iafilm = Independent Alternative Film

Tutorial - video double-system with cellphone audio

2012-01-17T18:22:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tst7YnQWLqQ

Long have I needed a portable voice recording gadget with good quality for indie film-making. People I know now own cellphones which do this well. I borrow and film this test. Works well - methinks they have a future of frequently lending their cellphones to the film-making cause. More notes on the Youtube page.

Test Scene on Amazon Studios

2011-08-04T03:57:00.000-07:00

Some action from us on Amazon Studios.
We have posted our test scene for "The Hour of Temptation" by Ben Ramsey.

http://studios.amazon.com/movies/8758

Test Scene (3 minutes) of Jordan kidnaps Abbey. This is also a test of "compositing" human actors + green screen with computer artwork.

At first I thought some of this script veered into comedy, especially the Dwight Dyer character. I started writing a comedy revision a little like "Naked Gun" or "Flying High" (aka "Airplane"). On filming this I see it differently. I am now thinking that what Abbey or anyone would be experiencing in a threatening situation like this is better played straight.

V48 Hours 2011

2011-06-19T03:49:00.000-07:00

We participated in the V48 Hours Furious Film-making competition in Auckland NZ as "Team MITCIT" for our 7th year. We drew "Quest" - see our movie "Laputa here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2KYRA38iho

We were 1 minute late so we were out of the main competition but still eligible for some category and special awards - and we won a special award. See us in the awards list at:
http://www.v48hours.co.nz/forum/topic/460/

Amazon Studios - some needles appear in the haystack

2011-03-12T13:13:00.000-08:00

Amazon Studios has announced their Feb script competition semi-finalists.
http://studios.amazon.com/contests/5
Semi-finalist lists are down the right-hand side.

IMHO good news to see more scripts engaging with social issues. Up until now Amazon Studios seems to have been dominated by entertaining escapism avoiding all challenging thoughts about the issues of our time. Now based mainly on loglines but with some script reading I count 11 out of 50 with some social issues merit:
The Argentine Job, E-Town, Exiled, Gimme Shelter, Heartland, Malabo, The Narcissist, The Nevsky Prospect, Survival, Tijuana, Zombie Robots.

If you register there as a site member then you can read the scripts.

HOWTO take a million digital still photos

2011-01-13T13:59:00.000-08:00

IN BRIEF
I have 3 reasons for creating videos as big sequences of still photos. My current camera does a good job but it is slow and I want to replace it. DSLRs and EVILs appeal but there are shutter life issues that are very difficult to get information on - after a lot of digging I have decided they cannot deliver. Webcams have been improving so I plan to go for modifying webcams to meet my main need of film digitisation.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
IN DETAIL
3 reasons why I want to take a million photos per year.

1. (Main) is digitising film to video by individually photographing every frame.
Ref: "What's up with Film Digitisation?"
My test result then was - to copy Super-8 film frames at near full quality needs a sensor of at least 1280x960 pixels.

2. Physical object animation aka "claymation"
Ref: "Dancing with the Pollies"

3. Time Lapse

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Current solution - Panasonic MX500 Video Camera used as a stills camera.

This has a non-interchangable zoom lens which takes well to adding other camera lenses as close-up lenses because of the very small sensor size. The sensor is a 3CCD unit which gives a better resolution than the size would suggest. Panasonic claim a relatively high 2.3 Megapixel stills performance compared to the 0.3 Megapixels for video by half-pixel-offsetting of the 3 CCDs. I was sceptical of this but my tests with line resolution charts indicate that the offset does work.
This Panny delivers excellent results but it needs 10sec between still shots which means 10 hours to digitise 1 x small roll of Super-8 film.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Investigating possible improvements:

DSLRs and EVILs? No because they have a mechanical shutter.

My investigation began with the Canon EOS DSLRs including hiring one for a few days to try it out. Excellent cameras in many ways but not for this particular job. Even in electronic "live view" mode a mechanical shutter gets in on the act to take a still photo. Further investigation reveals that other cameras including mirrorless ones also have a mechanical shutter - eg Panasonic Micro Four-Thirds.

Aiptek GVS? No because sensor/lens geometry is too big

My favourite budget cam, the Aiptek GVS, comes close. GVS comes with a charger that doubles as a long-run power supply. It has remote control. But the physics of a zoom lens limited to 5x with a relatively large sensor makes it more difficult to get the ultra close up shots of Super-8 frames. Maybe a goer if I could obtain a stills camera lens of 28mm focal length and aperture f/1.8 or better to use as a close-up lens but that includes the negative factor of adding extra glass to the mix.

High Definition Webcam? Looking promising!

My next experiment is to buy a high definition webcam and modify it. If I can remove the lens then I could substitute a single prime lens from a 16mm camera. I have bought this:
http://www.chinavasion.com/webcams/pc-webcam-1/
It has recently arrived and on early testing is looking promising. Its own lens simply removes by unscrewing giving good flexible scope to use it with other lenses. The sensor on my testing gives results true to its claims of 1600 x 1200 pixels which is a good size for what I want to do.

Amazon Studios - shaking up the indie universe?

2010-12-13T00:43:00.000-08:00

http://studios.amazon.com
Script-writing and film-making competitions giving indies a chance to get to a big audience.
Prizes of $20000 to $1million. Entry fee of zero. Plans to produce the best of the entries as commercial productions in association with Warner Brothers. So far so good.
Then comes the unusual rules especially with regard to copyright and ownership. Amazon Studios is an experiment in online collaborative creation for its community. When you enter a script anyone can download it and read it. There's more! Anyone can revise it and post their revision into the competition, although it does present as a child of your project webpage, and if they win anything then the judges share it with you depending on how much revision happened. Scripts become openly available for anyone to film them as a test movie and enter that in the test movie part of the competition. This is making Amazon Studios controversial on writers blogs and forums - eg this article and its reader comments:

IMHO Amazon Studios is an exciting initiative well worth our time and attention, but I agree with the "ScriptMag" columnist (link above) that any writer should approach this with all-new projects created especially for the Amazon Studios purpose. If you take your pet idea and throw it into Amazon Studios, and it does not rate, then the Amazon usage rights you have agreed to may be a barrier to some future opportunities for it.

At present, Amazon Studios seems to be flooded with about 1300 scripts and almost no "test movies". It looks to me as if most of the projects are from writers having another go with scripts that have been getting nowhere for years in other competitions. An indie group big enough to get a public voting momentum started could do well - yes - (sigh) - there is also a public voting element to this.

Here is a good Amazon Studios discussion on test movies. I esp. like the contributions of "Mark Vetanen".
http://studios.amazon.com/discussions/Tx39IRB22LO6M36

Another distinctive element is that Amazon Studios is about feature-length movies. Filming test-scenes of only part of a script is allowed and they will be published but they cannot win prizes. I have been in there making comments about this on the forums and as feedback to the organisers - well I'm just that kinda guy really .... eg:

Amazon Studios needs to welcome, encourage and give prizes for test scenes ie test movies of part of a script! OK smaller prizes for test scenes but prizes and as fully recognised contributions. A long form "test" movie is still a big project for your target emerging film-making membership - too big. So far in the flood of entries I can not find any example of a new test movie as a contribution in the true spirit of the experiment happening here which is evidence that you need to make the test movie side smaller and simpler to "get the ball rolling" on that side of collaborative development.

HOWTO compete? I suggest 2 approaches:

Approach #1. Search for an existing script there that motivates you. Make the test film of that. My problem is that so far I have not found a great script to motivate me. My closest candidate so far is "The Lightshockers" (use the search) - but for me it is too much like "Inception" and needs to either separate itself more or come closer while ramping up its political-satirical themes. I like the central idea/character: a brain surgeon goes spy action hero against the government intelligence agency which is abusing its powers by running bad bad bad experiments on her patients ...

Approach #2. Impro! ie the "Theatresports" and "Whose Line is it Anyway" improvisational acting approach. Start a project with an improvised test movie - then write it up as a draft script and develop it through follow-up sessions of scripted filming and more impro sessions. Your "Project" can then have both script and test movie competition entries developing together.

Animation cookbook - just add a pinch of life?

