Once to your doorstep. You HAVE to see this DVD.
As I write this, it's Oscar eve. Just like Christmas eve, only more exciting. At least to my wife Nora and me. In fact, our primary celebration of Christmas is going to the movies, preferably a movie where things blow up. A festival of bright lights if you will.
It's not really the contest aspect of the thing. Most years we see a significant number of the nominated films. This year, we haven't seen a single one of the movies nominated for a major award. A lot of the movies look wonderful, especially Juno, but we just haven't gotten around to it.
One reason is that we keep upgrading our home theater - most recently with an upconverting DVD player. I can honestly say that our viewing experience is every bit as satisfying as a trip to the movie theater...
...with one obvious exception. There's something tribal about sitting in an audience of strangers, being moved by the same story in our own ways. It can be startling to have the same experience, including those rare occassions...though not as rare as you might think...of rising in a spontaneous ovation at the end.
I had a lot of fun writing the "The Big Dog Gets Off the Porch" article for the newsletter. (Check out my blog post on the topic too.) It took a TON of research, though, and I found a lot of things I just didn't have room to use. It also made me think about some things -- new stuff as well as stuff that's been kicking around forever. So here we go...
This was never about image quality. Sort of. There were many comparitive issues that factored into the victory, and they never had anything to do with which format looked better. As Joe Kane pointed out in the article, there was a time when Blu-ray was easily demonstrable as having much poorer quality, due largely to seriously nasty MPEG compression.
(Please note: the article I wrote for the main library had a TON of links, and took an acre of work, so I'm not going to repeat any of them here.)
So I have set my sites on jobs when I graduate. It's pretty clear I'm not going to be inducted to the orphanage as their newest lead compositor straight out of college, not that it hurts to dream mind you, but it certainly hurts to expect such things. So I've been focusing on a much more realistic vacancy: Roto Artist.
Well, I am still awaiting my MacPro. Everything else has arrived: Kona 3 with K-BOX, HD10AVA, RAM, X1900XT Graphics card...heck, I even bought the pieces to the desk I intend to build today. I am discussing the arrival of my machine on this thread on the Apple forums. Trying to build tension, and have fun discussions that aren't meant to solve issues.
I'll post desk pics when I get the thing together. I bought various pieces at Ikea, but the design will be unique.
Going out on a limb here, but figured I'd take a stab at predicting today's game. I'm a Big Blue fan all my life so it's hard to go against my beloved Giants. They played a very tough game that last week of the seaon and while the Patriots are going to score a lot of points, I think it's the Giants by a field goal.
Amazon has put together a nice links page to update your HD-DVD and BluRay players. If you don't already know, many machines require firmware updates to be able to play the latest discs, particularly the recordable discs, such as BluRay BD-R discs.
If your machine won't play that latest HD disc, check to see if there's an update for your machine.
For the animation we have title and character treatments, first script, voice is recorded, and away we go!
"WOW that must be sooo FUN!" is what peeps are saying when I tell them I'm producing an animated short series about a Southern Jewish Princess TV producer. And I hear/read this as I'm coming off of 24 hours of mass hysteria over production and communication issues going on. Also wondering who will be our composer as one is not solidified...
I ve been fascinated by the photorealistic quality of images posted in the Luxology Modo Gallery. I ve been trying to learn from their workflow to see if I can do the same in Cinema 4D, especially from some of the free tutorials. I was struck by the level of detail in the shoe model posted there. Inspired by those images, I rolled up my socks and got to work! Trying to emulate the same in cinema4d. So folks here is my attempt. I think it kind of worked out ok. What do you think? let me know. As always I would love to exchange notes with other c4d enthusiasts out there.
The New York Times reports that Warner Brothers has now lined up in Blu-Ray DVD corner effectively giving the Sony format about 70% of the high definition DVD market. They'll continue to release movies on both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray until May and then switch exclusively over to Blu-Ray. This leaves Universal and Paramount along with Dreamworks as the only major studios backing HD-DVD.
As a production company that had to jump into Blu-Ray production in support of one of our clients, this is welcome news for us. I have to say, if you have not seen Pixar's "Cars" and "Rattatoule" on Blu-Ray disc, you have not seen the true capabilities of Blu-Ray. Jaw dropping is the only way I can describe what these movies look like in HD. Better than what it looked like in the theater.
For those last minute holiday shoppers, GameStop in introducing an idea that is long overdue. On Dec. 20 and 21 they will issue rain checks for the Nintendo Wii at the standard console price of $250. This will guarantee the holder a console no later than January 29th.
With the difficulty in finding these units at normal times, let alone the holidays, I'm not sure why they didn't come up with this idea sooner. We have one and I have to say it's the most fun gaming console on the market today.
For in case you are ever in Hollywood and need to know the industry lingo, here is the Hollywood Dictionary.
VERBS:
to schmooze = befriend scum to pitch = grovel shamelessly to brainstorm = feign preparedness to research = procrastinate indefinitely to network = spread disinformation to collaborate = argue incessantly to freelance = collect unemployment
NOUNS:
agent = frustrated lawyer lawyer = frustrated producer producer = frustrated writer writer = frustrated director director = frustrated actor actor = frustrated human
COMPOUND WORDS:
high-concept = low brow production value = gore entry-level = pays nothing
I saved posting the airdate until the time was close. Well, it is close. And it will air THREE times very close to one another...so you will be sure to catch it.
Sunday, November 18 08:00 PM Monday, November 19 12:00 AM (that's right...MIDNIGHT) Saturday, November 24 05:00 PM
Not sure if these are Eastern or Pacific times...there have been times when it was set to air at 8PM and I find that it is on a 5PM...so 8PM eastern, 5PM Pacific. But then it re-aired later that night.
Folks I'm a big dog lover and the happy new father of a 4 month old Labrador mix named Molly. We found her through a local Lab Rescue society called the Labrador Friends of the South. These folks rescue labs from local shelters where death is their next option.
Now today I found this incredible website that seeks to save animals of all breeds from local shelters across the nation.
The site's only purpose is to expose dogs who are about to be euthanized to see if anyone out there can adopt them before they are put down. It's a great idea and if anyone out there is looking for a dog or knows someone who is looking for a dog, certainly go to your local shelters first and also look at this site to see if there's someone perfect for you.
Our little Molly has been a welcome joy to our lives after losing our other two "children" last year. A greyhound mix named Niki and a Chocolate Lab named Baxter. And just this past week we lost our oldest, a cat named Peabody who was 15. Maybe the rest of us can help other dogs find a happy life too.
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