These visual FX videos are always something special to watch, but they’re also a bit worrying too.
Obviously some of the shots in this Boardwalk Empire fx reel could only be created by a computer.
But there are other, more simpler, shots such as the car driving into the Atlantic City Armory, that I was surprised with, thinking that a location could’ve easily been found.
But maybe for tax purposes it’s not possible for production to leave the area it’s in and if suitable locations can’t be found, they’ll be improvised.
But still, at what stage will directors start saying ’screw it, let’s do it all in post’?
I’m loving this demonstration video for Canon’s new high end camera, the C300. These things can usually be very dry but informative all the same for those interested.
Thankfully though Canon gave this job to a guy named Jonathan Yi and the results are real funny.
…is the one you have with you. It’s an old saying but I find it’s very true.
I bought a Canon HDSLR with the idea of using it for video and photography but I’ve ended up concentrating on video because of the beautiful results. This means my go-to picture camera is the one I have with me, my iPhone 3gs.
Some of my favourite pictures recently have been the ones I’ve taken with my phone, like the ones below. The combination of a reasonable quality camera, that’s always in your pocket, with an easy and effective editing app, can’t be beat.
It’s the same for a lot people, most have a ‘good’ camera that sits in a drawer, battery half charged and only ever brought out for special occasions. But it’s our camera phones that are capturing those spontaneous moments, every day, that we weren’t expecting.
It’s shorts like this that make me appreciate how HDSLRs have changed how and who film things today.
This stunning video was shot off the coast of Co. Clare in Ireland, where I spent summers as a kid.
However this is a new view of it all for me as these guys got right into the water, the cliffs and the sea life thanks to the convenience and quality HDSLR video cameras.
Living in New York I’d grab my Canon 7D, or S95, and shoot footage of what was going on around me. It seemed like a never ending project and you could stay filming life in New York for a long time
Eventually I put the camera down and started to edit. Here’s the end result, it’s a bit rough and ready but that’s life in the Big Apple I guess.
Turn up the volume on this one for the beautiful song ‘We Don’t Eat’ by Irishman James Vincent McMorrow.
Having worked on-air in radio for a number of years, my brain is hard-wired for sound and in particular the voice. Words like gravitas, timbre and resonance are used to try sum up what a great radio voice is and the subliminal effect the voice has on the listener.
When it came to shooting my final year film for college I wanted to get a grasp on all this. But the more I got into it the more the documentary was becoming just as much about Irish society and its voices.
I mean, just what is the right way to announce a death notice?
How would you keep the bidding at a cattle auction interesting?
What’s the best approach to shifting 30 units of housing in 30 seconds of radio ad time?
And why shouldn’t you sound too excited as a sports commentator if your local team score a goal in the first 10 minutes?
I’m reworking the documentary at the moment and polishing it up, with grading yet to be done.
Here’s a clip from it with thanks to Suzana Zalokar for her camera work.
I worked for a number of months with the great crew in Apostle, the production company of Denis Leary and Jim Serpico.
I digitized the company’s previous shows and movies, reviewed and edited them into clips and posted them on Apostle’s social media pages via whosay.com. I also helped with their new website, gathering video and other media for it.
The biggest edit project I undertook there was reworking the narrative of its 5-episode Comedy Central show Contest Searchlight to suit a ‘webisode’ format.
It’s now ‘airing’ on the Comedy Central site Atom.com, click here for the Contest Searchlight channel and the webisodes.
Working for the terrific Modern Vintage Records, a small label based in New York’s East Village, I edited music videos of their acts from previously shot footage.
Working for Athena Media, the production company led by R.T.E.’s former Head of Radio, Helen Shaw, I was charged with researching and talent-finding for the young-persons’ program Is It Just Me? The program was commissioned and broadcast by the national broadcaster R.T.E.
As we moved into production I was given the role of Production Co-Ordinator where I was responsible for the organization of the talent, crew and location for the particular shoots. I also worked as a camerman on the episode below, capturing Emma as she ran in Dublin’s Phoenix Park.
After completing a journalism course I worked as a broadcast journalist and presenter from 1998 to 2000 with Tipp FM Radio in Clonmel, Ireland. Here’s a quick sample of the work I did.
Here’s a wonderfully shot yet simple feature about Brock Mealer, who learned to walk again with help from the University of Michigan’s football conditioning staff after a tragic car crash.
Shot on the Canon 7D by Kevin Shaw of 23 Films, it uses the voices of those involved to tell the story instead of relying on a narrator, with Kevin making great use of the Canon’s low light and shallow depth of field capabilities.
Here’s a few stills from some footage I’ve been shooting on my wanders around New York with my Canon 7D and 2.8 lens. I’m editing them into some shape of a video to give a flavour of New York in the summer but as with all undefined projects, when are you finished? Especially when it’s a city that keeps throwing up some amazing sights.
The two things that stand out the most for me are the camera’s low light performance which means you can capture night scenes as you see them. I’ve written about this before but it’s great to have this performance in such an unassuming camera. Then there’s the crazy weather! Stifling humidity and frightening thunderstorms. Bring on September.
Alan Gilsenan is the acclaimed Irish documentary director whose work includes The Asylum, The Hospice and I See a Darkness. Last week in The Irish Times he listed the 10 most important rules he adheres to when making documentaries.
While it’s aimed at documentary makers and other media heads, it’s an appealing and humorous read with some good life lessons in there for everyone!