2010-12-10T23:44:00.000-08:00

Interesting discussion on the DAZ forums about how "life-like" should our animation be?
http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=152737

Related to this, I have been doing more experiments with the MOCAP database from Carnegie Mellon Uni. Details, including example video clips and downloads of CMU MOCAPs configured to be Carrara-friendly, at:
iafilm.co.nz - current projects

Harry Potter gets real

2010-12-04T20:40:00.000-08:00

Saw "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" Part 1 yesterday. Not my usual indie movie but family life gets me to these mainstream biggies. I was impressed at the history education and social justice themes in it. It looked to me like the story of the coming to power of Adolf Hitler retold as an allegory with a popular set of fantasy characters. The Adolf Hitler character is "Voltemort": power-hungry and irrationally racist. The movie starts with him taking effective control of the government of the magically talented people of Britain who live in a kind of semi-parallel dimension. Excellent depiction of the totalitarian screws going on for this population including an allegory of the persecution of the Jews. The title character "Harry Potter" operates like a kind of French Resistance leader. These themes have been in the series all along but bizarrely mixed with a child entertainment aim. This movie is much more focussed on its Hitler allegory theme and IMO is much better for it.

And there's more. This Kafkaesque movie references Orson Welle's "The Trial" (1962). This starts with the bleaching of colour and use of grey sets to get a monochrome look to restaging Welle's famous typing pool scene. Ref "The Trial" trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_7weUR0oMY

Facebook - not quite ruling the web

2010-11-19T13:34:00.000-08:00

I see Facebook is getting a lot of news commentary stimulated by the release of the movie "The Social Network". I have not seen the movie - so this is only a comment about the comments. Facebook may dominate some of the web space but as far as I can tell it is not successful in techie networking - that is sharing information in a productive way, as an expert conversation or even as a geek specialist interest fun thing. As far as on line film-making discussions go, the specialist website forums seem to be holding their own. Notable examples on my radar include www.creativecow.com, www.48hours.co.nz, www.daz3d.com. In the case of 48 hours, the organisers' efforts to move discussions to Facebook appear to have failed with the community sticking to its trad forum.

In the web developer part of my life, I am interested in the functions for linking to Facebook. There is some positive potential there of usefully connecting scattered information but I intend to evaluate keeping some healthy skepticism in place over information control and privacy issues.

Aiptek Action HD GVS camcorder first impressions

2010-02-23T02:29:00.000-08:00

This looks promising as a low cost camcorder useful for teaching and learning media. Not available in New Zealand so bought 2nd-hand off ebay. Arrived in the post today. Later (12 Mar) found out how to check firmware - identified as version 2302 made in Jan 2009.
Very good first impression. Seems to do a good job of what we want for our teaching with 3 important features in a low-price package: AF-lock, Ext Mic input and Remote Control.
Our students do some animation exercises with modelling clay and other physical objects. The Remote Control, close-focussing ability and AF-lock are good value for this. The Aiptek is also a stills camera taking 5 megapixel stills, but a surprise discovery is that a stills 'burst' mode can be changed to a single still mode - and this delivers 16:9 format 1280x720 stills which is an ideal size for ease of animation editing on modest computers. Switch off "Continuous Shot" in the menu then animate with the "OK" button on the remote rather than the "Still Photo" button.

Other reviewers criticise "flimsy" construction - on handling the camera it seems robust enough and looks to be of a similar construction standard to its competitors.

Other reviewers comment on over-sensitive microphone recording giving distortion with loud subjects. My first tests were with recording lectures and presentations and the results were good. But on filming an enthusiastic group of children singing loudly I discovered that problem! It did not seem to be the dreaded "clipping" except in extreme cases - my guess is that an Automatic Level Control does exist but was leaving too much high frequency in. I got acceptable improved results by applying an equaliser with gain reduction over 3000 Hz. After updating the firmware from ver 2303 to ver 2901, audio performance seems to have improved with less serious distortion happening less often. Conclusion - I can live with this OK for entry-level educational use. I can do ambitious indie work with some care, eg adding in a home-made attenuator for loud subjects.
A low cost $8 "Genius" computer desktop mic for Skype etc gives excellent results apart from a little more background hiss than I would like.

Others criticise poor low light performance - seems good enough for what we need with good results in all classroom lighting and acceptable results in low-level household lighting even with the "NightShot" setting off. The specs claim that the lens maintains its f/3.2 aperture from wide through to full telephoto and my first tests seem to back this up. This is unusual in a good way because most low cost optical zoom lenses lose light-gathering power when you zoom in. F/3.2 is average for a wide angle setting but is remarkably good for a telephoto performance.

I found the back ports cover difficult to remove so I got out a craft knife and cut the tight plastic holding peg down smaller - that worked well and the cover now removes comfortably with a fingernail.

Aiptek will need some care in classroom handling - some eccentricities to watch when mounting on a tripod. The tripod hole is shallow so you may need some spacers - I cut some out of cardboard. You need to open the LCD door before you mount it on the tripod else the door gets stuck.

The Ambarella chip on which many budget camcorders are based seems to be a work of genius that performs extremely well. I feel sorry for the inventors that the resulting cameras seem to not quite fulfill their chip's potential for creative power. The Chinavasion A4402 tested earlier runs its chip fast giving excellent video quality but misses out on perfection by not having any alternative to an always-on autofocus. The Aiptek does give us more controls including the all-important focus-lock. So could I shoot a film festival indie movie on it or would I be confident using it in the 48 Hours competition? [Edit] At first my answer was "no, not quite good enough" but after the firmware update I am re-editing this article to say a marginal "yes". Indie - some limited possibilities. Education - looking very good. More to come as other teachers test it.

[EDIT 16 Mar 2010 - FOLLOW-UP] - I have discovered Aiptek's firmware update page and upgraded the camera's operation system from ver 2302 to ver 2901. The bitrate for the 2 top HD settings has gone up. Now reporting 720p60 increased from 6mbps to 8mbps. 1080p30 increase from 8mbps to 11.3 mbps. Audio quality seems to be better. Odd effect fixed - previously 720p60 had a better wide angle with the stabiliser on but narrower angle with the stabiliser off - reverse of what I would reasonably expect. They are consistent now.

[EDIT 25 Mar 2010]"Aiptek GVS Camera Test Song (Processed)" now on Youtube.

"The Lovely Bones" IMO Excellent

2010-01-23T01:03:00.000-08:00

I have just seen "The Lovely Bones" and IMO it was excellent and effective. I have not read the book therefore I experienced this as a self-contained movie and it made sense to me that way. The surreal afterlife scenes worked for me as an imaginative dreamscape with the storytelling purpose of reflecting events on Earth that relate to the main character. I walked in with lowered expectations because of the critics and I was surprised, completely engaged, and impressed by an outstanding movie. My track record continues of loving movies that get a hard time from the critics.

Nice opportunity - shame about the mash

2010-01-04T14:59:00.000-08:00

Last century on New Zealand television there was usually a comedy show that week by week would give us topical parody and satire of our national life and current events. Since 2000 this has been sadly reduced with with the flickering light kept alive only by the occasional series from the Gibson Group. 10 weeks in 2007 was the last appearance of "Facelift". Example at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nfv58CrSuEo

Gibson Group have announced a new show: "The Mash Pit"
www.mashpitcomedy.com
Nice that there is an open opportunity for the public to submit creative work to a TV show. I could be right into this - but it ain't gonna happen and the reason is the mash-up gimmick. I find it very difficult to get live acting performances that are uninhibited and outrageous enough to work effectively as comedy. My actors are getting very nervous about well-publicised internet identity safety issues and it is difficult enough to get them to agree to screening on Youtube. They will not like the possibility of having their most outrageous moments taken out of context for mashing and I am not going to risk my friendships and film-making networking by trying to push them into it.

I also have a problem with music library and other content licensing that will not extend to mash-ups.

Nice idea to encourage wider participation in making TV comedy but I wish Gibson would try playing it as a straightforward submission without gimmickry like the mashing. On looking at the website I get the impression that the mashups are few in number and ineffective so they are failing to deliver an attractive advantage to outweigh the participation barrier they create.

I also criticise the way that this format seems to give a time lag between production and public screening. This is a yet another barrier to parody of current events.

Hey Gibson Group, I am a fan of your past comedy work, but I think you are stumbling with this "Mash Pit". A final thought - if mashing is such a good idea, why aren't you supplying examples of your recent productions as fodder for the mashers?

