LEE & GRANT

I was the Visual Effects Producer of this Special Documentary.
Check it out if you can. Premieres May 31st at 9:00 PM on The History Channel

FINAL CUT X NAB PREVIEW

After months of rumors, Final Cut X was announced today at NAB.
Taking the feed from somewhere, I respond...

FINAL CUT PRO X -- people say the new interface looks more like imovie. I think it's starting to look a bit like Avid Media Composer.





1. Crowd is unruly!
Of course, it's an Apple product. Zombies get unruly very easily.

2. Final Cut X is a full rebuild from scratch
Good!

3. 64 bit – Crowd: “finally!” “thank you!”
AMEN. About friggin time. Adobe products have been for more than a year.

4. Cocoa, Core Animation, Open CL, Grand Central Dispatch support
Okay.

5. The Focus was on image quality
Um, yeah, I guess it kinda should be -- considering it's an EDITING PROGAM!

6. Fully color managed
see above

7. Resolution independent playback/timeline all the way up to 4K
Nice, but I don't really work that way and neither does any pro.

8. Features people detection, single or in groups
Gimmick.

9. Non-destructive auto color balance
Yeah, I guess everyone is doing crappy TV these days that has to be churned out fast.

10. Automatic audio cleanup (option to auto noise reduce audio, more)
See above.

11. Features “smart collections”: a lot like the smart folders found in OS X
I have an Assistant Editor. I'm sure he will get a laugh out of that.

12. Editing can start immediately during importing of AVCHD and other media, switches silently to local media as it ingests
I'll believe it when I see it. Again, my AE will have things to say about that.

13. Uses every available cpu cycle to keep things rendered. Also highly scalable.
So I can't update FB while I work???

14. Will even work on a Macbook
yeah. whatever.

15 No interruption for rendering. No transcoding, EVERYTHING native. (incl DSLR footage–assume this means AVC)
So, things will render in shitty quality AND good quality in the same timeline? YAY

16. Presentation received a standing ovation!
Of course it did. See #1.

STUCK WITH HACKETT

Stuck With Hackett Premieres tonight on the Science Channel.
Check it out... It's a fun show. I know, I edited it!

The smartphone

Yes, 1 in 4 or you -- or some inordinate percentage, already have iphones and blackberries and androids -- but until two weeks ago, I was stubbornly holding onto my old dumb txt-ready-but-not -much-more-than-that cellphone.
Upgrade - to a super duper fancy dancy smartphone; a MYTOUCH 4G to be exact. Never one to fall into the Apple camp readily, I didn't actually forgo the Iphone so much as say NO FRIGGIN WAY to another ATT contract. Been there, done that, made a vow never to go back.

So, Android-phone, you are my new techno-lust, my newest obsession. You are so sexy.

So, iphone store has about 200,000 aps, the android store has about 100,000 aps. In looking through the countless lists of top ten must have apps for this or that, I see basically the same 20 or so apps. Is it so? Is it really like cable television (with an exponential number added) Are there really so few good, download-worthy apps for either system.

Huh.

Let me know. tell me what you have on your phone.

I was on Jeopardy

Last night, on Jeopardy, the 1600.00 question in double Jeopardy, under a Movies section was --

Pretty cool. I was, well a movie I made, was a question... wow.

Still feeling giddy, but as I was falling asleep, I did ponder a few goofy things.
1. I was happy that the contestant was able to quickly answer the question correctly.
2. I was impressed that he did so as I do think it's a bit obscure.
3. My next goal is to somehow be another question on Jeopardy, but - a cheap question. I'm aiming for 100 dollars. That means that I'd be sufficiently in the pop culture as to be expected to be an easy answer. Yeah, that's the goal. Now, how to to accomplish that without doing evil???

The Bit Rate Calculator is all wrong!

Facebook has killed the blog. That's kinda true, isn't it? There was a time when I would spin a ten word thesis thought into an essay. Admittedly, some were better than others - and that was the overall life of a blog. Facebook as killed that. The ten word thesis is nothing more. "Today I am blue" "Shouldn't have had that last Chili Dog" "Earthquake".

argh.

So, here's an attempt at a blog entry again. The fact that the microsoft word plugin that worked well with google blogs doesn’t work anymore, doesn’t make this easier; I’m typing in the clouds now, hoping that this will work. Life is a continual experiment.

I’m working on two new projects, both similar to each other. Action/coming of age movies. One is being fast-tracked. If we can get it all together, we could be shooting in the fall. In Europe. More realistically, it will be in the springtime. No matter, it’s very cool and exciting. More to follow. Hopefully.

To my left, the machine that was rendering a nine part DVD series for three months now renders another DVD project. For some reason, this supposedly simple output, something that should have taken no longer than a few hours, has taken three days thus far. Don’t know what it is, but the computer is getting a lot of predictions wrong. With DVD authoring, predicting final size of files is of utmost importance. You want to play as close to a zero-sum game as possible. You want the disc full, but of course it can’t go over. Normally, the calculators and bit-rate predictors are accurate to within a few “K”. For some reason, I’ve been off wildly on this one - hundreds of MB, signifying - failure. Argh, Frustration. Hair pulling - virtual.

