Test

This is a Safari 3 test. Just seeing how paragraphing goes, since paragraphing was broken in Safari 3 beta.  Now that I have the full version I just want to see how it pans out. CheersMaybe this will work?Otherwise so far Safari 3 and WordPress do not get along

Hang on…paragraphing words…but only when I type normally whilst in the ‘code’ mode, as opposed to visual. *sigh* how defeating.

*edit*

Yep, Safari 3 under 10.5 hates at the visual editing mode. So if I want to edit an entry…TOO BAD! All my paragraphs disappear!
I’ll be back to posting again soon, obviously 10.5 is now on my machines, I took the risk. Its great. Working flat out, virtually non-stop. Gotta recapture that footage for Inspirit but still having trouble finding the time – worst part is, had I been more vocal about my concerns, we wouldn’t have had the problem at all.

Justin

The AV Industry: Naming your business

This is a point my dad brought up a little while ago, and was also something I had been considering myself. Business names. Naming a business can be big business, as there are many firms that specialise in branding, both on this kind of large scale and also at a product level. Back when I was considering going into business this was a big consideration.

Bodybuilding, Apex, Round Earth, Football…all of it!!

Its all coming down on me pretty hard. I battle away however, like a soldier in the trenches. Another edit out the door is like another bullet out of the chamber, and I have a really big clip.

At the moment work feels like its being chain-fed to me. Problem is, the gun keeps jamming. Not that I’m complaining, mind. This work is pretty good, considering what I’ve come from. Small industry down here in Tassie, so one has to keep on his toes, and be pretty proactive to procure work like this.

Who out there works in the industry and doesn’t understand HD?

One question I’ve had to ask myself, more and more as my knowledge expanded, is ‘how much do the people I work around understand video?’ The answer: not much. Until now, this has been almost negligable – when shooting small scale stuff there is no relevance to 4:1:1 colour space and compression. Most, as I once did, considered any video recorded straight to tape to be ‘uncompressed’. I have since learned that it is not uncompressed, even on higher range cameras there is a degree of compression applied to the footage recorded to tape. Still – in the days of standard definition it is able to be met with indifference.

Not so in this new HD age.

Apex Fashion and Filing DVD Covers

Working on Apex fashion shows at the moment, one after the after. Its all a little mad – and also making it strikingly obvious that I need to get a newer version of Photoshop – the PPC emulation isn’t quite cutting it unfortunately.
Irregardless, the fashion shows. Stefano did South Australia, I’ve just finished Western Australia, capturing Queensland at the moment, and have already been booked to edit Tasmania on Friday. I’ve taken Thursday off from Mr. Video work specifically to tackle some of the (very) outstanding work that is waiting for me here – a reasonably simple edit for the Round Earth Theatre Company, a concert edit for my friend Nigel and some somewhat gruelling work fixing the capture of a HDV shoot – very valuable lesson learned from that one!

I also want to mention that Mac OS 10.5 will be shipping by the end of this month (or we’ll hear about the delay very shortly). I’ll try to keep an eye on what kind of performance/software issues arise from the upgrade (yes, I’ll be an early adopter – I’ll risk it!).

I’m also busy sorting everything now – something that isn’t discussed often is how people file their data. My DVD covers and labels were awful – folders seperated ’sport’ ‘weddings’ ‘funerals’ and ‘other’. I’m finally seperating into proper categories, which is a pain, but making things much easier to find – both now and for the future.

Kids at home – sort your files when you make/save them, you’ll save yourself the hassle later!!

J

Advertising

Halo 3 ad at StudioDaily

This is an advertisement for Halo 3. Part of a two part thing, although the first part was a little too cheesey for me, not as much impact. This part however, not only gave me an emotional twinge, it also made me want to get an Xbox 360 and Halo 3 more than actually seeing the game being played. I was pretty amazed.
Found this via Mike Curtis’ HDforindies blog, and I have to say, I fully agree with what he said there:

Would that YOU (or, ahem, I) would have such creativity, and NOT take the obvious route.

A friend of mine didn’t like the ad – no action, it didn’t show the game, didn’t show any new weapons or enemies or features. But as I said to him – Halo 1 and 2 had all the chance to sell the game, now with Halo 3 if they haven’t gotten people with the advertising rounds from the first two games they aren’t going to get them with a third round of the same advertising. I’m still amazed that they didn’t go with the straightforward route – this is just a level of advertising I didn’t anticipate – not by a long shot.

Some interesting techniques they used:

- All figures were eight inches tall, on a sixty foot by forty foot board (see pics here) and then shot with a shallow depth of field to make it appear that they were only one inch figures.
- Around 1000 figures hand sculpted by Stan Winston and his team
- Using CG in post production, they super-imposed actual human eyes over the models to give them more depth

Halo 3 gets a huge thumbs up from me just for this advert. I’d recommend everyone sees it – and especially the HD version. Download it here – you wont be disappointed.

As a note, don’t bother grabbing the MP4 H.264 encoded file if you’re on a single CPU G4, as I discovered my PowerBook G4 1.5GHz could barely play it back. To that power, if you have any kind of macintosh at all, avoid the Windows Media file too, that’ll be worse.