Video StudentGuy

I'm using the last show as a starting point for this show, about an

idea I want to put out there for helping students learn how to better

produce content and how to produce better content. I believe school is

the place where this learning can and should take place, but it's

success depends on how well it's presented and maintained. You'll have

to listen to learn more.

At the end I give a brief review of two books, Here Comes Everybody, by Clay Shirky and The Rise of the Creative Class, by Richard Florida.

They're not light reading but I think each one has something important

to say about how the internet is changing the way we produce media.

This show is about two experiences that were bouncing around in my head

and collided. First, a podcast about technology and second,,

conversations with educators lead me to consider the necessity of

providing some kind of multimedia literacy as part of the higher

education experience. Sort of like directed play in the schoolyard to

avoid bullying.

My thought is not only how to produce content that hits the intended

mark, but also present the impact and responsibilities, both personally

and to others that being a broadcasting entails.

There was a time when it was rare and seemingly ridiculous to require

students to attend schools with a computer. Not so ridiculous now. I

think the time is coming to accept the responsibilities that private

broadcaster carries. I don't have any solutions to offer, but I think

we should be thinking about this.

Here are some links to people and places mentioned in the show.

Listening to this show and trying to reach from what I know to what the

least informed person knows is very difficult. It's hard to record a

session of me talking off the cuff, just using notes, because I end up

using a lot of shorthand without explain things. I need a glossary.

I

don't have one, but I have included some brief explanations of some of

the video codewords I've mentioned in passing, in this show. If you

follow the links you'll find more thorough descriptions. It can get

pretty thick, but it really helps to know these things.

This

episode begins with a recent revelation about my goals and future

direction as a filmmaking professional. I've also included details I've

gleaned from blogs, podcasts and presentations at a recent meeting of

the Boston FCP User's Group.


This has been a busy summer of media events. I've attended Podcamp Boston 4, Podcaster's Across Borders in Kingston Ontario, the Boston Media Makers get together which meets in Jamaica Plains the first Sunday of every month and the annual Avid Summer BBQ.

I wanted to attend Podcamp Montreal, which takes place in a couple weeks, but I think I need to stay at home. There is also a Podcamp New Hampshire, taking place in Portsmouth in November.

It was at the Boston Final Cut Pro User's group that took place in August that I saw Philip Hodgetts present an overview of new features for FCP7. I've also included information I've gleaned from Apple's FCS site and the Digital Production Buzz. You can also find video tutorials online that demonstrate what the new features are in all applications within the suite.

One of the warm up presentations that I thought was particularly noteworthy was for Mocha for FCP

from Imagineer Systems. Check out the link above for videos that

explain image tracking and rotoscoping in a way that will quickly make

sense. Here's my abbreviated version:

Imagine you're seeing a

movie and there's a scene at a football stadium. There's a huge video

screen that shows instant replays and and short commercials. The people

who made that movie didn't record the information on that screen when

they shot the footage of the stadium, they inserted their own footage

on the screen in the editing suite. Maybe an advertisement for a

product that they're getting paid to place in the movie.

In a

still image you can select the space inside the frame of the jumbotron

and remove it and insert what ever image you choose. In a moving image,

the shape of the screen and position of the screen in the frame is

changing in every frame if the camera is moving.

You accomplish

this difficult task by marking places in the frame that are always

visible (bright white points usually) and then making sure they remain

in place as the camera pans across or zooms out. Now that you've got

the location of the anchor points, you create a mask that fits inside

the screen area of the jumbotron and then make sure that mask is linked

to those anchor points that are being tracked. That is called

rotoscoping. Then you drop in your video and make it look like it was

always there.

For sure, that's a gross simplification, but I hope it gets the idea across.


The

new version of the Final Cut Suite (no number, should be #3 tho)

include new feature updates for all the produces (except for DVD Studio

Pro), but Philip was there to cover just Final Cut Pro 7.

Because I clumsily referred to ProRez 422 in passing, give me a moment to explain what an intermediate codec is and what 422 color space and 4444 refers to.

A

color space is the limited range of color that can be viewed from the

entire spectrum of color. Humans can see a wide swath of color between

ultra violet and infra red (violet to red). Some insects and animals

can see beyond that range. Mechanical devices, like monitors and

cameras and capture and display color in a variety color spaces

depending on type of color space. HSB (Hue Saturation and Brightness)

is one space, RGB (Red, Green and Blue) is another.

