It’s been a long time

Published
by
moogaman
on July 4, 2008
in Apple, Media, Movies and Work
.

Finally, Lexy and I are on our own.  We have our own place in Lee’s Summit, MO.  We have all the essentials set up: TV, internet, and video game consoles.  Our internet is via AT&T’s 3Mbps DSL service.  We don’t have to have a landline and it’s only $30 a month.  I’m kinda digging that.

We have not at all unpacked.

My new job is not that bad.  Working and selling for Apple is fairly easy.

I also get to go to Gulf Shores, Alabama for vacation.  I’m sure it will be a lot of fun.

I want to thank all of you who helped us move.

Here is the short that won us the One Night Stand 10 hour film competition:

Nope, not gonna talk about it.

Published
by
moogaman
on June 10, 2008
in Apple, Cell Phones and Television
.

I’m sure many of you are expecting me to gush all over the iPhone 3G. Yes, I love it. I watched the keynote from WWDC. I plan on getting one on July 11. However, I do have a problem.

That problem? AT&T. They don’t have any adjusted plans for the new iPhone. They aren’t selling any as it is. They don’t have any. There is only one iPhone now and it is the iPhone 3G. Get up on it and release those plans. I don’t want to hear rumors anymore. I want facts. I want to see the FamilyTalk iPhone plans. AT&T, get on it.

Second thing I want to mention is that The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are finally on Hulu.  That is the coolest.  Now I get the only two shows I would watch Comedy Central for and don’t have to watch the crappy network.  That is good.

My Passion. The Second Surge.

Published
by
moogaman
on June 5, 2008
in Media, Movies, Rambling, Technology and future
.

Ok, so that title is a bit… suggestive.  Get over it.

Last night, I attended another meeting of the Independent Film Makers Coalition, aka IFC.  This is the organization that hosted the One Night Stand 10 Hour Film competition.  There was some drama the competition screening and last night seemed to be “talk shit about people behind their back” night.  I wasn’t impressed with the lack of professionalism of many of the IFC Board members.  The guy resigned, let it go.

Anyway, the big piece of awesome I got to hang out with last night was a RED One.  This is a 4K camera.  That means it has an active resolution of 4520 x 2540 pixels.  Compare that to the highest HD signal you can get on your TV at 1920 x 1080.  I think I just saw some of your eyes glaze over.  Here, look at this:

Screen resolution size comparison.

That 4k there?  That is where the RED One sits compared to 1080p.  Look how much bigger that image is, it is absolutely astounding!  I actually got to stand next to this machine and talk to the guy who owns TWO of them.  He is currently in the process of shooting a feature this is about to become the only two RED shoot in the Midwest.  That is just too cool.  He said that just the body runs $17,500 and when you get all the  lenses, power, and storage accessories, you are looking at a total setup camera of around $40,000.  Now, I understand that is a LOT of money, but look at it another way.  Other cameras that aren’t even capable of what the RED can do, run around $250,000.

Then, at NAB this year, RED introduced the RED Scarlet.  A 3k camera that will run around $3,000.  It will include a lot of stuff that will allow it to come out of the box ready.  The Scarlet doesn’t have as big of a sensor in it, but it does have a damn big one.

The RED One has a sensor in it the same size as a piece of Super 35mm film.  That means you get image characteristics that are extremely similar to film.  This is awesome because you get the same depth of field as you are used to with million dollar film cameras and the image quality is astounding.  The monitor that comes as an accessory for the RED One is a little 8″ LCD that outputs 720p.  At screen sizes that small you cannot tell the difference between 720p and the higher resolutions, so it gives you a damn fine example of what your footage looks like.

The guy, Steve Pruet (sp?), is such an amazing guy.  He is shooting and funding a feature out of his own pocket.  He has dropped over $250,000 on just equipment for the project and that includes two RED Ones.  He showed some of his footage last night and even on a standard definition DVD outputted to a crappy projector, the footage was absolutely gorgeous.  The amount of detail capable of a 4k image will just blow your mind.

Really, the thing that is grabbing me is that 3k Scarlet.  Once you are done getting all the accessories for it, you will be out around $7-8,000.  That is NOT at all bad.  That is a similar price to a Canon or Sony HD prosumer camera by itself and those aren’t capable of a 3k image.  The Scarlet will completely change independent film, I have no doubt of that.

I know that I threw a lot of jargon around and many of you are lost.  A 4k image is huge, but when you output your project, you are most likely going to output to a 2k master.  This means that you are throwing away a lot of pixels, but this also means that you can digitally, on a computer, zoom in and not loose and detail.  Taking a 4k image and mastering to 2k gives you so many options when it comes to editing, that you can do things on computer that wouldn’t be able to do in the field.  That is the real beauty of a large image camera like the RED, aside from the crystal clear image and the jaw-dropping depth of field.

