indiegear

I MOVED!

2006-04-29T13:18:00.000-07:00

I'm OUTTA here. Please check out my new site at http://theeggfarm.mutationengine.com/ Thanks!

test

2006-04-28T05:14:00.000-07:00

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Automatic Movie Editing Robot

2006-04-27T20:12:00.000-07:00

Well, minus the robot.

Muvee (pronounced mewwwwveeeeee) will chop up and order your footage in a cornacopia of fun styles. My personal favorite is the Velvet style, which is "A smooth, slow motion style with long dissolves. Loaded with atmosphere."

Trying Different Blog Editors

2006-04-27T16:18:00.000-07:00

Been through a bunch, one kept eating my posts, others were too complicated, others not complicated enough.

This one is called Qumana, a beta version with nice shiny buttons and free, so far, so I think I'll land here for awhile.

It does automatically drop a little advertisement in the corner. I'm erasing it for now, depending on if I like the software or not.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was one perfect software for everything? Now, everybody's got to compete for no real reason, and innovation is meant to rob someone else of the customers they already have.

That's why open source is pure-ish, I guess. I'm not digging the free market these days. And mind you, I run a business. But I don't understand how the hell we're supposed to decipher what we need (specifically thinking of audio/microphone/mixer concerns I'm having) when there are 50 brands, of which the majority apparently produce absolute shit, and the others are all pretty good to very good, but along a sliding monetary scale of essentially arbitrarily crippled gear. Why is there not just one rocking microphone available to everybody? Or at least a clearly delineated scale of progress where better value would cost more based on transparent critera. Until then, I'll be pulling my hair out trying to tell a Sennheiser from an AKG.

Homemade #2 - Desktop Love

2006-04-27T08:50:00.000-07:00

This is a stop-motion animation done using Snapz Pro, a cameraphone, a MAC computer, and a lot of time. It's called shiftcommand3 There are three short films - One, I lick the desktop Two, I blow the desktop Three, I finger the desktop

Screen Capture Software

2006-04-27T07:26:00.000-07:00

SNAPZPROX I use this all the time. For 8BIT, a documentary about video games and artists who do work associated with them, I had to capture hours of games, hacks, and mods, most of which were being emulated through C64 or Amiga emulation software. I tried doing tape-out through a DVI to SVIDEO adapter, but it sucked. The resolution automatically gets jammed down to 720/480. SNAPZ let's you do screen captures, either still or moving, with audio. Very nice stuff. I'll upload a short series of animations I did with it later.

Going to Haiti

2006-04-27T06:08:00.000-07:00

I'm traveling to Haiti soon to shoot and direct a documentary. I'll be staying in an orphanage run by a group called Theo's Work. I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to be filming, how I'm going to find the story to tell, or what will happen while I'm there. However, I DO know that I want to bring the best tools with me. I currently own a mid-level 24p video camera, the DVX100a, an have been very happy with it. I shot my last doc, 8BIT, on it and found the image quality to be very good. I am currently looking to build an essential "travelling kit" for shooting. I'm specifically looking at audio, lighting, and support that will allow me the best quality, and the most flexible freedom of mobility. I'd like to buy as much of the gear as possible, as I'm gearing up for a longer doc after the Haiti trip. As I search, however, I'm struck by a desire to formulate some sort of code of conduct for myself. As a completely independent producer (I fund my films via the profits of my production company) I feel like I should keep some sort of integrity when buying equipment. Should I buy new? Or make a rule to only buy used? Is there a way to break the oligarchy, started by that gangster Thomas Edison, on the tools of media production? Are all of the tools themselves tainted by association, even if bought used? Not sure, kids, but that's what I've been thinking about lately. Until then, I'll post sporaic links to resources I find helpful. Here's one now - For general to specific questions that the digital filmmaker may have... dvxuser.com

Arty Phone Content

2006-04-27T05:55:00.000-07:00

Wired News: Art Flicks Sparkle on Cell Phones: Some choice quotes: This week at the San Francisco International Film Festival, 20 movies made for mobile devices with 2-inch-by-3-inch screens will be shown as part of the festival's Pocket Cinema program ... "Simply repurposing television shows for the cell phone," he said, "is not a good use of the medium." ... Already, some 2 million Americans watch video once a month on their mobile devices, according to MMetrics. ... This is likely to increase as network operators like Verizon Communications offer more programming. The company recently cut a content deal with internet video provider Atom Entertainment to offer its content to subscribers. ****** The most important line in here is about repurposing TV shows for small screens. It either proves or disproves "the medium is the message." I believe that television is such a brilliant strain of virus that it can pretty much flourish anyplace. On cellphones. i***s, shoelaces, tongues, shedded tarantula skins, whatever. As for content created specifically FOR mobile phones - well, what's the criteria? When Lynch shot Twin Peaks cinematic-like (leaving out close-ups, etc) for the 4/3 box, he challenged the conventions of the medium. Do we actually believe that there are some trackable, psychological "sweet spots" (like the rule of thirds, etc) for itty bitty little screen with OK audio? The aspect ratio is the same, just smaller. If I got stuck long enough, I'd watch STAR WARS on my phone if I had to. We watch movies on buses, airplanes, snoop them through tinted SUV windows, stream them. The real question is not creating "cell-phone" content, but breaking the monopoly on distribution. The content will work itself out with practice.