Video

cameras generally use a color space called YCC, which is roughly RGB.

The Y is the luma quality and the two Cs are the chroma, or color

qualities. Those are the three values in a camera that shoots 4.2.2.

Our

eyes are more sensitive to luma than chroma, so in a 4.2.2 color space

there's twice as much luma, or light, as there is color. Web and DVD

video use a 4.2.0 space and the DV standard uses 4.1.1.

Think of

the 3 areas of information captured by a 4.2.2 camera as distinct

channels of light or color. Like channels in photoshop. There is 4th

channel of visual information which cameras won't capture because it is

created in post production, the alpha channel.

Alpha channels

are used in Photoshop, After Effects and Final Cut Pro are an

additional layer of information that can be used to remove areas of the

frame so that something else can be seen through it. Or it can act as a

selection area of a moving object in the frame so an effect or filter

can be applied to it.

Hold that thought for a moment and let me

move on to a codec. Among other things, it's a software program that

compresses a moving digital image. There are a variety of codecs that

compress video as a camera records it, and decompresses it as a DVD

player plays it. It's a lossy process, which means digital information

is lost when it's compressed. The greater compression, the more minutes

of video can be shushed into a gigabyte of storage space.

Still with me?

There

are a lot of codecs out there and the variety is necessary because of

how you're using them. Camera codecs need to compress data a certain

way to retain the most information to fit on the storage medium, tape,

drive or solid state card. Cameras are capturing video for one purpose

only, to store it. You aren't using it, cutting it into pieces, so it

can squeeze it really tight.

Cutting video in a codec designed

for camera capture, particularly HDV, is not a pleasure to cut. It's

doable, but has problems that I'm not going to get into. If you're

producing a feature length movie or TV video you want to work in a

codec that will give you more freedom to edit. That's what an

intermediate codec is.

One codec for capture, another for

playback (sometimes the same one) and one in-between for the edit.

Prorez is an intermediate codec.

You capture the video from the camera as you do normally, then select the footage in FCP and then convert it to a Prorez codec.

Hang in there, I'm coming to the end.

When

you convert footage captured by a camera using a codec using the 4.1.1

or 4.2.0 color space to, say, Prorez 4.2.2, does that mean you're

getting a better quality out of the footage you shot?

No!

Footage

captured in every DV or HDV camera is being compressed on the fly using

whatever color space the camera uses. That compress, being lossy

discards anything that doesn't fit. So when you convert it to a high

resolution color space, it's got a bunch space it isn't using. When you

shake it, you can hear it rattle.

So why would you convert it to the 4.2.2 space, or for that matter, 4.4.4?

One

reason is these other codecs have other characters that make it more

efficient for your editing software to edit, render and export the

video. More importantly though, and this IS the reason you would use

Prorez 4x4 (4.4.4.4) is that anything else you add, a still image,

motions graphics from After Effects or Motion, or 3D animation from

Maya or 3D Studio Max will be added at their full, mostly likely higher

color and image resolution.

These additional elements, even

something as simple as title text have to be massaged by various

filters and often moved in and out of other programs to make them feel

like they're as real as the realness of the video footage. Have a space

that allows you to work with the maximum amount of resolution of color

and pixel depth offers the kind of control the people with the big

bucks are looking for.

You and I are just lucky that we don't have to have big bucks to get into this party.

As

hard as that was to read, and I congratulate you if you got this far,

it was no picnic figuring how to say it. And be careful, don't use this

in your research paper.

I'm not going to put links to all this

stuff. I've put out the bare bones. If you need to know more you can

look it up for yourself.

I hope it's been useful.

You can find pricing for educational software at Journey Ed and Academic Superstore. I've used them both and they're fast.

Mike Jones at Digital Basin has a good review of the suite upgrade, including what's missing. And check out the Film School Drinking game which I found in the same article. It's an education in itself.

Finally,

if you're on the fence about getting the Snow Leopard update, Leo

Laporte and his gang of usual suspects provide a definitve thrashing of

the pros and cons in #156 of Macbreak Weekly.

This week's show is the second part of my thoughts about craft and art, this show focusing more art.

Right off the bat let me confess that not once did I get the title of the book by John Carrey that I keep refering to, which is What Good are the Arts.