The Vintner's Duck

2010-01-03T01:28:00.000-08:00

New parody on Youtube. A few weeks ago I heard a radio interview with Niki Caro about her latest movie "The Vintner's Luck" and it seemed to have parody potential. This led to us filming "The Vintner's Duck" on 26/27 Dec. It is now posted on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhzJyhrwlLs

Adaptations of books to film are often difficult to the point of controversy but this seems to have been an extreme case. See our Youtube notes for our parody-world take on this. Some sources for the issues around the real-world project:

"Author Cried over Vintner's Luck Film"

http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/3076674/Author-cried-over-Vintners-Luck-film

"Second Sight - Wrestling with the Angel"

http://secondstogo.blogspot.com/2009/11/wrestling-with-angel-niki-caro-and.html

Love Dance of the Parodyciums

2009-12-30T01:40:00.000-08:00

Our latest video on Youtube - Love Dance of the Parodyciums - is presented there as a wildlife mockumentary. It is really another test of the CVSEJ-A4402 low-budget hybrid camera. A common teaching need is the stop-motion exercise where students animate objects like modelling clay puppets by taking a series of still digital photos. We wanted to do that kind of test. On Dec 23 2009 I was at the beach and I saw 2 photogenic scraps of seaweed both about 2.5 cm long. No tripod available so I made a steady mount for the A4402 with a piece of wood I found placed on a ramp of sand that I made to get it to the right angle to point down at the hand-sized interesting collection of seaweed that made up my set. I then began the classic process of move the seaweed actors a few mm then take a photo repeated many times. My quick test turned into 405 photos taken over nearly 2 hours and I admit that I got sunburned which I am always careful to avoid and has not happened to me for many years. NZ is in the southern hemisphere so Dec is summer.

Distance from camera to work was about 20cm. Focus switched to "macro".
Colour balance manually set to Sunlight. Still image resolution set to the default native 5 Megapixels.

How does the A4402 perform in this situation? I do not get a clear answer from this movie because (con) I can see focus "hunting" variations but (pro) I also feel that this setup is a difficult one for a simple autofocus system to handle. It was only later that I realised that my "dressing the set" with interesting background seaweed was a bad idea because it gave a wide zone of objects to focus on in a closeup situation where the depth of field (zone) is small. The "star" seaweeds - er "Parodyciums" were on the near edge of this zone and they were mostly slightly out of focus. I hit them with the video editor "unsharp mask" filter to make them seem to look clearer. I also added contrast-lowering overlays to give the background areas less contrast and move viewer attention more on to the Parodyciums.

Re-ink re-visit good results

2009-12-15T15:52:00.000-08:00

Good results this week with re-inking of the colour cartridges of my Canon iP5200 printer. I have been using this printer for black-and-white work and I let the colour run out months ago. I expected that the old ink would have blocked the heads forever so it was a pleasant surprise to get colour printing working again. After the refill I needed to run cleaning 5 times before getting a reasonable test result. It has since got better with repeated use until now it is doing a useful job of printing photos. The "JET TEC" kit I bought had good instructions and a syringe. I have since discovered bulk ink suppliers online and I am trying some of that ink. This printer has 3rd party imitation cartridges and I discovered they had refilling holes with plastic plugs so refilling was remarkably easy. Important to cover the exit hole with tape and work on newspaper and wear latex gloves because these CLI-8 cartridges do leak a little on removing the exit hole tape after filling and replacing the plug.

I have also tried refilling another printer, Brother DC-110 with LC47 cartridges. That worked and is my easiest refill so far because the cartridge has a valve that closes on removal so preventing leaks.

I am also successful with 1 trial with an HP 56 black cartridge.

My earlier unsuccessful adventures many years ago were very messy with most of the ink going everywhere except inside the cartridge. This was with a Canon BC-02 cartridge which was a lot more difficult than this week's experiments.

Green screen chroma key - the Askar details

2009-12-09T03:31:00.000-08:00

Received this question in the Youtube comments for "Test Scenes for Askar"

i read that it wasn't possible to chroma key with HDV format. how you do this?

Difficult to give a long answer in the Youtube comments area - so here is the place.
The forums I was reading said it was possible but I borrowed cameras and did experiments because I do not take what I read as the final word. For this scene I borrowed a "real" greenscreen sheet that a local studio imports from China and sells for $100. Careful lighting of scene and sheet with film lights each side angling in so shadows do not hit the screen.

It helps to get the camera as far away from the green screen as possible then zoom in - you can then get the actors away from the screen. We did this in an ordinary classroom. Shot on Canon HV20. Editing was so easy - used the now unfortunately discontinued Ulead Mediastudio Pro 8 software. I selected the "bluescreen" preset then clicked on the green area with an eyedropper tool and hit 100% with the slider control. No masks, no separate tuning of various colour channels, really just one click on the default setting for dummies and instant gratification. I understand that most Video Editing software has this "bluescreen" setting but the screen does not need to be blue - green(this case) and red work just as well and there is an eyedropper control cursor to click on your screen colour to get the process started.

I think that to get "composite" shots to work, we need to get it together with hi-definition and pro greenscreen material and careful lighting.

We ran out of time for the main shoot and I needed to visit the "mystic" actor at her home and we did her closeups there. Same camera and greenscreen cloth but I could not borrow the film lights so I used halogen work lights as sold at $30 each by hardware stores - these go well as low-budget film lighting.

Askar published as ebook

2009-11-30T00:38:00.000-08:00

Author Bronwyn Calder has taken the ebook plunge with her novel "Askar" by publishing on "Smashwords".
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/6580

Big decisions on pricing and policies. Bronwyn has priced at USD 2.99 with a free preview of the first 25% of the work. She has chosen the path of an ebook free from DRM digital rights management in agreement with the Smashwords philosophy that it is best to enable readers to enjoy their books without complex restrictions which may create unfair situations, and that most readers can be trusted with the work.

CVSEJ-A4402 Low cost high definition Camera - first impressions

2009-11-21T03:04:00.000-08:00

I am checking out a CVSEJ-A4402 video camera - low cost currently USD$177.50
http://www.chinavasion.com/product_info.php/pName/1080p-hd-video-camera-highres-video-camcorder-up-to-60fps
Of interest because it is representative of advances in cameras emerging from the Chinese electronics industry. My first test was to point it at line resolution charts EIA1956 and ISO12233. Good results, 700-800 line pairs rating which well qualifies this as "High Definition". I am digging deeper to check out the potential for educational use. There is no manual focus or focus lock but the auto-focus seems to work as well as can be expected for a low-cost optical zoom lens. I am seeing it hunt once for focus then lock in until a major change of view happens. Focus hunting takes longer in dark conditions. I wish it had a mic input port. The LCD view matches well with the framing of the recorded video - IMHO better than most cams which tend to record more than they show to allow for traditional TV cropping. The testing continues.

Update - Test shot now posted on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPyzZNFyd88

Kindle - hey Amazon, share the love!

2009-11-19T02:07:00.000-08:00

EDIT - (22 Jan 2010)
NEWS - 15 Jan 2010 - Amazon now effectively does "share the love" by making the simple 30% USA withholding tax method available to international authors. We can now get started more easily and do the paperwork later if sales justify that.

ORIGINAL POST
Amazon is going international with its Kindle ebook reader. Tonight I downloaded their Kindle ebook reader for PC. Exciting ebook news but here is a negative. It is too difficult for writers outside of the USA to participate. To sign up you need a USA bank account and US Tax paperwork that is a bureaucratic drama to work through - I know because I am partway through this process. And this is quite unnecessary because Amazon's own Createspace print-on-demand service can invite anyone in by using the available simple 30% withholding tax regime. The Kindle needs to be one of the Createspace platforms and operate in the same way and I see no good reason why not. Hey Amazon, if it is good enough to collect money from all the world for ebooks, it is good enough to let all the world join in the creativity!

Best results on Youtube - WMV format does well

2009-02-11T12:25:00.000-08:00

I was helping my friend "Walnut the Clown" publish a band performance on his Youtube channel.
'The Amazing Frank E. Evans Band plays "Red Red Robin"'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpag4VA3yMI
We had problems with the video looking bad compared to our usual Youtube results. We deleted it, tried rendering different ways then uploading again - 4 times before we got an acceptable result, and that success is a little bit of a surprise being the Microsoft WMV format.
Our earlier efforts were:
1. MPEG-2, DVD-PAL format. MPEG-2 is one of Youtube's officially recommended formats and it seemed like a good idea to have one render cover both DVD and Youtube publication. .... er no!
2. DIVX format. This has been successful for us in the past but this time ... er no!
3. XVID format. Seemed better than DIVX for this clip, probably acceptable, but WMV was better.
4. WMV format. Our widescreen original render output set at 720 x 404 pixels, 30 frames per second progressive from PAL 50i original footage, bitrate 3500 kbps average VBR video with keyframe interval of 2 sec plus keyframes on cue and edit points and 192 kbps audio. This 3.5 minute clip came out to about 85 Meg.

