Passport photo (Taken with instagram)
Jai Who?
A recent piece of work here.
I’ve also got www.jaiwho.com up and running. Just over a month before I go to Cambodia I’m going to be going around for 11 days in a tuk tuk which should be an awesome event! After that we shall see! I’m quite interested in getting a another AV show out of the trip, I just need to figure out what I want to base it on! At the moment I’d quite like to retell an old Buddhist story I think Grabbing imagery from all round Cambodia to tell it but… we shall see!
I watched this amazing doc called ‘I believe I can fly’ (here’s the trailer https://vimeo.com/31240369 ) you can watch the whole thing on youtube. It’s about base jumping and just some of the stuff these guys do …. Crazy! but I would love to one day do it.
Shorts this week so we’ll see how that goes!
oh and the game of thrones books by George.R.R.Martin are bloody good!
A missed happy birthday.
two days ago would have been my dad’s 62nd birthday. He never celebrated his birthday much, he used to say how it was just another day, though he had no objections for someone buying a delicious cake the same day every year.
My family and birthdays are a bit unusual I think. From as young as i can remember I’ve been told ‘happy birthday’ for 3 days. My birthday and then the two following days. I guess it’s now just a bit of a tradition that birthdays last three days now.
Last year I was in bristol when my Dad had his birthday and I forgot to text him or ring him. I missed the first, second and third day. Worst yet I only remembered when I next came down to london a week or two later after a hint from my dad. Even then I said something stupid like ‘oh it was your birthday last week! happy birthday!’ I’ve never been very good at remembering birthdays, If it wasn’t for facebook I’d probably never even say happy birthday to the majority of the people I know.
A birthday is just another day, if it’s an excuse to have a party brilliant but I’ll have a party for waking up in the morning all the same. It’s funny the things you dwell on when you don’t have a chance to make amends. I don’t really regret forgetting his birthday, I regret missing the chance to wish a great and wonderful man a good day and ask about his cake.
I would like to say a proper happy birthday to him.
Happy Birthday Damian.
I’m going to have a slice of cake.
“ Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. ”
He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven - William B Yeats
“ In a room sit three great men, a king, a priest, and a rich man with his gold.
Between them stands a sellsword, a little man of common birth and no great mind.
Each of the great ones bids him slay the other two.
‘Do it,’ says the king, ‘for I am your lawful ruler.’
‘Do it,’ says the priest, ‘for I command you in the names of the gods.’
‘Do it,’ says the rich man, ‘and all this gold shall be yours.’
So tell me- who lives and who dies? ”
A Clash Of Kings - George R.R Martin
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
New years for as long as i can remember has been a great anti climax.
Between…
Standing out in the cold
Standing around very drunk people
and standing alone because the friends that said would come to the party you are at, lied (Mentiroso/a!)
New years parties/days have never been very memorable, however!
This year I decided 5 or 6 hours before midnight that it was going to be different! That I was going to make a podcast with my brother and friend Darren. And this audio recording is what happen an hour leading up to midnight. Unfortunately the battery ran out after 6 minutes so… so it would appear my attempts were foiled but hey…
There’s always next year!
Love this photographers work… I feel like i’ve seen it before (or something very similar to it) but… still makes me smile when i look at it!
check more of it out!
http://irinawerning.com/bttf2/back-to-the-future-2-2011/
Something cool one of my friends posted up a little while ago
Imagine if this is how they taught science in schools.
This week
I have an amazing conversation with this man who ‘hated film’ at Annie’s going away goodbye. I don’t think he really hated film as he said he saw one film a dozen or so times (doesn’t sound like the actions of a film hater to me!) But he had a very interested perspective. His view was that film tries to be real, It tries to mimic reality but, ultimately fails for we as a viewer are always removed from the experience. He turned my interest in creating more ‘immersive’ pieces of work (for example using base speakers to shake people during my Run For Cover Installation) as trying to create something more ‘real’ something that would stay with the audience member, as if they had been part of the story. I’m not sure If I completely agree with him but he definitely has an interesting point of view, surely creating a story that your audience doesn’t just view but feels they were part of. It’s an interesting goal to try and achieve I think.
So… This week I’ve been working for a company called BlinkTv and have been helping organize and grabbing footage for a concert for a man call Vangelis or as he likes to be called… The Maestro, for a big concert out in Doha. He’s done sound tracks for Blade Runner, chariots of fire etc. so he’s pretty big in the game. The screen they are projecting onto is 90m by 35m (just had an e-mail and apparently they just made the screen bigger then that) … now that’s BIG. they wanted basically the visuals that are in Tree of Life but… that’s pretty cool for a concert of pretty epic music. Probably my first sole ‘production’ roll, but I think I did ok, but I guess we’ll see by if I get called back!!!