Terrible oversight on my part and while there is no defense let me

repeat that the book and it's correct name is less important to my

remarks than the thoughts and ideas that were spurred by it. With that

in mind, here's a link to The Craftsman by Richard Sennett. I think it has a lot to say about methods of producing quality work for anyone, including filmmakers.

The

great thing about having all these diverse sources of information and

opinion is not so much the opportunity to learn as it is the ideas and

where they take me, and the things I think and believe.

I

generally find that I come to understand what I think and believe by

saying it out loud, either to myself, to others or to you in this time

shifted fashion. There's a monitor in my head as the words come out

that evaluate the rightness of what I'm saying against what I think.

Sometimes when they are at odds I find that what I have said is more

true to what I believe than what I was actually thinking. The sense of

smell and taste comes to mind as a comparable experience. Often they

are very different experiences and one or the other will become the

defining sensation.

So despite how dense, or confusing this all

may sound, I found it necessary to work it out, out loud and as I say

in the end, I have a better understanding of how I think and feel on

this subject, for the present time.

But I feel a need to say

these things not only to clarify my own thoughts, but because this is

an important issue we all have to face and settle for our own selves.

Everyone in the world is a creator and the more culture and technology

enables anyone to share to larger groups of people, the more the

question of craft versus art comes back at us.

Speaking of which, I'm currently reading a fascinating book, Here comes Everyone

by Clay Shirky. It addresses the impact of social media on creativity

and the changes it has had and will continue to have in the future. You

should read it.


Finally, as I was putting together the links for this post I came across a comment

(goodreads.com) from a reader of John Carrey's book who was

disappointed that they didn't finish the book with clearer

understanding of what art is. Diana commented that his definition of a

work of art is 'anything that anyone has ever considered a work of

art'. She goes on to say, "In other words anything, and

correspondingly, nothing" A few more thoughtful reviews are found on

the Times Online, Denis Dutton Online and The Reason Online.

This perspective, which is the cultural norm, that calling something

art acts as a qualifier, sieve, gate and value judgment. Defining art

is like separating the sheep from the goats. Not only does this

approach lead to fruitless and unending debate, I think it's

destructive and wrong.

I couldn't find a way to artfully add a couple links into the show notes, so I'll just list them here:

The Emoti-Chair
CBC Spark episode # 71 about the Emoti-Chair


Here's the transcript of the show, it may or may not help.

Let me know what you think.

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Hi, and welcome to the Video StudentGuy show, the weekly journal of a video student. I'm the guy, Paul Lyzun.

This

is the second part to a show I posted a few weeks ago, Show #128, which

was about Craft. In this show I'm gong to be talking a little bit more

about art and some more about craft,

I began that show by

talking about the path you might follow to make a film. I just wanted

to sum it up in a tight little package, from my own narrow little

perspective.

Along the way I got lost talking about

craftsmanship. I don't apologize for wandering off the path,

craftsmanship is the subject of my recent film. Craftsmanship is

integral to filmmaking, and for myself, the duality of Craft and Art

has been a lifelong tug of war.

I think I did a passing fair

explanation of what I felt craft was, and by implication, what it's

value is. I'll work hard not to go over the same ground in this

episode. Let me just mention one more time how much I enjoyed the book,

The Craftsman, by Richard Sennett, and if you are at all interested, as

I am, in the meaning of art and craft, particularly what it means in

your creative process, I strongly recommend you find a copy and read it

a couple times.

The last two things I mentioned in episode #128

that leads into today's portion of the conversation are that art, or

better and broader yet, creative expression, is a form of

communication, and the other is the question and the book that bears

the name, What is Art Good For, by John Carey.

Let me start with

the idea that I got form the book, which is what good is art for? Let

me start with the idea that was spawned by the book, which is, what is

art good for?

The first thing I'm going to do is dispense with

the word Art – it's a loaded word meaning everything and nothing. Just

trying to narrow it's definition would take more time than it's worth.

I'm going to use "it" in exchange for Art and you can assume when I say "it", I'm saying Art.

I

want to start off that way because it eliminates preconceived ideas of

creativity. It eliminates pictures of what is not art and removes the

risk of applying taste and prejudice (same thing? you decide) to the

topic.

That frees me up for a few minutes to look at the question itself, which is really very telling.