The only reason I even thought to try WMV was that "Walnut" had uploaded some WMV videos he had edited in "Windows Movie Maker" and they look good - for example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpVC7utjMnY

The surprise here is that articles I have read and people I have talked to have said that WMV does not work well with Youtube. These results tell a different story!

Walnut's channel - Comedy and Music:Nostalgia, Vintage, World, Folk, Jazz, Swing
http://www.youtube.com/user/walnuttheclown

Film Festival success for "How Europe Got Its Name"

2009-01-13T12:36:00.000-08:00

Our short animated film "How Europe Got Its Name", 6 min, has been selected for public screening in the "New Beijing International Film Week". This is a big step forward for us and we are very very happy about it. You can see it in the festival program at:
Link to Beijing Fest 2009 Selected Movies
"How Europe Got Its Name" appears a little over half-way down this page.

Backgrounder for new readers: the democratisation of film-making makes production easier for us (yay), and easier for zillions of others(uh oh) so selection panels can be choosing as little as 5% of what they receive. Why Beijing? My 1980s successes were often in non-English speaking cities. Our movies this century have been collecting rejections from US and NZ festivals so when "How Europe .." was ready, I thought it was time to revisit the wider world. I liked the style of this festival and the film-makers connected with it - you can see what I mean by using the above link and looking around the festival site.

"How Europe Got Its Name" version 1 was made in 1 weekend when we were competing as "Team MITCIT" representing the Manukau Institute of Technology in the New Zealand 48 Hours Furious Film-making Competition. It was wildly ambitious to do a speed-film-making competition with modelling clay animation but we did get it all shot and we got a panic edit version over the finishing line with 2 minutes to spare. We won a small audience-favourite-vote award for 3rd place in our heat.

The Beijing Festival entry is the completed "Version 2".

We can not show you the complete movie on the web yet because we are exploring its film festival and commercial potential. I do plan to post about a 30 second sample soon.

"Unsharp Mask" filter works well with digitised film

2009-01-08T15:56:00.000-08:00

I have been doing more digitisation of Super-8mm and Standard-8mm movies dating back to 1962. I ran across "Unsharp Mask" in the GIMP manual and I find that Ulead Video Editing software also has this in its video filters. Looking good - on careful inspection results do not have any better detail but they seem to look better. I have found that other sharpeners do bad things with film grain but Unsharp Mask seems to handle graininess well. With "The GIMP", I am using the default settings. With "Ulead" IMO the default settings go too far and I am using relatively gentle settings of "15%, 15%" on the 2 controls provided.
Ref - info with image examples in "The GIMP" online manual:
http://docs.gimp.org/en/plug-in-unsharp-mask.html
"The Unsharp Mask filter (what an odd name!) sharpens edges of the elements without increasing noise or blemish. It is the king of the sharpen filters..."

Music to my ears NOT

2008-12-13T17:10:00.000-08:00

Maybe I am turning into a very old fogey, but does anyone else object to social conversation being made impossible by playing loud music? Bronnie and I got into a film-makers party at "Galatos", (well we are "emerging" film-makers!), and we had a great time meeting interesting people, but that blasting music meant that conversation was conducted by yelling at close quarters. We worked it out that we could escape outside into the street to talk and the street filled up with exiled smokers and talkers with it being a little annoying and a lot funny that the bouncers were obliged to deprive we street people of our drinks. It seems that smoking and intelligent conversation are now the twin evils of society requiring the perpetrators to be put outside. Nice party MIC but next time lose the music, we film-makers are not out-of-it nightclub bunnies requiring music to cover for an inability to communicate - we are actually the articulate ones.

Effects just got easier - DAZ Studio can output PNG

2008-07-26T23:54:00.000-07:00

DAZ Studio (www.daz3d.com - basic toolkit free) is the 3D posing and animation software I have been getting interested in recently. In earlier posts I have been writing about adding a bluescreen background in "DAZ Studio" then following that up in the video editor software with compositing. Today I looked for rendering movies to a sequence of .PNG files and I found it. And even better it did what I wanted which is to render no-background as transparent. This is good news because a sequence of .PNGs supporting transparency (alpha values) is going to composite better than any process where a colour needs to be changed to transparency. I don't know if this is new in version 2.2 or whether it was there before and I missed it.

3D Animation Example

2008-07-07T15:01:00.000-07:00

Following up the previous entry with a "For Example" - this is from one of my students:
"Victoria at MIT" on Youtube
Ricky has animated Victoria in "DAZ Studio" with a plain "bluescreen" background. "Compositing" with photos and video done in "Ulead MediaStudio Pro 8".

IAFILM heading for 3D Animation

2008-06-22T05:04:00.000-07:00

There's an indie response to "Beowulf" in our future

We the current IAFILM film-makers have decided to adopt the "DAZ3D" 3D computer animation technology with its libraries of ready-made characters and concentrate for our new direction on how far we can push this. Over the last 3 years, we feel we have "cracked" low-budget high-definition greenscreen production with human actors only to hit the social and human problem of not being able to get enough actors interested in staying the course of low budget indie movies even short ones. Other indies are reporting the same experience - cruel when accessible technology finally enables our visions. BUT 3D is doing trickle-down to the likes of us. I had earlier said no to this partly because of what I perceived as the lonely isolated nature of the process. What we are finding now is that we have links to a pool of wonderful voice characterisation actors who we relate to well because many of them are 50+ years old like many of us. We are finding that the voice/sound production for these movies is great fun with most of the tedium and stress of human-actor-filming removed. Risk factors like fights and stunts involving enthusiastic non-professionals (and horses!) are also removed. Kinda radio plays with pix added. We can still get into some acting to give movement guides to the animators but we don't need elaborate setups and costuming. Acting sessions can be very free flowing and we can see rather than a loss of human acting dynamics and experience we may well find a freedom here to create in new ways.

DAZ Animation gives us lots of nice safety nets. An actor suddenly can not make it to filming? We can run with a stand-in and voice-record the missing actor later. Critical actor suddenly going overseas? Haul him/her in front of the mic with those others we can round up to feed lines and we can survive. Or replace much more easily with another actor. Our real people partners can do a Ray Winstone/Beowulf and play impossibly pretty-in-the-Hollywood-way humans and any kind of fantasy creature.

Who are DAZ3D? Refs:
DAZ Website: http://www.daz3d.com
The basic software toolkit "DAZ Studio" is a free download after registration.
It comes with a minimum set of "3D Models" = characters and clothes. You need to buy in extra "actors" and buy "morphs" for them to get a range of characters out of one model. Prices are reasonable, we can "cast" our next 10 minute movie for about US$100 which is well below what we would spend on such a project made by other means. This is not a rave review by any means - this looks to me very much like an emerging technology and at present we often need to tell ourselves to "keep it simple". DAZ Studio works well with bluescreen backgrounds processed later in the video editor and it does the basics of animation very easily - I especially like its "puppeteer" method. With some ingenuity of approach we seem to have here a kit for making the alternative no-budget indie response to "Beowulf".

Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAZ3D

48 Hours

2008-05-30T00:46:00.000-07:00

The big film-making activity for this month has been competing in the "48 Hours Furious Film-making Competition" in Auckland NZ.
We drew the genre of "Juvenile Delinquent".
We went the same way as last year doing stop motion animation with modelling clay.
One speed-up technique, we did most speech as close-ups by taking only 4 to 6 photos with various mouth positions then throwing those at our 2 x editors to arrange along the timeline opposite the sound. Gets those editors involved early doing "parallel processing".
Best move for this year was to recruit voice actors from a band I worked with to make video clips. This band, the "Frank E Evans Lunchtime Entertainment Band" plugged us into a folkie network of actors, comedians, and children's entertainers and they were great. Soundtrack was directed and recorded as a separate operation some 30km away by my co-director who sent it in by internet.
Generally all went well although we were wildly over-ambitious and we feel amazed that we threw together a result that does kinda reflect most of the story but with the rushed final editing showing. I got it across the finish line with 2 min to go.
"How EUROPE got its Name" is based on a story from ancient Greece. Our ancient city of Tyre 1000BC was mostly made out of file boxes. We printed out paper sheets of computer-file brick, wood and stone textures and glued those on the boxes.
We had some modelling clay characters from last year and earlier movies that we remodelled. We were character and set building till Sat 4:55pm when we fired the first of about 700 stop-motion shots.