Youtube Auteur

2006-04-26T16:35:00.000-07:00

From Lifehacker: So, in brief: Youtube recently capped the length of uploaded content to 10 minutes, to stem the bloody red tide of copyrighted material that was infesting Youtubes' noble waters, cus' we all know that you can't copyright anything under ten minutes in length. So, to appease to child abusers, they'd added a "director" tag for those folks who create original content, not pilfering copyrighted infringing pirate bastards. You can even add YOUR OWN LOGO

Homemade #1

2006-04-26T16:16:00.000-07:00

As was suggested by a The Best Show On WFMU chatter last evening, (CHRIS L) here's a video mashup of Losing My Religion and Shiny Happy People. mutationengine.com/shiny/fixed1.mov

There it is...

2006-04-26T16:09:00.000-07:00

Sendstation iPod PocketDock Combo: Thanks, Gizmodo. Allows you to plug your i*** into either USB or Firewire through the power port.

Netflix as Independent Distributor

2006-04-26T05:56:00.000-07:00

Netflix is not just distrubuting indie film, but in some cases co-producing it. I love Netflix. My wife and I have just gone through most of the Godard films up until 1972. Wow, Weekend! It's interesting to note how the recomendations actually DO work on Netflix. I do spend a lot of time "not interesting" Chris Farley movies, and their algorithym does seem to favor New Releases, but otherwise, I end up Queuing a lot of what pops up. Marry this system with the Nokia (or whatever) content CAPTURE, EDIT, and STREAM device, with an affinity based system of distribution, and the major players will all be destablized. I don't expect that people will sit around all day watching Citizen Media, and most of the little clips will still be fathers getting hit in the testes by blunt objects, but if one voice can cry out, and you or I listen, the entire web of media will be affected. I don't know what to call it, and I don't know if it'll be worse than what we have now (which is really corporate curation, but with definite places of refuge) but let's freaking try it already! (Saw the link on Cinematech blog.)

Nice Video Phone

2006-04-26T05:26:00.000-07:00

Saw this on Gizmodo. According to them "The Nokia N93 in the photo above might just be the first device made for serious mobile videobloggingÂit takes MPEG-4 VGA video capture at 30 fps, records audio in stereo and has digital stabilization to avoid shaky capture. It features a 3.2 MP (2048x1536 pixels) camera with a Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens, 3x optical zoom (20x digital zoom), an active toolbar like you see on many digital cameras that displays details like white balance and exposure, and dedicated shutter, zoom and flash keys. Video and photos can be edited on the N93 and uploaded uncompressed via email, Bluetooth or to blogs or Flickr; multimedia can also be shown on compatible TVs via the included cable or wirelessly over integrated WLAN and UPnP. It runs on WLAN, 3G (WCDMA 2100 MHz), EDGE and GSM (900/1800/1900 MHz) networks, runs on Symbian OS 9 and S60 3rd Edition like all new Nseries phones and should be available July 2006 for Â550." Well, here's that device I was talking about yesterday. Now get the UN to buy 5 billion of these things and put them into the hands of everybody on the planet, and the revolution will start yesterday. Nokia's video technology is great, IMHO. I had one of those big brick phones with the first video capability, and it was really simple and easy to use. The OS crashed on it, unfortunately, and now I've got one of those "sharp" *ehem* phones, and I must say that it really sucks. Maybe it's my godless carrier, but to take a simple photo, it takes three steps to save it! They try to force you to put it into an email or message, hoping you'll accidentally save it and spend 10 cents. Or maybe I'm the oddball that actually wants to have a CAMERAPHONE and not send my pictures to my friends every 15 seconds. The Nokia phone was the opposite. Easy to navigate, awesomely awful image quality (I'm sure it's better now, unfortunately.) I might have to trade in my "sharpy" for one of these guys. When, of course, they don't cost $1000 bucks anymore!

Corporate Culture

2006-04-26T05:20:00.000-07:00

A car company is sponsoring a Machinima festival, using The Movies. To make a short film about how much you love their cars, it seems. If you win, you win one of their cars, which apparently you've been lusting for. Get to work!

Soundcard in an Audio Cable

2006-04-26T05:04:00.000-07:00

Mini from your axe, electric saxophone, or Moog into the USB port of your trusty DAW, and throw the MBOX out the window. Or something. I'm no audio guy, but that's what this looks like: something for I'm no audio guys!