To

rephrase the question, "what is it good for" is a universal and a

common, commonly asked question. It places the focus on the practical

and pragmatic. Things exist because they perform a function. In a

Darwinian sense, you could say things exist because they're food for

something else, or are means of avoiding being food. Every detail in

the construction and appearance of everything has a purpose. I believe

that's true whether you believe in a higher power or the evolutionary

process, or both. This isn't about who's responsible, this is about

dealing with the way things are.

So, asking what is it good for

implies there must be a purpose, that things exist for a reason. As I

just describe, I concede they do exist for a reason.

Imagine

that I made something. At a very minimalist level it is good for being

the result of an effort of realizing an idea in the real world, the

world outside our minds. We're thinking things all the time. Making

stuff up that never was, and is not. But when someone takes an idea and

makes it, physically, it becomes separate from the maker, beyond their

control.

Now, why would anyone want to do that? Well, perhaps to

get a more concrete grasp of this idea, Looking at it externally allows

me to refine it's nature until it matches my expectations OR it changes

the way I think.

Once I put an idea in the physical world, my

mind isn't solely in control of it's idenity. The world that we both

occupy now has some claim to it's meaning and in the process I can

change as well as it can.

The thing I made changes me.

THAT, is the real power of creativity!

Being able to change yourself.

That makes it worth the effort alone, just to experience change in how I perceive the world I live in.

But

it doesn't end with communicating with the world separate from myself.

When I put it out there in a world of other individuals I open it and

myself up to further change through the reactions of other people and

how they view themselves and the world, the same world I live in

objectively, but not subjectively.

It's a means of expressing a human experience and a means of sharing a human experience

Sounds complicated eh?

Well, getting back to the main question, what is it good for?

It's good for changing myself, changing other people – changing the world.

What is it again?

It is art, it is creativity, it is human expression, it is communication.

Everything

changes all the time. Scale isn't the issue. We are bombarded, shot

through every iota of a moment with information that changes our world

view and I'm guessing here, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone told

me we don't register most of it.

So the volume and the scale, it doesn't matter very much. Everything changes, all the time. You can't take it all in.

That's why we're all different right, we are the sum of what we choose to perceive.

Now, lets get a little more concrete. I want to talk about the book "What is Art Good For? by John Carey.

Because

once we get past the abstract, fundamental view I've just presented,

things get immediately sticky and oh so thick. Watch out that you don't

loose a shoe in the mud.

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I have not read this book, I'll tell you right up front and as long as I'm being honest I'll say that in all likelihood I won't.

I

think I would enjoy his writing and find I would agree with a lot of

what he has to say. I just don't have the time or inclination. I'm not

saying this a means of passing judgement on his book, it's just a

matter of personal bandwidth.

By all accounts John Carey is a

good writer and very convincing in his arguments. He is witty,

intelligent and dead on in his ability to deconstruct and lay bare the

self serving mystification of the art establishment. His books are a

pleasure to read. One author thought he was just a little too forgiving

in his appraisal of the one medium he feels is superior, but overall,

he thinks that it's a good book.

I've read a number of reviews

and I've put a couple links on the blog page if you'd like to read them

as well. After several different articles read, I feel I can made some

generalizations (obviously without having read the book) and offer this

simple, perhaps unfair generalization.

He says that the art culture is pompous and hypocritical
and that greatest art is literature.

See the time I saved you!?

The

primary reason I'm discussing it here is to present an alternative view

to his perception that all other creative works are subordinate to

literature. And since I haven't read his book I'm not going to indict

him personally, he may very well feel misunderstood on that count, I

just want to use his premise as a jumping off point for this idea of a

hierarchy in value to art – that there's always a pecking order.

The

more we embrace technology in our lives, the further we become removed

from our origins, the places and things that have shaped us as human

beings over our time here on earth. Despite the pervasiveness of the

technology surrounding us today, it still doesn't have the same impact

on the way we think act and feel as "natural" environmental shapers.

So,

we've surrounded ourselves with an environment of our own making –

which is alien to us in a historically cultural sense. Plastic, steel

concrete – they register in our higher functioning brain, but not in

our unconscious mind, which got us by for hundreds of thousands of

years before we began collecting together to build farms, towns and

cities.