Our last year's modelling clay entry, "Dancing with the Pollies", similar approach, is on youtube as a tidied up version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qD3WkV0sUGg

Reviewer "Godfather" writes:
"How Europe Got Its Name" by MITCIT (Juvenile Delinquent)
These guys always come up with something from left field, and this was no exception.
Where do you find inspiration for a Juvenile Delinquent story? Why, Herodotus, of course! For a claymation musical about a fairly obscure moment in ancient Greek history, this got a huge audience response. B-

Concert Video Lessons

2008-02-16T19:19:00.000-08:00

The big project this month for many of us has been shooting and editing the 40th reunion party concert of the Frank E. Evans Band. We're mostly into doing indie drama so event video gives us some variety. Overall it worked out well. Notes and Lessons:
Best moves: (1) taking the time and trouble to set up some backlighting. (2) using a home-made camera steadying device for hand-held shooting (ref http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/steadycam/ ). (3) using 4 cameras. (4) using a high definition Canon HV20 for the master wide shot and getting away with digital blow-ups of half of that image in post.
Main lesson: we had some shots with exposure problems - the classic case of spotlit entertainers against a dark background and cameras reading the background and over-exposing the highlights. Next time we need to give our newbie helpers more training and we need to find and use the "spotlight program" setting on the cameras.

Review Parachute Music Festival

2008-01-29T01:03:00.000-08:00

I'm a secular kind of guy so it was my family who got me along to this Christian music festival. My opinions of what I saw:
BEST PERFORMANCE - "TWINK"
This was a young band let loose for their half-hour in the "Debut" tent. They had supporters running around beforehand holding up advertising posters so I though "good on you" for that effort and braved the journey through the heat to take a look. This was high energy loud enthusiastic rock. I'm guessing here but maybe "Thrash Metal" is the common description in that culture. The madly leaping-about lead singer looked-like a testosterone-fuelled young Tom Cruise but he was upstaged by the even more energetic girl drummer breaking into a stereotypical male role, well done! I could make out very little of the lyrics but they seemed to belong to a comic horror movie and the whole act had a kind of cheeky parody flavour to it, something like "Spinal Tap". This with their enthusiastic sense of fun set "Twink" apart and above the mass of similar bands performing here. "Twink" had what looked like a large crowd of supporters moving, dancing and clapping on cue in front of the stage. This was confirmed by the MC at the end of the set who remarked on so many supporters coming from the small town of Warkworth (ie a long way!). Deep thought - "Split Enz" emerged from Te Awamutu so maybe there is something about NZ small towns and maybe "Twink" is the new "Split Enz"?

WORST PERFORMANCE - "HILLSONG"
This is the house band for a megachurch in Sydney, Australia, and IMHO they did a steretypical performance in that style, lacking in distinctive or original touches. This is easy-listening pop reminding me of Barry Manilow. Out on the edge of a big crowd, I had a Monty Python moment like the sermon scene from "The Life of Brian" where the crowd fringes are struggling to hear what Brian is saying - "blessed are the cheesemakers?". Hillsong sounded to me like this:
Eat baked beans,
Eat baked beans,
For a larger brain,
For a larger brain,
You will mistake me for a shoe

More useful things with cellphones

2008-01-21T18:03:00.001-08:00

Ancient as I am, I am making cellphone progress. Mine (see pic) is a "smartphone" which I picked up secondhand in an online auction. Motorola MPX220 which is an early example of running Microsoft Windows Compact Edition on a cellphone. It has room for improvement as a phone - I need to run outside to get a clear conversation where others around me can talk just fine on their cellphones. But as a text device and pocket computer it delivers some nice surprises.
I was talking about "Askar" the book with one of our test readers, when I thought of using the MPX220 as a voice recorder. This worked very well and gave me all the interview details that I could never have recorded just taking notes.
I also find that the program for web access, "Pocket Internet Explorer", can be pointed at HTML files on the plug-in memory card and do a remarkably good job of using the phone as an e-book reader - (see pic below - note "Askar as E-Book" is not available to the public yet). Last night, Bronwyn and I were away from home and we got into debating "Askar" paragraph wording, as one does. We were able to call up the paragraphs in question and decide that they did not need further editing.

Book Publishing and First Reviews

2008-01-13T13:40:00.000-08:00

An interesting discussion "Tactless Reviewers" has started on Lulu. I thought author Sylvia Semel, writing about her experience with BEING A TWIN, made a good point about how a community of authors should handle initial peer reviews.
I have responded saying that the first few public reviews for the web page of a new self-published book need to be positive else readership and therefore discussion can be severely damaged. If the reviewer feels negative about the book then IMO a private message to the author is the best way to handle that. I know there is a controversy about authors and their friends stacking online review pages with patsy reviews. I suggest the best way for authors and publishers to handle this is to start the page off with reviews from test readers but with statements like this: "Publisher-posted review from John Doe, one of our test readers."
More...

"Askar" gets publishing industry interest - EBook goes off-line

2008-01-11T01:35:00.000-08:00

Our E-Book new media publishing experiment goes off-line until further notice because of conventional publishing possibilities opening up for "Askar". We are guessing that Traditional Publishers would not like an E-Book "on the loose" without heavy security locks so we are taking a wait and see approach.
The Physical Paperback book continues to be published and available at:
http://www.lulu.com/content/1539440

DIY Bookbinding update

2008-01-07T14:57:00.000-08:00

We printed the first copies of the "Askar" book ourselves. The hardest part was diy bookbinding. Following advice found elsewhere on the Internet gave us books that held together OK, but were very flexible at the spine so that the spine artwork was quickly creased and worn by normal handling. But by experiment 15 we have a method that is meeting the challenge of our rather large 464 page epic.
IN BRIEF - Start with contact glue then cover that with cloth-based gaffer tape.
IN DETAIL - Conventional paperback binding is a complex hot glue critical temperature mass production process that is quite impossible to emulate for cottage industry one-offs. My answer is lateral thinking for the niche unpredictable small demand situation - I have after a lot of trials come up with a cloth-tape spine with contact glue. The result is very flexible rather than having the conventional gutter stiffness and some find it a better lie-flat reading experience. Most people who have inspected examples of both have preferred this version. The minority report was concern that the flexible spine would not last but examples have gone through our test reader program with no problems. Hey it's gaffer tape - my film-making influence shows!

We start by using a cotton bud to paint contact glue eg ADOS F2, PASCO on the spine edge of the block of paper including the covers which are separately cut front and back covers to match the paper size. Let that dry then paint another layer. Then cut a piece of gaffer tape and place that sticky side out in a jig (wooden frame) so that it will align with the book block when we stick it on the spine and wrap it about 10mm over the spine edge of the covers.

CEV is the sensible copyright Bible

2008-01-05T20:14:00.000-08:00

When writing my essay "Ideas and Themes Behind Askar", I needed to quote from "The Bible". Checking out the copyright notices on Bibles I found them surprisingly demanding. The Bible itself is more than 50 years old but publishers claim copyright on their translations. The worst example I saw was the "New International Version"(NIV) which allows even small amounts of quoting only on condition of a LARGE statement at the BEGINNING of any essay or article. IMHO NIV's statement infringes the critical review provision of the copyright law of most countries. This is part of a wider issue. It is quite OK and fair for publishers to say "ALL RIGHTS RESERVED". In my new role as a publisher I do that myself. But the wording that follows on many title pages seems to be an exercise in wishful (or paranoid) thinking that tries to invent diy copyright law that simply does not exist. Electronic versions seem to have more of this disease than printed books. My reaction to the NIV statement was to reject the NIV and search for a Bible with a sensible copyright statement compatible with the APA Referencing standard for quotes where we add brief pointers to a list of sources at the END of the article.

And the winner is .. (ta da!)

Congratulations to the American Bible Society for their Contemporary English Version(CEV).

