Facebook. I’m seeing it as a test of insecurity. That says a lot about me. Why have a map of the world that shows where I’ve been? What should I think that says about me? How many friends would I like to have listed on my profile? What if my friends think I don’t have ‘enough’ or have ‘too many’?
There’s an article about Facebook’s definition of friendship on First Monday.
Then there’s the issue of meeting up with long-lost school friends and workmates.
When I find people I haven’t seen for twenty years, what do I say to them? When they ask me how I’ve done over the years, do I need to exaggerate? Facebook can be like a school reunion every time you connect with a name from the past – you know how bad they can be…
Bill Gates said that HDVD and Blu-Ray would be the last hardware formats. Looks like he was almost right. It’ll be DVD. When I got my first DVD player I explained it to my VHS owning friends as a CD for movies. You don’t have to wind through stuff to jump to the bit of the film you want. You can also have different soundtracks if you want to watch a foreign film in English. Also watching a DVD many many times does not damage it.
I never mentioned the picture quality. I didn’t talk about the extras (what few there were in those days). I knew that most people weren’t interested in that. They liked the convenience and the resilience. They knew how to deal with CDs. They’d been through the transition from vinyl.
In the UK, 100% of TVs that are sold have a 16:9 aspect ratio. I would guess that the installed base for 4:3 TVs is down to less than 40%. We don’t associate widescreen TV with HD. It’s just the norm. This happened over six tears ago when the main commercial channels mandated that all commercials should be provided to the network with an aspect ratio of 16:9 with a 14:9 safe area. This meant that people in 4:3 TVs would get a little matting with a 14:9 image on a 4:3 screen. 16:9 TVs would get adverts and programmes where the action and titles were limited to the 14:9 centre of the screen.
We also have a slightly higher resolution in PAL than NTSC. NTSC has more frames per second, so it has slightly smoother motion and less strobing (unless the picture was orginated on film. There’s less demand for HD broadcasting in the UK.
A year or so ago, I was back stage at a conference. I noticed that the majority of the crew were using up the time between video, sound and lighting cues by using their computers to browse YouTube. They needed an unlimited amount of short video clips to fill variable chunks of time. These are the sort of people who buy the latest widescreen TVs. Some have HD cameras. They spent their time watching low-res flash video.
I think they’d agree with me: HD is for aquisition. For consumption, SD is good enough. 1080p24 for production. Eventually 720p for consumption, but not for a while.
Robert X. Cringely thinks that the next technology killer app will telepresence. That’s this year’s name for video conferencing.
HP have a system that costs $300,000 to set up with fees of $18,000 to operate. You get a special room with HD displays and cameras, a fast internet connection and support. HP developed this with Dreamworks. It was designed to support the post-production process.
Mr. Cringely goes on to suggest that Apple might sell home-telepresence as their next consumer killer app. iMacs and portables have screens bulit in at the moment. Apple have the software and marketing expertise to sell the idea to the general public.
The thing I miss about full-time work is regularly spending my days with people I like. Chatting about random subjects. Giving them feedback about their work and lives. Telepresence will work for many more people when it gives us the social element of working with other people in person.
I think that the key to telepresence, making working from home much more like being in the office would be using a dedicated screen and the addition of a second camera. The first camera would be in a dedicated screen next to your main monitor. You could even use a autocue/prompting-type mirror to line up the person on the screen with the camera that’s watching you. This would be the normal personal interaction camera. I think having a seperate screen would help people talk to each other more comfortably. People don’t usually look directly and continuously into people’s eyes as they talk. They like to cutaway to other things in the room.
A second camera would emulate the non-verbal negotiation we do when we decide whether the person we’re looking at is in a state where they can be talked to. This camera would be positioned at 90 degrees to the conversation camera, behind the user. This would be framed as a mid-shot – showing the person from the waist up. This is the sort of view you get when walking past someone’s office, or looking over at their desk in an open plan office. The view that helps you see whether someone is free to talk. Also the view that can tell you if they have time for general chat, or are only free to talk business.
Once we have those extra channels of information, it’ll be a great deal easier to work from home because you won’t be missing your friends at work.
I used to digitise and design fonts. Here are three:
I did some freelance design work at the Radio Times, the BBC’s TV and radio listings magazines. One of my jobs was to take the custom drawn swash caps of their display typeface and make it into a font that could be used in layout software.
For a conference countdown animation, I desgned a typeface that could be implimented using a LCD display. A few years later, someone from Otis emailed to say that he downloaded it as part of research into typefaces that could be used in lift displays.
I made this one by blurring the edges of a typeface in Photoshop, tracing the edges and turning the resulting outlines into a new typeface. I made the spacing between the letters deliberately odd.
I was experimenting with some new plug-ins for After Effects 3.1. The brief was to create an introduction to the new IBM of 1999. Ross MacLennan came up with a script, I chose the music and animated to it.
Almost 9 years later, I face a dilemma. Should I take my experience in graphic and title design and learn how to do complex animations in Apple Motion 3? It comes included with Final Cut Studio. Why not?