The invention of writing and the ability to read has had

a profound impact on our culture, both as a means of advancing it, and

archiving it. Certainly our success in living in an artificial

environment is due mainly in part to reading and writing. But whatever

we've read, whatever has been written, is a memory that connects us to

a real experience of something we've felt, touched, smelled, seen and

heard at an earlier time. I believe these senses are more immediate and

transfer information to our brains in a more visceral and direct way.

And yet, the further we move into the future, the less exposure we have

to these sense touchstones. It's sort of like living without knowing

what the midnight sky looks like without light pollution.

How

much are we really missing? How much are we really separated from the

past, from the real world in terms of the artificial world that we've

created for ourselves?

Well, if you're honest, you know you

can't beat a tornado. The best you can do is hunker down with Auntie

Em. And how different is that from hiding from a tiger in a cave.

Of

course it can be rightly said that writing presents information in an

organized manner. After all, how valuable can art be that slips by your

conscious understanding and sits like undigested meat in your colon

until it finally integrates into your body you're not even aware of the

cause of any change that's taken place? Or that change has taken place.

Actually, I think change that occurs without knowing is an an awesome power.

So

think about music, the texture of a basket or the smell of a leather

coat. It's a message organized in a different way. Nonlinear, holistic.

And

you could say that writing has achieved a greater cumulative scale in

meaning than any other media, but I reject the importance of volume and

scale, in favor of the specific impact a creative work can have on an

individual.

Let me use a specific instance to clarify what I

mean about this unique effect that non verbal art can have on different

individuals.


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About communication through the other senses
Spark #71
http://www.cbc.ca/spark/2009/03/episode-71-march-25-28-2009/

I

listened to a show called Spark . It's from CBC Radio in Canada. It's a

great show. Each show has several stories of different length about

current and bleeding edge technology and how it's transforming people's

lives. I like it mainly because, although it's all about technology, it

dares to find ways in which technology is changing the way we live – as

we're living it. Right now! That, is cool.

One of the stories in

a recent episode, episode number 71, was a conversation about the

creation of an emoti-chair, a device which produces electrical

impulses, tiny shocks, that are triggered by the sounds in music.

When

you sit in this chair it actually – it can actually feel like something

is touching you. The creators of this technology have developed a new

form of expression based on the sense of touch.It has begun to morph

quickly. One example is that deaf people can sense music in a greater

dimension.

Someone who was deaf described how at a party

everyone who couldn't hear would hear the music through feeling the

vibrations, barefoot, through the wooden floors. The difference with

the emoti-chair is that each instrument creates a different sensation.

Instead of all of the music coming through as one vibration, you had

different vibrations at different locations on the chair, which of

course affected different parts of your body. For each instrument. This

mechanism allowed a deaf person the ability to experience music through

assimilating multiple layers of sensation, in this case tactile, which

mirrored closely the manner in which a hearing person experienced music

through their ears.

Another person, one without hearing

limitations found that the emotional impact of the music was

intensified with the combination of the sensations that were generated

by the emoti-chair. It literally brought her to tears in a way the

music did not.

Finally, a musician who was composing music for

the chair found that he was able to elevate the effect that the chair

on the senses, not by writing a great song, but writing the music based

on the sensations produced by sitting in the chair.

So the chair itself was his feedback loop, not his ears.

Is

this any less the impact that literature has? Is the argument that

literature is more powerful as a single force and to the greatest

number of people because of it's ability to cross reference itself and

establish a more cohesive, inter-referential whole? Is it because it's

easier to document and catalog it's impact that sets it apart in value

from all other forms? Is it the consistency of the media over

generations that makes it easier to judge?

Okay, this is where you're saying, well Paul, you should just read the book and find out. Find out why he thinks that way!

Well, my point at it's very heart is that any creative expression has to be judged on it's own and by an individual.

So,

the first point is that there's all this bogus mysticism about art, and

it's being propped up by museums, and art collectors, and art

speculators and so forth. That has, for generations and hundreds of

years even, affected the way we perceive art. Remember, there was a

time when art and craft were one thing. They were just simply creative

expressions. At least in western culture, it wasn't until the

Renaissance that they sort of split apart. And so there was a humbler

form of creativity, and a higher form of creativity.

But, that

was just simply a societal choice. Up to that point people didn't make

that distinction and there was no need to make that distinction. And I

believe very much that that was generated by money.

If people

valued it and therefore they had to identify that it had a special,

unique value, that set it apart. Supply and demand so to speak.