ASKAR as an e-Book

2008-01-02T10:37:00.000-08:00

After much discussion and research reading, we plan to publish Bronwyn's fantasy epic ASKAR as an e-Book priced at US$5.00. We are going for a "human relations" approach to copyright issues including writing our own copyright statement . We have decided that our e-Books will NOT have any digital restrictions like license keys. We believe that the most important format issue is to make it as user-friendly as possible for the customers. The package is a zip file containing 4 e-books, that is the content in 4 different file formats. 2 of these are print-friendly pdfs, one for US Letter paper and one for UK A4 paper. One is html format, we expect this will be the most user-friendly for screen reading on most devices. One is .prc format, this is the "MobiPocket" format for the "Amazon Kindle" e-Reader and other small devices like pocket computers.

EDIT (11 Jan 2008) - e-Book on hold - see post above

Beowulf - John's review

2007-12-23T19:27:00.000-08:00

We had a child-free day on Saturday so Bronwyn and I headed off to check out the new IMAX 3D cinema playing "Beowulf".

Bronwyn and I usually agree on movies, often both liking movies that have had negative reviews. eg We both liked "Troy". But not this time. Bron (see below) feels that the Beowulf CGI approach did not work for her. I thought Beowulf was excellent, with the bonus of easily being the most successful and effective 3D feature movie I have ever seen. I am however a techie who appreciates the cutting-edge work these animators are doing and I may be forgiving a few things. The shyness in showing nudity looks foolish at times but that is probably some producer's decision to make more money by avoiding a restricted certificate. IMHO wrong call, this looks to me like an R13 movie awkwardly trying to change gear down to M, but it's a minor point.

On to my appreciation of what is good here. Top marks to the writers for tying the disconnected events of the ancient story together with a new story arc of cause and effect while still staying true to the distinctive elements of the original. The ancient storyline, of the surprising way to defeat the monster Grendel, is well adapted here. Great characterisation, character design and 3D world design. The artists make imaginative use of their medium to bring their ancient Viking world to vivid life.

Some favourite scenes:
Near the beginning where we join Beowulf and his thanes as they ride a North Sea storm on their Viking longboat.
Near the end there is a magic moment where there is a performance in honour of Beowulf and for a few seconds the bard slips into the anglo-saxon language of the original epic.

Recommendation: If you have any interest in CGI 3D art then don't burden yourself with ice-creams etc cos you don't want any distraction from the amazing immersive experience of the opening scenes.

Beowulf - Bronwyn's review

2007-12-22T03:35:00.000-08:00

Keep the CGI for Shrek and Toy Story

I can’t imagine computer animation ever working for an adult movie, or at least not one that is meant to be serious and pack a metaphorical punch. I’m prepared to be proven wrong, but alas I don’t think Beowulf is the movie to do it. To put it plainly I found this movie boring.

There’s plenty of action, lots of gee whiz effects, violence, lots of nudity, but it was dull. The only reason I can think of is that the characters, albeit played by mostly quite recognizable and extremely A list actors, were just not interesting. A very fine performance just cannot seem to translate to the screen via the graphics program. It just isn’t the same.

The story was not one I was familiar with, despite hearing about it second or third hand for years. I found the first third particularly almost impossible to watch because a) it was brutal and horrifying beyond belief (do not take your children to this movie) and b) because not only was I watching it in 3D but the camera was spinning around so fast you couldn’t focus on anything.

OK – that all sounds pretty bad. I would say that if it had been live action (obviously some of the effects had to be CGI) and the camera had stayed put a bit more it would at least have been watchable. And it did improve. After Beowulf dealt with the deeply disturbing Grendel (some things are just too creepy for movies) the soulless violence and bleakness eased. Also I had begun to sympathise with Beowulf and his queen, but it took three-quarters of the movie to get to that point. The second monster, the dragon, well he was just plain cool. He still ate people, but it was far less disturbing (these things are totally relative).

John asked me if I would like my book "Askar" (http://stores.lulu.com/askar) made into a CGI movie. The answer is no. If you’re making a human drama, it needs to have humans in it.

Askar - joys of self publishing

2007-12-17T14:33:00.000-08:00

Bronwyn Calder has finally completed writing her epic fantasy novel "Askar" after 20 years working on it. We have been developing a film script version and my students have been creating Askar-themed internet games. What this is leading up to is a new media publishing project.
This gets us into self-publishing which is quite a learning adventure. We are publishing with "lulu.com" which our writing friends like and recommend - thanks Colin and Joss - see it at..
http://www.lulu.com/content/1539440
No e-book version yet. Lots of interesting pros and cons there and a lot of discussion going on amongst us here. A special point here is that "Askar" is big, 464 pages in its Lulu version. Print-on-demand is very cost-dependent on the number of pages so "Askar" becomes relatively expensive as a physical paper book which helps make the case for the e-book. We will probably put up a separate e-book version in a few days. The font/page size for the printed book does not do screen reading well for us, and IMHO an e-book also needs quite different wording for its copyright statement.
We could have reduced the cost a little by going for a smaller font = Garamond 11pt rather than the Garamond 12pt we ended up using. Various people drafted in for their opinion all said the bigger font was worth it.

We needed some copies quickly and with Christmas coming we could not get a print job done in time so we are trying home-printing some examples and we have got as far as the first 4 prototypes. In brief, we were able to buy A5 paper and our modest Brother DCP 115 C home inkjet printer is doing the heavy-duty duplex page-printing job reliably and economically. We can get the covers printed on A3 card at reasonable cost by a copy centre. The fun and games is in do-it-yourself paperback glue binding and we have been trying various kinds of glue. "PVA" and "Contact Adhesive(ADOS F2)" both worked with F2 being a quick process, but the spine comes out rather flexible and so wear-creases appear on it with normal use. The latest experiment with "Gorilla Glue" is looking like the best so far. We also need to try hot glue.

Auditions Lesson - learn to txt!

2007-11-05T23:18:00.000-08:00

Events around 02 Aug (writeup catch-up). "Askar" is our 106 minute script for an ambitious fantasy epic movie. We are moving on developing it by test-filming about 5 mins of it. I have just read "Five Things I Hate About Microbudget Movies"by "Film Flap":
http://filmflap.blogspot.com/2007/05/five-things-i-hate-about-microbudget.html
and Thing Three is:
"Terrible Acting .. You'd be surprised how many talented actors are out there hungry for work. They will do anything (including work for free) to pad their resume, so use them ...Hold auditions and good people will show up."
This inspires me to step outside my usual network and advertise auditions, bracing myself to cope with the flood of hungry actors. Notices on the walls at a drama school and on the internet discussion boards of the local indie scene and the LARPers. Well, Mr Film Flap, only about 4 responses and zero end result from that! Our cast and crew all came via our own network eg our email newsletter and work colleagues getting the word out to their students and rellies. But a lesson here! I am guessing that as a crusty old last-century-indie-relic, I made a mistake in not understanding how important cellphone "txt-ing" is for communicating with the New Generation. I left lots of voice messages then someone explained to me that they don't get picked up because many people can't afford the cellphone call charge to listen to them and you need to use txt to get people together. I'll try that next time and see if that makes a difference. And Mr Film Flap, if you can read this, do tell what strange and wonderful place you live in with all these surplus talented actors floating around - methinks I should go there to make a movie!
In the meantime I am getting into txt with my cast and crew.

48 Hours Competition - "Dancing with the Pollies"

2007-06-09T05:16:00.000-07:00

This year in the "48 Hours Furious Film-making" competition we decided to go with modelling clay animation - that's like the "Wallace and Grommit" movies. We drew the "Romance" genre which led us to parodying "Dancing with the Stars". Follow the link to the iafilm home website for the full "making of" article with photos and video clips. All is revealed on how we got modelling clay characters to talk.

http://island.manukau.ac.nz/iafilm/shell.aspx?tint=2&mainDir=Content&areaDir=Public&subdir=1.%20Current%20and%20Recent%20Projects&file=48%20Hours%202007.htm

Crash Recovery Success

2007-06-03T02:57:00.000-07:00

I was shooting to memory card with a Canon MVX25i, which is the PAL version of the Optura 40. I had a "low battery" warning but I kept going in the hope of completing a shot. The battery died on me. I assumed that the camera would do a graceful shutdown in that event but I discovered that is not the case!
I now had 34 minutes of event filming as a file of length "0". The file recovery was long and difficult. I have written it up as an article in the hope that if this happens to anyone else the information may be useful. I regard myself as an I.T. expert but this would have to be one of the most difficult problem-solving challenges I have faced in a long time. Moral of the story, if you see that battery warning then STOP. It is also a good idea when using Memory Card to stop and restart often so you do not build up a large at-risk file.