I need to wrap this one soon as I have another job coming down the pike. Gonna be running a Sumo Wrestler over with a Smart Car. Gotta get prepped and in gear.

Fun times ahead.

working and rendering

To the left of me, my Mac-Hac-Pro is rendering away at a major show -- 18 hours that will span 9 DVDs. It has occupied my time non-stop for the last two months. At last, I see light and it is with great delight that the computers are doing their jobs without complaint.

I am allowing myself a bit of time to blog (all too rare these days) and return to a story which I've been working on. In scraping up childhood memories to exploit for this current screenplay, I am recalling a favorite childhood book, The Magnificent Inventions of Alvin Fernald. Anybody here remember it? If you have kids, a boy around 8 years old, this is a good one to have him read. I don't think it matters how long ago it was written, I believe it would still be very entertaining.

Back to work...

Avalos, Eisenson to intervene in WGA case

Avalos, Eisenson to intervene in WGA case

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Italian Musings

Entries into this blog have been sadly absent this year. As I’ve
written before, it means that I’m busy in life.
Should I make a New Year commitment?

Is that a cliché? Is it destined to fail?

Likely, yes on both accounts. Instead, I’ll try to do some short entries. Perhaps that is better for all – those who might read and myself. I do admit that Facebook as taken a bit of the thunder out of these writings. When it is possible to jot a one or two sentence thought of your immediate feelings, it quells the necessity to ponder the last several days or week and write a tome.

Thus – today’s entry, essentially verbatim from a post to a violin makers forum about a recent trip I took to Italy. I will try to do these short paragraphs more often. Expect more from this recent journey, as well as video.


I'm back from Italy; a fantastic trip in every regard and Cremona was a real joy.

At the museum, seeing the molds, knives, clamps, etc. of Tony himself was quite awing. We also went to the town hall, where my girlfriend was quite struck by the Amati built for King Charles the 9th. We heard Andrea Mosconi (the conservator) play the Strad Ex-Bavarian there. It's on loan to them at the moment. I wish he'd have let me play it, as I would have given it a bit more of a work out. :)
In terms of playing, though time was a bit limited, I had a chance to play several violins in a few different shops. Overall, many of the shops weren't really 'open' to the public, but the luthiers I did manage to talk to were quite friendly. I played a few 'used' violins -- a 1690 C.G. Testore, for example (for the price -- eh).

Of the new violins, I noticed quite a range in quality. What I took away from the trip was the, i guess obvious, "Luthier located in Cremona" is not synonymous with "great". I realized fully that Cremona is to many Luthiers what Los Angeles is to actors. You're going to get a wide range of capability.

However, not to be mistaken -- I did also play some very concert worthy fiddles. I was most impressed by one that was made by Andrea Castellani. To the point where I asked him the price; a surprisingly low 6000 EU. It did get me thinking. In the excitement of playing violin after violin at his shop, I didn't ask him what bow I was using, which I regret. In hindsight, it was the best bow I've ever had my hands on. Hopefully an email to him will have him remembering (and hopefully it wasn't a Tourte or something. I'd really feel like an ass.)

Anyway, a great experience. I suggest everyone do it once in their life, at least.

Time to make a movie

The updates on this blog have been getting spottier than ever. That's obvious. Time is being fragmented by so many things that it becomes difficult to maintain a routine. With this blog, I make attempts to write more than just brief, unimportant updates as to what I'm doing; Facebook or Twitter, etc. are fine for that. One quick aside about that phenomenon -- why is it essentially the same people that are completely paranoid about the government tapping phones and email are also the same people that update their 'twitbook' every ten minutes? For being concerned with privacy issues, we have very happily put it all out there, haven't we? Hey, I'm obviously one of 'them'. Aside complete.

I have started thinking about the next movie. The past few years have been a series of ups and downs in terms of trying to get another feature off the ground. Like so many other people in this town, I have my stories of, "it almost happened but the deal fell apart." Unlike many in this town, that won't do for me. I have always been rather self sufficient and – as that is a strong suit – I shall, necessarily, put that self sufficiency back to work. I have begun to seriously entertain some revamped ideas about 'the next movie'.

And I do have a seriously cool idea buzzing around. The buzzing goes a little bit like this…

1. It will no be dissimilar from, The Last Broadcast.
   
2. It will be absolutely up to date with every aspect of technology and information dissemination as it exists today.
   
3. The future audience of it will be involved as it is being produced; they will be a recursive element in the movie.
   
4. It will work online as well as on the big screen; in fact, it will actually originate partially online, before actually becoming a story element.
   
5. It will be an extreme action movie.
   

In accordance with the self-recursive premise of the movie, for the moment I am going to try a full-disclosure idea on what is happening.

Now, that I've laid it out there, I have to make it happen. I've dared myself.

You dare me too.