So

however powerful any work of art can be, I just don't believe that

there is a greatest hits of art. There is great art, there is universal

art, but I think it's important to value work based on a personal level.

Just as one's knowledge and understanding of math and science is easier

to measure compared to the arts in general, like in SAT scores, so

society believes that's the better organized the information is, the

better it represents a higher intelligence.

After all, isn't

that how we were able to create a sophisticated culture? And I'm not

saying that we can throw that away, but I think that it would be good

to embraced that disorganized, holistic, intuitive aspect of ourselves

just as much. This is what we're starving [for], currently, in our

culture

So the idea of having the ability to quantify and

categorize and hierarchize and organize art - that makes it much easier

sort-of-like to build a mountain of blocks and then see which comes

upon top.
Is that the reason literature achieves greater significance over the other arts?

I'm

not going to enter into that argument. I can only say that measuring

the value of something through the volume of it's impact is

dehumanizing. Creativity is expressed on a personal level and impressed

on individuals in the same way. Hundreds of people can view a painting

at a museum in a single day. Thousands of people can hear a musical

performance at one time in a concert. Millions of people can watch a

movie on TV simultaneously. But every person internalizes that

experience on a personal level.

Painting, music, literature,

origami, everything touches everyone of us in a different way at

different times and while you generalize about the critical defining

characteristics of one medium, you also lose a lot in the streamlining

process. And in that process you disenfranchise a lot of people from a

lot of creativity.

It's not just about what you see and identify

as art, it's what you allow yourself to believe what you can do, as far

as art. And if you think that knitting is secondary to some other art

form, then you're always going to feel like a second class citizen of

art. Of creativity, forget the art word.

[Streamlining,

simplifying art is a form of marketing. For money, for ideology, take

your pick. The honest reaction of an individual to a single creative

expression cannot be calculated, summed and expressed in anything more

than a gross generalization that distorts its value.]

But I'm

not interested in changing the world on this point. For myself, I feel

that holding this thought, this consideration, as I create, will help

me keep my balance against any outside pressure of generalized, common

knowledge, wisdom and understanding.


Well, now that that's

over I don't think I enjoyed it very much at all. How about you? It was

hard work and I don't think it makes any difference.

Well, maybe

a little difference. Now that I've written this down and thought about

it, I have a better idea of what I think I think, and I can consider

whether it makes sense or not. I don't know about you.

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After

I wrote all this that I just told you, I had some other thoughts and I

decided that, instead of integrating them, I'd just simply leave them

as a footnote at the end .

I think the reason I'm going on and

on about the idea of craft and art is this (and remember when I say

art, I mean an expression of creativity and a desire to communicate):

Art

with a capital A, as I've tried to identify earlier, creates a sense of

heightened expectations. Somedays you don't feel inspired, you're glad

you can drag your sad butt out of bed and put your shoes on the right

feet.

Days like that can make you wonder if you should even put

in the time. Everyone has days like that and you can't control when

they happen. Frankly, I don't want to live with the weight of

expectations about what I'm going to do or how well I'm going to do it,

while I'm in the middle of my work. I don't want to be distracted, I

want the creativity to flow out of me without any speedbumps.

That's

the feeling I want, regardless of how useful, attractive or successful

is the thing I end up creating. When I'm in that frame of mind, what I

make is almost always good and whether it's what I want or not, it

leaves me feeling good about the work and myself. And that just

perpetuates more creativity.

[So I think all the talk about art

is an after the fact thing. It's hindsight. Who knows how many trials,

experiments or dead ends any creative person has to pass through before

the finished work of art is delivered. No one wants to know, no one

cares. So why do people who are making the thing itself have to think

about it.]

I know, there's all kind of situations where you have

to keep your eye on the deadline, measure the work you're doing against

the anticipated product, keeping customers happy, keeping the business

flowing.

I'm not saying you can dispense with all those voices,

I only want to provide a little breathing room so we can create and

build, At the same time I'm also listening to myself think, I can watch

myself work, think about what I'm doing and have enough presence of

mind to evaluate it, or re-evaluate it and then proceed forward to the

next step.

When the focus is on craft you can have that kind of

internal conversation, just you and the thing you're creating. And you

can feel good about what you're doing, because you can see how you're

doing.

Immediate feedback loop.