Wikimentaries

2006-04-25T16:36:00.000-07:00

In sum: A collaborative set of tools are being developed to use the XML feature in Final Cut Pro to allow for collaborative editing. In some ways, this looks like merely a great way to get other people to log your footage. I call those people interns, and must ply them with pizza and college credits, but this fella has long-distance relationships with his lackeys, which is even better. But really, the idea is fantastic. Films can be generated in a collaborative, decentralized fashion. I'm still of the mind that this is just a segmentation of labor, and won't do much outside of citizen-activist media, but that's fine. Imagine a similar project focusing on police brutality, gang-rule, corruption, whatever. When the cellphone (or whatever else) can be married into this, you could track dictator/criminals by mashing up G*****maps with your video clips, kind of like Gawker Stalker but with despots. This is a concept that I've been talking about with my friend John Porcaro in regards to a doc on eugenics we're working on. More on that later. This is all kind of research for that project, anyway.

Now...

2006-04-25T16:03:00.000-07:00

James Cameron's big secret, apparently, is 3D!!!! Yep. 3 freaking D.

And Then...

2006-04-25T15:59:00.000-07:00

From Wikipedia The studio system was a means of film production and distribution popular in Hollywood from the end of the silent era in 1927 to 1948. This period is commonly known as The Golden Age Of Hollywood. The term "studio system" referred to the practice of motion picture studios pursuing vertical integration by buying the distributors and the theaters. Additionally, many studios used block booking, a system of selling multiple films to a theater as a unit. Such a unit, frequently twenty films, typically comprised only one or two good films, the rest perceived as monetary filler to bolster the studio's finances. With the outlawing of block booking in a 1948 federal court case, the studio system, and in some respects, the Golden Age era, effectively came to a close.

Tapeless?

2006-04-25T15:49:00.000-07:00

Catapult is the world's first device to allow capture of video footage from DV or HDV video cameras directly to iPods or virtually any USB drive, and begin editing immediately. A battery powered device not much larger than a Blackberry, the Catapult eliminates the time consuming and tedious task of digitizing video footage. This is cool. A hacked-together solution to compete with Firestore, using your ordinary USB DAP or harddrive, and only $300 to be rid of them pesky mini-DV tapes. I'm not so crazy about the thing having rechargeable batteries, however. But I'm sure there will be a workaround. Also, is there a Firewire to USB convertor? There's plenty of cheap old IPODS on Craigslist, and that form factor is the perfect solution.

MoTV Is a Hot Item

2006-04-25T15:01:00.000-07:00

So says the NAB site itself. With the monoplistic, profiteering robber barons lurching on and lording over the mobile phone market now (at least US side) it doesn't seem like the indie producer has much of a shot at the moment. Trying to navigate my mini-computer (mobile phone) now beyond Top-40 ringtones is a pretty much impossible task. But as a distribution device, cell phones are kind of the Holy Grail to us media makers. How do we get involved, or get our media shown, on crippled systems? I may be merely ignorant on the subject, but it's one of the things I'll be researching.

Mark Cuban Distribution Model

2006-04-25T14:57:00.000-07:00

For $40,000 to $150,000, you can self-distribute (with the help of your friendly neighborhood billionare.) A one week run in a few markets. Let's hope this doesn't burst like... Bubble.

THE PURPOSE

2006-04-25T14:37:00.000-07:00

So, the purpose of this site, more than any other, is to force me to catalogue all of the interesting film and video stuff I see online during my daily sojourn in the wilds of the net. I spend way too much time online with very little return on my investment, mostly due to my horribly bad memory. So, hopefully this will force me to catalogue all the neat stuff I run into. A lot of the info here will be oldish, as I try to retrace my meandering steps, and the rest will be new as I run into, obviously, new stuff that is interesting to independent media makers. I do run a production company, so some stuff will be producty, and other stuff will be more in line with my lofty aspirations of Ludditry, at least quasi.

RED CAMERA

2006-04-25T13:56:00.000-07:00

"The idea behind the RED camera system is simple. To design and build a high performance digital cine camera with the quality of 35mm film and convenience of a camcorder. RED delivers unmatched image quality with no recording system limitations. Introducing the RED ONE camera, the worldÂ¹s first large format digital camera with integrated recording. Ultra High Definition in the palm of your hand." Once you get past the corporate development and marketmaneuveringg, this may be the camera of the future. The ability to mod it freely, apparently on both a software and a hardware level, as well as the non-disposable nature of the project itself, is pretty exciting. As soon as it's available second-hand, this may be the coolest development in digital cinema history. Of course, 4K images aren't going to make anyone's films any better, and are going to make a lot of actors look a lot worse.