Work

mousewords - Mar 1, 2008

Yaaay! Congrats! here’s to the next 20,000. :-)

Did I mention that I got all the way up to twenty thousand tweets last night? I’m officially a very heavy user of twitter and many people celebrated the event with me in true twitter style. They @ed me. It’s not everyday you get to that number. I also seesmiced a few thoughts about twitter which someone can find and link to in the near future. I’m feeling a little lazy in that regard. Also today was my first proper full day of work and it went well. I’m tired as a result and tomorrow should be more fun. See you then.

With a screen resolution of 1920*1080 interlaced this is one of the higher resolution cameras currently on the market at the moment. It’s beautifuly designed for camera men rather than engineers (unlike the red). I already wrote about earlier.The light wasn’t so interesting but here are 11 seconds of footage. (92 megs) Right click to save the footage as this will not behave properly in browser

mousewords - Mar 1, 2008

Congratulations, and best wishes to you in your new journey!

Last night’s drive was amazing. It’s just the type of drive you want to have. It starts in the middle of the afternoon as a friend helps you load the car and you set off for a 900 kilometer drive. At the beginning you have to deal with London traffic/congestion. After this you’ve got part of the m20 that’s closed so you need to take a slip road. As I got into France I was welcomed by a lot of snow coming straight at me, like the windows screensaver from a decade ago. That meant I couldn’t really drive as fast as I wanted. Still made good time. For most of the journey the road was fine.The part I really loved is when I got off the motorway to go via the Jura. At this point it wasn’t snowing too much but as I progressed up the slopes and let the Garmin Nuvi 250 guide me along the path so I saw a little snow, and it started to stick. As I drove I had to stay awake and battle with the ever present threat of loss of adherence. That was the fun part of the drive. The road was covered in a thin layer of snow and people were driving more slowly. At moments I was chasing a snowplow across the mountains as it was salting the roads.At other moments there was no snow plow and I lost traction two or three times but kept the car in control. I occasionaly thought that I wouldn’t make it up the hills but I did, and I loved the view. The trees were covered in snow and they were lit by the grand phare. It’s memories from childhood. I’m glad I’ve spent so much time playing in car parks covered in snow to learn how the car behaved.At five in the morning the last thing you want to learn is how to drive in snow. Luckily I do.It made a nice transition from the student life I’ve been living over the past three years and the job seeking following that. I wanted the drive to be a transition from one phase in my life to the next. Now I’m  an employed graduate who’s working in Switzerland as of next Monday. This next chapter of my life should be fun. Â

The week is almost over and I’ve got a job. Spent the past week being trained in certain softwares I’ll need to use, as well as hardware. I’m looking forward to that. In the meantime I have a little roadtrip to London and back to get out of the way. More details to come tomorrow night

Last time I went to the cinema I was in Paris and my name was in the credits. This time I was at the 20th Century Fox offices on Soho Square in London as a guest, along with Loudmouthman, Suzymiller, Danacea, Rupert Howe, Sizemore and many other social media participants. We were invited to preview the film Juno, which will be out in British cinemas around the 8th of February 2008. It’s nice to be two months ahead of the crowd. It’s also nice to be in a private cinema. I enjoyed the leather seats along with the press package and the fact that when you lean back the seat tilts back at the same time. It was also amusing to see all these faces. It’s a funny thing to be part of the social media mainly because you recognise and feel that people are familiar although you’ve never met them in real life. What makes this particularly appealing is the fact that it’s not someone saying “oh I’ve heard something about you”. They’ve actually looked at, and appreciated your work, or at least we hope so. I enjoyed the film and so did the rest of the crowd. Frequent laughter could be heard from around the room quite frequently. I did enjoy quite a bit of the dialogue and the story is a nice one although the end is typical of American films. Aside from the film and the crowds we did get to interview the organisers of the event as well as Danacea of Forbidden planet, Rupert Howe, vlogger and Robert… whose last name eludes me. It’s 1am and I’m tired. The Twittervox video should be up by tomorrow evening at the latest. More concise information on those interviewed will of course, appear accordingly

The digital era of communcation is a great one because research for video material is no longer restricted the archives of the INA, France television, BBC, TSR and other archives to find footage you’re looking for. A producer from steamboat films was working on a documentary about the walkman and found a lot of historic footage to make the subject come alive. She aslo needed some comtemporary representation of how the modern walkman is used and came across silent disco and my footage. The screening took place at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in the basement where there are two cinema rooms. The cinema was filled to more than half it’s capacity as all those who had worked on the three documentaries met to get to know their fellow contributors. The three documentaries are The Bookworm, The Concorde and the Walkman of course. Each one is an individual documentary with it’s own merits. I had the opportunity to see the Concorde documentary almost in it’s entirety twice as I arrived whilst they were testing to make sure everything was in order. Having watched the Walkman documentary three or four times already, once with house mates and two or three times by myself it was fun to see an audience’s reaction. It’s fun to be surrounded by a professional group of people rather than fellow students. You see them laugh at moments that are both typically French and old fashioned. What they didn’t laugh at so much is the silent disco footage, probably because it’s too close to home. People did laugh, but not quite as many as I would have liked. I suspect the reason for that is that they’re thinking of how they dance so laughing would be making a slight joke of their own dancing. There are two reasons why I enjoyed this event. The first was that it was the first time I’m surrounded by professionals as I get my first screen credit on the big screen at a cinema projection. It was also an opportunity to meet with the people that are behind the screen producing these programmes. I look forward to future collaborations in the near future.  I look forward to what the future holds.

Documentally - Oct 1, 2007

Good points. I try to do the same and am in fact staying over in Birmingham tomorrow to save on the unessesary milage over two days. I also like to use my laptop on the battery where possible so as not to be contantly drawing on the mains. I am sure switching between uses less power. I recently bought one of these devices as well.. http://www.reuk.co.uk/Owl-Wireless-Electricity-Monitor.htm It is amazing seeing what is being used and when..

When I started video editing it required a powerful desktop computer and moving it around was hard. Now I’m working on a laptop. This is great for the environment and here’s why.

When the equipment you are using is portable it means that you can edit from the client’s offices rather than your own. Several times already I have gone to the office of those whom I work for. If there is a desk free beside them then they may go along with their daily routine whilst I keep working on my own work. Once there’s a rough cut I show them the edit and see whether they like it, apply any changes and once that’s done I can author a DVD.