//


There's

something about big people and little people when it comes to creative

endeavors and I don't like the mentality that we qualify the creative

value of something based on it's ROI. Yeah, we got a great economic

steamroller of a system, but when I make things, I'm answering a need

that places money below first place.

I'm not saying that we can

live in a world where doesn't money matter, only that we should choose

to live in a world where it matters a lot less than it does.

//

If

you're still listening, I applaud your fortitude. Thanks for letting me

talk this thing out. I think next week I'll do a short show about

something superficial.

I've got links on the blog to the various

podcasts, or books that I've talked about. Take a look at

[email protected]. You can also leave a comment or a criticism

at the website. Or you can send me an email at

[email protected].

Despite how I may come off, I am

interested in what you think, even if we disagree. In fact, I reserve

the right to disagree with myself sometime in the future.

I'm Paul, the videostudentguy, thanks for listening,

I'll talk to you later,

in the meantime, be creative.

Bye

What's in this show:

I'm going to talk mostly about some of the events at PAB 09 in Kingston. It's been a month and I'm just now getting my thoughts down. My apologies to Bob and Mark, the show's promoters, and thanks guys, for once again producing a first class happening.

First I have some updates about my computer. Then, after I give you a quick reminder of what PAB is all about, I talk about Jowie Taylor and the Six String Nation Guitar. Check out the site, it's full of really interesting stories that I can talk about only in passing. Better yet, if you can attend an event where Jowi Taylor speaks(his schedule is right on the homepage) about this remarkable artifact, you should attend and get your picture taken holding it.

As a counterpoint to Jowi's story I discuss some sobering and pragmatic information presented by Chris Penn of the Financial Aid Podcast and Marketing over Coffee. This guy's good!

All this leads me to talking about identity, personal and national, and the power of the stories that people tell…

I'm serious about my offer to interview any Canadian expatriate, or emigrant to Canada. Send me an email at [email protected] and we can talk via skype. It's easy!

Oh, if you can help me understand what to do with Twitter (@bermamot), I'd be very grateful.

This is a long show, about 45

minutes so I've listed the time-code for the sections so that if you

want to get on to another subject you can scrub your way forward.

00:16    Introduction

06:47    What is PAB?

08:55    Jowi Taylor and 6 String Nation Guitar

25:04    Chris Penn

32:14    Networking 101

33:41    Social Media History

35:51    Personal History

37:29    Call to Action

40:42 Good Intentions

45:46    Close

Talking about hardware problems with my car, my own mental wiring and my laptop, leading up to attending Podcaster's across Borders in Kingston Ontario. I made it there an back, but I'll have to give you the high points in the next show.

Check out these shows,

• On the Log - Episode 68: The Sound Between the Notes
• DicksnJanes #202: postPABblab
• Being Buff # 36, Jowi Taylor PAB2009 Keynote: How a guitar brought a nation together
• Canadian Podcast Buffet will be uploading recordings of the sessions throughout the summer

Also, google PAB09. Every attendee who writes a blog or posts a podcast/vidcast will put this tag in their RSS fee.

In the process of troubleshooting problems with my laptop, using tools such as Techtool Pro, Carbon Copy Cloner and and Apple Disk Utility, the drive and the motherboard failed and an emergency trip to the Apple Store Genius Bar resulted in it being pronounced DOA.

All that I can do at this point is offer some cautionary advice on how to prepare, and deal with the inevitable computer meltdown.

Finally I go over some of the critical features I'm looking for in my next laptop.

Corrections:

15" laptop. It is 1440x900, which is identical to the highest resolution

on my PowerBook 1.67 Ghz 17" laptop.

Also I was wrong about the price

difference. There is only a $200 price difference, not $400.

Finally, the factory warranty is one year and you can

purchase AppleCare, an extended warranty for a maximum of 3 years (not 4 years). A

real bargain at $350. It covers any defective parts and service to

replace them.

There are two graphics cards in both the 15" and 17' which have 2.8Ghz processors, and they function the same. There are other, slower processor 15" MacBook Pros and their hardware configurations are very different.

Here's the primary differences between the two laptops as far as I can determine right now.

                                               15"                  17"

• Cost Difference              $200 less
• Two video cards                 Yes                   Yes
• Drive                               500 Gig            500 Gig
• Card Slots                          SD             ExpressCard/34
• Display                             Good          Larger, HiRez
• Battery                            7 hours             8 hours

The 17" is a good deal for the extra $200, no question about that.