1. OPEN YOUR EYES AND EARS
Call me old-fashioned, but you don’t make documentaries sitting at your desk. You’ve really got to get out of the house or the office or the pub. But once you manage to finally shrug off your inherent apathy and venture out into the wild blue yonder, you need to look and listen.
Really look and really listen. Listen to people. To their stories. To what is said and what remains unsaid. Listen to the sounds of the wilderness and the hum of the city. See what is actually there before your eyes, not what you imagined was there or what you had hoped would be there. See the beauty in the ugliness and the ugliness in the beauty.
Then ask yourself what is all this really telling me? What is this not telling me? And when you realise that you don’t understand any of it, that none of this makes any sense at all, but yet you still instinctively feel that it may have some inherent importance, then record it.
Document it. Preserve it. You can sort it out later and maybe even begin to understand it (this is called editing and it is a dark and secret art).
I like this picture of a French customs officer playing with his sniffer dog in a deserted Charles-De-Gualle airport as the ash from the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull-göes-bööm, continues to ground flights across northern Europe.
Meanwhile, staying with northern Europe and, of course, sniffer dogs, this four legged explosives expert joined his handler recently as they took part in a NATO exercise in Norway.
I watched an engaging and funny talk today given by Ken Robinson at TED 4 years ago.
In it he talks of how the inherent creativity in young people is curbed by education systems worldwide that put academic subjects like maths and science ahead of the arts and vocations. He describes how the school system we know today came about in the 19th century to provide useful, productive workers for the industrialism at the time (you can watch the talk here).
And things haven’t changed. I was out recently with a group of friends who are secondary school teachers. They talked about how important it was to enforce rules regarding the school uniform because it prepared the students for the office place uniform of the shirt and tie. Which is a worrying thought for 2 reasons.
If school is to prepare young people for the workplace, why is it that taxpayers fund schools and not the large employers that students are being prepared for?
What kind of workplaces are students being primed for that make the mindless, rote learning which dominates education, a good preparation?
Well perhaps the Young Explorer answers that. Boy oh boy you can start deflating your child’s optimism for a cheery future early with this toy. A cubicle bound desk-jockey my son, that’s what your schooling will train you for.
This blog post will change your life. Well the part of your life that you spend behind the wheel of a car. And it’s not a change for the better.
I present to you the four slowest driven cars on the road. If this pattern hasn’t stood out to you in the past, it’ll jump out at you now.
So much so that if you find yourself in the middle of a sluggish convoy, you can bet that it’s one of these cars in front. If you have a chance to overtake one of these cars, do it, DO IT! And avoid the inevitable frustration coming down the road.
Indicators? They’re optional for these drivers. An awareness of the traffic around them? Nope, not a chance. A constant 60 km/h in both 100 and 40 km/h zones. You bet!
Here’s a little glimpse into the minds of these drivers.
I’m trying not to get too excited about this but it looks like the film Hot Tub Time Machine is shaping up to be THE FINEST FILM EVER MADE.
With reviews like “Hot Tub is a balls-to-the-wall Hard-R comedy complete with tasteless humor, nudity and foul language” (cinemaobsession.com), “Hot Tub Time Machine…succeeds beyond any expectations suggested by the title” (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times) and an “idiotic movie to go with its willfully idiotic title” (Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune) it’s shaping up to be the film your girlfriend moans most about being dragged to see!
Check out the trailer below or, if you’re not in work, the cruder red-band version below that.
In sci-fi films the s**t usually hits the fans around about the time that the computer or robot becomes ’self aware’. Well photoshop has become almost self aware except this new tool is called ‘content aware’.
This video from Adobe shows how the new tool goes beyond the usual retouching tools to actually reimaginging and creating imagery in your picture where there wasn’t any before.
The first photo example shows how handy this tool will be, but skip along to towards the end and the last two examples. It’s gets a bit creepy for me.
I’m sure you remember the wonderful rendition of Afternoon Delight by Ron Burgundy and the rest of KVWN-TV’s Channel 4 News Team from Anchorman…
So anyway there I was, last night, at the Apollo Sessions in The Bleeding Horse on Camden Street in Dublin, shooting footage of singer-songwriter Pete Fagan playing some of his new work. When he finished, I packed up my cameras, stuck them in the car, parked up and headed back to the pub for a drink.
Then, towards the end, an unassuming American was invited on stage. It turned out to be a Mr Bill Danoff who wrote the well known Country Roads (seen here performing it with John Denver) and the even better known Afternoon Delight! he starts off the song explaining how it ended up in Anchorman (Will Ferrell and the guys were waiting around on set and started singing) and all I had on me at this stage was my iPhone…
Still, I wasn’t expecting that from a Sunday night in Dublin. By the way, that’s not my voice you hear singing right next to the phone!
The song really reminds though me of this scene from one of the best TV shows ever made Arrested Development!
Here’s a few stills from some footage I’ve been shooting on my wanders around New York with my Canon 7D and 2.8 lens. I’m editing them into some shape of a video to give a flavour of New York in the summer but as with all undefined projects, when are you finished? Especially when it’s a city that keeps throwing up some amazing sights.
I like this picture of a French customs officer playing with his sniffer dog in a deserted Charles-De-Gualle airport as the ash from the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull-göes-bööm, continues to ground flights across northern Europe.
Man, cats seem really useless now…
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