The article:
http://island.manukau.ac.nz/iafilm/shell.aspx?tint=3&mainDir=Content&areaDir=Public&subdir=2.%20Articles&file=AVI_Recovery.htm

The rescued movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtCqySVKcT0

"Love Song to Super-8" - blog09 - completion

2007-04-28T00:33:00.000-07:00

Movie completed and submitted by post to the NZ Film Festival. Editing co-incided with high pressure in the day job and the computer moonlighting job so it was not much sleep for me. Editing ran so late that I used up the week the musicians were available and completed a fine cut on the night of the 19 April, with the fest entry deadline being the next day. I checked the fest website and behold! a 10 day extension - yay! But what to do about music?

I had another muso wanting to help, but he was in a small rural town. I posted him the stuff and it got lost in the post. I did however have a Plan B going and that moved into full swing. I had chosen "Danse Macabre" by Camille Saint-Saens as a piece I wanted to use and I started searching for versions of it on the internet and writing to the arrangers and/or publishers asking permission. After about 8 unanswered emails over a week I finally made a friendly contact. Terry Smythe belongs to the "International Association of Mechanical Music Preservationists" whose members have invented scanners which read the player piano rolls of the early 20th century into computer "MIDI" files. Terry kindly gave me clearance to use his publication of a Liszt arrangement of Danse Macabre. On loading it into my MIDI software, "Powertools Pro", I found I was able to split the left and right hand sets of notes into separate "channels" and give them different instruments. I kept the right channel as a piano but added an asian "koto" voice. The left hand notes became a "string ensemble" and an "oboe".

I have great admiration for Franz Liszt now! It was amazing how well this piece fits with the movie, IMHO because of the way it moves off the melody into atmospheric variations.

For the courtroom scene I wanted another piece by Saint-Saens - the "Fossils" from "Carnival of the Animals". I especially like Tony Matthew's midi sequencing of it which IMO delivers an especially good computer simulation of an orchestra. Tony gave me permission to modify his work for the film. I repeated some sections with changed instrument voices - mostly percussion to go well with the courtroom typewriter as the silent-movie-voice of the characters and something of a character in its own right. I found the "tinkle bell", "celeste", "shamizen" and "koto" worked well. I found that these simulated instruments sound realistic only over a narrow range of notes but I got into making them sound quite different by assigning them well out of their "realistic" range. My favourite experiment was where I assigned some low notes to the "tinkle bell" and it became a woodblock-like drum-percussion track very suggestive of a typewriter.

Entered 48 Hours as "Team MITCIT"

2007-04-07T14:41:00.000-07:00

I have done the entry for the 48 Hours Competition as Team MITCIT. So we're now on the rollercoaster ride peaking with that mad weekend 18-20 May. I'm going for technical rehearsal and team workout Tues 15 May 5pm to about 7pm.

"Love Song to Super-8" - blog08 - progress

2007-04-07T14:35:00.000-07:00

The last 3 rolls of film are back from processing. I can report success with the experimental modification of the Chinon Pacific camera - see details below. Gate registration is much better. More evidence for my theory that Super-8 cartridges work best with minimum take-up tension. Pressure is on - I am editing this weekend and I need to get it to our musicians in time for them to get a soundtrack together before a film festival deadline April 20th.

Richmond Rd Short Film Festival

2007-03-27T03:46:00.000-07:00

I saw the Richmond Rd Short Film Festival last Sat 24 March. Nicely done event. Outdoor screening so I hauled along my cushion, jackets and rugs but on getting there I find that this one has seats! Yay! The films were:

"A Very Nice Honeymoon" by Jeff and Phill Simmonds. Ironic title. About the film-makers' great grandparents' experience of a shipwreck. Animated film in something of the same technical style and production values that you would see in commercial cartoons on TV, but turned to a quite different genre and purpose, and very effective because of that. Its documentary approach leads the audience by degrees to an amazing and emotionally poignant final interview. IMO this film well deserved its audience choice award.

"Brown Peril - The Tim Porch Story" - dir Jarrod Holt and Nigel McCulloch. This was the winner of last year's NZ 48 Hours so I've seen it a lot, but I am always amazed by the number of comedy elements that these people have piled on in layers. The main story is a goodie in itself yet it seems that in every moment they can heap on more and more outrageous and eccentric detail. This won lots of awards at this show and there should be another award for an acceptance speech that was in itself a high energy comedy performance.

"Oh Deer" by Chung Min Moon. Animated fantasy film in an east Asian style. I thought the artwork was good but the rather minimal very computer-animated movement needed something like the human touch of Len Lye's movies. To be fair to the film-makers I'll admit I was seeing this only a few days after the Auckland Festival Len Lye screening so they had a hard act to follow. With my head even more full of Len Lye than usual, "Oh Deer" was like "Tusalava" without the "zizz".

"Night Vision" dir Zoe MacIntosh. An documentary which I found effective because of a sense of the film-maker's empathy with her subjects.

"The Customer is Always Trite" dir Greydon Little. Humourous observation of the passing parade of supermarket customers from the point of view of a checkout operator.

"Rope" dir Adam Luxton and Jeremy Dumble. An brief incident of attempted suicide gives some narrative structure to what is mainly an exercise in art direction, lighting, photography, and intense acting performance.

"Life after Death" by Guy Capper and Jemaine Clement. Pub philosophers mouthing off with the great original touch that these are animated plasticene sheep. A little like the Aardman productions. Stacks up well in comparison to "Creature Comforts".

"Uso" dir Miki Magasiva. Effective comedy of 2 young men hanging out by a phone box. Great character performances. I nominate "Uso" as the local answer to "Waiting for Godot".

"The Speaker" dir, prod, writ. Tearepa, Savage, Quinton Hita. Slice of life story of a politically motivated tagger and his Maori activist peer group achieves in-depth portrayal of characters who came across to me as struggling in a remarkably real way with their conflicting loyalties and the peer pressure to be "staunch".

"The Knock" dir Miles Murphy, prod Simon Ranginui, writ. Nick Ward. Very stylish horror movie from the NZ Film Commission initiative to make shorts with high production values. Effective intense performances and a surprise ending about which I could say "what I would expect for this genre" but I can only say that in retrospect. Winner of "Best Film" in this competition.

"Chop Off" dir Grant Lahood. Some of the slapstick elements of classic silent comedy grace this strange but original piece about a wood-chopping contest. The logline says "epic battle between young and old" and I felt afterwards that more could have been done to show that. IMO the visual comedy was built more around the competition equipment than around the theme.

A good show giving a great snapshot of short film-making. I came away with the encouraging feeling that IAFILM is operating at an equal level. There seems to be a common element of quirky plot surprises echoed by visual elements running through these. If I read that right our current production "Love Song to Super-8" should stack up well in this kind of company.

"Love Song to Super-8" - blog07 - first looks

2007-02-16T02:25:00.000-08:00

First look - first impressions - it is working out well. To me the EK64 stock does look grainier than Kodachrome but that gives it a retro look that will work well for this project. I am not sure yet about how much I want to use it on future films.
Frame scans are posted on another site because of display space.
You can see them here ...
IAFILM Current Projects - Love Song to Super-8

The Canon 814E looks more and more like the number 1 camera. One surprise behaviour we have uncovered. We noticed that we got slightly different settings focussing by eye compared to measuring distance with a measuring tape. We went with the measuring tape but the close-ups show that the focussing by eye was the one giving the true and accurate settings. We have some close-ups to re-shoot Monday night:(

"Love Song to Super-8" - blog06 - film is processed!

2007-02-08T16:45:00.000-08:00

The package of Ektachrome films has just arrived back from Spectra Lab, Hollywood, USA. Turnaround time was 14 days from New Zealand. I have unreeled the first few cm of one and I can see it has nicely exposed pictures on it. Tonight I can start running the films through my home-made scan-into-computer machine.

How best to use YouTube - a new idea!

2007-02-03T13:59:00.000-08:00

The story so far. An aim of IAFILM life is to score some high audience figures on YouTube so we can point to these when going for funding of more ambitious movie projects. Experiment 1 was to do "responses" to a big-time film-maker and that went nowhere because the other film-maker did not accept the response - I suspect because of feedback overload rather than any other reason.

Experiment 2 is an intense effort to comment generously on videos I like. Most text comments on YouTube are very simple one liners like "lol" or "wow" or "bravo! excellent video" so it MAY get some attention to make an effort to write meaningful mini-reviews.