In this show you can hear a recent screening of the film, Handmade in America at the Community School of the Arts in Mansfield CT.

Heather Bunnell, the Arts Coordinator of the school and Susan Gerr, one of the potters featured in my film, start off the show with introductions, as do I, to a crowd of of over 100 people.

I don't include the recording of people watching the film, but you can view the complete 20 minute film at Vimeo using the password: lorezfile.

The remainder of the show is a Q&A with the audience.

This show is a summing up of my recent experience interning at a

documentary film production house as a production assistant. It was a

good sized business, about 20 to 30 people, depending on the business

climate. I didn't really comment about this in the show, but now,

during this economic pit we're in, now has been a very good time to

observe how a business like this functions.

Filmmaking may or may not be recession proof, but there's no question

this time around a lot of money has dried up. I saw a lot of

resourcefulness at work.

If you listen to this show I hope you'll get an idea of what an

internship can offer you beyond your formal education. I also talk

about some valuable lessons I learned and generalized how to go about

getting what you want from this learning experience.

I have no doubts that internships aren't about the money, the time you

spend or the sacrifices you make. In a nutshell about temporarily

living the life you think you want. You can't see more than a small

part of it, but it's a lot more than you see any other way. In the end

the value you get out of it rests entirely on your effort to learn what

you want.

Oh, an one correction, there is no such thing as JUST an assistant.

In the beginning of the show I mentioned I was interviewed by John

Meadows for his show On the Log and we discussed the future of

filmmaking. The show, Lights Camera and Interaction was broken into Part 1 and Part 2. 

And I'm serious about the offer of interviewing you over Skype. If you

would like to be on this show and you think you have something

interesting, even half interesting, to say about filmmaking, video

production, editing, motion graphics, even internship, let me know by

leaving a comment here on the blog or emailing me.

I've just finished a book by David Lynch, writer and directory of many movies, including Eraserhead, Dune and Twin Peaks.  Catching the Big Fish is a the author's reflections on how he has and others can find ideas, big ideas through TM, Transcendental Meditation.

But the book isn't about the workings of TM, it's about his experiences

as a filmmaker trying to solve puzzles as he worked on his films.

It's a quick read and has a lot of interesting reflections in it. You

won't find a lot of practical information, but you will get a glimpse

of the man and the way he thinks, and what he thinks about storytelling.

I hadn't finished reading the book before I recorded this episode so I

didn't get to mention that he spends a few pages talking about digital

video and it's impact on him and the Hollywood film industry. I'm

always interested to learn how established filmmakers view this new

technology and his response is blunt and pragmatic.

Here are a few links to comments I made about another filmmaker who writes and is written about, Walter Murch. He wrote a great book about editing, In the Blink of an Eye. He was the subject of another book  I highly recommend called, The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film. Finally, though I haven't read it yet, I would suggest you look at, Behind the Seen: How Walter Murch Edited Cold Mountain

Using Apple's Final Cut Pro and What This Means for Cinema, it's a

little dated, written in 2004, but between the history and biography

I'm certain it's an interesting read.

Leave a me a comment or send me an an email

Towards the end of last year I had so many things to do I switched from

a weekly to a bi-weekly show. I thought I could switch back, but I

still don't have enough time, so for the foreseeable future I'll work

hard to get one out every two weeks.

This week is kind of short, but a lot has been happening. Following a

screening of my film a couple weeks ago I got an invite to a local

radio to talk about the film and pottery. I was joined by Linda Gerr of

Birch Mountain Pottery, who is one of the subjects in my documentary.

By the way, send me an email

and ask me for a link to the full film and I'll be glad to send it to

you.There's a link in the show a one or two episodes back if you

thinking looking for it is easier.'

The radio call letters are WILI, you can find the link to the audio online here (posted April 23) or you can link directly to the audio file. Watch out, it's a Windows Media file.

Bill Meems left a comment on show #86, which was about the National Association of Broadcaster's show in Las Vega that I attended and commented on this time last year. Thanks Bill. I mentioned the Digital Production Buzz

show as a source of news about industry announcements during the event.

I've gone for the past two years and enjoyed it a great deal, but I'm

glad for the chance to take a year off.