a corporate flash site that does not suck

confessions of a pixel pusher internet marketing media

ILM’s Pirates 2 show and tell

Usually VFX companies have a hard time telling the world about their work. Either they keep their ‘secrets close to their chest’ or they simply lack the skills to communicate well. Lately a certain diss-interest of the public can be added to the list: The fact that something is not real in a movie is not worth mentioning anymore. The bar is much, much higher now. And -of course- ILM in Pirates2 reached it big time with Davy Jones. Their site about the fx is surprisingly good, informative and fun.

While looking at the blogs that link to the ILM page I found this 80’s TV piece

at Visual FX blog.
I had no idea that Lasseter / Disney did try to make “Where the wild things are”.

who? me?

media

linkbait

so true, just had not heard the term before. ‘linkbait’.

DI workflow for the departet

confessions of a pixel pusher technology

The ASC has an interesting article about the DI workflow used on “The departed”. It is interesting, yet not surprising, that Michael Ballhaus watches HD dailies and is happy with them. Only a few short years ago it seemed a sacrileg to abandon film dailies.
Interestingly there has not been any technological breakthrough since then. HD is still 1920×1080. But people probably know now better how to do these things, and creatives are more comfortable with a digital aspect, since their final product will be created digitally anyway in the DI suite.

As for the rest of the “Departed” workflow it might have made sense at the time to procede as described at each step. But after a cursory read I am left with the feeling that the movie bounceds in and out of lots of formats in the process. I have not seen it, but it looked good from what I heard. Ballhaus’ movies usually do.

what’s michel doing?

confessions of a pixel pusher

linux screen command

misc

An addition to this blog post

Of course I had forgotten the semantics in the meantime, and google did not point me to my own blog. So with this entry I hope it will. Since one thing is for sure: I will need the screen command again, and it will also have forgotten how to use it.

In order to share one terminal session by two people on the same machine personA runs:

screen -S someName

the second person should be able to share the session by running:


screen -x someName

flash video sucks

confessions of a pixel pusher internet media

yeah, yeah,

youtube. Everybody talked about all that money g paid for it.
Next one on the list of things to mention is the ample amount of content.
And then -of course- people mumble about DRM. Lawsuits. All that stuff journalists like to write about.

But, did anybody ever look at it???

It looks like shit – curtesy Flash video. 95% install base made this format an instant winner.
And it still looks like shit. When MTV appeared it at least had the same TV quality than the rest.
The sad part is, that it seems to be good enough. People don’t seem to mind.

motion blur

misc

two divided by two plus one plus allot still makes zero

confessions of a pixel pusher media

Once about a time Amanda and Andrew (2) made rocketboom. And it was alright. Had a couple of ideas, was fresh, delivered in iTunes daily. Overall it was worth watching. Then they broke up (divided by two). Andrew got a new leading lady (+1). I never started watching again (=0). She tried to much to be like the old rocketboom AND try to find her own style in the same time. Amanda went to LA. She signed with a talent agency. And now ABC picked her up (+allot):
ABC’s “page” for Amanda Congdon

Just watched the first installment. It it dull, boring. No content. Nothing of interest. More visual treatment but nothing that mattered or that was original. She still does the signature swing into the camera thing. But not even those worked. Timing is indeed crucial.
Perceived production value on the original rocketboom was definitely higher than it is now. Which is ridicolous, since ABC probably spends between five hundred and thousand times more per second than the original did.

Another sad part of the new presentation is the whole “breast in your face” action. No, it is not me. I have watched her for hours, daily on Rocketboom. Yes, she never was ugly. But it was a good mix, with her looks not trying to center stage. Which is almost always horrible boring. It seems ABC never understood her or the whole concept. They tried, and failed dismally. It could easily be that ABC will loose around hundret US$ per viewer per episode on the web. Nobody would care to watch this.

I hope that ‘zefrank’ is really only one guy. So he can not split up, and leave us with no decent content left in the those video feeds.

broken things

Apple technology

The screen goes dark on an iBook G3 that my wife used to use. Turns out that this is a very common problem with iBooks G3 machines. Google does do a good job in showing related results. But imagine it could do a better job! How if computer makers would give their models google-able individual ‘names’. Those could be anything, as long their use is easy and encouraged by their nature. Bugs could be tracked. There could be a whole new industry around this: I rather write some new code then to battle 50 tiny screws on that iBook. But somebody else might have fixed a few of those iBooks already. Putting a bigger harddrive in while the machine is open. It’s old, but still a very neat machine. Who cares about the Mhz? The white iBook is a great little computer. One worth fixing. One capable ‘enough’.

camera contrast range

confessions of a pixel pusher

A very interesting overview of the different response curves for the Arri D20, Thompson Viper, RED and some other cameras.