Enough film geek for ya?

My Passion. It’s back!

Published
by
moogaman
on June 2, 2008
in Movies and Projects
.

Over the weekend, most of you know, I was part of a 10 hour film competition.  I was Assistant Director for a friend of mine, Jerry.  The short film was writen, directed, and shot by Jerry himself.  He busted his ass all damn day and through his hard work, we pumped out a damn fine short film called The Plan.  Eventually, when he gets around to it, the film will be put up on the ‘net and I should be getting it on DVD.  Those of you who haven’t seen it yet, you will, I assure you.

Here’s the deal.  The film had to have three characteristics in it.  The first was a fan.  This could be anything from a ceiling fan to a sports fan.  It just needed to be in the film in some fashion.  The second was a director.  A film of a dead director had to be inserted into or as a line of dialogue.  The director chosen was Billy Wilder and we inserted Sunset Blvd. into our film.  The last was a theme.  The theme chosen was “an act of charity.”  This theme turned out to be the only one that we had to work a good bit to get to work.  I won’t tell you because it is kind of the end of the film.

Those three things were given to us the day of.  We showed up at the Wesport Coffe House in KCMO, signed in, were given these, and were set out to make our film.  Let me stress this: our film was shot, edited, and authored to DVD in a little under 10 hours.  Even overcoming bad sound, broken mics, our actress leaving early, shooting out of order, importing video with dropped frames, and re-engineering our squib, we kicked ass.  Jerry led the team extremely well and dealt with everything with a cool head.

Personally, I didn’t really see myself doing a whole lot during the shoot.  I’ve said this a lot, as a few of you can attest.  I swear, I am NOT trying to get sympathy or whatever when I say this.  I was planning on keeping track of our shots, timecodes, all that.  I didn’t, but to be fair, it didn’t end up mattering.  We imported the footage into the machine in large lumps.  Not my editing style, but obviously, it worked for Jerry.

This weekend got to me.  I really enjoyed being a part of this project, but it also made me realize something.  I don’t have access to nearly the resources that Jerry did.  He had access to a Canon GL2, a good camera if used properly.  He had several friends who are actors, which helped a lot and resulted in a good, well performing cast.

My next challenge is to figure out how I am going to schedule work, school, and any future projects.  The weekend showed me that working on a film project like this is an amazing experience.  Now, I need to put together a regular team I can work with.  A group of people that wouldn’t mind working on my projects as long as I help them with any projects they have.

I really need to get my own equipment.  That is a lot of money to spend, though.  A LOT.

Oh God, My Childhood!

Published
by
moogaman
on May 29, 2008
in Movies, Opinion, Rambling and Sad
. 4 Comments

So I’ve been thinking about my childhood recently.  Really because the first dog I had is being put to sleep tomorrow.  Super sad.

Then I started thinking about all the new movies that are just remaking or continuing my childhood.  First, let us talk about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  This is probably the best of the recent childhood rehashings.  It wasn’t the best of the Indy movies by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a fun movie.  As a continuation of my childhood memories, it did a fairly good job, but it definitely didn’t match up to Raiders of the Lost Ark or Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  So at this point, my memories of childhood are doing ok, still alive.

Then we come to the hardest hit portions of my childhood: Star Wars.  The original trilogy was one of the greatest movie memories I’ve had.  Since then, they have been among my favorite films and I really geeked out on them.  Then the prequels were released.  When I saw Episode 1, for a while, I tricked myself into believing it was a good movie.  Eventually, I had to face the facts and admit, it sucked hard.  Episodes 2 and 3 raised the bar a little with each movie, but never to the levels of vision and ingenuity shown in the original three.  Once Revenge of the Sith ended, I was hoping that the Clone War saga was put to a close and the Star Wars franchise could just die in peace, with what little dignity it had left.  That is what George Lucas did to his own series, he murdered it in cold blood.

Now, to exhume the body and presumably rape the corpse, is Star Wars: The Clone Wars.  The story to link together the stories of Episodes 2 and 3.  Just the last bit of shit to make sure that the Star Wars fans are completely pissed off and the series is wholly and completely trashed.  Don’t get me wrong, I will go see it, but I will NOT be waiting in line on release day.  I have seen what George Lucas has done to his much loved series and I am not excited about what’s coming.  Maybe I will be shown wrong and it will be a good production, but my expectations are so low, they can’t really be called expectations.

The last thing that I will talk about is Back to the Future.  This was another trilogy that was so well made and just enraptured me as a child.  The movies wove together so well and were excellently delivered by Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd (among others), they also stand in my favorite movies below Star Wars and Indiana Jones (respectively from great to slightly less great).  Thankfully, the rumors of a fourth BttF movie were squashed and it will not be in production.  You can’t grasp how happy this makes me.  The series finished itself at the end of the third movie and everything was wrapped up all nice and tight.