On the one hand I find that I can learn Mac applications in a few days, and be comfortable to hire myself out using that application after a few solid weeks. On the other, I want to spend my working life collaborating with people who specialise – who can concentrate being the best sound editor, grader, animator etc.
What if the animation work starts coming in again and I can’t spend the time working on developing my editing career?
It reminds me of the tip given to me when I was a freelance graphic designer: never admit that you can type. If you are the one person in the office that can type the copy into the computer, you’ll be given the typing task – not the chance to design the best layout for the content.
I suppose the trick for freelance editors who aren’t yet working on major films is to learn enough about companion applications so that you can do a ‘good enough’ job on no-budget shorts. There’s a good chance that producers and directors don’t want the hassle of finding crew members who will do the job for free. It’s difficult for some professionals to be able to get their required equipment for free too. That means the editor should be able to do that ‘good enough’ job. If the film gets picked up for some sort of distribution beyond festivals, there might be time to add more professionals to the production.
Maybe it would be a good idea for sound designers and graders to be able to do favours using kit that they wouldn’t normally use in their professional life. As long as they can do the job on their own hardware and software, they’ll be able to do favours. The favours that are part of the networking imperative. The networking that can develop careers in new and interesting directions.
So, editors – learn how to use Motion (or LiveType) to do the kind of typographic effects small productions need. Learn Soundtrack Pro to fix audio problems and create temp tracks. I don’t think you need to know Color, as the built-in features are good enough for small productions. On the Avid side of course you also need to know Pro Tools.
I also think that it would be a good idea for graders to learn Apple’s Color application – it might get them in with people who have no way of paying time in a professional grading suite.
…but those 3D particle effects in Motion 3 look like fun. Oh well.
After a few hours of producing the new, improved (current) final version of The Things We Do for Love over the weekend. I attended the screening on behalf of myself and George (who’s on holiday at the moment).
The organisers were very understanding. They showed the new version I brought along. They also put the lights up before the show for my introduction and after for questions. The audience were kind enough to ask questions too. George and I got laughs, sighs of approval and comments reacting to our wise contributors (‘that’s right!’).
I’ve done a lot of work on making the DVD version, which will include the original 40 minute documentary, production notes and over 30 minutes of bonus footage. The DVD will cost you £8 – with my profits going to Help the Aged.
Just before going to the Cannes Film Festival last year I had an idea for a feature film. It grew out of an idea for a short film.
My father was Quentin Crisp’s agent. He used to be a regular houseguest as I grew up. He didn’t seem odd to me. Children don’t judge adults – they use each person they meet as further information about the different ways adults can be. I thought I could make a little film on this subject. John Hurt’s portrayal in the film of Quentin’s autobiography made both men famous. I realised that John Hurt is now the same age as Quentin was when the film was made. I was tickled by the idea of John reprising the role that made him famous (although he was well-known to some for films that he has already made) in a little short.
A few days after having this idea, I was having a meal with the man who introduced Quentin to my father back in the 1960s. As I was pitching this idea to him, I realised that I could make more than just a short – we could make a sequel to The Naked Civil Servant. Quentin died in 1999. He left the rights of his literary works to my father. That means I can control the rights to any works based on his books. He wrote a sequel to The Naked Civil Servant and other books.
This kind of talk went down well in Cannes, amongst other conversations, and I’ve been thinking how best to adapt his works since then. My father tells me that a screenwriter has got in touch. Brian Fillis is a writer with a pretty good track record – people want to work with him. He’s got Leopard Drama interested making a film about Quentin: An Englishman in New York.
We’ll meet in a couple of weeks, I think as someone who has control over some of the rights required to get a film made, I might be able to negotiate a credit of Co-executive Producer.
In less than five hours I’ll be getting up to go to JFK and back to London, eager to use my new-found abilities to change my life.
George Blackstone just sent me some good news: our documentary ‘The Things We Do for Love’ has been accepted into the Portobello Film Festival, and will be screened on Sunday 5th August at the Westbourne Studios. The good news is that the screening is free, and is part of a whole day of documentaries – that also includes ‘Love is the Devil’ a drama documentary about Francis Bacon featuring Derek Jacobi and Daniel Craig.
That gives me a deadline to finish my new and improved editor’s demo reel. George can’t be there, so I’ll be there representing both of us.
So, as I’m sitting there with Jean and Iris, Uch comes over and asks if I could introduce my film. I thought my little piece would be a gap filler between films. I was the opening act. I was suprised to find that public speaking didn’t worry me too much.
Up until last year, I would have been frozen in fear at the thought of standing up and talking to a crowd of more than five people. Then I had the task to introducing the documentary I made with George Blackstone – The Things We Do for Love. I hosted the fund-raising screening – I introduced our guest speakers, the film, my producer and managed the short Q&A. I wasn’t worried at all. The evening went well. I was shocked at my new ability.
The whole point of being the animator, the designer, the editor is to let your work do the talking. To stay safely backstage. Fear of making myself known to an audience sent me down my particular lines of endeavour.
So it was this evening. I may have talked a little quickly, but I think the screening went well. A block away from Grand Central Terminal.
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