Last weekend I was in Italy visiting the Italian Man, Mr Andre Chekka V1 with Darren and my bro. Italy was pretty sick! We went time lapsing down San Marino where Andre studies. San Marino is on this massive hill/mountain which overlooks Italy really… It’s a wicked place for a time lapse and although our shot compositions were good unfortunately my timelapse remote ran out of battery and me clicking down on the button ended up shaking the camera equaling a rather shitty time lapse :| but I got some other pretty interesting stuff shooting out of Andre’s car window which will hopefully be pretty sweet once I start editing that together.
In Italy we ate like kings thanks to Andre’s mum, we had some damn good pizza and ice-cream too (the rumours of their deliciousness in Italy are true!). Defo need to move to continental Europe soon, food’s much better… and it seems to be actually sunny. Who woulda guest eh ? and I need to learn a new language…
This week I’ve been down Dalston doing some editing for a guy called Jude who used to be part of the Light Surgeons. It’s gone pretty well so far! Just waiting on this dang thing to color files to render… Hopefully my future life will consist of super computers and less of twiddling my thumbs while my computer renders.
At least it gives me time to come up with genius plans like an ice cream cloud (that’s right… it’s exactly how it sounds).
oh and just cus this is H-i-l-a-rious….
http://textsfrombennett.tumblr.com/
You’re Pretty Posh Aren’t You?
Brother’s Work College: You’re pretty posh aren’t you?
Brother: … Ok
Brother’s Work College: Yeah. Yeah you are. You know how I can tell? Because you think before you speak.
Brother: ….
How Not To Get Ill
Friend: I go jogging 3 times a week you know? Just to get my heart beating fast. I run about 5km, what’s that in miles?
Me: About 3
Friend: Yeah about 3 miles. But I never get ill! You should do that. Go running, gym, some type of excise that gets your heart beating fast. I only get ill… maybe once a year?
Me: Yeah… well I know what you mean. When I’m playing Call Of Duty online and I’m the last guy on the team but there are still 3 enemies left my heart starts beating like crazy! …. It’s pretty intense.
Friend: …
Sooo! This is one of the projects that I have been working on recently. We were asked to create a short film celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Tobacco Factory Cafe and this is what me and one of my friends katie put together!
Can’t say it’s my best piece of work but it seems to of come out ok (with the exception of maybe that rather awful wildtrack (sorry sound people) , and really I wish I did something more with this (for example hook up QR tags around the Cafe and link them to videos/ part of the story/video. Try to create a kinda game with it. Maybe next time!
This was the first project that I edited with Final Cut Pro X which let me state right now was not anything like this…
http://youtu.be/LxKYuF9pENQ
but is more like this…
http://nofilmschool.com/2011/10/walter-murch-final-cut-pro-x-i-cant/
is it powerful? Hell yes!
Have a look at your activity monitor when it’s up. Or when you are rendering something! definitely seems faster rendering to me! Big 5k animations are dealt with much better then FCP7
Does it edit in native h.264?yes!
No more having to convert to pro res before editing HDSLR footage! well… kinda. My computer (mac pro, 2.66 GHz i7, 8gb ram) started having some laggy issues after i started putting more then 3/4 min in the timeline. So if I was editing anything longer I definitely convert everything to pro res unless you have some stupidly powerful computer.
Did it save me time? maybe… but probably not.
ok so it took me a little time to get use to the new layout but did it save me time or do I think it would save me time in the future? well no… not really. If it’s something with a super fast deadline that’s under 3 min yes… it’ll save you time otherwise I’d probably convert everything to pro res in the night and you wont really be saving time. I found using the software REALLY laggy using h.264 clips at times, giving really bad response times when dragging from your viewer making it almost impossible to lay down the clip where you want it first time round. it doesn’t do this every time but at least half I would say. Apple were right, we don’t need the viewer window but why take away the different number of timelines? this makes it bloody annoying to edit audio and video when you are messing around trying to get a feel for what will work!
would I use it again? yes
But not on a major project unless it needs to be done ASAP and under 3 minutes
Overall?
Some things are better, I like the new design for the timeline, At first the magnetic timeline annoyed me but… after a bit of use I love it! I find the lack of advanced controls annoying (unlike many who say it’s too simple to use… I love the fact that it’s simple to use! just allow me to do more specific shizz as well!) They have made a more fluid editing software where editing is easier but have removed a perfectionist preciseness from it and I believe that is it’s downfall compared to final cut 7.
oh and it crashes a lot! really annoying that
Apple are doing a free 30 day trial, and they have the new software update coming early 2012. So when they update it… give it a go, do a little project on it. Hopefully they’ve fixed some of the bugs by then!
check this out before though… It’s an interesting video showing some of the upsides of what final cut X can do…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwF9J1_aYzI
I’m going to post up my 15 day man diary (or as my brother likes to call it… a manary) of my adventures in cuba that I went to last year, some interesting stories in there, maybe some worth using somewhere along the line.
but for now, ADIOS!