Why do there need to be remakes and re-imaginings of movies that were just fine the way they were?  If you want to bring the movie to a newer audience, let them watch the original.  Let them figure out that if weren’t for these original classics, the stories we know and love today wouldn’t be around.  Please, let the old stories lay in peace.  They don’t need to be rehashed, reimagined, redone, recovered, rewhatevered.  There are so many creative people out there with so many great ideas and skills, give them a chance.  Throw some money to the independent film makers instead of $200 million dollars to remake and fuck up a movie that was just fine the first time.  Creative and original stories are the way to go.

WL.TV Spoof!

Published
by
moogaman
on May 28, 2008
in Funny, Interesting, Media, Podcasts, Projects and future
. 2 Comments

Sometime in mid-June, Gary Vaynerchuk of Winelibrary TV will announce a contest to spoof his show.  Apparently the prize for which will be sick (his words, not mine).  You may ask, if he going to annouce the competition, how do I know about it?  Well, he pseudo announced it today (05/28/08) on his show.  It was real quick, you have to keep an ear for it.

I know several of you out there, specifically those Lexy and I spend many of our weekends with, would find this kind of project fun.  So, if you guys want to help write, shoot, whatever this, give me a shout and we will get this done and produce the BEST WL.TV spoof on the net, ever.

My Current Florida Confusion

Published
by
moogaman
on May 27, 2008
in Bitching and Rambling
. 1 Comment

Have you out there heard of Alex Barton?  If so, you are probably pretty outraged.  If you haven’t, then read this here article.  Personally, I am so pissed off at a lot of people right now.

Apparently taking a child to the front of the classroom and having all his classmates tell him what they don’t like about him and then voting him out of the classroom, that isn’t considered emotional abuse.  Let me tell you something.  Being in front of the class like that is fucking terrifying.  Then you add the horror of being called “disgusting” and “annoying” by your peers and THEN voted 14-2 to leave the classroom.  The teacher then sends you to spend the rest of the day in the nurse’s office.  No.  That wouldn’t bother anyone.

The Florida state attorney’s office doesn’t consider the situation endured by Alex Barton to fill the requirements for emotional child abuse.  Really?  What the fuck is emotional abuse then?  Being verbally abused by your friends and classmates in a public setting?  Being voted out of the classroom, denied your legal right and obligation to attend an education institution.  I’m sure that Alex didn’t consider that he was being denied an education by his own teacher, but that is still the case.

Then add the case that Alex was in the process of being diagnosed with Asperger’s.  I can’t really be sure whether or not Wendy Portillo (Alex’s teacher) knew of the possible diagnosis, but she should have known.  Though, regardless of whether the possible diagnosis was known, you do NOT treat a student like that.

The fact that Alex may have Asperger’s may be causing this issue being blown way up; however, I think this is a good thing.  There is no doubt in my mind that there are hundreds of kids who get mistreated like this every day.  The teacher gets protected by the school system, nothing happens, and the kid gets mistreated for the rest of the time spent under the teacher.  There needs to be a greater amount of scrutiny placed on teachers when dealing with children.  Bullshit like this needs to be made more public and the teacher needs to be fired.  Ms. Portillo was moved to a office position and hopefully there will be enough outrage to cause her to get flat out fired.

What is your take on this situation?

Sony and Blu-Ray Sittin’ in a Tree

Published
by
moogaman
on May 15, 2008
in Media, Movies, Technology and future
.

I’m not sure that title joke is actually appropriate seeing as Sony is the parent of Blu-Ray… meh.

So, Sony is sitting pretty with Blu-Ray being the one HD format to rule them all.  Until THIS! (dun-dun-dun)  Pretty much saying that Blu-Ray players aren’t moving and most consumers who didn’t get in during “the war”, still won’t get in on Blu-Ray.  Really, I’m not surprised.  Blu-Ray (BR) players are still up around $300.  DVD didn’t REALLY become popular until you could get a player for around $100.  I think those 35% with HDTVs are waiting for the prices to come down.  Sony or other BR manufacturers, however, don’t feel the need to bring those prices on players or media down because, dammit, they won and they are going to milk this tit as long as they can.

BR is a fantastic format, don’t get me wrong.  I love the crap out of it and my PS3 is a great DVD/BR player.  Though, the interesting thing is that the PS3 is adhering to more of the BR standards than the standalone players are, without being the best BR player available.  You are hard-pressed to find a BD player that supports BD 2.0 or BD Live.  Then when you do, you are looking to shell out $3-400 on it.  Not appetizing when you look at the actual movies running around $35 at BestBuy.  Though, admittedly, if you shop around, you can get new BR discs for close to the same price as new DVDs.