For example: ("Le Grand Content" by "enlarge")
"I LOVE this video because I HATE most business presentations I see - and I get to see a lot! It is so good to see such an effective satire. I will enjoy pushing my teaching and business colleagues to watch this! Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you!"

Making an effort to comment on a very popular video does result in the comment only being visible for about 5 minutes until it is swamped off the comment front pages by the "lol" and "wow" brigade. Does that comment do something useful for IAFILM in its short readable life? Let's find out.

Most of these comments are visible by clicking on videos in the "favourites" section of Channel Iafilm.

How best to use YouTube - continued

2007-01-31T00:54:00.000-08:00

On Sat 27 Jan, see below, I wrote of my experiment to produce and post a clip "CheekyGirl10..." as a response to someone else's high profile clip = "Poor Pluto" by "LonelyGirl15". Well that was 4 days ago and so far "LonelyGirl15" has not accepted my submission as a response so no result yet on that experiment. The good news is that the "CheekyGirl10" clips are scoring better than any of my previous ones just by normal osmosis or whatever it is that brings viewers.

"Love Song to Super-8" - blog05 - In the clutches of Chinon

2007-01-31T00:45:00.000-08:00

Late last night I went further with dismantling the Chinon camera from inside the cartridge chamber. 2 screws removed and out came the backplate. 2 more screws and the clutch removed nicely as a unit. It is adjustable, but this one was on its lowest setting and still seemed tight. So a deep breath and following my new theory that minimum take-up reel force is good, I replaced the strong spring with part of a ballpoint pen spring. Today we had the last day of pickups and I did some shots with the modified Chinon. It transported OK including running one entire cartridge on its own so I nervously await processing to see if less torque fixes the jiggles.

"Love Song to Super-8" -blog04 - camera experiences

2007-01-29T23:28:00.000-08:00

Our Super-8 experience is going to depend on how well 25+ year old secondhand cameras have survived. We have started out with 4 cameras on "Love Song to Super-8". In brief: a Canon 814E is looking like the champion.
In detail:
Canon 814E - lens performance unknown as yet, we have had one mediocre EIA1956 result of 500 horiz line pairs but that was with way outdated b/w film with dodgy processing - so we don't really know. BUT the Canon is standing out as giving rock steady registration. My guess is that it has a better(lower) tension on its take-up clutch than the others. The others just pull too hard.

Sankyo 620 SuperTronic - reasonable lens performance = about 550 line pairs horiz, small registration jiggle. Kinda average. Dedicated animation stand camera on this project so it can live permanently with a close-up lens and a vertical mount.

Sankyo ES44 - low-light champion but failed on set just whirring and not transporting. My guess is that a release solenoid has failed or jammed. It lasted just long enough to get an action scene where we ran the ES44 at 9 frames per second and got the actors to act out in slow motion movement - aiming for a strange quality of movement when sped back up in post. Changing between cameras is a trap - under pressure I forgot to pay attention to the ES44's unusual daylight filter switch so did an entire scene (fortunately) set to daylight while lit with artificial light. We anxiously await the result back from the lab. Maybe it will make sense as an orange-toned scene? Maybe we can correct digitally?

Chinon Pacific 200/8 XL - this is a good-looking and nicely ergonomic unit to use and our EIA1956 tests are showing excellent lens performance up to 720 line pairs horizontal which rivals HD cameras. BUT its registration is awful. Bad jiggle and one sequence shows film going momentarily out of focus which IMO is the gate spring bending under pressure. This hints at the awful truth. The take-up transport just pulls with too much tension. Just putting a finger on it makes that very clear. We've pulled this camera off the project and replaced with the Canon 814E but I am trying to figure out how to reduce that take-up tension. I have been able to partially dismantle by easily removing the film chamber backplate but I can't see enough yet to get many clues. This would be a brilliant camera if I could fix its transport problems.

"Love Song to Super-8" -blog03 - black-and-white film

2007-01-28T14:06:00.000-08:00

We are shooting the main storyline in colour with Kodak's new Ektachrome 64T stock. 7 rolls of that is in the post to Spectra Lab in California so we don't know what that looks like yet. Some of the films-within-the-film are black-and-white. I am doing hand processing so we have our first results with new Kodak 7266 stock. The raw results appeared very bleached or over-developed but I am almost certain that I got my developer formula wrong with too much KSCN clearing agent. The good news is that on scanning into the computer and applying digital contrast and brightness corrections the results look great. We discover we can get an enormous improvement on the raw image.

"Circle Dance" is the classic experimental Super-8mm genre that EVERYONE did, of dancing and spinning while holding a camera at arm's length pointed back at one's face. Performed here by Linda Whitcombe playing the part of "Glenis".

"Love Song to Super-8" - blog02

2007-01-28T11:18:00.000-08:00

This is a "silent" movie and we were expecting that shooting would be fast and easy compared to shoots where we need to worry about sound recording. Not quite true! Our 2 previous drama movies for the "48 hours" competitions were done in 1 room in front of blue and green sheets. "Love Song.." is reminding us that it is hard work to go for a visually rich movie largely done in real locations with the lining up and setting up of many camera angles!

First up was a Courtroom scene where our tragic film-making couple, "Mike" and "Glenis" are having a "custody battle" case over their films. We travelled 50km north to the Helensville Museum and used the 1864 vintage Courtroom there.

First look from the shoot ...

Going for visual jokes involving attention to detail takes a lot of time. We had surreal miniature policemen played by children wearing false beards achieved partly with crepe hair and spirit gum. Looks great but takes time to get them ready, and with heavily-dressed children on a hot day we had to work very fast with the filming eg raising the percentage of hand-held camera work.

How best to use YouTube?

2007-01-27T15:31:00.000-08:00

Do we show vid clips on YouTube, hopefully for public recognition reward, but maybe hurt commercial opportunities? Lots of indies are commenting on this as a big issue! I'm going for selecting clips and making clips especially for the iafilm YouTube channel.
www.youtube.com/user/iafilm
The big issue to me trying to "build a profile" or should that say "indulge my ego by showing off" is that after the excitement and nervousness of setting up a YouTube channel comes the anticlimax of only getting a small audience. Max views so far is about 200 for the quickie alternative-news "Raurimu Spiral". I want audiences to love our more-crafted work!

Experiment. My latest made-especially-for-YouTube is "The cheekygirl10 Guide to Len Lye". In 4 days it has collected 20 views. So now I have submitted it as a "response" to the lonelygirl15 clip "Poor Pluto" and I am curious to find out if this response approach boosts the audience ratings by kinda hitching a ride on a famous clip. This experiment now depends on the "lonelygirl15" film-makers accepting "cheekygirl10" as a response. Watch this blog for progress reports.

With "cheekygirl10" we try for a general satirical take on "lonelygirl15" by filming genuine spontaneous responses from a cheeky and articulate 10-year-old host in contrast to the set up of lonelygirl15. It was a difficult decision as to which LG15 clip to respond to. "Poor Pluto" is in my opinion the best of LG15. It shows "Bree" commenting on something apart from her personal world and visually the mobile is a little like the kinetic sculpture in our vid.

"Love Song to Super-8" - blog01

2007-01-27T13:49:00.000-08:00

The "push" to get blogging is the latest iafilm movie: "Love Song to Super-8". For this short film we are experimenting with an open show and tell of ideas as we make it rather than the usual big secret until the ta da! premiere. A little bit restricted though because we want to enter it in a film festival that likes to do exclusive premieres, so it's not much video on show but we'll cut loose with ideas, script elements, photos and share the results of the tech experiments.

Starting with what it's about:
"Mike and Glenis are the king and queen of Super-8 art film-making until Mike falls in love with a video camera. Glenis, feeling betrayed, is driven to passionate and furious revenge using Super-8 film-making equipment as tools and weapons."

Comedy Parody, especially taking the mickey out of "Fatal Obsession"(1987). We also aim to poke fun at any passionate obsession with technical points of difference eg the Film vs Video rivalry, the PC vs Mac rivalry, the Ford vs Holden rivalry.

The Tech Experiment:
Earlier experiments (see www.iafilm.co.nz - the iafilm home website) ...show that John's old Super-8mm cameras may well have a new life shooting Super-8mm film which we then scan directly into a computer. A love-match of the best of the old and the new? How to find out? Make a movie this way! We are aiming to shoot everything in Super-8mm so that it will be possible to play the result in the original Super-8mm on special occasions - AFTER it has been safely digitised.