Sony is shooting itself in the foot and bleeding all over the consumer.  They are grossed out and kind of confused.  If the media becomes cheaper, more accessible to the consumer, I think Sony will start putting some gauze on that ugly bullet wound.  BR will eventually explode and replace DVD, but right now the consumer is confused, doesn’t really know the difference between BR and DVD, and is scared off by the high prices of all things BR.  HD specs are full of numbers and letters they never had to deal with before.  1080p through HDMI and all that.  Those of us who can follow and understand the jumble are okay and loving our BR players.

Once prices come down, if they come down, BR will start moving.  The first hurdle for the format is HDTVs.  The second, the format war, which is still scaring consumers for some reason.  The final is price.  Once all three of these are leaped, BR will become a giant and we will look at DVD the same we do VHS now.

Lets not talk about digital downloads.  Let’s suffice to say that the majority of consumers still want to hold a piece of plastic in their hands to show they bought something.  Also, the HD quality on downloads doesn’t come close to that on BR.  That may change, but I think the tangible product will keep winning for several years to come.

I’ve had my piece.  Now, you, Disqus.  Heh.  Reference to the new comment system I re-implemented.

I’ll Try Harder

Published
by
moogaman
on May 14, 2008
in Apple, Work and future
. 2 Comments

A couple of weeks ago, I tweeted that I was planning on keeping up a commitment of one blog post per day.  I have already failed at this.  The past few days have been a bit hectic and honestly, I forgot to post.

On the good side, I was offered a job at the KCMO Apple Store as a Mac Specialist.  I filled out all of the paperwork today and should be recieving an email with details on training start June 6.  Very interesting it will be to juggle school and a job at Apple.  It may be rough and I may loose a lot of my weekends, but that is part of life right now.  Here’s to hoping the job rocks and I am good enough to move up inside of Apple.

The Future of Television

Published
by
moogaman
on May 8, 2008
in Computers, Media, Opinion, Technology, Television and future
. 1 Comment

As some of you may know, I am a Broadcasting major at University of Central Missouri in mid-west Missouri.  That’s right, I’m in the mid-west of the Mid-West.  Well, you should also know that I am a geek.  I mean… look at that list of social networks.  What that geekiness really means is, I like the Internet.  I’ve always liked it, but when I started working for Niche Productions, Inc. in Jefferson City, MO, I fell in love with media.  I changed my life around, dropped Computer Engineering at UMR (now Missouri S&T), and moved to Warrensburg to start an undergrad degree in Broadcast Media. Then, I found out there were these things called podcasts.  I love them.  This got me thinking.  A lot of thinking.  Where is this podcasting thing going to go?

This is when I developed my theory of the future of television.  The Internet is becoming such an increasingly important part of our lives.  The content available on the ‘net is astounding.  There is a lot of it.  A LOT.  User generated content, the ability to produce your own series, is more and more available, thanks to sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, Revver, and the like.  A lot of that content is bad, but also, a lot is good.  Once we start moving to a more ‘net based viewer, I feel that the production values on a lot of shows will skyrocket along with their budgets.  Never before were we at such an opportunity for a Media Revolution.

The future of television?  I think it will have to change or die.  In the next ten years, the current model of television will be gone or at least severely crippled.  We are already seeing this in the structure of a season for many shows.  Viewable media will have changed into something we can’t exactly know, but I do know that it will involve the Internet and be at least somewhat interactive.  The ability to download and watch a show whenever you want.  Sounds a lot like a DVR, I know, but an Internet-based model will not restrict you to time slots.  The show will be sitting there, waiting for you to decide to watch it.

Some of you may be saying, “But I hate watching stuff on my computer monitor.”  I say back to you that you will be watching your content on a television.  Soon, there will be a blurring of monitor and television into the same entity.  You will sit down on your couch, check your email and watch a couple of your favorite shows.  Some of us do this already, but I will admit, the current system is… annoying.  The traditional keyboard/mouse system will have to change into something smaller, compact, capable of controlling several devices at once, and is easy to type and navigate on a computer interface.  Perhaps something like a haptic touch screen universal remote combined with the pointer capability of the Wii Remote.  Something you point at the screen to point and click, but also type on when necessary.

Regardless, the current broadcasting model will change.  I believe that instead of broadcasting shows, we will be receive Internet access.  Maybe not from the broadcasters, but wireless nonetheless.  Gone will be the days of tethered Internet.  Take your notebook or cellphone anywhere and access the web just as if you were at home.  Your computer attached to your TV will use that same wireless connection.  This way, the sets of eyes on your content isn’t restricted to the home, those eyes can be anywhere.  Able to reach anyone, anywhere, whenever they want.  Having access to all eyes all the time is a broadcaster’s dream.

Once we break down the current broadcasting model and broadcasters stop looking at the Internet as a rival, but rather a resource for distribution, we may see a Media Revolution that will take the bubble off Web 2.0 and move us past into waters unknown.

Are we mired in the current broadcast model forever, will there be a change, or will something completely different happen?